Affair in Araby Part 18

Another man let go of Yussuf Dakmar, who was growing weak and too short of wind to yell, and in a moment there were five of us struggling on the floor between the seats, one man under me with my forearm across his throat and another alongside me, stabbing savagely at a leather valise under the impression that he was carving up my ribs. On top of that mess Narayan Singh pounced like a tiger, wrenching at arms and legs until I struggled to my feet again--only to be thrust aside by Jeremy as he rose and rushed at Yussuf Dakmar's two a.s.sailants.

But with all his speed Jeremy was a tenth of a tick too late. The wretch was already helpless, and I dare say they broke his back as they leaned their combined weight on him and forced him backward and head-first through the window. Jeremy made a grab for his foot, but missed it, and a knife-blade already wet with Yussuf Dakmar's blood whipped out and stung him in the thigh. That, of course, was sheer ignorance. You should never sting an Australian. Kill him or let him alone. Better yet, make friends with him or surrender; but, above all, do nothing by halves. They're a race of whole-hoggers, equally ready to force their only shirt on you or fight you to a finish.

So Jeremy finished the business at the window. He took a neck in each hand and cracked their skulls together until the whack-whack-whack of it was like the exhaust of a Ford with loose piston rings; and when they fell from his grip, unconscious, he came to my rescue. Believe me, I needed it.

They were as strong and lithe as wildcats, those Syrians, and fully awake to the advantage that the narrow door gave them. One man struggled with Narayan Singh and kept him busy with his bulk so wedged across the opening that Grim and Hadad were as good as demobilized out in the corridor; and the other two tackled me like a pair of butchers hacking at a maddened bull. I landed with my fists, but each time at the cost of a flesh-wound; and though I got one knife-hand by the wrist and hung on, wrenching and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g to throw the fellow off his feet, the other man's right was free and the eighteen-inch Erzeram dagger that he held danced this and that way for an opening underneath my guard.

Jeremy's left fist landed under the peak of his jaw exactly at the moment when he stiffened to launch his thrust. He fell as if pole-axed and the blade missed my stomach by six inches, but the combined force of thrust and blow was great enough to drive the weapon into the wooden part.i.tion, where it stayed until I pulled it out to keep as a souvenir.

There wasn't much trouble after that. Grim and Hadad came in and we tore strips from the Syrians' clothing to tie their hands and feet with.

Hadad went to the rear of the train, climbing along the footboard of the third-cla.s.s cars to the caboose to throw some sort of bluff to the conductor, who came forward--called me "Colonel" and Hadad "Excellency"

--looked our prisoners over--recognized no friends--and said that everything was "quite all right." He said he knew exactly what to do; but we left Narayan Singh on watch, lest that knowledge should prove too original which, however, it turned out not to be. It was bromidian--as old as history. Narayan Singh came back and told us.

"Lo, sahib; he went through their clothes as an ape for fleas, I watching. And when he had all their valuables he laid them on the footboard, and then, as we pa.s.sed some Bedouin tents, he kicked them off. But he seems an honest fellow, for he gave them back some small change to buy food with, should any be obtainable."

After that he stood flashing his white teeth for half an hour watching Mabel bandage Jeremy and me, for it always amuses a Sikh to watch a white man eat punishment. Sikhs are a fine race--but curious-- distinctly curious and given to unusual amus.e.m.e.nt. When Mabel had finished with me at last I stuck a needle into him, and he laughed, accepting the stab as a compliment.

A strange thing is how men settle down after excitement. Birds do the same thing. A hawk swoops down on a hedgerow; there is a great flutter, followed by sudden silence. A minute later the chattering begins again, without any reference to one of their number being torn in the plunderer's beak. And so we; even Grim loosened up and gossiped about Feisul and the already ancient days when Feisul was the up-to-date Saladin leading Arab hosts to victory.

