“Jimgrim, sahib!”
Narayan Singh laid a hand on Jim’s sleeve.
“If I steady this automatic on my forearm,” the Sikh continued, “resting my elbow on the ground—thus—in three or four shots I can hit him in the leg with certainty. Then he will limp, and we can catch him. Only say the word.”
“No.”
“The last time I saw him he came straight along the ridge and passed me after he’d finished the ballet,” whispered Catesby.
“Give him a chance to do it again.”
The iblis pirouetted interminably, gaining rather than losing speed, the ring of cloth spreading out around him in an ever widening circle. If he really was a leper, then the disease had made strangely little inroad on his stamina.
And for all that whoever watched grew giddy, the iblis himself retained full consciousness. For there came cloaked figures of men, who dodged in the shadows from bush to bush; and as they drew near he was aware of them and began to slow down gradually, letting the turban droop in ever narrowing curves, until he stood stock-still again, back to the moon, like a statue, glistening with sweat that made him shine now from head to foot instead of showing sliminess in patches.
After standing rigid for about two minutes he stretched out his right arm toward the camp, and suddenly his voice boomed like a tenor bell, cursing in Arabic, cursing in the name of Allah the Lord of Creatures, the Prince of the Day of Judgment, cursing man and beast and tent and mechanism—eye, hand, ear and brain.
“What do you make of him?” he whispered.
“I’ve seen his kind in the mosques of Mosul and Marash,” Catesby whispered. “I think he’s simply a dancing dervish from up north, driven away very likely because of his leprosy.”
But Jim, too, had been in Mosul and Marash and seen the dancing dervishes. He reserved judgment.
The iblis turned at last toward the hooded figures that were crouching near him; and now he stretched out both arms, but whether or not he blessed them was not clear, for he lowered his voice. However, after a minute or two it was quite plain that he urged them to a certain course, for he flung his right hand out like an emperor ordering armies, and his chin went up so imperiously high that he moonlight sheened on his fierce eyes.
The hooded figures vanished. They had come from different directions, but as far as one could judge in the uncertain light they were headed one way in single file when they disappeared into the cactus.
“—!” Jim muttered suddenly, and Narayan Singh crept close again.
“Yes, sahib? What is it?”
“Can’t you see? The iblis has gone too—and the wrong way for us, durn him!—toward the moon—due east. If we chase him now he’ll simply run.”
“I can stalk him, sahib. He will never see me.”
“No. The others are coming straight along the ridge in the shadows.”
“We can do better than that. Catesby?”
Once again you might have laid a handkerchief on all three heads.
“They’re coming one by one. Bag the last one alive. Narayan Singh, gag him; take Suliman’s turban—have it ready in your hand. I’ll pin his arms and get his knife away. I’ll whistle to startle him, and then all three of us spring together, downing him at once in the shadow where his friends can’t see.”
They stowed Suliman in a hollow just over the shoulder of the hill, and crawled into position where a foot-track passed between an anthill and a big cactus in a shallow, spoon-shaped depression of the hilltop. They had hardly hidden themselves when the first man came swinging along at a sort of dog-trot, the pace common to most savage and nearly savage people bent on adventure. He passed so close that they might have touched him, and the reek of cotton clothing soaked in oil was unmistakable.
Six men passed, all going at the same pace, all smelling strongly of the same rancid unguent, with about ten yards between each, dog-trotting to the night’s work and in no particular concern just yet to conceal themselves. The seventh man lagged a little, being heavier than the rest and not so free- breathing.
As he drew abreast of them Jim whistled. But instead of checking his pace to look about him the man sprang into the air like a shot buck, and landed in his stride intent on sprinting.
Jim, Catesby and Narayan Singh all sprang at the same instant, and crashed their heads together. But for Catesby’s Rugby football days they would have missed their man; but instinct, born of following the ball though a whole pack pounce on him, sent Catesby’s right arm shooting out of the scrimmage. Groping wildly at the air, he caught the Arab’s ankle. It was greased, but the check before the Arab freed it tripped him, and before he could recover balance all three captors were on top of him, crashing together into the cactus bush.
The Arab could not yell with agony, because Narayan Singh’s steely wrist clapped on the cotton gag and held it in place, come life come judgment day. And the Sikh, being topmost, got fewest of the cactus stabs, so swore least. Catesby, underneath, with his arms about the fellow’s legs, cursed like a wet cat, hissing canteen blasphemy between his teeth; and Jim, side by side with the prisoner in a bed of inch-long thorns, kept at his task in panting speechlessness that was just as eloquent. There are few points that hurt more acutely than those of a Holy Land cactus.
Jim got the fellow’s knife at last, and dropped it in the murderous mess of pikes they fought among. But to hold his arms was another matter. The Arab was greased from head to foot, and his clothes, which might otherwise have served to hold him by were rotten with the oil, tearing whenever they were seized. As the clothing came away from him in rags his naked skin slipped from the grasp more readily than ever; and he was stronger than a bear—sinewy and lithe and, for all his weight, able to wriggle any section of himself that wasn’t pegged down tight.
Three or four times he seemed about to slip away from them, struggling like an eel. But Narayan Singh’s knee in his stomach combined with the unyielding gag to rob him of breath, so that at last they all rolled out into the open and Jim gasped out a request to Catesby to take his girdle off and bind the fellow’s hands and feet.
Catesby was only in the nick of time at that. Struggling to his knees, he was aware of something flashing brightly in the moonlight from behind the ruined cactus bush. He sprang into the shadow and caught Suliman’s kukri in the act of descending on the Arab’s undefended neck, whirled in both hands like an ax by the eight-year-old. He threw Suliman into the cactus to whimper and recover rectitude.
Then when they had trussed their prisoner and had picked most of the thorns out of him they sat and operated on themselves by moonlight, using pocket-knives and fingernails and hard words, giving the Arab time to get his breath and think up some lies to tell them presently.
It was no use trying to pretend they themselves were Arabs any longer, for they had sworn too lustily in English, to say nothing of Jim’s instructions anent the girdle, and Narayan Singh’s hoarse imprecations in another tongue.
“Perhaps it’s as well,” laughed Jim. “Here, Catesby, be a good chap and dig this thorn out from behind my knee. He’ll be so puzzled that perhaps he’ll lie less, if we can get him to say anything at all. Where’s Suliman?”
“I am here. I look for the kukri. It was not the act of a true khawaja (gentleman) to throw me in that cactus bush. If you are my mutahid (partner), Jimgrim, you will see that I have full vengeance!”
“I’ll avenge you. Wait and see. Let’s ask the prisoner what he thinks about it. Have you found the kukri?”
Suliman