by Talbot Mundy
At last the Avenger spoke, and in the dawn light his face looked grey with grief and disappointment.
“I will sign the agreement with this dog who calls himself a Lion, Jimgrim; for I swore by Allah, and by the Prophet’s beard, and by the honors of my race. I will take his wife, for she is good to look at, and has fifty men. The men will find better employment under me than under the Dog of Petra. Taib. Let a deed of peace be drawn accordingly, and I will sign it. But how about the issue between thee and me, Jimgrim? It was your suggestion that the account between us should be reckoned as balanced. Therefore we stand as two men not beholden to each other. As between you and me personally there has been no agreement made, nor oath passed, either as to your life or any other matter.”
“Have one of my cigarettes,” Grim answered calmly. “They’re better than yours.”
The Avenger waved the offer aside, indignantly.
“I call myself Avenger. None has proven to me yet that is not my name!”
Narayan Singh’s eye caught mine, and he patted the part of his cloak that concealed the revolver. I made ready, too; but Grim didn’t seem in the very least disturbed.
“Very well, friend Saoud. I told you beforehand that I was going to trick you. If the account was even just now, let’s admit that the balance between us has swung in your favor. I’m no more a maskin than you are. I’ll consider I owe you a turn. How’s that?”
“Such talk is easy. You have robbed me in the first place of a conquest; second, of a prisoner, whom I would rather hold than any in Arabia; third, you have made a fool of me.”
“Not so,” said Grim, still smiling his seductivist. “I’ve made a fool of Ali Higg — saved you from destruction by a British Army — provided you with a beautiful wife — and added fifty men with camels to your army, without your having to strike a blow for them. Now, since you think the scales are still too low on my side, I say name your own make-weight.”
“By God, Jimgrim, your life would never be enough to balance this!”
“Of course it wouldn’t! I’d be no use to you dead.”
“By Allah, I have known revenge to taste sweet!”
It was in keeping with Grim’s usual tact that he was silent on the subject of the British, who would certainly have exacted retribution, severe, though possibly indirect, from any Sheikh who caused him to be slain. He chose a different line of argument.
“See here, Ben Saoud, you’re too fine a fellow altogether to give way to ill-temper now. Smile, and shake hands! You’ve got the right now to call on me in an emergency; I’ll keep my word as well as you keep yours.”
“You mean you will come if I call on you?”
“Inshallah,” answered Grim. “I can’t do impossibilities. But if you call, and it’s possible, I’ll come.”
“And do as I bid you?”
Grim laughed aloud and reached for another of the Avenger’s cigarettes.
“Here, take one of mine. No, you optimist! If I were to do what you told me to, we’d both be in a British gaol within the week! What I do mean is, that if you’re in a bad mess at any time, and if it’s humanly possible, I’ll come and help you out.”
Well, that Avenger fellow was the nearest approach to a sportsman that I had seen yet in that part of the world, if you except our old fox Ali Baba and his sixteen performing thieves. He laughed, and decided to make the best of matters — in the teeth of opposition, too; for his staff-officers, and his brother Achmet argued for an hour, going so far at last as to produce a m’allim, very learned in Koranic law, who maintained stoutly that to fulfil any agreement imposed on him by the trickery of an infidel would be to set a bad example, and therefore sin.
“I see no sin in holding to my given word,” he answered finally. “Let Allah judge me!”
After that, all of us except Ayisha ate breakfast together on the roof (women don’t eat with the men); and a devilish nasty mess it was, concocted of rice, powdered coconut, camel-butter, tumeric, and the flesh of a goat that had been bleating less than an hour before. The Avenger went through the form of eating salt with Ali Higg, but without enthusiasm, and insisted on referring to him as the Dog of Petra.
Then Grim drew up the agreement in triplicate, to which we all attached our signatures; and I don’t know what law I broke, or what the penalty should be, but I set down an Indian name in the place reserved for me, and gave my address as Lahore, Punjaub, India.
Since we were all dog-tired, it was agreed that we should sleep the day through in Abu Lissan, and all of us go our separate ways that evening. Grim would have been quite contented to take the Avenger’s word for our safety, and so would I; but when word was sent to Ali Baba about it, he turned up within the hour with his sons and grandsons, and insisted on their taking one-hour turns on guard.
