"Money doesn't weigh much!"
Well--you don't stand on precedence or ceremony at times like
that. Over I went in the bight of the rope. They let me fall
about fifteen feet before they seemed to realize that I had let
go of the parapet. Added to all that had gone before, that made
about the climax of sensation. The pain of barking the skin of
knees and elbows against projecting angles of stone was a relief.
I am no man of iron. I haven't iron nerves. Not one second of
that descent was less than hell. I could hear the thunder of
some kind of battering-ram on the door at the foot of the stair.
I could imagine the rope chafing against the sharp edge of the
parapet as they paid it out hand over hand. The only thing that
made me keep my head at all was knowledge that Abdul Ali had had
to do the trip feet-upward, with his head in a bag. When they
let go too fast it was rather like the half-way stage of taking
chloroform. When they slowed up, there was the agonizing dread
of pursuit. And through it all there burned the torturing
suggestion that the rope might break.
Mother Earth felt good that night, when strong hands reached up
and lifted me out of the noose that failed of reaching the bottom
by about a man's height. Come to think of it, it wasn't mother
earth at that. It was the stinking carcass of a camel only half
autopsied by the vultures, that my feet first rested on--brother,
perhaps, to the beast I had put out of his agony that afternoon.
The others came down the rope hand-over-hand, Grim last. I
suppose he stayed up there with his pistol, ready for contingencies.
He had his nerve with him, for he had fastened the upper end of
the rope to a piece of broken stone laid across a gap that the
crusaders had made in the ramparts, centuries ago, for the Christian
purpose of pouring boiling oil and water on their foes. It did not
take more than a minute's violent shaking after he got down to bring
the rope tumbling on our heads.
Then the next thing he did was to take a look at the prisoner.
Finding him not much the worse for wear, barring some bruises and
a missing inch or two of skin, he ordered the bag pulled over his
head again and gave the order for retreat. Mahommed ben Hamza
went scouting ahead. The others picked up Abdul Ali as the
construction gangs handle baulks of timber--horizontal--face-
downward. When he wriggled they cuffed him into good behaviour.
You have to get down into an Arab moat before you can realize
what the Hebrews meant by their word Gehenna. The smell of
rotting carrion was only part of it. One stumbled into, and
through, and over things that should not be. Heaps, that looked
solid in the moonlight, yielded to the tread. Whatever liquid
lay there was the product of corruption.
Yet we did not dare to climb out of the moat until we reached the
shadows at the northern angle. Though the moonlight shone almost
straight down on us it was a great deal brighter up above, and
the walls cast some shadow. There was nothing for it but to pick
our way in the comparative gloom of that vulture's paradise,
praying we might find a stream to wade in presently.
Once, looking up behind me, I thought I saw men's heads peering
over the parapet, but that may have been imagination. Grim vowed
he did not see them, although I suspected him of saying that to
avoid a panic. He shepherded us along, speaking in a perfectly
normal voice whenever he had to, as if there were no such thing
as hurry in the world. When we reached the farther corner of the
moat it was he who climbed out first to con the situation. A
look-out in a bastion on the ruined town wall promptly fired
at him.
I expected him to fire back. I climbed up beside him to lend a
hand with the pistol I had filched from Abdul Ali. But Grim
shouted something about taking away for burial the corpse of a
man who had died of small-pox. The man on the wall commanded us
to Allah's mercy and warned us to beware lest we, too, catch that
dreaded plague.
"Inshallah!" Grim answered. Then he summoned our men from
the moat.
They passed up Abdul Ali, dragging him feet-first again with one
man keeping a clenched fist ready to strike him in the mouth in
case he should forget that corpses don't cry out. He looked like
a corpse half-cold, as they carried him jerkily along a track
that roughly followed the line of the wall. I don't suppose that
anything ever looked more like an Arab funeral procession than we
did. The absence of noisy mourners, and the unusual hour of
night, were plausibly accounted for by the dreaded disease that
Grim had invented for the occasion. My golf-suit was the only
false note, but I kept in shadow as much as I could, with the
unseemly burden between me and the ramparts.
It was a long time before we had the town wall at our backs. A
funeral, in the circumstances, might justifiably be rapid; but
we could hardly run and keep up the pretense. But at last we
passed over the shoulder of a hill into shadow on the farther
side, and there was no more need of play-acting.
"Yalla bilagel!" [Run like the devil.] Grim ordered then, and we
obeyed him like sprinters attempting to lower a record.
Twelve men running through the night can make a lot of noise,
especially when they carry a heavy man between them. Our men
were all from Hebron. Hebron prides itself on training the
artfullest thieves in Asia. They boast of being able to steal
the bed from under a sleeper without waking him. But even the
stealthiest animals go crashing away from danger, and, now that
the worst of the danger lay behind, more or less panic seized all
of us.
Mahommed ben Hamza refused to follow the regular track, for fear
of ambush or a chance encounter in the dark. Grim let him have
his way. They dragged the wretched Abdul Ali like a sack of corn
by a winding detour, and wherever the narrow path turned sharply
to avoid great rocks they skidded him at the turn until he yelled
for mercy. Grim pulled off the sack at last, untied his arms and
legs, and let him walk; but whenever he lagged they frog-marched
him again.
At last we reached a brook where we all waded to get rid of the
filth and smell from that infernal moat, and Abdul Ali seized
that opportunity to play his last cards. Considering Ben Hamza's
reputation, the obvious type of his nine ruffians, the darkness
and rough handling, it said a lot for Grim's authority that Abdul
Ali still had that wallet-full of money in his possession.
Sitting on a stone in the moonlight, he pulled it out. His nerve
was a politician's, cynical, simple. Its simplicity almost took
your breath away.
"How many men from Hebron?" he demanded.
"Ten. Well and good. I have here ten thousand piastres--one
thousand for each of you, or divide it how you like. That is
the price I will pay you to let me go. What can these other
two do to you? Take the money and run. Leave me to settle with
these others."
Ben Hamza, knee-deep in the brook, laughed aloud as he eyed the
money. He made a gesture so good-humoured, so full of
resignation and regret and broad philosophy that you would have
liked the fellow even if he hadn't saved your life.
"Deal with those two first!" he grinned. "I would have taken
your money long ago, but that I know Jimgrim! He would have made
me give it up again."
"Jimgrim!" said Abdul Ali. "Jimgrim? Are you Major James Grim?
A good thing for you I did not know that, when I had you in my
power in the castle!"