But there was an even stranger circ.u.mstance than that. We weren't the only people in the train; our car, for instance, was fairly well occupied by Armenians, Arabs, and folk whose vague nationality came under the general heading of Levantine. The car ahead where the fight took place, though not crowded, wasn't vacant, and there were others in the car behind. Yet not one of them made a move to interfere. They minded their own business, which proves, I think, that manners are based mainly on discretion.

As the train gasped slowly up the grade and rolled b.u.mpily at last along the fertile, neglected Syrian highland, all the Armenians on the train removed their hats and subst.i.tuted the red tarboosh, preferring the headgear of a convert rather than be the target of every Bedouin with a rifle in his hand.

The whole journey was a mix-up of things to wonder at--not least of them the matter-of-fact confidence with which the train proceeded along a single track, whose condition left you wondering at each b.u.mp whether the next wouldn't be the journey's violent end. There were lamps, but no oil for light when evening came. Once, when we b.u.mped over a shaky culvert and a bushel or two of coal-dust fell from the rusty tender, the engineer stopped the train and his a.s.sistant went back with a shovel and piece of sacking to gather up the precious stuff.

There was nothing but squalid villages and ruins, goats and an occasional rare camel to be seen through the window--not a tree anywhere, the German General Staff having attended to that job thoroughly. There is honey in the country and it's plentiful as well as good, because bees are not easy property to raid and make away with; but the milk is from goats, and as for overflowing, I would hate to have to punish the dugs of a score of the brutes to get a jugful for dinner.

Syria's wealth is of the past and the future.

Long before it grew too dark to watch the landscape we were wholly converted to Grim's argument that Syria was no place for a man of Feisul's calibre. The Arab owners of the land are plundered to the bone; the men with money are foreigners, whose only care is for a government that will favour this religion and that breed. To set up a kingdom there would be like preaching a new religion in Hester Street; you could hand out text, soup and blankets, but you'd need a whale's supply of faith to carry on, and the offertories wouldn't begin to meet expenses.

Until that journey finally convinced me, I had been wondering all the while in the back of my head whether Grim wasn't intending an impertinence. It hasn't been my province hitherto to give advice to kings; for one thing, they haven't asked me for it. If I were asked, I think I'd take the problem pretty seriously and hesitate before suggesting to a man on whom the hope of fifty million people rests that he'd better pull up stakes and eat crow in exile for the present. I'd naturally hate to be a king, but if I were one I don't think quitting would look good, and I think I'd feel like kicking the fellow who suggested it.

But the view from the train, and Grim's talk with Hadad put me in a mood in which Syria didn't seem good enough for a soap-box politician, let alone a man of Feisul's fame and character. And when at last a few lights in a cl.u.s.ter down the track proclaimed that we were drawing near Damascus, I was ready to advise everybody, Feisul included, to get out in a hurry while a chance remained.

CHAPTER VIII

"Bismillah! What a mercy that I met you!"

While the fireman sc.r.a.ped the iron floor for his last two shovelfuls of coal-dust and the train wheezed wearily into the dark station, Grim began to busy himself in mysterious ways. Part of his own costume consisted of a short, curved scimitar attached to an embroidered belt-- the sort of thing that Arabs wear for ornament rather than use. He took it off and, groping in the dark, helped Mabel put it on, without a word of explanation.

Then, instead of putting on his own Moslem over-cloak he threw that over her shoulders and, digging down into his bag for a spare head-dress, s.n.a.t.c.hed her hat off and bound on the white kerchief in its place with the usual double, gold-covered cord of camel-hair.

Then came my friend the train conductor and addressed me as Colonel, offering to carry out the bags. The moment he had grabbed his load and gone Grim broke silence:

"Call her Colonel and me Grim. Don't forget how!"

We became aware of faces under helmets peering through the window- officers of Feisul's army on the watch for unwelcome visitors. From behind them came the conductor's voice again, airing his English:

"Any more bags inside there, Colonel?"

"Get out quick, Jeremy, and make a fuss about the Colonel coming!"

ordered Grim.

Jeremy suddenly became the arch-efficient servitor, establishing importance for his chief, and never a newly made millionaire or modern demagog had such skillful advertis.e.m.e.nt. The Shereefian officers stood back at a respectful distance, ready to salute when the personage should deign to alight.