“For men are like camels in this: that they dream dreams,” he remarked dryly. “One who should dream that he was murdered while he slept might possibly not wake again.”
So they spread rugs and mats on the floor of the long second-floor passage, and we sent up such a chorus of snores as I dare say that roof had never echoed to before. But I know the Avenger didn’t sleep much, and don’t suppose Ayisha did. The Avenger sat in conference in a small room with the m’allim, discussing all the intricacies of marriage to another man’s wife. Fortunately the Avenger had only three wives, and the Koran permits four; fortunately, too, the Prophet Mahommed had set the precedent, by demanding the young wife of his faithful follower Ali and, better still, obtaining her.
The m’allim said it was good doctrine that the willingness of Ali Higg to part with her constituted full divorce, and whether or not duress might have had anything to do with his consent made no difference. The lady’s preferences having no kind of bearing on the case, Ayisha was not consulted.
But she was satisfied — no doubt of that. I think she admired Grim more than any man she had ever known; but tribal history was in her veins, as it is in every man’s and woman’s. What she wanted was an influential husband, and she had one, for which she was as grateful to Grim as a stray cat for a saucer of milk. It was up to her to establish a position for herself among the senior wives, and by the look in her eye I should say she felt like doing it.
About four in the afternoon she asked leave of the Avenger to go and select the fifty men who were to constitute her dowry. Ali Higg demanded to go with her, to prevent her taking all the best; so Grim went, too, and our whole party rode with Grim to prevent any last-minute treachery on the Lion’s part.
It was a good job that we all went in the circumstances. There was a new arrival behind that sugar-loaf hill, and a real reinforcement after all. Jael Higg, constitutionally restless, opportunist always, huntress with all hounds and runner with all hares in sight — everlastingly haunted, too, by doubt of Ali Higg’s ability — had scraped together every last man Petra could produce, and brought them to the scene, trusting to her own sharp wit to use them to the best advantage. She had scraped together nearly fifty, including some women, but they were a rather bob-tailed lot and their camels were living skeletons.
Ali Higg tried to avoid her, but there wasn’t much of the retiring arbutus about Jael. She tackled him in front of us all, and tongue-lashed him bitterly when she had dragged the story out of him, he trying in return to assert his overlordship, but with small success. The part that seemed to sting her most was the discovery that Grim had all along retained that order on the bank.
She advanced toward him with her thin lips quivering nervously, and cold hatred glaring from her eyes; and we all closed in, to prevent murder.
“So you kept that letter, did you? Clever, aren’t you, Jimgrim! You’ve fooled me at every turn, haven’t you! Proud, aren’t you, to have me in money- hobbles for three years to come! Very well; you won this time, but wait and see!”
“I’ve left you lots to build with, Jael, if you’ll only build to the line,” he answered kindly.
“Left me lots — and fifty men and camels to go
with that wandering gipsy Ayisha? Bah! You’ve skinned me to the bone. Ayisha may take these that I brought with me today.”
But Ayisha was already choosing her contingent, and there was no reluctance to be chosen. Changing to the stronger side and a less irascible leader had its obvious advantages. Jael rushed off to interfere, and Ayisha cocked her rifle instantly.
Quick work by Ali Baba’s men prevented that duel. Half a dozen of them pounced on Jael from behind, pinned her arms behind her, and the rest got in position to spoil Ayisha’s aim. Ayisha threatened to shoot through them, but they laughed at her, and at a word from Grim she put her rifle up. Then Grim went and stood in front of Jael, but did not tell Ali Baba’s men to let go her hands.
“See here, Jael, old girl,” he said, “you’re nervous and jumpy. You’ll be doing something you’ll regret if you don’t watch points. Suppose you take that Lion of yours and your remaining men, and head straight back for Petra before you make your trouble any worse.”
“Let me go then!”
“Say the word, Jimgrim, and we cut her throat!” Ali Baba called out from behind.
Beyond holding his hand up as a signal for nothing doing, Grim did not answer. He walked up to Ali Higg instead, and ordered him to take his men away. The Lion obeyed readily enough; he was sick of the whole business, and desperately eager to get back into his cave, where he could growl himself into better spirits.
