The moon was but a ghost of itself, and a faint rose was beginning to
tinge the pallor of the sky behind the Bakhtiari mountains, when the
motor began to miss fire. Gaston, stifling an exclamation, cut it off,
unscrewed the cap of the tank, and measured the gasolene. Then he
stepped softly forward to the place in the bow where he kept his reserve
cans. Magin, roused by the stopping of the boat, sat up, stretching.
"_Tiens!_" he exclaimed. "Here we are!" He looked about at the high clay
banks enclosing the tawny basin of the four rivers. In front of him the
konar trees of Bund-i-Kir showed their dark green. At the right, on top
of the bluff of the eastern shore, a solitary peasant stood white
against the sky. Near him a couple of oxen on an inclined plane worked
the rude mechanism that drew up water to the fields. The creak of the
pulleys and the splash of the dripping goatskins only made more intense
the early morning silence. "Do you remember, Gaston?" asked Magin. "It
was here we first had the good fortune to meet--not quite three weeks
ago."
"I remember," answered Gaston, keeping his eye on the mouth of the tank
he was filling, "that I was the one who wished you peace, Monsieur; and
that no one asked who you were or where you were going."
Magin yawned.
"Well, you seem to have satisfied yourself now on those important
points. I might add, however, for your further information, that I think
I shall not go to Bund-i-Kir, which looks too peaceful to disturb at
this matinal hour, but there--on the western shore of the Ab-i-Shuteit.
And that reminds me. I still have to pay you the rest of my ticket."
He reached forward and laid a little pile of gold on Gaston's seat.
Gaston, watching out of the corner of his eye as he poured gasolene, saw
that there were more than five napoleons in that pile. There were at
least ten.
"What would you say, Monsieur," he asked slowly, emptying his tin, "if I
were to take you instead to Sheleilieh--where there are still a few of
the English?"
"I would say, my good Gaston, that you had more courage than I thought.
By the way," he went on casually, "what is this?"
He reached forward again toward Gaston's seat, where lay the Bakhtiari's
present. Gaston dropped his tin and made a snatch at it. But Magin was
too quick for him. He retreated to his place at the stern of the boat,
where he drew the knife out of its sheath.
"Sharp, too!" he commented, with a smile at Gaston. "And my revolver is
gone!"
Gaston, very pale, stepped to his seat.
"That, Monsieur, was given me by my Bakhtiari brother-in-law--to take to
the war. When he found I had not the courage to go, he ran away from
me."
"But you thought there might be more than one way to make war, eh? Well,
I at least am not an Apache. Perhaps the sharks will know what to do
with it." The blade glittered in the brightening air and splashed out of
sight. And Magin, folding his arms, smiled again at Gaston. "Another
object of virtue for the safe custody of the Karun!"
"But not all!" cried Gaston thickly, seizing the little pile of gold
beside him and flinging it after the knife.
Magin's smile broadened.
"Have you not forgotten something, Gaston?"
"But certainly not, Monsieur," he replied, putting his hand into his
pocket. The next moment a second shower of gold caught the light. And
where the little circles of ripples widened in the river, a sharp fin
suddenly cut the muddy water.
"Oho! Mr. Shark loses no time!" cried Magin. He stopped smiling, and
turned back to Gaston. "But we do. Allow me to say, my friend, that you
show yourself really too romantic. This is no doubt an excellent comedy
which we are playing for the benefit of that gentleman on the bluff. But
even he begins to get tired of it. See? He starts to say his morning
prayer. So be so good as to show a little of the reason which you know
how to show, and start for shore. But first you might do well to screw
on the cap of your tank--if you do not mind a little friendly advice."
Gaston looked around absent-mindedly, and took up the nickel cap. But he
suddenly turned back to Magin.
"You speak too much about friends, Monsieur. I am not your friend. I am
your enemy. And I shall not take you there, to the Ab-i-Shuteit. I
shall take you into the Ab-i-Gerger--to Sheleilieh and the English."
Magin considered him, with a flicker in his lighted eyes.
"You might perhaps have done it if you had not forgotten about your
gasolene--And you may yet. We shall see. But it seems to me,
my--enemy!--that you make a miscalculation. Let us suppose that you take
me to Sheleilieh. It is highly improbable, because you no longer have
your knife to assist you. I, it is true, no longer have my revolver to
assist me; but I have two arms, longer and I fancy stronger than yours.
