These _harêm_ guards are rarely seen in Cairo nowadays--they belong

to the other picturesque Oriental institutions which have begun to

fade with the crescent of Islâm. There was something startlingly

incongruous about this full-grown specimen, that bloated

representative of Eastern despotism squatting on the step of an

up-to-date French car.

It was a kind of all-round shock; I cannot describe how it struck me.

It was something like running into Martin Luther at the Grand National

or Nero, say, at an aviation meeting.

This was a frightfully hot morning, and the adipose object on the car

step was slumbering blissfully. A moment later I spotted the charge

which he was guarding with such sedulous care. She was seated in

Hassan's shop--well back in the shadows--a gauzy white vision, all

eyes and _yashmak_. A confidential female servant accompanied her.

They made a pleasing picture enough, and a more suitable setting could

not well be found. It was an illustrated page of the _Arabian Nights_,

and it appealed strongly even to my jaded perceptions.

Of course, I was not going to interrupt the _tête-à-tête_; but from

where I stood I could observe the group very well whilst remaining

myself unobserved. It presently became evident that the lady of the

_yashmak_, under the pretence of purchasing perfumes, was merely

killing time, and my interest increased as the hour of noon grew near

and the artistic group remained unbroken. You know the Mosque of

El-Ashraf by Hassan's shop? Its minaret almost overhung the place.

Well, in due course, out popped the _mueddin_.

"_La il aha illa Allah...._"

There he was a very sweet-voiced singer, as I noted at the time,

telling them there was no God but God, and all the rest of it; and

presently he worked round to the side of the gallery overlooking

Hassan's shop.

Then I could see which way the wind blew. He seemed to be deliberately

singing _at_ the picturesque trio--and the dark eyes of the lady of

the _yashmak_ were lifted upward--in reverence, perhaps; but I hardly

thought so.

There was no doubt about the _mueddin's_ final glance, as he turned

and retired from the gallery. I remained where I was until the

_yashmak_ left the shop; and as she had to pass quite close to me in

order to rejoin the waiting car, I had a good look at her.

It was just an impression, of course, an impression of red lips under

the white gauze, an oval Oriental outline, with very fine eyes--notably

fine, where fine eyes are common--and a little exquisitely chiseled

nose; a bewitching face. Just that one glimpse I had and a vague

impression of rustling silk with the tap of high heels. A faint breath

of musk still proclaimed itself above the less pleasing odors of the

street; then, the female attendant having cuffed the slumbering Silenus

into wakefulness, the car moved off and this _harêm_ lily vanished from

the bazaar.

I knew that my party was safe for another half an hour, at any rate,

so I nipped along to Hassan's shop. Of course, he began brazenly by

declaring that no ladies had been there that morning. I had expected

it, and the attitude confirmed my suspicions.

Presently, when his boy had made fresh coffee, and Hassan, from the

black cabinet, had produced some real cigarettes, we got more

intimate. There was a scarcity of European visitors that morning; and

excepting one interruption by a party of four American ladies, I had

Hassan to myself for half an hour.

He raised his fat finger to his lips when I pressed my question, and

rolled his eyes fearfully.

"She is from the palace of Harûn Pasha," he whispered with more

sidelong glances. "Ah! _effendim_, I fear...."

We smoked awhile; then--

"The Pasha's wife?" I inquired.

"It is the Lady Zohara," he said.

This did not add greatly to my information; but I continued: "And

the _mueddin_?"

"Ah!--do not whisper it.... That is my brother, Saïd!"

"He raises his eyes very high?"

"Not so, _effendim_; it is she who raises her eyes. I fear--I fear

for Saïd. The Pasha ... you have heard of him?"

"I may have heard his name," I replied; "but I am quite unfamiliar

with his reputation."

Hassan shook his head gloomily.

"He is the last of his race," he explained; "the race of the Khalîfs.

He inhabits the ancient palace--but much has been rebuilt, and much

added--in Old Cairo, close behind the Coptic Church...."

"I did not know that such a palace even existed."

Again Hassan raised his finger to his lips.

"He is not like the other pashas," he said; "in the house of Harûn

Pasha are observed to-day all the old customs as in the day of his

great ancestor Harûn al-Raschîd."

"But a motor-car!"

"Ah, _effendim_, he does not scorn to employ modern comforts, nor do

I mean that he is a strict Moslem. But you saw the one who sat upon

the step? The _harêm_ of the Pasha is well guarded; not only by such

as he, but by the Nubians and by the other mutes."

