_I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but
time and chance happeneth to them all._
Ecclesiastes: ix, 11.
I
The first of the two boats to arrive at this unappointed rendezvous
was one to catch the eye even in that river of strange craft. She had
neither the raking bow nor the rising poop of the local _mehala_,
but a tall incurving beak, not unlike those of certain Mesopotamian
sculptures, with a windowed and curtained deck-house at the stern.
Forward she carried a short mast. The lateen sail was furled, however,
and the galley was propelled at a fairly good gait by seven pairs of
long sweeps. They flashed none too rhythmically, it must be added, at
the sun which had just risen above the Persian mountains. And although
the slit sleeves of the fourteen oarsmen, all of them young and none of
them ill to look upon, flapped decoratively enough about the handles of
the sweeps, they could not be said to present a shipshape appearance.
Neither did the black felt caps the boatmen wore, fantastically tall
and knotted about their heads with gay fringed scarves.
This barge had passed out of the Ab-i-Diz and was making its stately
enough way across the basin of divided waters below Bund-i-Kir, when
from the mouth of the Ab-i-Gerger--the easterly of two turbid threads
into which the Karun above this point is split by a long island--there
shot a trim white motor-boat. The noise she made in the breathless
summer sunrise, intensified and re-echoed by the high clay banks which
here rise thirty feet or more above the water, caused the rowers of the
galley to look around. Then they dropped their sweeps in astonishment
at the spectacle of the small boat advancing so rapidly toward them
without any effort on the part of the four men it contained, as if
blown by the breath of jinn. The word _Firengi_, however, passed around
the deck--that word so flattering to a great race, which once meant
Frank but which now, in one form or another, describes for the people
of western Asia the people of Europe and their cousins beyond the seas.
Among the friends of the jinn, of whom as it happened only two were
Europeans, there also passed an explanatory word. But although they
pronounced the strange oarsmen to be Lurs, they caused their jinni
to cease his panting, so struck were they by the appearance of the
high-beaked barge.
The two craft drifted abreast of each other about midway of the sunken
basin. As they did so, one of the Europeans in the motor-boat, a stocky
black-moustached fellow in blue overalls, wearing in place of the
regulation helmet of that climate a greasy black _beret_ over one ear,
lifted his hand from the wheel and called out the Arabic salutation of
the country:
“Peace be unto you!”
“And to you, peace!” responded a deep voice from the doorway of the
deck-house. It was evident that the utterer of this friendly antiphon
was not a Lur. Fairer, taller, stouter, and older than his wild-looking
crew, he was also better dressed--in a girdled robe of grey silk,
with a striped silk scarf covering his hair and the back of his neck
in the manner of the Arabs. A thick brown beard made his appearance
more imposing, while two scars across his left cheek, emerging from
the beard, suggested or added to something in him which might on
occasion become formidable. As it was he stepped forward with a bow
and addressed a slim young man who sat in the stern of the motor-boat.
“Shall we pass as Kinglake and the Englishman of _Eothen_ did in the
desert,” asked the stranger, smiling, in a very good English, “because
they had not been introduced? Or will you do me the honour to come on
board my--ark?”
The slim young man, whose fair hair, smooth face, and white clothes
made him the most boyish looking of that curious company, lifted his
white helmet and smiled in return.
“Why not?” he assented. And, becoming conscious that his examination of
this surprising stranger, who looked down at him with odd light eyes,
was too near a stare, he added: “What on earth is your ark made of, Mr.
Noah?”
What she was made of, as a matter of fact, was what heightened the
effect of remoteness she produced--a hard dark wood unknown to the
lower Karun, cut in lengths of not more than two or three feet and
caulked with reeds and mud.
“‘Make thee an ark of gopher wood,’” quoted the stranger. “‘Rooms shalt
thou make in the ark, and thou shalt pitch it within and without with
pitch.’”
“Bitumen, eh?” exclaimed the slim young man. “Where did you get it?”
“Do you ask, you who drill oil at Meidan-i-Naft?”
“As it happens, I don’t!” smiled the slim young man.
“At any rate,” continued the stranger, after a scarcely perceptible
pause, “let me welcome you on board the Ark.” And when the unseen jinni
had made it possible for the slim young man to set foot on the deck
of the barge, the stranger added, with a bow: “Magin is my name--from
Brazil.”
