It sounded like ten weary camels being cursed by ten angry men, and I supposed at once that Ibrahim ben Ah had sent a detachment to investigate and that this was their advance-guard. Who else would dare to lift his voice in that way in the gorge? You could hear the words presently:
“Ill-bred Somali beast! Born among vermin in a black man’s kraal! Allah give thee to the crows! Weary? What of it? What of my back, thou awkward earthquake! Thou plow-beast! A devil sit on thee! A devil drive thee! A devil eat thee!”
Whack! Whack!
“Oh my bones! My old bones!”
Mujrim was the first to recognize the voice. He got up quietly and stood in the gorge; and in another minute a blot of denser blackness that was a camel loomed above him, and he raised his hand to seize the head-rope. But the camel saw him first, and, realizing that the journey was over at last, flung itself to the ground with the abandon of a foundered dog, and lay with its neck stretched out straight and legs all straddled anyhow. Mujrim was just in time to catch his father, who was nearly as tired as the camel. It was pretty obvious at once that Jael’s authority had failed badly when it came to exchanging camels.
The sons all surrounded the old man and made a fuss over him, laying him down on a sheepskin coat and chafing his stiff muscles, calling him brave names, rubbing his feet, patting his hands, praising him, while he swore at them each time they touched a sore spot.
They would not even give him a chance to hand over his letter to Grim, until at last he swore so savagely that Mujrim paid attention and took the letter out of the old man’s waistcloth. It was in the same envelop in which the other had gone, unsealed, but with the thumb-mark of Ibrahim ben Ah imprinted on its face.
“To think that I, of all people, should fetch and carry for such dogs!” swore Ali Baba. “I asked for a good beast in exchange for mine, and they gave me this crow’s meat, and laughed! May Allah change their faces! May the water of that oasis turn their bowels into stone!
“Aye, Jimgrim, they will stay there! They are glad enough to stay there. They are dogs that fear their master’s whip. They are so afraid of him that I think if Ali Higg should bid them roast themselves alive the dogs would do it. May they roast a second time in hell for giving me that camel.
“Bah! What kind of sons have I? Are these the sons of my loins that let me parch? Is there no water-bag?”
Grim struck a match in the dark corner where the camels were; but all the envelop contained was a piece of jagged paper torn from the original letter, with Ibrahim ben Ah’s thumb-mark done in ink made from gunpowder by way of acknowledgment. It meant, presumably, that instructions would be obeyed, and so far, good; we were not now in danger of trouble from that source.
But Ali Baba found his tongue again, and freed himself from his sons after he had drank about a quart of water.
“That Ibrahim ben Ah was puzzled,” he said. “Allah! But the fool asked questions; and by the Prophet’s beard I lied in answer to him! Ho! What a string of lies! Who was I but a sheikh from El-Kalil bringing word to Ali Higg of the movements of a British force! In what way did I become the friend of Ali Higg? Was I not always his friend! Was it not I who fed him when he first escaped from Egypt! Ho-ho-ho! Have I not been working for a year to gather men for him in El-Kalil! Have I not made purchases in El-Kalil and El-Kudz for his wife Ayisha! Il hamdulillah! My tongue was ready! May the lies rot the belly of the fool who ate them!
“But that was not all. He wanted to know other things—as, for instance, whether the other force of forty men is still at large, and if so who shall protect the women in Petra.
“‘For,’ quoth he, ‘by Allah, there are men in the neighborhood who have felt our Ali’s heel, and who would not scruple to wreak vengeance if his back were altogether turned. Convey him my respectful homage, and bid him look to his rear,’ said Ibrahim ben Ah.”
At that Grim called to Narayan Singh, who came down the goat-track like a landslide. You mustn’t whistle your man in those parts, or the Arabs will say the devil has defiled your mouth.
“Ask Jael Higg to come here.”
“A word first, Jimgrim sahib! While I watched, those women talked. Jael, the older one, offered Ayisha forgiveness if she would obey henceforth; but Ayisha gave her only hard words, saying that in a day or so it will be seen whose cock crows loudest. So Jael called to two of the men who have been with Ayisha all this time, and they squatted in the mouth of her cave. As it was very dark I crept quite close and listened. She bade them watch their chance and run to Ali Higg.
“‘If he is ill and angry, never mind,’ she said. ‘If he beats you, never mind. He will reward you afterward. Bid him, as he values life,’ she said, ‘call in those forty men whom he would send to punish the Beni Aroun people. Tell him I am a prisoner, but those forty are enough to turn the tables until Ibrahim ben Ah can come. A camel must leave in a hurry for Ibrahim ben Ah at the oasis, and bring him and all the men back to straighten this affair.’
“She promised them money and promotion for success, and sure death for failure!”
“Good!” said Grim, turning to me. “You see? It always pays to stage a close-up in a game like this. We’ve caught our friend Ali Higg between soup and fish.”
“Get in quick, then, and kidnap him,” I urged.
“Man alive,” he answered, “we’ve no kind of right to do that. Bring her down,” he told Narayan Singh, “and then have Mujrim tie those four men of Ayisha’s so they’ve no chance to escape.”
Jael Higg came down in a livid passion—altogether too near home to enjoy taking secondhand orders from an Indian in the dark. She was still less amused when she discovered that Grim knew her little scheme.
“Well, Jael,” he said, “you weren’t quite frank with me after all, were you? Which will you do now—stay in that hole up there with a double guard, or come into Petra with us and behave yourself?”
For, I should say, a whole minute, she did not answer. You could not tell in the dark, but I think she was fighting back tears, and too proud to betray it.
“I’m your prisoner,” she hissed at last. “Do what you like, and take the consequences.”
“I’ll put you to no indignity, Jael, if you’ll play fair.”
“My God! What? Are you mad, or am I? What are you going to do with Ali Higg?”
“Make friends with him.”
“You swear that?”
“Sure.”
She was silent for another minute.
“Very well,” she said at last. “I’ll do my best.”
“Accepted,” answered Grim. “Now—bring down Ayisha—fetch out the camels—mount—and forward all!”
We went forward just as dawn was breaking, and I believe every man Jack of us except Grim had his heart in his teeth. Grim was likely too busy conning over the plan in his head to feel afraid, that being, as far as I could ever tell, the one lone advantage of being leader, just as the capacity to drive out fear by steady thinking is as good a reason as exists for placing a man in command.
Nobody knows how old Petra is, but it was a thriving city when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, and for a full five thousand years it has had but that one entrance, through a gorge that narrows finally until only one loaded camel at a time can pass. Army after army down the centuries have tried to storm the place, and failed, so that even the invincible Alexander and the Romans had to fall back on the arts of friendship to obtain the key. We, the last invaders, came as friends, if only Grim could persuade the tyrant to believe it.
The sun rose over the city just as we reached the narrowest part of the gut,