"I'll make one to give this Feisul boy a hoist"
Whoever invented chess understood the world's works as some men know
clocks and watches. He recognized a fact and based a game on it, with
the result that his game endures. And what he clearly recognized was
this: That no king matters much as long as your side is playing a
winning game. You can leave your king in his corner then to amuse
himself in dignified unimportance. But the minute you begin to lose,
your king becomes a source of anxiety.
In what is called real life (which is only a great game, although a
mighty good one) it makes no difference what you call your king. Call
him Pope if you want to, or President, or Chairman. He grows in
importance in proportion as the other side develops the attack. You've
got to keep your symbol of authority protected or you lose.
Nevertheless, your game is not lost as long as your king can move.
That's why the men who want to hurry up and start a new political era
imprison kings and cut their heads off. With no head on his shoulders
your king can only move in the direction of the cemetery, which is over
the line and doesn't count.
I love a good fight, and have been told I ought to be ashamed of it.
I've noticed, though, that the folk who propose to elevate my morals
fight just as hard, and less cleanly, with their tongue than some of us
do with our fists and sinews. I'm told, too, quite frequently that as
an American I ought to be ashamed of fighting for a king. Dear old
ladies of both sexes have assured me that it isn't moral to give aid and
comfort to a gallant gentleman--a godless Mohammedan, too; which makes
it much worse--who is striving gamely and without malice to keep his
given word and save his country.
But if you've got all you want, do you know of any better fun than
lending a hand while some man you happen to like gets his? I don't. Of
course, some fellows want too much, and it's bad manners as well as
waste of time to inflict your opinion on them. But given a reasonable
purpose and a friend who needs your assistance, is there any better
sport on earth than risking your own neck to help him put it over?
Walk wide of the man and particularly of the woman, who makes a noise
about lining your pocket or improving your condition. An altruist is my
friend James Schuyler Grim, but he makes less noise than a panther on a
dark night; and I never knew a man less given to persuading you. He
has one purpose, but almost never talks about it. It's a sure bet that
if we hadn't struck up a close friendship, sounding each other out
carefully as opportunity occurred, I would have been in the dark about
it until this minute.
All the news of Asia from Alexandretta to the Persian Gulf and from
Northern Turkestan to South Arabia reaches Grim's ears sooner or later.
He earns his bread and butter knitting all that mess of cross-grained
information into one intelligible pattern; after which he interprets it
and acts suddenly without advance notices.
Time and again, lone-handed, he has done better than an army corps, by
playing chief against chief in a land where the only law is individual
interpretation of the Koran.
But it wasn't until our rescue of Jeremy Ross from near Abu Kem, that I
ever heard Grim come out openly and admit that he was working to
establish Feisul, third son of the King of Mecca, as king of just as
many Arabs as might care to have him over them. That was the cat he had
been keeping in a bag for seven years.
Right down to the minute when Grim, Jeremy and I sat down with Ben Saoud
the Avenger on a stricken field at Abu Kem, and Grim and Jeremy played
their hands so cleverly that the Avenger was made, unwitting guardian of
Jeremy's secret gold-mine, and Feisul's open and sworn supporter in the
bargain, the heart of Grim's purpose continued to be a mystery even to
me; and I have been as intimate with him as any man.
He doles out what he has in mind as grudgingly as any Scot spends the
shillings in his purse. But the Scots are generous when they have to
be, and so is Grim. There being nothing else for it on that occasion,
he spilled the beans, the whole beans, and nothing but the beans.
Having admitted us two to his secret, he dilated on it all the way back
to Jerusalem, telling us all he knew of Feisul (which would fill a
book), and growing almost lyrical at times as he related incidents in
proof of his contention that Feisul, lineal descendant of the Prophet
Mohammed, is the "whitest" Arab and most gallant leader of his race
since Saladin.
Knowing Grim and how carefully suppressed his enthusiasm usually is, I
couldn't help being fired by all he said on that occasion.
And as for Jeremy, well--it was like meat and drink to him. You meet
men more or less like Jeremy Ross in any of earth's wild places,
although you rarely meet his equal for audacity, irreverence and riotous
good-fellowship. He isn't the only Australian by a long shot who
upholds Australia by fist and boast and astounding gallantry, yet stays
away from home. You couldn't fix Jeremy with concrete; he'd find some
means of bursting any mould.
