n officer in the British pay, and
was rather obviously considering which would likely pay him
best--to side secretly with Ali Higg or openly with Grim, or both.

Having fought over all that country under Lawrence, and knowing
consequently every yard of it, I suppose Grim felt neither
thrilled nor mystified; but in case any scientist reads this and
wants to know how I felt, "fed up and far from home" about
describes it. But there was worse to come!

Grim turned to me at last and smiled in that darned genial
way he has when he means to call on your uttermost patience
or endurance.

"You see, the difficulty is," he said, "to get to Ali Higg
without his getting us first. He has probably got between forty
and fifty men in Petra with him, so we daren't invade the place.
Yet we've got to hurry, because old Ibrahim ben Ah with that army
may get suspicious and send back a messenger on his own account.
Now, do you feel willing to beard the Lion in his den?"

"Alone?" I asked.

I never felt less willing to do anything, and dare say my face
betrayed it.

"No. Narayan Singh will go too, and, of course, Ayisha."

Ayisha seemed about as safe an ambassador to send as an electric
spark to a barrel of powder. I glanced at Narayan Singh and felt
ashamed, for his eyes glowed unmistakably. He was enthusiastic.

Well, it seems I draw a color-line after all. I can't fight like
a Sikh, or be as good a man in lots of ways; but I'm not going to
be outdone by one in daring, while the Sikh is looking.

"All right," I said, "I'll do anything you say."

But I did not have the perfect voice-control I would have liked,
and Jael Higg grinned. That naturally settled it.

"Narayan Singh needn't come if he'd rather stay with you," I
added, and the Sikh raised his eyebrows.

"Do you dare to make love to Ayisha, sahib?" he grinned.

I began to see the general drift of the plan of campaign, and
wondered. Having seen more than a little of the Near East, and
knowing how the peace of the whole world depends on preserving
that unmelted hotpot of nations from anarchy, I was not impressed
by the stability of things in general!

Grim had come out on his hair-raising venture because no army was
available to deal with Ali Higg, and he would not have ventured
unless powers-that-pretend-to-be were sure that Ali Higg was
deadly dangerous. Did the peace of the world, then, depend on the
success or otherwise of a Sikh's mock love-making. It did look
li