If the slim young man did not stare again, he at least had time to make
out that the oddity of his host’s light eyes lay not so much in the
fact of their failing to be distinctly brown, grey, or green, as that
they had a translucent look. Then he responded briefly, holding out his
hand:
“Matthews. But isn’t this a long way from Rio de Janeiro?”
“Well,” returned the other, “it’s not so near London! But come in and
have something, won’t you?” And he held aside the reed portière that
screened the door of the deck-house.
“My word! You do know how to do yourself!” exclaimed Matthews. His eye
took in the Kerman embroidery on the table in the centre of the small
saloon, the gazelle skins and silky Shiraz rugs covering the two divans
at the sides, the fine Sumak carpet on the floor, and the lion pelt
in front of an inner door. “By Jove!” he exclaimed again. “That’s a
beauty!”
“Ha!” laughed the Brazilian. “The Englishman spies his lion first!”
“Where did you find him?” asked Matthews, going behind the table for
a better look. “They’re getting few and far between around here, they
say.”
“Oh, they still turn up,” answered the Brazilian, it seemed to Matthews
not too definitely. Before he could pursue the question farther,
Magin clapped his hands. Instantly there appeared at the outer door a
barefooted Lur, whose extraordinary cap looked to Matthews even taller
and more pontifical than those of his fellow-countrymen at the oars.
The Lur, his hands crossed on his girdle, received a rapid order and
vanished as silently as he came.
“I wish I knew the lingo like that!” commented Matthews.
Magin waved a deprecatory hand.
“One picks it up soon enough. Besides, what’s the use--with a man like
yours? Who is he, by the way? He doesn’t look English.”
“Who? Gaston? He isn’t. He’s French. And he doesn’t know too much of
the lingo. But the blighter could get on anywhere. He’s lived all over
the place--Algiers, Egypt, Baghdad. He’s been chauffeur to more nabobs
in turbans than you can count. He’s a topping mechanic, too. The wheel
hasn’t been invented that beggar can’t make go ’round. The only trouble
he has is with his own. He keeps time for a year or two, and then
something happens to his mainspring and he gets the sack. But he never
seems to go home. He always moves on to some place where it’s hotter
and dirtier. You should hear his stories! He’s an amusing devil.”
“And perhaps not so different from the rest of us!” threw out Magin.
“What flea bites us? Why do you come here, courting destruction in a
cockleshell that may any minute split on a rock and spill you to the
sharks, when you might be punting some pretty girl up the backwaters
of the Thames? Why do I float around in this old ark of reeds and
bulrushes, like an elderly Moses in search of a promised land, who
should be at home wearing the slippers of middle age? What is it? A
sunstroke? This is hardly the country where Goethe’s citrons bloom!”
“Damned if I know!” laughed Matthews. “I fancy we like a bit of a lark!”
The Brazilian laughed too.
“A bit of a lark!” he echoed.
Just then the silent Lur reappeared with a tray.
“I say!” protested Matthews. “Whiskey and soda at five o’clock in the
morning, in the middle of July----”
“1914, if you must be so precise!” added Magin jovially. “But why not?”
he demanded. “Aren’t you an Englishman? You mustn’t shake the pious
belief in which I was brought up, that you are all weaned with Scotch!
Say when. It isn’t every day that I have the pleasure of so fortunate
an encounter.” And, rising, he lifted his glass, bowed, and said:
“Here’s to a bit of a lark, Mr. Matthews!”
The younger man rose to it. But inwardly he began to feel a little
irked.
“By the way,” he asked, nibbling at a biscuit, “can you tell me
anything about the Ab-i-Diz? I dare say you must know something about
it--since your men look as if they came from up that way. Is there a
decent channel as far as Dizful?”
“Ah!” uttered Magin slowly. “Are you thinking of going up there?” He
considered the question, and his guest, with a flicker in his lighted
eyes. “Well, decent is a relative word, you know. However, wonders can
be accomplished with a stout rope and a gang of natives, even beyond
Dizful. But here you see me and my ark still whole--after a night
journey, too. The worst thing is the sun. You see I am more careful
of my skin than you. As for the shoals, the rapids, the sharks, the
lions, the nomads who pop at you from the bank, _et cetera_--you are
an Englishman! Do you take an interest in antiques?” he broke off
abruptly.
“Yes--though interest is a relative word too, I expect.”
