“And you! They would kill you too!”
“Perhaps. But why me? I don’t think that in the circumstances they would kill a British officer, who had exposed you for playing tricks on them!”
“A British officer? I don’t understand.”
“I’m a British officer.”
“You?”
“Sure. Used to be Governor of Hebron. Grim’s my name. I’m better known as Jimgrim.”
“Hah! Then that is simple! Denounce me tonight. Taib! I will denounce you for having entered the mosque by a trick. I will denounce you for sacrilege!”
“All right. Then they’ll kill us both.”
“But what good will that do you, Jimgrim?”
“No good.”
“Nor me either!” The Sheikh laughed like a man who believes he is conversing with a lunatic.
“If you don’t want to be exposed tonight,” said Grim, “you’d better offer to make terms.”
“Terms about what?”
“You know as well as I do that the mob is planning to attack this Governorate after tonight’s ceremony, kill everybody in it, plunder it of arms, and march on Jerusalem.”
“I can do nothing about that.”
“Yes you can.”
“Allah!”
“You can think up some way of keeping the crowd idle until morning.”
“I? They will not listen to me outside the mosque.”
“All right. Talk to ‘em inside the mosque.”
“I have talked enough. I have already accepted risk enough. My place is enough in danger as it is.”
“Can’t you have another vision?”
”Mustahil! (Impossible!) They have had enough of visions! They are simple people, but determined. They intend to march on Jerusalem to protect their co-religionists before it is too late. Who can stop them?”
“You can. You can hold them until it’s too late to make the attempt.”
“I? How?”
“You know as well as I do what will happen to them. They’ll be met by machine guns outside the walls of Jerusalem and mowed down.”
“I cannot help that!”
“Yes you can. It’s up to you. If that happens it will be on your head! Now, if we’re willing to go through with this performance tonight to save your position for you at the mosque, you ought to be willing to go a step further to save that crowd from the machine guns. Never mind about us. Consider the crowd.”
”Ya hain! (Oh, the pity of it!) How I regret that I did not denounce those thieves in the first place!”
“Regret’s no good! What are you going to do now; that’s the point. See here: If you’ll—yes, that’ll do the trick! —most of the ringleaders will be inside the mosque, for they’re a holy lot of rascals!—if you’ll get up in the pulpit and give them a long harangue to the effect that your spirit tells you to warn them— to go slow—to be cautious—to wait for the word; and that you’ll give ‘em the word at the proper minute—you can leave the rest to us; and we’ll fix it so that you get credit as a prophet. Will you do that?”
”Taib. I will do it. But I doubt that it will do any good.”
“All right, that’s a bargain, then.” Grim turned to the governor. “Crep, old boy, trumps are all out; we must score the last trick with the deuce of spades!”
CHAPTER XI.
“Allahu akbar! La illahah il-allah!”
You know that feeling at a melodrama of the old sort, when all the villain’s plans are prospering and a ghastly death stares the hero in the face; even although some fool has told you the plot in advance, so that you know what the end is going to be, you can’t pretend not to be all worked up about it. And most men—and more women—have faced at some time the imminent risk of death, with just one chance of pulling through.
Well, we enjoyed both sensations that night. We were spectators of a play and actors in it, not knowing yet whether it was comedy or tragedy. We hoped we could foresee the end, but weren’t at all sure.
“We’re betting on the merest guess,” said Grim. “We may as well not fool ourselves. Perhaps we can hold the crowd until tomorrow morning. Perhaps not. If we succeed, perhaps the Sikhs will come. We’re betting they’ll come. If they do, good; Crep and Jonesy’ll be slated for promotion. If they don’t, we’ll none of us need rations ever any more, amen! Let’s go.”
It was about nine o’clock—no moon—and the roar of El-Kalil was like the voice of a long tunnel full of railway trains, made all the more unholy by utter darkness. After a long consultation de Crespigny had left two policemen on guard at the jail and taken the other eight with him.
The lonely little one-horse plan finally decided on, as the best possible in the event of an outbreak, was for de Crespigny and his eight police to fight their way to the jail, gather up the two guards, the jailer and his assistant, leave the jail and prisoners to the mob, and fall back on the Governorate. The rest of us were to join de Crespigny if we could and Doctor Cameron and the nurse were to take their chance of being unmolested at the hospital, seeing that neither of them would hear of any other course.
It was decided that to make a last stand at the hospital, supposing we could ever reach it, would only seal the fate of two people whom the mob might otherwise treat as noncombatants.
De Crespigny had ridden off, with his eight policemen tramping stolidly behind him, awfully afraid, yet proud as Lucifer to be the bodyguard of Law where no law would be otherwise, and encouraged by the sight of his brave young back bolt-upright in the saddle. A man’s back often tells a truer story than his face.
Grim and I went on foot—to the Ghetto first, leaving Jones alone in the Governorate; for somebody had to hold headquarters, and the joyless job is the junior’s by right of precedent. Grim had a word to say to the jail-guards on the way and we reached without incident the narrowing gut where the street passes into the city by a fragment of the ancient wall.
From that point onward it was one long struggle to force a way through the crowd. All Hebron was out, trying to win to the Ghetto gate and see the preliminaries. There was not room in the street for seven men to stand abreast, nor space by the Ghetto for a crowd of fifty; yet several thousand men were milling and crushing for a front view, like long-horn steers that smell water —and all in the dark. You couldn’t see the face of a man three paces off.
We soon got jammed up hopelessly and only contrived to keep together by clinging and wrestling. The hilt of a man’s sword took me under the ribs and pressed until I nearly yelled aloud with agony. I trod on his instep to give him a different sense of direction and if he could have drawn the sword I should have learned the feel of its sharper end. He started an argument, spitting out the savage abuse within six inches of my face and I did not dare answer him for fear of betraying myself with an obviously foreign accent. Grim saved that situation by a trick as old as Hebron is—a trick that has saved armies before now.
He started to sing, choosing the lilting air the Hebron men love most, and making up the words to it, as nearly every singer does in that town of surviving customs.
Oh, fortunate and famous are the men of El-Kalil!
Allah