by Talbot Mundy
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, Grim leading, and its first rays showed that we were using the bed of a watercourse for a road. Exactly in front of us, glimpsed through a twelve-foot gap between cliffs six hundred feet high, was a sight worth going twice that distance, running twice that risk, to see — a rose-red temple front, carved out of the solid valley wall and glistening in the opalescent hues of morning.
Not even Burkhardt, who was the first civilized man to see the place in a thousand years, described that temple properly; because you can’t. It is huge — majestic — silent — empty — aglow with all the prism colors in the morning sun. And it seems to think.
It takes you so by surprise when you first see it that in face of that embodied mystery of ancient days your brain won’t work, and you want to sit spellbound. But Grim had done our thinking for us, so that we were not the only ones surprised. Such was the confidence of safety that those huge walls and the narrow entrance to the place inspire that Ali Higg had set only four men to keep the gate; and they slept with their weapons beside them, never believing that strangers would dare essay that ghost-haunted ravine by night.
They were pounced on and tied almost before their eyes were open; and, catching sight of Jael Higg first, and getting only a glimpse of Grim, they rather naturally thought their chief had caught them napping; so they neither cried out nor made any attempt to defend themselves; and presently, when they discovered their mistake, the fear of being crucified for having slept on duty kept them dumb.
Grim led the way straight to that amazing temple, and we invaded it, camels and all, off-loading the camels inside in a hurry and then driving them out again to lie down in the wide porch between the columns and the temple wall. The porch was so vast that even all our string of camels did not crowd it.
The main part of the interior was a perfect cube of forty feet, all hand- hewn from the cliff, and there were numerous rooms leading out of it that had once been occupied by the priests of Isis, but “the lion and the lizard” had lived in them since their day. We put the prisoners, including Ayisha’s four men, in one room under guard.
That much was hardly accomplished when the spirit of our seventeen thieves reacted to their surroundings, and all the advantage of our secret arrival was suddenly undone. Half of them had gone outside to tie the camels, under Ali Baba’s watchful eye; and it was he, as a matter of fact, who started it. From inside we heard a regular din of battle commencing — loud shouts and irregular rifle-fire — and I followed Grim out in a hurry.
There was no enemy in sight. Old Ali Baba was busy reloading his rifle fifty paces away in front of the temple door, facing us with his sons, in a semicircle around him, and they were shooting at something over our heads. Grim laughed rather bitterly.
“My mistake,” he said. “I ought to have thought of that.”
So I went out to see.
Surmounting the temple front, at least a hundred feet above the pavement and perfectly inaccessible, was a beautifully carved stone urn surmounting a battered image of some god or goddess. It was in shadow, because the cliff wall, from which the temple had been carved, overhung it; so it was peculiarly difficult to hit, even at that range; but they were all firing away at it as if Ali Higg and all his men were hidden behind the thing. There was no particular need to stop them, for they had made noise enough already to awake the very slumbering bones of Petra. Ali Baba advised me to shoot too, and I asked him why.
“To burst the thing.”
“But why?”
“That we make a profit from this venture.”
“How?”
He paused to reload once more. He had already fired away about fifteen cartridges.
“Allah! The very dogs of El-Kalil have heard of Pharaoh’s treasure.”
“I am neither a dog,” said I, “nor an inhabitant of El-Kalil, for which Allah for his thoughtfulness be praised! Tell me what you and the dogs know.”
“This place was the treasury of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, a bad king and an unbeliever, whom may Allah curse! In that urn are his gold and rubies. If we can crack it they will come tumbling down and we shall all be rich.”
“Mashallah! You believe that? Why haven’t Ali Higg and his men cracked it, then?”
“Shu halalk? I have told you Pharaoh was an evil king. He was in league with devils and bewitched the place. The devils guard it. May Allah twist their tails! Look — see! We shoot, but the bullets miss the mark each time!”
“Perhaps you haven’t prayed enough to exorcize the devils?” I suggested, and he dropped the butt of his rifle on the ground to consider the proposition.
“Out of the mouth of an unbeliever has come wisdom before now,” he said. “There may be truth in that.”
And he called all his sons and grandsons there and then to spread their mats and pray toward Mecca, performing the prescribed ablutions first with water from one of the goatskin bags.
Well, there wasn’t any further use in trying to keep our movements secret. Grim beckoned me to where he stood beside Narayan Singh, with Ayisha looking mischievous in the gloom behind them, and issued final instructions.
“Present my compliments and these gifts to Ali Higg — I’m busy at prayer, remember — and say how greatly honored we feel to have escorted his wife across the desert. If he asks where her four men are, tell him I’ll bring them later. Be sure and make me out a great sheikh, and say I heard he is sick, so sent my hakim in advance to give him relief; then do your best for him, if he’ll let you — after Ayisha has done her worst,” he added in a whisper. “Don’t forget you’re a darwaish. The more you jaw religion the better the old rascal will like you. See you soon. So long!”