He had been too long lost in the heart of Arabia for anything except the
thought of Sydney Bluffs and the homesteads that lie beyond to tempt him
for the first few days.
"You fellers come with me," he insisted. "You chuck the Army, Grim, and
I'll show you a country where the cows have to bend their backs to let
the sun go down. Ha-ha! Show you women too--red-lipped girls in
sunbonnets, that'll look good after the splay-footed crows you see out
here. Tell you what: We'll pick up the Orient boat at Port Said--no P.
and O. for me; I'm a passenger aboard ship, not a horrible example!--
and make a wake for the Bull's Kid. Murder! Won't the scoff taste
good!
"We'll hit the Bull's Kid hard for about a week--mix it with the fellers
in from way back--you know--dry-blowers, pearlers, spending it easy--
handing their money to Bessie behind the bar and restless because she
makes it last too long; watch them a while and get in touch with all
that's happening; then flit out of Sydney like bats out of--and hump
blue--eh?"
"Something'll turn up; it always does. I've got money in the bank--
about, two thousand here in gold dust with me,--and if what you say's
true, Grim, about me still being a trooper, then the Army owes me three
years' back pay, and I'll have it or go to Buckingham Palace and tear
off a piece of the King! We're capitalists, by Jupiter! Besides, you
fellers agreed that if I shut down the mine at Abu Kem you'd join me and
we'd be Grim, Ramsden and Ross."
"I'll keep the bargain if you hold me to it when the time comes," Grim
answered.
"You bet I'll hold you to it! Rammy here, and you and I could trade the
chosen people off the map between us. We're a combination. What's time
got to do with it?"
"We've got to use your mine," Grim answered.
"I'm game. But let's see Australia first."
"Suppose we fix up your discharge, and you go home," Grim suggested.
"Come back when you've had a vacation, and by that time Ramsden and I
will have done what's possible for Feisul. He's in Damascus now, but the
French have got him backed into a corner. No money--not much
ammunition--French propaganda undermining the allegiance of his men--
time working against him, and nothing to do but wait."
"What in hell have the French got to do with it?"
"They want Syria. They've got the coast towns now. They mean to have
Damascus; and if they can catch Feisul and jail him to keep him out of
mischief they will."
"But damn it! Didn't they promise the Arabs that Feisul should be King
of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and all that?"
"They did. The Allies all promised, France included. But since the
Armistice the British have made a present of Palestine to the Jews, and
the French have demanded Syria for themselves. The British are
pro-Feisul, but the French don't want him anywhere except dead or in
jail. They know they've given him and the Arabs a raw deal; and they
seem to think the simplest way out is to blacken Feisul's character and
ditch him. If the French once catch him in Damascus he's done for and
the Arab cause is lost."
"Why lost?" demanded Jeremy. "There are plenty more Arabs."
"But only one Feisul. He's the only man who can unite them all."
"I know a chance for him," said Jeremy. "Let him come with us three to
Australia. There are thousands of fellers there who fought alongside
him and don't care a damn for the French. They'll raise all the hell
there is before they'll see him ditched."
"Uh-huh! London's the place for him," Grim answered. "The British like
him, and they're ashamed of the way he's been treated. They'll give him
Mesopotamia. Baghdad's the old Arab capital, and that'll do for a
beginning; after that it's up to the Arabs themselves."
"Well? Where does my gold mine come in?" Jeremy asked.
"Feisul has no money. If it was made clear to him that he could serve
the Arabs best by going to London, he'd consider it. The objection
would be, though, that he'd have to make terms in advance with
hog-financiers, who'd work through the Foreign Office to tie up all the
oil and mine and irrigation concessions. If we tell him privately about
your gold mine at Abu Kem he can laugh at financiers."
"All right," said Jeremy, "I'll give him the gold mine. Let him erect a
modern plant and he'll have millions!"
"Uh-huh! Keep the mine secret. Let him go to London and arrange about
Mespot. Just at present High Finance could find a hundred ways of
disputing his title to the mine, but once he's king with the Arabs all
rooting for him things'll be different. He'll treat you right when that
time comes, don't worry."
"Worry? Me?" said Jeremy. "All that worries me is having to see this
business through before we can make a wake for Sydney. I'm homesick.
But never mind. All right, you fellers, I'll make one to give this
Feisul boy a hoist!"