by Talbot Mundy
“Say, Grim, old top; Hullo, Rammy, come here half a sec. Looks like the last trick, don’t it? The Devil couldn’t lick that outfit with a matter of three hundred men! There’s more on the way, too; that Willy-boy Avenger has managed to persuade his pals that I’m easy, and there’ll be a race in a minute to see who can be first over the wall. We might stop half of ’em if the luck runs right, but Lady Luck looks sick at her stomach. Some of my last-ditchers seem to think there’s more room over the skyline to dig the damned thing, and I’m offering two to one that half of ’em will bolt within two minutes of the first shot; the sons-of-guns won’t get far, but they’ll take their chance on that.”
“What’d you think you’re driving at?” demanded Grim.
“Why, this: you’re my prisoners. Don’t matter how or why, but prisoners you are and you’ve got to obey me. Anything I say goes; d’ye get that? Now I say, ‘Get the Hell out of this! Take a man or two, look slippery, and hide among the rocks until this game’s over.’ Soon as they’ve scuppered me they’ll quarrel among ‘emselves and hurry off to loot each other’s harems; then you hit the trail for Jerusalem. Now, no argument! You take and do what I say!”
He looked pugnacious enough, with his hands on his hips and head to one side, and I for one knew there would be a row before we could convince him, because Jeremy with his mind made up is less amenable to reason than a mule. But there came a diversion in the nick of time that brands me forever; and I don’t know how to take the brand off.
Did you ever hit a woman? I did then. I hit Ayisha, and the weight of my left fist is no joke. The Avenger’s brother was sitting on a pile of rugs and cushions in the middle of the roof, but I don’t believe that he had anything to do with it. My judgment of the matter is that Ayisha thought she saw her chance to convince him finally of her loyalty. She was behind the Avenger’s brother, and Jeremy’s back was toward them. Grim and I were facing each other, with Jeremy between us in such a way that we naturally wouldn’t notice much that might go on behind.
It was out of the corner of my right eye that I suddenly saw Ayisha spring to her feet and drive for the space between Jeremy’s shoulder-blades with a knife about eighteen inches long. Lord knows where she got the knife; we had taken her own away from her. I knew it was Ayisha — never doubted that for a tenth of a second; and I didn’t hesitate. I swung my left fist under the peak of her jaw and crashed her so hard against Narayan Singh, who was standing fifteen feet away, that the two went down together. There was no need to count ten. She was out; and she stayed out for several minutes.
“Oh, I say!” said Jeremy.
And Grim said nothing, which was worse. I pointed to the knife on the floor and said nothing too, for I hate a man who makes excuses. Having done a thing it suits me as a rule to face it out; a course which doesn’t make black white by any means, but at least doesn’t add yellow to it. Jeremy ignored the knife, shouted for water, went and picked up Ayisha, and laid her on the heap of cushions close to the Avenger’s brother.
Grim didn’t waste a second then on side issues. He snapped into action like a piece of spring mechanism.
“Quick!” he said. “Before Jeremy gets back on the track! Remember you’re an Indian now. Take Narayan Singh, and the two of you cross to the Avenger’s lines. Tell him you’ve come from me — that I’m a prisoner — but that on my word of honor I can settle this to the Avenger’s advantage if he will meet me in that old tomb half-way between our lines and his. Let him bring three or four men, and I’ll bring three or four; and here, I’ll give it you in writing; pledge my word that if nothing comes of the negotiations our side will take no improper advantage of him.
“You’d better tell him I’ve got Jmil Ras buncoed. You can also say that if he doesn’t agree to meet me and discuss terms, I shall take the side of Jmil Ras and there’ll be a fight then that will cost him the utmost damage I can help Jmil Ras inflict.”
I was glad enough to get away from there, even on such a dangerous mission as that. You fellows who haven’t ever knocked a woman down with your fist may not believe it, but it makes you feel like a yellow hound, even when by doing it you have saved the life of such a man as Jeremy. It would only have made matters worse if Ayisha had found me standing over her when she came to; for the more guilty a woman is, the more bent she will be on contrasting the iniquity of someone else. There would have been a scene that would profit nobody.