So Narayan Singh and I, followed by Ayisha and two of Ali Baba’s sons, left that ancient temple bearing the medicine-chest as well as presents, and I hope the others did not feel as scared as I did.
CHAPTER 12. “Yet I forgot to speak of the twenty aeroplanes!”
YOU can expect anything, of course, of Arabs. People who will pitch black cotton tents in the scorching sun, and live in them in preference to gorgeous cool stone temples because of the devils and ghosts that they believe to haunt those habitable splendors, will believe anything at all except the truth, and act in any way except reasonably. So I tried to believe it was all right to be unreasonable too
.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that a man who had set himself up to be the holy terror of a country-side and put his heel on the necks of all the tribes for miles around, would have made use at least of the caves and tombs to strengthen his position. There were thousands of them all among those opal- colored cliffs, to say nothing of ruined buildings; yet not one was occupied. Ayisha had told most of the truth when she said in El-Kalil that her people lived in tents.
We walked down the paved street of a city between oleander bushes that had forced themselves up between the cracks, toward an enormous open amphitheater hewn by the Romans out of a hillside, with countless tiers of ruined stone seats rising one above the other like giant steps.
In the center of that the tents were pitched, and the only building in use was a great half-open cave on another hillside, in which Ayisha told us Ali Higg himself lived, overlooking the entire camp and directing its destinies.
On the top of the mountain in front of us was the tomb of Aaron, Moses’ brother. On another mountain farther off stood a great crusader castle all in ruins; and to left and right were endless remains of civilization that throve when the British were living in mud-and-wattle huts. The dry climate had preserved it all; but there was water enough; it only needed the labor of a thousand men to remake a city of it.
We avoided the amphitheater with its hundreds of tents pitched inside and all about it, because Ayisha said the women would come running out to greet her, and she did not desire that any more than we did. So we turned to the right, and started up a flight of steps nearly a mile long that led to an ancient place of sacrifice; two hundred yards up that the track turned off that led to Ali Higg’s cavern.
It was there, where the broken steps and sidetrack met, that the first men came hurrying to meet us and blocked our way — four of them, active as goats, and looking fierce enough to scare away twice their number. But they recognized Ayisha, and stood aside at once to let us pass, showing her considerable gruff respect and asking a string of questions, which she countered with platitudes. They did not follow us, but stayed on guard at the corner, as if the meeting between Ali Higg and his wife were something to keep from prying eyes.
So the far-famed Ali Higg was alone in his great cave when we reached it, sitting near the entrance propped on skins and cushions with a perfect armory of weapons on the floor beside him. The interior was hung with fine Bokhara embroideries, and every inch of the floor was covered with rugs.
There was another cave opening into that in which he sat; and it, too, was richly decorated; but the sound of women’s voices that we heard came from a third cave around the corner of the cliff wall, not connected. Ali Higg was apparently in no mood for female company — or any other kind.
In the shadow of the overhanging rock he looked so like Grim it was laughable. He was a caricature of our man, with all the refinement and humor subtly changed into irritable anger. He looked as if he would scream if you touched him, and no wonder; for the back of the poor fellow’s neck, half hidden by the folds of his head-cloth, was a perfect mess of boils that made every movement of his head an agony.
His eyes were darker than Grim’s, and blazed as surely no white man’s ever did; and his likeness to Grim was lessened by the fact that he had not been shaved for a day or two, and the sparse black hair coarsened the outline of his chin and jaw. In spite of his illness he had not laid aside the bandolier that crossed his breast, nor the two daggers tucked into his waist-cloth. And he laid his hand on a modern British Army rifle the minute he caught sight of us.
Narayan Singh and I both bowed and, after greeting him with the proper sonorous blessing, stood aside to let Ayisha approach. We should have demeaned ourselves in his eyes, and hers as well, if we had walked behind her. He nodded to us curtly, and almost smiled at her; but that one wry twist of his lips was his nearest approach to pleasantry that morning.
She knelt and kissed his hands and feet, waiting to speak until she was spoken to; and he did not speak to her at all, but signed to her with a tap on the head and a gesture to take her place on the rug behind him. Then at a motion from me Ali Baba’s two sons brought forward the presents and the medicine-chest, setting them down before him in the cave-mouth.
The presents were pretty good, I thought. I would not have minded owning them myself; but he eyed them dully. There was a set of Solingen razors, marked in Arabic with the days of the week; a cloak of blue-and-white-striped cloth, fit for any prince of Bedouins; and an ormolu clock with a gong inside it that would have graced the chimneypiece of a Brooklyn boarding-house.
