est I will
have thee and thy woman whipped into the desert and left to die."

Whereupon Achmed fled precipitately in the wake of her who had annoyed,
and snatching a whip beat her smartly on her plump but ill-formed
shoulders, the while he urged the prima ballerina of the establishment
to anoint herself and depart right quickly to the pacifying of the
great Hahmed, which order, alas, put a totally wrong idea into her
Tunisian-Arabian pate.

[1]Long native pipe.

CHAPTER LI

La Belle, a rank cross-breed of Tunisian and French with a dash of
Arabian, was the one good part of a bad debt which had overwhelmed
Achmed when he had inadvertently over-reached himself.

Her body was passable, lithe, sinewy, with a faint hint of rib and a
wonderful bust; her brain was good, intuitive in its non-educated
state, and subtle from inheritance; her ambition was superb, it knew no
limits, it saw no obstacle.

Born in a kennel in Tunis, she had figuratively and literally fought
her way to the upper reaches of the gutter, sleeping in filth, eating
it, listening to it, living it; dancing for a meal, selling her
strangely seductive body for a piastre or so, settling her quarrels
with a knife she carried in her coarse, crisp, henna-dyed hair, with
one goal before her slanting orange eyes, that of dancer in chief,
prima ballerina, or what you will, in some house of good repute; the
explanation of which phrase would overtax my oriental knowledge I fear.

Dance she could, if dancing is the correct term for the subtle
portraying of every conceivable vice by every conceivable gesture and
posture; and she had felt herself content on the day she had for a good
round sum sold herself to take up a dancing position of some importance
in the house of him who, unknown to her, had got himself entangled in
more than one human money-spider's web.

If her dancing was correct or not, men had begun to foregather in the
house, where--if her temper allowed--she would dance o' nights fully
clothed or fully unclothed; also her reputation was beginning to be
used as a lure to the uninitiated freshly arrived in Cairo, therefore
her usually fiendish temper was as hell unloosed when, as part payment
of a debt, she found herself willy-nilly strapped to a camel and carted
by slow stages to the house of rest whose proprietor was Achmed, and
landlord Hahmed, the Camel King.

"Dance I will not, thou descendant of pigs," she stormed at Achmed,
who, reduc