"Mutes!"

"He has many slaves. His agent in Mecca procures for him the pick of

the market."

"But there is no such thing as slavery in Egypt!"

"Do the slaves know that, _effendim_?" he asked simply. "Those who

have tongues are never seen outside the walls--unless they are guarded

by those who have no tongue!"

It was a curious sidelight upon a more curious possibility and I was

much impressed.

"Your brother----"

"Alas! I have warned him! I fear, most sincerely I fear, that one dark

night the same will befall him that befell the son of my cousin, Ali."

"And what was that?"

"He climbed the wall of the Pasha's garden. There is a fig tree

growing close beside it at one place. Someone assisted him to descend

on the other. But he had been betrayed; the Nubian mutes took him--and

they----"

He bent and whispered in my ear.

"Impossible!" I cried--"impossible! _báss! báss!_"

"Not so, _effendim_--nor was that all. After that they----"

"Enough, Hassan, enough!" I cried. "_Usbûr!_"

Hassan sighed, raising fearful eyes to the minaret.

III

There has been nothing you are likely to disbelieve so far; but

now--well, I specified at the beginning--no comments. Let me tell the

story in my own way, and you have permission to _think_ what you

please.

There was a dance at Shepheard's that night, and young Forrest rather

interfered with my plans again as to one of the members of the English

party; I think I have referred to her before? That sent me home in a

bad humor--at least not home; for as I was standing over by the

Ezbekîyeh Gardens, wondering whether to go along to "Jimmy's" or not,

I formed a sudden determination to go and have a look at the abode of

Harûn Pasha instead!

Mind you, I was not surprised to have lived in Cairo all these years

without having heard of the place; I had learned things about the

Mûski in the morning, from my tourist friends, which had revealed to

me something of my pitiable ignorance. But I was determined to mend my

ways, so to speak, and I thought I would turn my restless mood to good

purpose, by improving my knowledge of my neighbors.

I induced the torpid driver of an _arabîyeh_ to drive me out to Old

Cairo. He obviously considered me to be even more demented than the

rest of my countrymen, but since the fare would be a substantial one,

he tackled the job. Mad expedition? Quite so; but you appreciate the

mood?

After we had passed a certain quarter--a quarter which never

sleeps--there was nothing livelier than decayed tombs _en route_. In

the chill of the evening I began to weigh up my own foolishness

appreciatively, but having got so far as the Coptic Church--you know

the church I mean?--I was not going back unsatisfied; so I told my man

to wait, and started off to look for the famous palace.

I must say the scene was impressive; a sky full of diamonds and a moon

just bursting with light. The liquid night--sounds of the Nile alone

disturbed the silence, and the buildings might have been made of

mother-o'-pearl, so flawless and pure did they seem, gleaming there

under the moon.

Well, I wandered up some narrow streets--past ruins of former

important houses, and all that--until I found myself in the shadow of

a high wall which obviously was kept in good repair. I followed this

for some distance, and I could see trees on the other side; at one

place a perfect mat of those purple flowers hung over the top;

gorgeous things; the name begins with a B, but I can never remember

it. This seemed promising, and as there was not a soul in sight, nor,

on the visible evidences, a habitable building near me, I began to

fossick for a likely place to climb up.

Presently I found the spot, and at the same time confirmation of my

belief that these were the precincts of the Pasha. A fig tree grew

beside the wall, affording an admirable means of reaching the top--a

natural ladder. In a jiffy I was up ... and overlooking one of the

most glorious gardens I had ever seen or dreamt of!

It must have been planned by an artist simply soaked in the lore of

the Orient. It set me thinking of Edmond Dulac's illustrations to the

_Arabian Nights_. Apart from those pages, you never saw anything like

it, I swear. The position of each tree was a study; the arrangement of

the flowerbeds was poetic--that is the only word for it; there was a

pond with marble seats around and a flight of steps with big copper

urns filled with growing flowers, mosaic paths, and lesser pools with

fountains playing. I peered down into the water, and the moon rays

glittered magically upon the scales of the golden carp which darted

there. And all this fairy prospect was no more than an introduction,

as it were, a sort of lead-up, to the Aladdin's Palace beyond.

I saw now that what with palms and the natural rise of the land back

from the Nile, the wonderful palace, with its terraces and gleaming

domes, must actually be invisible from all points; a more secret

locality one could not well imagine.