“Mar’haba!” he said at last, by way of acknowledging our existence, after he had stared at the presents for about two minutes sourly; and I took that for permission to say my little piece.
So I delivered Grim’s message, saying that he was a most God-fearing and hard-fighting sheikh from Palestine, who had had the honor to escort his mightiness’ wife to Petra, and now, learning of the illness of the famous Lion of Petra, who might Allah bless for ever, rather than postpone his devotions had sent me, his hakim, schooled in medicine at Lahore University, and a darwaish to boot, to offer such relief as my modest skill might compass.
That was a long speech to get off in Arabic for a comparative beginner. I rather expected him to smile or say something pleasant in return, but he didn’t.
“By Allah, you have come to poison me!” he growled. “All hakimsare alike. There was an Egyptian tried it a month ago. Look yonder on the ledge, where his skull hangs. May devils burn his soul!”
It was easy enough to look shocked at that suggestion. He had the drop on me for one thing; and, for another, Ayisha was whispering to him, and I couldn’t guess whether she was betraying me or not. It turned out that that young woman was much too bent on swapping owners to do anything but smooth our path; but I wasn’t so sure of that then as Narayan Singh seemed to be, and as, for that matter, Grim was too.
But he seemed to grow a little less irascible, until she leaned too close to him and touched his neck. Then he went off like a pent-up volcano, and cursed her until she shuddered; and her fright gave him no satisfaction, because he could not turn his head to look at her.
“Where is this cursed person?” he demanded, meaning Grim, of course.
“He rests at the treasury of Pharaoh,” said I, hoping that as Narayan Singh and I both stood exactly in front of him he might not catch sight of Grim’s movements in the valley below.
“How did he enter Petra without my leave?” he demanded.
I took a long pause, for that was an awkward question. I could not very well admit that Grim had seized and imprisoned his watchmen. But Narayan Singh strode into the breach.
“The Lion’s jackals slept,” he announced in a voice of righteous indignation. “There was none to give our great Sheikh Jimgrim as much as Allah’s blessing. Nevertheless, he sends these presents.”
Without answering that Ali Higg clapped his hands twice, and a woman came around the corner from a near-by cave. By her bearing she was either a junior wife or a concubine, and she greeted Ayisha like a sister with a great pow-wow of blessing and reply. But Ali Higg cut all that short. He was no sentimentalist.
“Find Shammas Abdul,” he ordered her. “Order him to take camel and meet the men returning from the Ben Aroun raid. Let him bid them hurry. Go!”
She obeyed on the run. There was discipline in that man’s camp, as long as he was looking. But Ayisha followed the woman out, and whether she herself found Shammas Abdul, or whether she contrived to pervert the junior wife, Grim presently became aware of that move to summon forth men, and governed himself accordingly.
For about a minute Ali Higg fixed baleful eyes on me.
“You are a Shia!” he snapped suddenly. “A Persian! A cursed heretic!”
A look of pained surprise was the best retort I could accomplish; but Narayan Singh came to the rescue again. He thumped a fist on his chest as if it were a drum, and glared indignantly.
“Would I, a Pathan of the Orakzai, demean myself by being servant to a Persian?” he demanded. “Lo! We bring gifts. What manner of desert man are you that reward us with insults!”
“Peace!” I said. “Peace!” remembering the Sikh’s counsel about the middle course I should pursue. “The Lion is sick. May Allah take pity on him!”
Narayan Singh growled in his beard by way of submitting to the mild rebuke, and Ali Higg — a little bit impressed perhaps — proceeded to question me on doctrine and theology, showing a zeal for splitting hairs that would have done credit to a Cairo m’allim.But I had had lots of instruction on those points, and in fact surprised him with a trite fanaticism equal to his own, ending with a statement that whoever did not believe every article and precept of the Sunni faith not only was damned forever beyond hope, but should be despatched in a hurry to face the dreadful consequences.
His eyes softened considerably at that; and for the moment I think he almost approved of me, in spite of the foreign accent that must have grated on his ears, and his national dislike of anyone who hailed from India. He actually told both of us to be seated, and clapped his hands again. Another woman came, looking dreadfully afraid of him.
“Coffee!” he ordered.
We sat down on the ledge of rock in front of him, for although it was hardly wise to seem too deferent, it would have been most unwise to move away and give him an unobstructed view of the valley, where Grim might be in sight or might not be. Our job was to gain time.
He did not say a word until the coffee came, beyond swearing scandalously when he moved his head and the boils hurt.
“O Allah, may Your neck hurt You as mine does me!”
I thought that pretty good for such a hard-and-fast doctrinaire, but it was almost mild compared to some of his other remarks.
The woman brought the coffee on a tray in little silver cups — as good and as well served as if our host were a Cairene pasha; but our irascible host took none, for Ayisha called out and warned him not to, saying it would heat his boils.