“That’s how most of these fire-eaters ye see performing in Cairo and places like that come to a bad end. They don’t die so quickly but they’ve time to suffer the agony of the damned. I’d recommend ye to be very careful. And mind ye, I’m not asking what ye’re up to. It’s none o’ my business.”
It was a long job squeezing out the juice of onions and mixing up the different ingredients, but Grim and I lent a hand and Cohen watched like a victim getting ready for the stake. He had a feeling, that nobody could blame him for, of being put upon; and his naturally alert business instinct made him suspicious of taking what looked like more than his share of the risk, to say nothing of the physical danger involved in fooling with fire.
But Grim kept talking to him and did not make the mistake of minimizing what he had to do. He took the other line, making use of rather subtle flattery, saying how lucky we were to have a genuine, sure-fire American Jew to show the Orthodox crowd of Hebron how to save themselves.
But there wasn’t really the least doubt about Cohen. He would kick and complain for the simple business purpose of emphasizing his stake in the proceedings; that much was second nature. And he was certainly afraid; but so was I, and I don’t think Grim felt any too confident under his mask of cool amusement. But if Grim had told Cohen he was slated for sure death, though he would have argued the point undoubtedly, I’m pretty sure he would have gone ahead.
As a matter of fact, none of us was fooling himself very seriously about the chance of surviving that night’s work. The prospect was too slim altogether. There were too many opportunities for a slip, however carefully and cunningly Grim might stage-manage the affair. Besides, we had not yet converted the Orthodox Jews of Hebron to our plan; and to lift up a mountain by the roots and plant it in the sea might prove not much more difficult than to persuade those frozen-souled conservatives.
It was best not to try to imagine what might happen if we were detected playing tricks with Moslem prejudices—as might easily turn out. The Sheikh of the mosque, for instance, might turn cold at the last minute and denounce us as the best way out of his own predicament.
But Cohen was finally stripped to the waist to an accompaniment of joshing, and every inch of his skin was covered carefully with the preparation. Then that was allowed to dry and the whole performance was repeated, until at last Cameron pronounced him fire-proof from the waist upwards. But he doubted it volubly, until Grim struck a match and made the first test, holding the flame against his body in a dozen places without producing the least sensation.
After that it was vaudeville. Cohen’s spirits rose and his imagination with them. He staged a whole performance, and bally-hooed it in the bargain like a small-town circus side-show performer.
“Ladies and gents, you mayn’t believe it, but the guy who ought to spill the talk for me is sick. After my performance at the last town I was red-hot and he feared I’d set the bed on fire. So he took a bucket of water and threw it over me. The water turned to steam and scalded him. Now watch! The original and only noncombustible asbestos man!”
Cameron had to hurry through his hospital and then go to the jail to attend to the Egyptian, held down by the iron hands of Ali Baba’s men. So he lent Grim a battered old book on ancient magic and left us.
Cohen was so full of high spirits and original ideas for stunts by that time that it was quite a job to get him to pay attention, but Grim took as much pains with him as if he were a performing animal. Ali Baba had to be brought in, anointed with the dope and taught too, for the old Arab’s accomplishment was crude and limited, although he was a first-class showman in his own way.
Thereafter the whole plan for the night’s unlawful ritual had to be worked out in detail and there Ali Baba was a great help, for he understood the Arab mind and knowing Hebron of old could judge to a nicety just what would produce an effect and what would not. The hardest thing was to get Cohen imbued with a proper sense of solemnity, for he had a perfectly entire disrespect for every kind of ritual and was constitutionally inclined to make low comedy of it.
Again and again Grim impressed on him, Ali Baba seconding, the certainty that we, and every Jew in Hebron, would be killed that night unless he kept a straight face. He had no feeling for tribal history; none for pageantry; every suggestion Grim made he capped with a caricature of it.
“Say, when I reach the mosque steps, suppose I throw the fire in the Sheikh’s face and set alight to his beard, what then?”
The rehearsal was cut short by the noise of rioting. We were hardly a quarter of a mile from the Governorate and through the open window came the yelling of a mob that surged by the Governorate gate. It bore no resemblance to the singing of the men who had come dancing up-street the previous day, but was shriller voiced, without rhythm, and there was the ominous mob-growl underneath it like the anger of a hundred upset hives.
“Ah!” remarked Ali Baba dryly. “That will be the end of it all! No fire-gift tonight! Better run, Jimgrim! Run for Jerusalem while there is time! I would be sorry to see you with your throat cut!”
Grim was listening and signed to Ali Baba to be still. It was difficult to pick out words from the babel of noise down-street, for the uproar came from a thousand throats; but it was clear they were shouting for de Crespigny, and that was a good sign as far as it went. If they had intended murder they would have rushed the building, instead of calling for the governor to come and talk to them.
Suddenly Grim ran from the room and I after him. I didn’t stop to reason it out, but followed intuitively—partly from a sense of dependence on his swift wit and also because it’s easier, though not nearly always wiser, to meet trouble half-way than to sit and wait for it.
We ran out through a side door into a garden and followed a wall fronting on the road. At the far end was a rambling old barn-like building that nearly faced the Governorate. We entered that by climbing the wall at the end of the garden and in another minute were lying on the roof overlooking the crowd.
“Good Lord!” said Grim. “They’ve got the Chief Rabbi with them! It’s all up to young Crep now!”
To say they “had” the Rabbi was to state it very mildly. They had dragged him by the beard and driven him with blows. They held him now in their midst, bruised and terrified, while thirty or forty young Jews and one pathetically brave policeman strove to force their way through the crowd and rescue him—all yelling at the top of their lungs and being yelled at.
When de Crespigny came to the gate at last he was not smiling. I think that boy could have smiled in the face of torturers, for he had the priceless gift of self-control and an inborn faith in the value of a grin. But, as he said afterward, crowds vary; sometimes it pays to laugh at them, but at others the suggestion of a smile will goad them into fury. The man who smiled at that crowd would probably have paid for the indiscretion with his life.
As he reached the gate they thrust the Rabbi forward to confront him; but if the Jew deduced from that that he was going to get first word in he was wildly wide of the mark. Ten Arabs, holding the old man by the clothing, foaming at the mouth with emphasis and gesticulating like fish-wives, denounced him to the governor all together, while the crowd tossed in reminders and the Jews on the outskirts shrilled rejoinders. You couldn’t make head or tail of it, except that they were threatening de Crespigny. And as everybody talked at once he couldn’t understand them either.
“Touch and go!” said Grim to me. “Crep’s got the wind up! Lord send he keeps his head!”
De Crespigny watched his chance and then picked out the noisiest, most violent man to do the talking—a very wise move that, for it let off steam.
“Now,” he demanded, “what is it?”
“This cursed Jew is a thing they