As to this magician's abode, which lay before me, I shall not attempt

to describe it. But turn to the illustrations which I have mentioned,

or to those of Burton's big edition; I will leave it to the artist's

and your imagination to fill up the canvas.

Lights shone out from a hundred windows. Out of the ghostly, tomb-like

silence of Old Cairo, I had clambered into a sort of fairyland; I

stood there with the spray from a fountain wetting me, and rubbed my

eyes. Honestly, I should not have been surprised to find myself

dreaming. Well, you may be sure I was not going back yet; there was

not a living soul to be seen in the gardens, and I meant to have a

peep into the palace, whatever the chances.

The likeliest point, as I soon determined, was to the west--where a

long, low wing of the building extended, and was lost, if I may use

the term, in a great bank of verdure and purple blooms. I took full

advantage of the ample shadow cast by the trees, and came right up

under the white wall without mishap.

To my right, the wall was obviously modern, but to my left, although

in the distance and under the moon it had seemed uniform, it was built

of sandstone blocks and was evidently of great age. The palace proper,

you understand, was fully forty yards east; the place before me was a

sort of low extension and evidently had no real connection with the

residential part.

Just above my head was a square window, iron-barred, but this did not

look promising, and cautiously, for I was hampered by the creepers

which grew under the wall, I felt my way further west. Presently I

encountered a pointed door of black, time-seared wood, and heavily

iron-studded. Then, with alarming suddenness, the quietude of my

adventure was broken; things began to move with breathless rapidity.

A most dreadful screaming and howling split the stillness and made me

jump like a startled frog!

The sound of a lash on bare flesh reached me from some place behind

the pointed door. Screams for mercy in thick, guttural Arabic, mingled

and punctuated with horrifying shrieks of pain, informed my ignorance

unmistakably that mediæval methods yet ruled in the civilized Near

East.

Screams and supplications merged into a dull moaning; but the whistle

of the lash continued uninterruptedly. Then that too ceased, and dimly

came the sounds of a muffled colloquy; a sort of gurgling talk that

got me wondering.

I had just time to creep away and conceal myself behind a thick clump

of bushes, when the door was thrown open, and the most gigantic negro

I have ever set eyes upon appeared in the opening, outlined against

the smoky glare from within. He had one gleaming bare arm about the

neck of an insensible man, and he dragged him out into the garden as

one might drag a heavy sack; dropping him all in a quivering heap upon

the very spot which I had just vacated!

The negro, who was stripped to the waist and whose glistening body

reminded me of a bronze statue of Hercules, stood looking down at the

insensible victim, with a hideous leer. I ventured to raise myself

ever so slightly; and in the ghastly, sweat-bedaubed face of the

tortured man--whose bare shoulders were bloody from the lash--I

recognized the Silenus of the limousine!

In response to a guttural inarticulate muttering by the black giant, a

second Nubian, of scarcely lesser dimensions, emerged from the dungeon

with a jar of water. He drenched the swooning man, evidently in order

to revive him; and, when the wretched being ultimately fought his way

back to agonized consciousness--to my horror he was seized, dragged in

through the doorway again, and once more I heard the whistle of the

lash being applied to his lacerated back, the skin of which was

already in ribbons.

I suppose there are times when the most discreet man is snatched

outside himself by circumstances? The door of this beastly

torture-room had not been reclosed, and before I could realize what I

was about, I found myself inside!

The wretched victim had been hauled up to a beam by his bound wrists,

and the huge Nubian was putting all his strength into the wielding of

the cat-o'-nine-tails, drawing blood with every stroke; whilst his

assistant hung on to the rope running through a pulley-block in the

low ceiling.

All in a sort of whirl (I was raving mad with indignation) I got

amongst the trio, and landed a clip on the jaw of the son of Erebus

which made his teeth rattle like castanets.

Down came the fat sufferer all in a heap in his own blood. Down went

my man, and began to cough out broken molars. Then it was my turn;

and down _I_ went with the second mute on top of me, and the pair of

us were playing hell all about the blood-spattered floor--up, down,

under, over--straining, punching, kicking ... then my antagonist

introduced gouging, and I had to beat the mat.

It had been a stiff bout, and the stinking shambles were whirling

about me like a bloody maelstrom. When things settled down a bit, I

found myself lying in a small cell skewered up like a pullet, and with

a prospect of iron grating and stone-flagged passage before me. I was

more than a trifle damaged, and my head was singing like a kettle. If

I had thought that I dreamed before, it was a struggle now to convince

myself that this was not a nightmare.