So I stayed not on the order of my going, but beckoned my good friend Narayan Singh and started down the outside stone stairs at just about the moment when the first irregular salvo of rifle-shots announced that one of the Avenger’s neighbors on the far right had elected himself conductor of the overture. The range was much too long for effect, but among rival Sheikhs it is something to be able to boast of leading the men who fired the first shots.
“That was a good blow you struck, sahib,” the Sikh growled in my ear as we reached the bottom of the stairs. “If it broke a woman’s jaw, what odds? It saved a man’s life!”
But I think that in his heart he, too, regretted that I had struck it. If I had thought twice I should rather have struck Jeremy and knocked him sidewise out of the path of the knife. However, it’s no use arguing after you have done a thing.
CHAPTER XIV. “By Allah, it is too late!”
IT took us longer to get past Jeremy’s defenses than you might expect. They tell me that Australians are shock troops, rather given to despising precautions and bent on winning every fight by speed, bravery, and direct assault, with a quick-witted trick or two maybe thrown in now and then, just to prove what they can do when so disposed, but above all mockingly irreverent of every theory except one — which is, that Australia can’t be beaten.
If Jeremy is typical, then that description of Australians is true. But perhaps he is unique, as his defenses surely were. They seemed to have been devised much less to keep out an enemy than to make it easy to sally forth and swat him.
There was excellent cover here and there for Jeremy’s men, and the wall by which he had connected house to house was a good screen, but not much more, for there were gaps in it at frequent intervals, and where they were missing almost any man with hands and feet could climb it. I should say it was deliberately devised to tempt an enemy to attack without wasting time, but when I asked Jeremy about it afterwards he only laughed.
“Did you ever catch a showman telling how he turns his tricks?” he asked me.
Well; it was a chain of tricks that Jeremy had stretched around the place, and as it turned out it was I who had provided the star feature, but I did not know that at the moment. My head ached damnably, so I sat in the gap of a more or less unfinished wall and let Narayan Singh scout about a bit for some way of reaching the Avenger’s lines without being seen by either side until we might choose to show ourselves; for there was just as much risk of being shot from behind by some of Jeremy’s enthusiasts as of being plugged from in front by the enemy.
And while he did that I observed Jeremy and Ali Baba followed by Ali Baba’s gang lugging a great iron pot between them headed for the northeast corner of the wall at the point where Jeremy had shortened the line he proposed to defend. Of all the easily assailable points that corner looked like the weakest, so there was nothing wonderful about his posting Ali Baba there; that old rascal and his sons would give a costly account of themselves against any odds whatever, and if there was a trick to be pulled off they were the lads who would pride themselves on managing it perfectly.
Narayan Singh spied out the route at last, and we crawled forward, but the oftener I looked back the less optimistic I became. Maybe the headache had something to do with that, but it seemed to me that if I were the Avenger I would attack that place rather than waste time talking.
Apparently the Avenger’s temporary allies on his left wing shared my opinion, for they were following up their opening salvo by creeping closer, about four hundred strong, and taking up position to assault that obviously open corner where Ali B
aba and his men were posted. There was nothing but a breast-high rampart of broken stone between them and our men.
So I hurried. If a fight could be prevented, the time to do it was while the issue was in doubt. It was a precious poor exhibition of scouting that Narayan Singh and I gave as we crossed the open ground toward the lip of the hill where the Avenger’s black tent was pitched. We were seen when about half-way, fired at by a hundred men for several minutes, and were pounced on and roughly handled when we managed at last to hoist a handkerchief on a stick. The stick was shot out of the Sikh’s hand before our surrender was accepted.
But they took us straight to the Avenger’s tent, which after all was the main thing. And he, being a decent fellow after his own kind, cursed our captors roundly for having made us both bleed as they tore nearly all our clothes off. He did that even before he recognized me as the Indian who had accompanied Grim on that trip to Abu Lissan, when Grim got the better of him in a bargain.