However, let us make the supposition. And let us make the equally
improbable supposition that I fall into the hands of the English. What
can they do to me? The worst they can do is to give me free lodging and
nourishment till the end of the war! Whereas you, Gaston--you do not
seem to have reflected that life will not be so simple for you, after
this. There is a very unpleasant little word by which they name citizens
who do not respond to their country's call to arms. In other words, Mr.
Deserter, you have taken the road which, in war time, ends between a
firing-squad and a stone wall."
Gaston, evidently, had not reflected on that. He stared at his nickel
cap, turning it around in his fingers.
"You see?" continued Magin. "Well then, what about that little Gaston? I
do not know what has suddenly made you so much less reasonable than you
were last night; but I, at least, have not changed. And I see no reason
why that little Gaston should be left between two horns of a dilemma. In
fact I see excellent reasons not only why you should take me that short
distance to the shore, but why you should accompany me to Dizful. There
I am at home. I am, more than any one else, emperor. And I need a man
like you. I am going to have a car, I am going to have a boat, I am
going to have a place in the sun. There will be many changes in that
country after the war. You will see. It is not so far, either, from
here. It is evident that your heart, like mine, is in this part of the
world. So come with me. Eh, Gaston?"
"Heart!" repeated Gaston, with a bitter smile. "It is you who speak of
the heart, and of---- But you do not speak of the little surprise with
which you might some day regale me, Mr. Enemy! Nor do you say what you
fear--that I might take it into my head to go fishing at Umm-un-Nakhl!"
"Ah bah!" exclaimed Magin impatiently. "However, you are right. I am not
like you. I do not betray my country for a little savage with a jewel in
her nose! It is because of that small difference between us, Gaston,
between your people and my people, that you will see such changes here
after the war. But you will not see them unless you accept my offer.
After all, what else can you do?" He left Gaston to take it in as he
twirled his metal cap. "There is the sun already," Magin added
presently. "We shall have a hot journey."
Gaston looked over his shoulder at the quivering rim of gold that surged
up behind the Bakhtiari mountains. How sharp and purple they were,
against what a deepening blue! On the bluff the white-clad peasant stood
with his back to the light, his hands folded in front of him, his head
bowed.
"You look tired, Gaston," said Magin pleasantly. "Will you have this
cigar?"
"No, thank you," replied Gaston. He felt in his own pockets, however,
first for a cigarette and then for a match. He was indeed tired, so
tired that he no longer remembered which pocket to fumble in or what he
held in his hand as he fumbled. Ah, that sacred tank! Then he suddenly
smiled again, looking at Magin. "There is something else I can do!"
"What?" asked Magin as he lay at ease in the stern, enjoying the first
perfume of his cigar. "You can't go back to France, now, and I should
hardly advise you to go back to Sheleilieh. At least until after the
war. Then there will be no more English there to ask you troublesome
questions!"
Gaston lighted his cigarette. And, keeping his eyes on Magin, he slowly
moved his hand, in which were both the nickel cap and the still-burning
match, toward the mouth of the tank.
"This!" he answered.
Magin watched him. He did not catch the connection at first. He saw it
quickly enough, however. In his pale translucent eyes there was
something very like a flare.
"Look out--or we shall go together after all!"
"We shall go together, after all," repeated Gaston. "And here is your
place in the sun!"
Magin still watched, as the little flame flickered through the windless
air. But he did not move.
"It will go out! And you have not the courage Apache!"
"You will see, Prussian!" The match stopped, at last, above the open
hole; but the hand that held it trembled a little, and so did the
strange low voice that said: "This at least I can do--for that great
lady, far away."
The peasant on the bluff, prostrated toward Mecca with his forehead in
the dust, was startled out of his prayer by a roar in the basin below
him. There where the trim-white jinn-boat of the _Firengi_ had been was
now a blazing mass of wreckage, out of which came fierce cracklings,
hissings, sounds not to be named. As he stared at it the wreckage fell
apart, began to disappear in a cloud of smoke and steam that lengthened
toward the southern gateway of the basin. And in the turbid water, cut
by swift sharks' fins, he saw a sudden bright trail of red, redder than
any fire or sunrise. It paled gradually, the smoke melted after the
steam, the current caught the last charred fragments of wreckage and
drew them out of sight.
The peasant watched it all silently, as if waiting for some new magic of
the _Firengi_, from his high bank of the Karun--that snow-born river
bound for distant palms, that had seen so many generations of the faces
of men, so many of the barks to which men trust their hearts, their
hopes, their treasures, as it wound, century after century, from the
mountains to the sea. Then, at last, the peasant folded his hands anew
and bowed his head toward Mecca.