Amid the rattling of chains and dropping of bars, a fantastic

procession was filing down the passage. First came a hideous,

crook-backed apparition, hook-nosed, and bearing a lantern. Behind him

appeared two guards with glittering scimitars. Behind the guards

walked a fourth personage, black-robed and white-turbaned--a sort of

dignified dragoman, carrying an enormous bunch of keys.

The iron grating of my dungeon was unlocked and raised, and I was

requested, in Arabic, to rise and follow. Realizing that this was no

time for funny business, I staggered to my feet, and between the two

Scimitars marched unsteadily through a maze of passages with doors

unlocked and locked behind us, stairs ascended and stairs descended.

From empty passages, our journey led us to passages richly carpeted

and softly lighted. By a heavy door opening on to the first of the

latter, we left the squinting man; and, with the two Scimitars and

Black Robe, I found myself crossing a lofty pavilion.

The floor was of rich mosaic, and priceless carpets were spread about

in artistic confusion. Above my head loomed a great dome, lighted by

stained glass windows in which the blue of lapis-lazuli predominated.

By golden chains from above swung golden lamps burning perfumed oil

and flooding the pavilion with a mellow blue light. There were inlaid

tables and cabinets; great blue vases of exquisite Chinese porcelain

stood in niches of the wall. The walls were of that faintly

amber-tinted alabaster which is quarried in the Mokattam Hills; and

there were fragile columns of some delicately azure-veined marble,

rising, graceful and slender, ethereal as pencils of smoke, to a

balcony high above my head; then, from this, a second series of fairy

columns crept in blue streaks up into the luminous shadows of the

dome.

We crossed this place, my heel taps echoing hollowly and before a

curtained door took pause. An impressive interval of perfumed silence;

then in response to the muffled clapping of hands, the curtain was

raised and I was thrust into a smaller apartment beyond.

I found myself standing before a long _dîwan_, amid an opulence of

Oriental appointment which surpassed anything which I could have

imagined. The atmosphere was heavy with the odor of burning perfumes,

and, whereas the lofty pavilion afforded a delicate study in blue,

this chamber was voluptuously amber--amber-shaded lamps, amber

cushions, amber carpets; everywhere the glitter of amber and gold.

Amid the amber sea, half immersed in the golden silks of the daïs,

reclined a large and portly Sheikh; full and patriarchal his beard,

wherein played amber tints, lofty and serene his brow, sweeping up to

the snowy turban. From a mouthpiece of amber and gold he inhaled the

scented smoke of a _narghli_. Behind him, upon a cushioned stool,

knelt a female whose beauty of face and form was unmistakable, since

it was undisguised by the filmy artistry of her attire. With a

gigantic fan of peacock's feathers, she cooled the Sheikh, and

dispersed the flies which threatened to disturb his serenity. A second

houri received in her hands the amber mouthpiece as it fell from her

lord's lips; a third, who evidently had been playing upon a lute, rose

and glided from the apartment like an opium vision, as I entered

between the guardian Scimitars.

I found myself thinking of Saint Saen's music to _Samson and Delilah_;

the barbaric strains of the exquisite _bacchanale_ were beating on my

brain.

Black Robe advanced and knelt upon the floor of the _dîwan_.

"We have brought the wretched malefactor into your glorious presence,"

he said.

The Pasha (for I knew, beyond doubt, that I stood before Harûn Pasha)

raised his eyes and fixed a stern gaze upon me. He gazed long and

fixedly, and an odd change took place in his expression. He seemed

about to address me, then, apparently changing his mind, he addressed

the recumbent figure at his feet.

"Have the slaves returned with the female miscreant and her partner in

Satan?" he demanded sternly.

"Lord of the age," replied the other, rising upon his knees, "they are

expected."

"Let them be brought before me," directed the Pasha, "upon the instant

of their arrival. Has Misrûn confessed his complicity?"

"He fainted beneath the lash, excellency, but confessed that he

slept--that pig who prayed without washing and whose birth was a

calamity--on several occasions when accompanying the lady Zohara."

"Leave us!" cried the Pasha. "But, first, unbind the prisoner."

He swept his arm around comprehensively, and everyone withdrew from

the apartment, including the Scimitars (one of whom cut my lashings)

and the lady of the fan. I found myself alone with Harûn Pasha.

IV

"Sit here beside me!" directed the Pasha.

