Spirits rose high after that; for the danger was all behind and El-Kalil in front, with the suk and the coffee shops, where Ali Baba and his sons and grandsons could boast and lie to their hearts’ content about our lawless doings. Mahommed, the gang poet, rose to the occasion nobly with an epic song of our adventure; and being a poet, of course, he wasn’t hampered by any such trivialities as facts. If a story is worth singing, it is worth enlarging on; so he enlarged, to everybody’s satisfaction. I remember a few stanzas: he sang the story part, composing as he went along, and we all thundered the refrain.
Saoud the Avenger—
Sing of the Avenger! Akbar the Avenger! Struck the earth in anger, Swore an oath in anger, Vowed before his captains He will harry Ali Higg! Akbar the Avenger! Down with Ali Higg! Saoud the Avenger— Sing of the Avenger! Akbar the Avenger! Summoned all his camel-men, Made the desert dark with them; Twenty-five machine-guns Sent he in advance . Tap-ap-ap machine-guns Sent he in advance! Half a hundred captains— Each he had a squadron— Half-a-hundred squadrons! Swore to do his bidding; Allah bear them witness, They will enter Petra, The hold of All Higg! Burn and plunder Petra, The hold of Ali Higg! Akbar the Avenger! Akbar the Avenger! He shall eat up Petra, The abode of Ali Higg! Lo! The Lion of Petra— Ha! the Lion of Petra! Ali Higg of Petra! Rose and cursed in answer Swearing by the Prophet, Father of a thousand boils, Father of a rage! Wallah! Ya, the wrath of him! Roaring Ali Higg! Summoned he Ayisha, Shellabi* Ayisha, Starry-eyed Ayisha! Bade her lead his camel-men Straight at the Avenger, Meet him at the desert wells, Give him battle there! Shellabi Ayisha! Shellabi kabir!** Called he his commander, Father of commanders, Fiercest of commanders! Gave him, too, a thousand Princes of the desert, Bade him and Ayisha Bring Ben Saoud’s head! Shellabi Ayisha! Ibrahim ben Ah!
* Beautiful.
** Supremely beautiful.
It was a first-class song, with never an end to it, for Mahommed added stanza after stanza as the days wore by. It included finally a wonderful account of my defeat of Mujrim in the Valley of Moses, and Mujrim was made the hero of it by the ingenious process of ascribing fearful and supernatural qualities to me.
But the whole song was merely a setting for the wholly fictitious story of Grim’s conquest in battle of the allied “thousands” of the Avenger and Ali Higg combined, winding up with a gorgeous climax, in which Grim carried off “Shellabi Ayisha” from under the eyes of both of them. Grim was the hero of the epic, and however long the song grew day by day, it always ended with a final crashing chorus:
Akbar! Akbar! Jimgrim! Jimgrim!
We sang it all the way home, and roared it in the narrow streets of El- Kalil; and although I suppose that Homer may have been more truthful, I’ve a notion he is an overrated epic-builder in comparison to my friend Mahommed ben Ali Baba ben Hamza, youngest son of Ali Baba, dean of thieves and wiliest old fox in Palestine.
THE END
The Lost Trooper
CHAPTER I “Talk about transmuting elements—”
CHAPTER II “Grim’s a bird—you ought to meet Grim.”
CHAPTER III “Protection looks best from a long way off.”
CHAPTER IV “In the name of Him Who never sleeps it is a bargain!”
CHAPTER V “Suppose we stage an accident!”
CHAPTER VI “Yemen—a thousand miles away—that hardly sounds like Jeremy!”
CHAPTER VII “A member of a strangely free and independent, brave and disrespectful sect.”
CHAPTER VIII “Miyan, you are a great magician!”
CHAPTER IX “Ask the camel of Jmil Ras!”
CHAPTER X “You’re a fallen angel, Ramsden!”
CHAPTER XII “Ross, Ramsden, and Grim. Grim, Ramsden, and Ross.”
CHAPTER XIV “By Allah, it is too late!”
CHAPTER XV “Ali Baba! Ali Baba!”
CHAPTER I
“Talk about transmuting elements—”
How can you begin a tale at the beginning, when it has as many beginnings as there are people in it? I don’t see that these critics who make literary laws have done much else than shut out two-thirds of the best tales by making it impossible to tell them.
At any rate, as I’m telling this one; and as nobody need listen if he doesn’t like, I’m going to begin it where I please, which happens to be in Berlin, Germany, which I visited long enough after the Boer War for men who fought all through it, to show themselves there without having to have police protection.
My business is prospecting, and I hadn’t made my little pile in those days—hadn’t attained, in other words, to that only essential of contentment in this world: the ability as well as the inclination and the right to suit yourself as to what you’ll do next, where you’ll go, and how.
My particular pet delight is independence. But in those days I was trying to get a syndicate of Prussian von’s and zu’s to finance an undertaking in what was then known as German East Africa. Looking back through the smoke of adventurous years I should say now that it would have been about as easy to persuade the U.S. Government to finance a claimant to the throne of France. I cooled my heels, spent money in a very bad hotel, and dare say I should have been insulted finally, if it weren’t for my odd inch or so above six feet and the muscle that carries it upright. Even in those days the Prussians weren’t openly rude to anyone they weren’t sure they could lick.
But I made a profit, for I met an Australian named Jeremy Ross. It was worth a trip half around the world to make that man’s acquaintance.
He was swearing at the methods of the same hotel proprietor and trying