There was delay at the last minute, owing to the fact that many more than fifty men, including Ibrahim ben Ah, wanted to stay with Ayisha; but Ayisha had chosen her contingent and lined them up. Grim gave the rest thirty seconds to start after Ali Higg. He didn’t say what the consequences would be if they refused; but there were a couple of hundred of the Avenger’s men within hail, and they might imagine what they liked.
When the last of the Lion’s men was about two hundred yards away Grim ordered Jael released and her camel brought to her. Ali Baba wanted to keep her weapons, but Grim disallowed that. She mounted and rode away without a word of farewell, and Ali Baba croaked out his opinion that hornet’s stings are usually in their tails. But Grim laughed.
Jael did turn once, at about two hundred yards’ range and threaten Grim with her rifle, but as every single one of Ali Baba’s men promptly took aim at her she thought better of it.
“We’ve not had quite the last of that lady, I suspect; she still has one chance left, and overlooks no bets,” said Grim.
That one chance was obviously to waylay us on our road home; and, seeing that Grim had added fifty to his force, the Avenger was kind enough to offer us an escort of a hundred men as far as the British frontier. But if Grim had agreed to that, there would have been a fight in all likelihood, which in itself would constitute excuse for treating the signed agreement as a scrap of paper. If only one shot were fired by Jael’s men, the Avenger would interpret that as breach of faith and act accordingly.
So Grim insisted on the treaty being carried out in full. We said good- bye to the Avenger and Ayisha, and stood by at dusk to see the whole force file southward out of Abu Lissan.
The Avenger’s last words as he shook Grim’s hand were ominous:
“By Allah and the Prophet’s body, Jimgrim, I shall hold thee to our terms! If no occasion rises to summon thee to my aid in a difficulty, may Allah change my face and roll me in the dust unless I make one!”
Ayisha didn’t forget her obligations. She came and kissed Grim’s hand, and gave him her amber necklace.
“If I have a new husband and am once more a princess, I am none the less beholden to thee for it,” she said prettily. And because Grim didn’t know quite what to do about the necklace and was obviously embarrassed, Narayan Singh came to the rescue with one of his heavy-handed jests:
“By my teeth and the Prophet’s, belly!” he boomed impiously, “Princess thou mayest be; but I am a Pathan of the Orakzai! Let this be the Avenger’s hour, and let him make the most of it; for as surely as the moon will shine tonight — as surely as thine eyes are worth a ransom — I will slay ninety and nine Avengers — aye! and burn Arabia for one more look into Ayisha’s eyes!”
The Avenger overheard that, and felt rather flattered. He tossed back over his shoulder a mocking invitation to Narayan Singh to come and fight him single-handed for the girl at any time. So we all parted in a rare good temper, Ayisha having the last word, as a lady should.
“A Pathan is a pig, but thou art not so bad as some pigs!” she called back to Narayan Singh; and thereafter, all the way back home to El-Kalil, the gang kept chaffing him unmercifully about different breeds of pigs, pretending to wonder wherein he was so obviously different from the rest. But that was because they knew he was a Sikh, and that the Sikhs don’t object to pigs at all; if he had really been a Pathan those jokes would have cost a life or two.
We were a whole day longer on the road home than if we had taken the shortest way. Grim led us over a water-less route to the southward; and the proof of the wisdom of that was the sight we had of a party of camel-men, led almost certainly by Jael Higg, who reached a ravine too late to intercept us. For about an hour they followed in hot pursuit and then, giving up the chase, sat their camels on a ridge five miles away and watched us gloomily until we disappeared from view.
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!
It was a firs
t-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
BLACK LIGHT
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. “Shall I sin, to satisfy your itch for what you have no right to?”
CHAPTER II. “You are an egg that is about to hatch”
CHAPTER III. “Cut me off and set me free. I’ll be so grateful...”
CHAPTER IV. “You wish to question me?”
CHAPTER V. “Amrita is a sort of Joan of Arc.”
CHAPTER VI. “What’s the odds? She’s harmless.”
CHAPTER VII. “So you sing to them, eh?”
CHAPTER VIII. “Do I get my money?”
CHAPTER IX. “Read thou thine own book.”
CHAPTER X. India would be all right if it weren’t for rajahs.”
CHAPTER XI. “Are you drunk, Joe?”
CHAPTER XII. “Taters à la Kaiser Bill.”
CHAPTER XIII. “I am not in the world to learn cowardice, but courage.”
CHAPTER XIV. “Better watch my step!”