Being yet too dazed for wonder or protest, I obeyed mechanically. My

exact situation was not clear to me at the moment and I was a long way

off knowing how to act.

"I am much disturbed in mind, and my bosom is contracted," continued

the Pasha, with a certain benignity, "by reason of a conspiracy in my

_harêm_, which came to a head this night, and which led to the loss of

the pearl of my household, a damsel who cost me her weight in gold,

who entangled me in the snare of her love and pierced me with anguish.

Know, O young Inglîsi, that love is difficult. Alas! she who had

captivated my reason by her loveliness fled with a shame of the

Moslems who defamed the sacred office of _mueddin_! In truth he is

naught but the son of a disease and a consort of camels. My soul

cries out to Allah and my mind is a nest of wasps. Relate to me your

case, that it may turn me from the contemplation of my sorrows. At

another time, it had gone hard with you, and penalties of a most

unfortunate description had been visited upon your head, O disturber

of my peace; but since this child of filth and progeny of mules has

shattered it forever, your lesser crime comes but as a diversion.

Relate to me the matters which have brought you to this miserable

pass."

There was some still little voice in my mind which was trying to speak

to me, if you understand what I mean. But what with the suffocating

perfume of ambergris (or it may have been frankincense), my incredible

surroundings, and the buzzing of my maltreated skull, I simply could

_not_ think connectedly.

A memory was struggling for identification in my addled brain; but

whether it was due to something I had seen, heard, or smelled, I could

not for the life of me make out. I heard myself spinning my own

improbable yarn as one listens to a dreary and boresome recitation;

_I_ didn't seem to be the raconteur; my mind was busy about that amber

room, furiously chasing that hare-like memory, which leaped and

doubled, dived under the silken cushions, popped up behind the Pasha,

and flicked its ears at me from amid the feathers of the peacock fan.

I driveled right on to the end of my story, mechanically, without

having got my mind in proper working order; and when the Pasha spoke

again--there was that wretched memory still dodging me, sometimes

almost within my grasp, but always just eluding it.

"Your amusing narrative has diverted me," said the Pasha; and he

clapped his hands three times.

It never occurred to me, you will note, to assert myself in any way; I

accepted the lordly condescensions of this singular personage without

protest. You will be wondering why I didn't kick up a devil of a

hullabaloo--declare that I had come in response to screams for

assistance--wave the dreaded name of the British Agent under the

Pasha's nose, and all that. I can only say that I didn't; I was

subdued; in fact I was down, utterly down and out.

Black Robe entered with eyes averted.

"Well, wretched vermin!" roared the Pasha in sudden wrath; "do you

tell me they are not here?"

The man, with his head bumping on the carpet, visibly trembled.

"Most noble," he replied hoarsely, "your lowly slave has exerted

himself to the utmost----"

"Out! son of a calamity!" shouted the Pasha--and before my astonished

eyes he raised the heavy _narghli_ and hurled it at the bowed head of

the man before him.

It struck the white turban with a resounding crack, and then was

shattered to bits upon the floor. It was a blow to have staggered a

mule. But Black Robe, without apparent loss of dignity, rose and

departed, bowing.

The Pasha sat rocking about, and plucking madly at his beard.

"O Allah!" he cried, "how I suffer." He turned to me. "Never since the

day that another of your race (but, this one, a true son of Satan)

came to my palace, have I tasted so much suffering. You shall judge

of my clemency, O imprudent stranger, and pacify your heart with the

spectacle of another's punishment."

He clapped his hands twice. This time there was a short delay, which

the Pasha suffered impatiently; then there entered the squint-eyed

man, together with the two Scimitars.

"I would visit the dungeon of the false Pasha," said my singular host;

and, rising to his feet, he placed his hand upon my shoulder and

indicated that we were to proceed from the apartment.

Led by Crook Back, in whose hand the gigantic bunch of keys rattled

unmelodiously, and followed by the Scimitars, we proceeded upon our

way; and it was beyond the powers of my disordered brain to dismiss

the idea that I was taking part in a Christmas pantomime. Many steps

were descended; many heavy doors unbolted and unbarred, bolted and

barred behind us; many stone-paved passages, reminding me of operatic

scenery, were traversed ere we came to one tunnel more gloomy than the

rest.

Upon the right was a blank stone wall, upon the left, a series of

doors, black with age and heavily iron-studded. The only illumination

was that furnished by the lantern which Crook Back carried.