“Miyan,” he said then, stroking his fine black beard, “this is no way to have treated Jimgrim’s friends. Those devils of mine shall pay for it. What brings you?”
So I told him, giving Grim’s message word for word, and adding that Jimgrim was confident of being able to persuade Jmil Ras.
“By Allah, it is too late!” he answered. “Nine other Sheikhs have joined me to make an end of Jmil Ras, and who shall stop them now? Look; they haven’t waited for my order. I can hold my own men for a little while, because they know that if we attack first those others will loot our baggage; but once those neighbors of ours are over the wall, my men will follow. Inshallah, let Jimgrim not be slain by accident. Is my brother well?”
He said nothing about his wife Ayisha, because that wouldn’t have been good manners; but I said that a member of his honor’s family had done her best to make his brother comfortable, and he understood me. After that he cut the conversation short, because the fighting over on the left had started in real earnest. All I could see for it was to hope with him that no half-dozen frenzied fanatics would find Grim and kill him before he could be protected. I didn’t have much doubt of the Avenger’s good faith; all tales about him; and our own experience of him in the past were in his favor; and he looked the part of a chivalrous and honorable chieftain, as he stood there with his arms folded watching the progress of events.
It wasn’t easy to watch. We had to screw our eyes up, because a scorching hot wind blew toward us. I know I wouldn’t have liked the job of facing it on camel-back, let alone on foot against defended ramparts. The obvious course would have been to make a circuit and attack from the other side, when the odds would have been reversed and the defenders blinded by the dust and heat; but the rival Sheikhs were too impatient to begin.
I don’t think our side fired a shot until four hundred madmen densely massed in nothing remotely resembling a military formation broke cover from behind low rocks yelling “Allaho Akbar,” and started to rush that weakest corner of the wall where Ali Baba lay hidden. And even then the firing on our side was feeble. It looked as if our men, with the dust and wind behind them and the wall in front, had lost heart already. There wasn’t more than enough shooting to keep the assaulting force keyed up, and very few of them fell at first — not more than a dozen I should say — until a strange thing happened.
The hot wind increased in violence and the dust flew in a stinging cloud, but that hardly accounted for it, especially as the enemy rushed close and began to get a little protection under the lee of the low wall. But all at once they began to go down, face forward and writhing, numerically out of all proportion to the amount of firing from our side.
As the dust storm writhed and twisted it looked exactly as if it blasted them, until at least the half of the four hundred lay dead or struggling on the ground, and the remainder, covering their faces in their headcloths, turned and ran.
Then, and not until then, Jeremy’s men opened up a really withering fire on them, raking and cross-raking them from the rear, and a murmur sounding almost like a prayer went up from the ranks of the Avenger’s men.
But the attack wasn’t over yet. There were other Sheikhs whose men proposed to show the runaways how real warriors attack a wall. Another roar of “Allaho Akbar!” broke out like a series of explosions, and eight hundred or a thousand men broke line to storm the whole line of the defenses. Not firing much — for the wind prevented that; they charged with their left arms held up to protect their faces and went like bolts into a sea of dust — they covered the intervening half-mile as if it were a race for money. And those on the right nearly reached the wall, making for the obvious gaps, where Grim and Jeremy directed a hail of bullets into them. There was hand-to-hand fighting in the breaches before the right wing of the assault reeled back. But over on the left, where the bulk of the attacking force attempted to charge home and Ali Baba waited for them exactly the same thing happened as before. They went down in dozens and lay writhing, as if blasted by the dust.
“Uh! Poison gas,” remarked Narayan Singh, standing on my right-hand. But I knew that Jeremy had no poison gas. How should he have? And on my left the Avenger expressed a different opinion.
“By Allah, that is magic! They have told the truth of Jmil Ras; he and the Devil are in partnership!”
But I could see the Avenger’s face, and there was a look on it of something rather less poignant than chagrin. It called for scant mind-reading to deduce that he didn’t exactly resent seeing his neighbors’ forces decimated. If he could make favorable terms now his own supremacy in that part of the world would be unassailable.