“Quite so!” agreed the Brazilian. “I have rather a mania for that sort
of thing, myself. Wait. Let me show you.” And he went into the inner
cabin. When he came back he held up an alabaster cup. “A Greek kylix!”
he cried. “Pure Greek! What an outline, eh? This is what keeps me from
putting on my slippers! I have no doubt Alexander left it behind him.
Perhaps Hephaistion drank out of it, or Nearchus, to celebrate his
return from India. And some rascally Persian stole it out of a tent!”
Matthews, taking the cup, saw the flicker brighten in the Brazilian’s
eyes.
“Nice little pattern of grape leaves, that,” he said. “And think of
picking it up out here!”
“Oh you can always pick things up, if you know where to look,” said
Magin. “Dieulafoy and the rest of them didn’t take everything. How
could they? The people who have come and gone through this country of
Elam! Why just over there, at Bund-i-Kir, Antigonus fought Eumenes
and the Silver Shields for the spoils of Susa--and won them! I have
discovered----But come in here.” And he pushed wider open the door of
the inner cabin.
Matthews stepped into what was evidently a stateroom. A broad bunk
filled one side of it, and the visitor could not help remarking a
second interior door. But his eye was chiefly struck by two, three, no
four, chests, which took up more space in the narrow cabin than could
be convenient for its occupant. They seemed to be made of the same
mysterious dark wood as the “ark,” clamped with copper.
“I say! Those aren’t bad!” he exclaimed. “More of the spoils of Susa?”
“Ho! My trunks? I had them made up the river, like the rest. But I
wonder what would interest you in my museum. Let’s see.” He bent over
one of the chests, unlocked it, rummaged under the cover, and brought
out a broad metal circlet which he handed to Matthews. “How would that
do for a crown, eh?”
The young man took it over to the porthole. The metal, he then saw, was
a soft antique gold, wrought into a decoration of delicate spindles,
with a border of filigree. The circlet was beautiful in itself, and
astonishingly heavy. But what it chiefly did for Matthews was to
sharpen the sense of strangeness, of remoteness, which this bizarre
galley, come from unknown waters, had brought into the familiar muddy
Karun.
“As a matter of fact,” went on the Brazilian, “it’s an anklet. But can
you make it out? Those spindles are Persian, while the filigree is
more Byzantine than anything else. You find funny things up there, in
caves----”
He tossed a vague hand, into which Matthews put the anklet, saying:
“Take it before I steal it!”
“Keep it, won’t you?” proposed the astonishing Brazilian.
“Oh, thanks. But I could hardly do that,” Matthews replied.
“Why not?” protested Magin. “As a souvenir of a pleasant meeting! I
have a ton of them.” He waved his hand at the chests.
“No, really, thanks,” persisted the young man. “And I’m afraid we must
be getting on. I don’t know the river, you see, and I’d like to reach
Dizful before dark.”
The Brazilian studied him a moment.
“As you say,” he finally conceded. “But you will at least have another
drink before you go?”
“No, not even that, thanks,” said Matthews. “We really must be off. But
it’s been very decent of you.”
He felt both awkward and amused as he backed out to the deck, followed
by his imposing host. At sight of the two the crew scattered to their
oars. They had been leaning over the side, absorbed in admiration of
the white jinn-boat. Matthews’s Persian servant handed up to Magin’s
butler a tray of tea glasses--on which Matthews also noted a bottle. In
honour of that bottle Gaston himself stood up and took off his greasy
cap.
“A thousand thanks, Monsieur,” he said. “I have tasted nothing so good
since I left France.”
“In that case, my friend,” rejoined Magin in French as good as his
English, “it is time you returned!” And he abounded in amiable speeches
and ceremonious bows until the last _au revoir_.
“_Au plaisir!_” called back Gaston, having invoked his jinni. Then,
after a last look at the barge, he asked over his shoulder in a low
voice: “Who is this extraordinary type, M’sieu Guy? A species of an
Arab, who speaks French and English and who voyages in a galley from a
museum!”
“A Brazilian, he says,” imparted M’sieu Guy--whose surname was beyond
Gaston’s Gallic tongue.
“Ah! The uncle of America! That understands itself! He sent me out a
cognac, too! And did he present you to his _dame de compagnie_? She put
her head out of a porthole to look at our boat. A Lur, like the others,
but with a pair of blistering black eyes! And a jewel in her nose!”
“It takes you, Gaston,” said Guy Matthews, “to discover a dame of
company!”