ady in the city who can be of service to him in a certain matter
and he should come back with us and we should lead him to the
house and she will give us money and the sheikh will understand."

"Good!" pronounced Grim. "Not half bad. Just for that I'll go
with you."

He winked at de Crespigny, nodded to me, pulled on a black-and-white
striped Bedouin cloak, and went off with them at once. Whereat
Narayan Singh came in, looking like another person altogether,
although, if anything, bigger than before. He had got out of
uniform and was dressed in a medley of Indian and Arab costume
that made him look like one of those slaves in the "Arabian Nights"
who cut off the heads of women. All he needed was a big curved
simitar to fill the bill.

"Henceforth I am the _hakim's_ servant," he said, showing his
teeth in an enormous grin. "Only," he added, "since it will be I
who instruct the _hakim,_ in secret the sahib must listen to me."

He got out the medicine-chest, and being a Sikh with all of a
soldier's opinion of civilians proposed to teach me what the
labels on the little bottles stood for. Even he laughed after a
minute or two, when he had got himself thoroughly sewed up and
called each bottle by its wrong name.

"Ah! What does it matter!" he exclaimed at last. "Sore
eyes--broken leg--boils--knife-wound--let it be all one. Give
episin salts--always episin. Then, if we are long in one place,
so that a sick man comes a second time, swearing grievously
because of episin, give croton. That person will not come again,
but the fame of the _hakim_ will spread far and wide."

"You'd much better teach me how a _hakim_ sits a camel,"
I suggested.

"All ways, sahib, for the _hakim_ is not seldom a _bunnia_ whose
parents bought him education. Softer than wax is the rump of a
_bunnia_ and one who reads books. He sits this way until the
boils break out, and then that way until the skin chafes. Then
presently he lies across the saddle on his belly and either prays
or curses, according as his spirit is pious or otherwise. But the
camel continues to proceed, since that is its nature."

"Well, go on, instruct the _hakim,_ then. The sahib listens."

"It is well to remember there will be with us, besides those
seventeen thieves of this place, who know who we truly are, four
sons of the desert and a woman. Now the woman, being woman, and
they are all alike, will take note of the _hakim_ and pretend to
little sickness for the sake o