“For Hell’s an awful place!”
“Maybe you know?” he suggested. “Tell me some more, miss.”
She talked to him about fire and brimstone all through breakfast without any kind of malice but a perfectly sincere desire to scare him into Christianity.
“Ain’t you afraid you’ll get killed before night?” he asked, trying at last to turn the subject.
But she was not afraid of anything except bad doctrine, and only of that in case it should get by her unrebuked. As Cameron had said the day before, she was a good lass; she would stand.
“Tell me about Heaven,” sighed Cohen. “I’m tired of hearin’ about Hell.”
“Man, man! You may be in Hell before bedtime!” she answered and Grim laughed aloud.
“She’s quite right, Aaron. Initiation takes place directly after breakfast. Third degree follows, and Hell tonight!”
All through breakfast there were interruptions. De Crespigny had to keep leaving the table to interview local notables, who called to complain that the city was growing more turbulent every hour and they could not fairly be held responsible.
Jones swallowed a few mouthfuls and started off alone to look alert and confident in the swarming suk, since to appear the reverse of afraid was about the only available resource, though that seemed limitless. And just as breakfast finished there came once more the splutter and bark of a motorcycle down-street.
“Can you beat that?” asked de Crespigny, coming in and handing the dispatch to Grim. They let me look at it; in fact, it was passed around the table afterward, although the envelope was stamped “SECRET” as usual in enormous letters:
Your message of yesterday received. Troops here are busy. Governors of outlying places are expected to carry on accordingly. A demonstration will be made by airplane from Ludd this morning; the pilot will be expected to report whether all is quiet or otherwise. In the event of his reporting all quiet no action is expected to be taken in your direction before tomorrow morning, when a Sikh patrol will be sent with machine guns if it can be spared. Please report by bearer if there are any symptoms of a concerted attack on Jerusalem, rumors having reached us.
It was signed by the same staff-major who had written the message of the day before. But this time there was a foot-note, not typewritten but in the angular long-hand of the administrator himself.
“Carry on, boys. Kettle.”
“That postscript’s typical of ‘Pots and Pans’,” said Grim. “I’ll bet he’s sent help to some of the weak sisters elsewhere and counts on you fellows to worry through. There’s probably a raid in force coming up from the Jordan Valley and every available man in Jerusalem combed up to deal with it. How will you answer?”
De Crespigny wrote two lines and showed them:
Carrying on, sir. No sign of attack on Jerusalem from this place yet. Sikhs welcome when available.
“Good!” said Grim. “He likes telegrams. Man fired at on the way?”
“Says not.”
“That proves nothing,” put in Cameron. “I’ve been five-and-twenty years here, and know their ways. They’re flocking into the city. So the fields are deserted. The Turks understood how to deal with them. The Turks, in a crisis like this, would have hanged out of hand any man found in the streets who did not belong to the city. I’ve seen them strung up in front of the jail in a row like haddock drying in the sun. Djemal Pasha would have straightened out this business in less than half a day. He was a rascal, though; he’d have lined his pockets afterwards with fines that would have kept them all too poor to make trouble for a year to come! Well, we’re not Turks and they’re gone. But I heard ex-president Roosevelt speak in Egypt. ‘Rule or get out!’ That was his advice. Speaking as a missionary, I’d say take the latter half of it—get out! Teach, yes, if they’ll listen; but teach ‘em what? They’re as moral as we are. Teach ‘em our Western commercialism? God forbid! Literature? We don’t read our own books, so why should they? Which of you can quote me half a line from Robbie Burns?”
“Speaking of burns, Doc,” put in Grim, “You’ve got to teach me some chemistry before lunch—something to prevent them.”
“I’m a very busy man.”
“Have you plenty of drugs?”
“I’ve plenty of nothing! Fifteen hundred pounds a year our Mission scrapes together for this hospital, and out of that must come my salary, if, as and when I choose to draw it. I’ve drawn it seven times in twenty years. Ye’d think Hebron would contribute something; it did at times under the Turks; but now all the rascals do is steal my stores. Teach, eh? Come wi’ me to the hospital and I’ll show ye how one man and one trained nurse care for eighty patients in a forenoon.”
* * * * *
So Cohen, Grim and I walked over with him and the lady from the Hebrides and he barked with pleasure at sight of the paper packets that Grim laid on his office table in the trim stone mission building.
“This man Cohen has got to be made fire-proof!” Grim announced.
Cameron smiled.
“Has Miss Gordon’s sermon made him so afraid of Hell as that?”
“The point is, can you do it for us, Doc? Or must we experiment?”
“Well, there are preparations that so indurate the cuticle as to render it insensible to a very high degree of heat.”
“Are the ingredients in these packets?”
“Aye, some of them. These could be improved on.”
“What would you add?”
“Quicksilver, but I’ve none to spare. I think I can recall a formula, though, that I once used for the hands of a Turkish soldier who was employed in the castle armory on some hot metal work. Let’s see— mnmn—spirit of sulfur—onion juice—essence of rosemary —sal ammoniac—that’s all. You could make a paste of these drugs on the table, but it would be liable to form a hard film that might crack, with dangerous consequences. The other’s better; I’ve a notion it’s what they used in mediaeval times when people went through the ordeal by fire—walking on hot plow-shares, ye know, and all that hocus-pocus.”
“Here’s your patient,” said Grim. “Make him Hell- proof, please!”
He pulled Cohen forward by the arm and the poor chap’s face changed color under the tan.
“Why me? Say, I’m not afraid of Hell! You quit your kiddin’! I’ve had about enough of this practical jokin’! That tank in the dark was my positively last performance!”
“Listen, old man—we’ve nobody but you,” said Grim. “You’ve got to carry the big end. All we can do is support you and watch points. You know perfectly well it would be no use trying to argue with the Jews of this place; we’ve got to show them. If you prove to them you can handle fire without getting burned and I prove to them that they’ll all be dead before night unless they sit into the game, we can make at least some of them play. It’s the only chance. If you should back down now, we’re done for! Go ahead, Doc—mix the devil’s undershirt. See that Satan has nothing on this man when it comes to squatting on the slag!”
“What? Have I got to sit on fire? Without pants?”
“No, not as bad as that.”