"What shall be done with the memsahib's hat?" demanded Narayan Singh.

You could only see the whites of his eyes, but he shook something in his right hand.

"Eat it!" Grim answered.

"Heavens! That's my best hat!" objected Mabel. "Give it here. I'll carry it under the cloak."

"Get rid of it!" Grim ordered; and Narayan Singh strode off to contribute yellow Leghorn straw and poppies to the engine furnace.

I gave him ten piastres to fee the engineer, and five for the fireman, so you might say that was high-priced fuel.

"What kind of bunk are you throwing this time?" I asked Grim.

He didn't answer, but gave orders to Mabel in short, crisp syllables.

"You're Colonel Lawrence. Answer no questions. If anyone salutes, just move your hand and bow your head a bit. You're just his height. Look straight in front of you and take long strides. Bend your head forward a little; there, that's it."

"I'm scared!" announced Mabel, by way of asking for more particulars.

She wasn't scared in the least.

"Piffle!" Grim answered. "Remember you're Lawrence, that's all. They'd give you Damascus if you asked for it. Follow Jeremy, and leave the rest to us."

I don't doubt that Grim had been turning over the whole plan in his mind for hours past, but when I taxed him with it afterward his reply was characteristic:

"If we'd rehea.r.s.ed it, Mabel and Hadad would both have been self-conscious. The game is to study your man--or woman, as the case may be--and sometimes drill 'em, sometimes spring it on 'em, according to circ.u.mstances. The only rule is to study people; there are no two quite alike."

Hadad was surprised into silence, too thoughtful a man to do anything except hold his tongue until the next move should throw more light on the situation. He followed us out of the car, saying nothing; and being recognized by the light of one dim lantern as an intimate friend of Feisul, he accomplished all that Grim could have asked of him.

He was known to have been in Europe until recently. Rumours about Lawrence had been tossed from mouth to mouth for days past, and here was somebody who looked like Lawrence in the dark, followed by Grim and Hadad and addressed as "Colonel." Why shouldn't those three Shereefian officers jump to conclusions, salute like automatons and grin like loyal men who have surprised a secret and won't tell anyone but their bosom friends? It was all over Damascus within the hour that Lawrence had come from England to stand by Feisul in the last ditch. The secret was kept perfectly!

We let Mabel walk ahead of us, and there was no trouble at the customs barrier, where normally every piastre that could be wrung from protesting pa.s.sengers were mulcted to support a starving treasury; for the officers strode behind us, and trade signs to the customs clerk, who immediately swore at everyone in sight and sent all his minions to yell for the best cabs in Damascus.

Narayan Singh distributed largesse to about a hundred touts and hangers-on and we splashed off toward the hotel in two open landaus, through streets six inches deep in water except at the cross-gutters, where the horses jumped for fear of losing soundings. Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, were in flood as usual at that time of year, and the scavenging street curs had to swim from one garbage heap to the next. There was a gorgeous battle going on opposite the hotel door, where half a dozen white-ivoried mongrels with their backs to a heap of kitchen leavings held a ford against a dozen others, each beast that made good his pa.s.sage joining with the defenders to fight off the rest. I stood on the hotel steps and watched the war for several minutes, while Grim went in with the others and registered as "Rupert Ramsden of Chicago, U.S.A., and party."

The flood, and darkness owing to the lack of fuel, were all in our favour, for such folk as were abroad were hardly of the sort whose gossip would carry weight; nevertheless, we hadn't been in the hotel twenty minutes before an agent of the bank put in his appearance, speaking French volubly. Seeing my name on the register, he made the mistake of confining his attention to me, which enabled Grim to get Mabel safely away into a big room on the second floor.

The Frenchman (if he was one--he had a Hebrew nose) made bold to corner me on a seat near the dining-room door. He was nervous rather than affable--a little pompous, as behooved the representative of money power--and evidently used to having his impertinences answered humbly.