t would not have been safe to apply
to any of Ali Baba's men if he had chosen them for the job.

Those thieves would stand for any kind of devilry, and were
willing to undertake all risks at Grim's bidding. Jail, fighting,
hardship, meant to them no more than temporary inconvenience. But
to have asked them to let a prisoner escape, and submit to
shameful abuse for it afterward in the presence of a woman and
strangers, would have been more than Arab loyalty could stand.

And, mother of me, how that woman Ayisha did revile us! If ever
she had doubted we were Indians she was sure of it now. She swept
with her tongue the whole three hundred million Indians into one
vile horde and de-sexed, disinherited, declassed, and damned the
lot of us. Before you think you know anything about abuse,
wholesale or retail, you should hear a lady of the desert
proclaim displeasure. I wouldn't be surprised to know that the
very camels blushed.

It was all Narayan Singh could stand, for Ali Baba and his gang
laughed derisively, and no true son of the East can endure to be
laughed at.

"Let that mother of snakes beware!" he growled in my ear; and
as it turned out in the end, he did not forget the grudge he
owed her.

We were off again a good hour before sundown, and Mahommed Abbas
sent out a screen of camel-men to follow us for several miles.
They fired about twenty shots when we were well out of range, and
boasted, as we learned afterward, of having put Ali Higg and a
hundred men to rout.

But that did no harm. It reduced the real Ali Higg's prestige for
a while all over the countryside; and in these days of League of
Nations and mandates and whatnot it is hard enough in all
conscience for brave villagers with muskets to find something to
make up songs about. De Crespigny knew the truth about it as soon
as our "escaped" man got to Hebron.

Before midnight we were well south of the Dead Sea and far beyond
the border up to which the British mandate was supposed to be
going to extend whenever the League of Nations Council should
stop arguing. We were something like two thousand feet below
sea-level now; but although the heat all day long under the tents
had been almost intolerable, the night air was actually chilly
because of the tremendous evaporation. The earth was throwing off
the heat it had absorbed all day, and chill drafts crept from the
mountaintops to take its place.

And as we crossed the imaginary border in pure, mellow m