The Wind Bloweth Part 22

There was a slight frown on his face. He was becoming impatient. Shane broke again to the right. Ahmet followed, his immense hands poised.

Campbell feinted for the chin again with his left hand. The wrestler's smile flickered. His right arm went out in guard. Campbell shifted, caught the brown wrist in his right hand, his left hand shot forward to the chin again. He brought forward all his forces to twisting that gigantic arm. He held the Syrian locked. The right arm began to give. If he could only shift his feet, get some sort of leverage. But how in G.o.d's name, how? How could he get behind. With an immense wrench of shoulders Ahmet got free. He stood for an instant, nursing his numbed wrist. He nodded and grinned. "That wasn't bad," he seemed to say. The lean bilious Turk on the edge of the crowd began talking viciously. The saturnine French corporal turned and smacked him terribly across the nose with the edge of the scabbard of his bayonet. "_Et-ta soeur!_" He had the air of a schoolmaster reproving a refractory pupil. But his language was obscene and his blow broke the man's nose.... He vouchsafed no further interest in the Turk, but turned to watch the wrestling, twirling an oiled mustache....

The Syrian closed his mouth, breathed heavily through his nostrils. His brow corrugated. His eyes became pinpoints. He was a workman out to do a job. He began to weave in, his brown arms describing slow arabesques.

The crowd around became oppressively silent. They breathed hissingly.

Shane feinted, dodged, broke away. Doggedly Ahmet Ali followed. Faster than time, Shane's right hand shot out and gripped the wrestler's right wrist. His right foot hooked around the Syrian's right ankle. He pulled downward with sudden, vicious effort. Ali crashed forward on his face, a great brown hulk like an overturned bronze statue. Shane stooped down for either the half-Nelson and hammer-lock, or full Nelson.... An instant too long of hesitation. Light as a lightweight acrobat Ahmet Ali had rolled aside, put palm to ground, sprung to his feet. His face was b.l.o.o.d.y, his right knee shook. With the back of his hand he wiped the blood from his eyes. There was a twitter from the Syrians. The wrestler lumbered forward again.... A little quake of fear came into Campbell's being. There was an impersonal doggedness about the wrestler from Aleppo's eyes, a sense of inevitability.... Shane's eyes shifted, right and left....

Then suddenly, the wrestler had him....

He felt a twirl to his shoulder, and then he was pinioned by two immense brown arms. They caught him above the elbows around the chest. First they were like boys' arms, light. They became firm as calipers. They settled, snugged. Then they tightened slowly, with immense certainty.

There was something about it like the rise of the tide. A gigantic cable around his chest. At his shoulder-blades the Syrian's pectoral muscles pressed like shallow k.n.o.bs of steel. His arms began to hurt. His breathing began to be hard with every output of breath. The arms tightened.... All his vitality was flying through his opened mouth....

He hit futilely with his knuckles at the rope-like sinews of the brown forearms.... His head throbbed like drums.... In an instant he would be like a bag bound midways ... his ribs giving like saplings in the wind ... Lights danced....

Stupidly he looked down at the clasped hands, and a sudden fury of fighting came on him.... Something terrible, sinister, cold. His free hands caught the Syrian's little finger, tugged, pulled, bent, tore....

He wanted to shred it from its hand.... Rip it like silk.... He felt the great arms about him quiver, grow uncertain.... Tear, tear!...

With a little whine like a dog's, the wrestler let go.... He nursed the finger for an instant like a hurt child.... Opening and shutting the hand.... Looking worried.... Great waves of air came into Shane's chest.... His knees were weak.... The Syrian walked around an instant, thinking, worrying.... He was serious now.... Suddenly he plunged....

But swifter than Ahmet's plunge was thought and memory.... Of a day at Nagasaki ... of a little brown smiling j.a.panese and a burly square-head sailorman.... Of the j.a.panese's courteous explanation in smiling Pidgin.... With luck and timing he could do it.... Fast, but not too fast, and steady.... Handsomely, as the ship-word was.... There!

The hands trained to whipping lanyards caught Ahmet's wrists as he plunged. Shane's right leg went outward, foot sunk home. Backward he fell, leg taunt, hands pulling. Above him Ahmet's great bulk soared, hurtled grotesquely. For an instant; a flash.... The squeals of startled Syrians, the panic of feet.... Then a crash, an immense crash....

A long shuddering, frightened _eh_ from the crowd.... A French soldier mumbling ... "_'Cre nom de nom de nom de nom de Jesus Chri!_"

He staggered to his feet, put his hand to his face.... It came away dripping.... His face was like the leeward deck of a flying yacht ...

swimming.... A few feet away Syrians and French soldiers were milling over ... something.... The corporal wrenched Shane's arms into his coat.

Pushed his hat into his hands.

"_Courez donc, le citoyen_.... Come on, get away.... Get...."

"Is he dead?"

"No, not dead.... But get away.... He'll never wrestle again.... _Vite, alors!_"

He pushed him down the street.

"But----"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Go on. We can take care of ourselves...." He shoved him roughly forward.... Shane staggered, walked, ran a little.... Behind him a few blocks away, an ominous hum. He ran on.... Some one was shrieking....

"_Ma hala ya ma hala Kobal en Nosara_.... How sweet, oh, how sweet, to kill the Christians...." The crack of a gun.... Tumult.... The long Moslem war-song.... Two rifles. "_A nous, les Francais_.... _A nous, la Legion_!"

A nausea, a great weakness, an utter contempt for himself came over him in the boat pulling him toward his ship ... G.o.d! He had fought with and nearly killed--possibly killed--a man for personal hatred! From irritation, and in a public place! A spectacle for donkey-boys and riff-raff of French towns.... He tottered on the ship's ladder.... The sailors caught him. The mate ran up.

"Anything wrong, sir? You look like a ghost."

"No, nothing. All aboard? Everything ready? Is she a-drawing? Anchor a-peak? All right. Get her up...."

-- 12

"Arif Bey, where is my wife? I come back to Beirut. I find my house deserted. My servants gone. Where is Fenzile? Is she here?"

"No, son."

"Is she dead?"

"No--no, son, I wish she were...."

"Then where is she gone? With whom?"

"Trebizond. Stamboul. Cairo. I don't know where."

"With whom?"

"With--oh, don't bother yourself, son. Forget her."

"With whom? I must know."

"With--do you remember that wrestler you crippled, the wrestler from Aleppo?"

"With Ahmet Ali! Impossible! I all but killed him."

"She went, though...."

"No, uncle, no. If he had been strong she might, but,--"

The old Druse chief shook his head, smiled in his beard, a little, bitter, wise smile.

"You were never sick with her, never poor."

"No, never sick, never poor."

"Well, he was sick and poor, so she went with him."

"Then she loved him all along."

"No, son Zan, she loved you--until you threw him. She might have been amused at seeing him pa.s.s the house, laugh a little, be flattered....

Such a big fool, and she a little woman.... But she would never have left you...."

"But she did."

"Well ... after the fall, he had no friends ... the Christians despised him, the Moslems hated him.... There was no train to follow him ... he went on crutches.... He pa.s.sed her door and looked, and looked.... What could she do but come out.... It was her fault, after all.... And she was very tender-hearted...."

"Tender-hearted?"

"Didn't you know?"