“Do you think Jimgrim would come out and meet me now?” he asked.
“Inshallah, why not?” said I. “If he should see you and me and my friend here advancing alone across the open he would come at once to meet us.”
“By Allah, we will try it!” he answered.
But he harangued his own men first, displaying the sort of political opportunism that a man needs if he is to be a successful ruler almost anywhere. I wouldn’t call him a liar exactly, that being a hard word, and he a fairly good sportsman with the game not won; besides, our daily papers set him the example.
“Now, ye impatient fools!” he thundered at them. “Now do ye understand why I ordered you to lie still? See what I preserved you from! Ye would have met the fate of those fools yonder but for my wisdom! By my beard and the Prophet’s feet, ye would be no better than the goats without me to save you from destruction! Wait now and guard the baggage, while I go and settle this affair without losing one man’s life!”
“Wallah! You seem to have faith in your star!” said I when he returned to the tent with two men whom he had selected to go with us.
“I have faith in Jimgrim,” he answered. “Jmil Ras is too many for me, but Jimgrim will know of a way out of it.”
We waited a few minutes yet while word went down the line that all firing was to cease pending the outcome of negotiations; and the word hadn’t passed a dozen lips before it was twisted into a report that Jmil Ras had offered to surrender. Some of the men began putting up a pole to crucify him on. But that was Grim’s affair; he had said he knew how to extricate Jeremy from the mess. Narayan Singh and I followed the Avenger and his bodyguard of two straight forward across the open, walking slowly to give Grim a chance to recognize us through his glasses.
And as I had predicted, Grim came out to meet us. But he surprized me, nevertheless, for he brought with him Jeremy and Ali Baba to offset the Avenger’s two; and after stately and very formal greetings we all sat down in a circle beside a battered ancient tomb that afforded shelter from the wind and dust. Jeremy nodded to me with the brightest twinkle in his eye you ever saw —
“Thanks for the cyanide, old top!” he whispered.
“It was I who roasted it!” said Ali Baba out aloud, tapping his chest with conscious pride. “Did you see the devils wilt under the magic?”
Then the business began; and because Grim led off it was shorter and more dire
ctly to the point than any other conference with Arabs that I ever listened to. Grim’s face was stern, although Jeremy smiled all the while and kept up a running fire of jocular comments, mostly in undertones but now and then aloud.
“Now, O Avenger,” Grim began, “I promised that if you should get into trouble I would come and help you in my own way. Here I am. Are you going to listen to me?”
“By Jimgrim! This is my country from the Gates of Petra to the border of the Hedjaz; I will listen, but none shall dictate to me!”
“We’ll see about that,” said Grim. “Would you rather listen to me or to Jmil Ras?”
“Jmil Ras is a wicked bastard, who must die!” he answered.
“Taib!” said Jeremy promptly. “Let you and me settle it together right here! Come on, I’m ready! Knives — pistols — swords — rifle — bare hands — if you want a piece of me, come and help yourself!”
“You talk like a white man!” the Avenger sneered.
“Well, what in the bloody Hell d’you take me for?” Jeremy retorted in English with a laugh. “D’you think an Arab would have let your brother live, or have respected your captured wife? You’re a looney, that’s what you are! Come on, old top; let’s have it out and see who’s the best man!”
“What does the madman say?” asked the Avenger; and his question put another weapon into Grim’s hand.
“He is quite mad,” Grim answered.
“Here — steady on, old top!”
“He is an Australian, whom Allah afflicted; but he eats out of my hand.”
“Well I’ll be damned!” put in Jeremy.
“He thinks he is damned, and therefore that nothing matters,” Grim continued. “Being, as he supposes, damned already he is not afraid to open tombs or to make use of witchcraft and black magic; but he hasn’t harmed your brother or your wife. He will listen to me. But if you won’t listen to me, then I will simply leave him here and let him do his worst. If, on the other hand, you wish me to take him away there is a condition that you must agree to first, taking oath on the name of Allah, and by your beard and your own honor and the honor of your sons.”