Before one of the doors the Pasha paused.

"In which is Misrûn?" he demanded.

"In the next, excellency," replied the jailer--for such I took to be

the office of the hunchback.

As he spoke, he held the lantern to the grating.

I found myself peering into a filthy dungeon, the reek of which made

me ill; and there, upon the stone floor, lay poor Silenus! He raised

his eyes to the light.

"Lord of the age," he moaned, lifting his manacled wrists, "glory of

the universe, sun of suns! I have confessed my frightful sin, and most

dire misfortunes. Of your sublime mercy, take pity upon the meanest

thing that creeps upon the earth----"

"Proceed!" said the Pasha.

And with the moaning cries of Misrûn growing fainter behind us, we

moved along the passage. Before a second door, we halted again, and

the jailer raised the lantern.

"Look upon this!" cried the Pasha to me--"look well, and look long!"

Shudderingly I peered in between the bars. It had come home to me how

I was utterly at the mercy of this man's moods. If he had chosen to

have me hurled into one of his dungeons, what prospect of release

would have been mine? Who would ever know of my plight? No one! And

beyond doubt I was in the realm of an absolute monarch. I silently

thanked my lucky stars that my lot was not the lot of him who occupied

this second dungeon.

As the dim light, casting shadow bars across the filthy floor, picked

out the features of the prisoner, I gave a great start. Save that the

beard was more gray, longer, filthy and unkempt, and that, in place

of the nearly shaven skull, this unhappy being displayed dishevelled

locks, the captive might easily have passed for the Pasha.

I met the eye of this terrible despot.

"Look upon the false Pasha," he said; "look upon the one who thought

to dispossess me! For years, by his own miserable confession, he

studied me in secret. When I journeyed to my estates in Assuan" (I

started again) "he was watching--watching--always watching. His

scheme, which was whispered into his ear by the Evil One, was no plant

of sudden growth, but a tree, that, from a seed of Satan planted in

fertile soil, had flourished exceedingly, tended by the hand of

villainous ambition."

I clutched at the bars for support. The stench of the place was simply

indescribable; but it was neither the stench nor the bizarre incidents

of the night which accounted for my dizziness: it was the sudden

tangibility of that hitherto elusive memory.

In build, in complexion, in certain mannerisms underlying the

dignified assumption, Harûn Pasha might well have been the twin

brother of Jack Dunlap!

A frightful possibility burst upon me like a bomb; clutching the bars

with quivering hands, I stared and stared at the wretched impostor in

the cell. _Could_ it be? Had he been mad enough to make some attempt

upon the Pasha? And was this his end?

I looked around again. I searched the bearded features of the Pasha

with eager gaze. Good God! either I was going mad, or incredible

things had been done, were being done, in Cairo.

I had not seen Dunlap for a year, remember, and in the ordinary way

I did not see him more than half a dozen times in twelve months, so

that, all things considered, it was not so remarkable that I had

overlooked the resemblance. A full beard and mustache, artificially

darkened eyelashes, a shaven head and a white turban, are effectual

disguises; but if you can imagine Dunlap--the Dunlap you remember--so

arrayed, then you have Harûn Pasha. Imagine Harûn Pasha, dirty,

bedraggled, a hopeless captive ... and you have the prisoner who

crouched upon the straw in that noisome dungeon!

For the second time that night I was lifted out of myself. I turned

on the man beside me in a blazing fury.

"You villain!" I shouted at him, and clenched my fists--"do you _dare_

to confine a Britisher in your stinking cellars. By God! sir...."

Harûn Pasha clapped his hand over my mouth; the two guards had me by

the arms from behind. But my cries had aroused the man in the dungeon,

and, as I was dragged down the passage, these moaning words reached

me, spoken in Arabic:

"Help! help! Englishman! A crime has been committed! I appeal to

Lord----."

A door was slammed fast with a resounding bang, and the rest of the

captive's appeal was lost to me. One of my guards had substituted his

hand for that of the Pasha, but now it was removed; and, speechless

with rage, I found myself being thrust up stone stairs--and I realized

that by a moment's indiscretion, I had ruined everything.

Back in the amber apartment once more, with the two Scimitars at the

door and Harûn Pasha reclining upon the cushions, I found speech.

"What are you going to do with me?" I demanded.

"My son," replied the Pasha with benignity, "I pardon all! Your great

courage and address, together with the modesty of your deportment, and

the spirit of adventure which has brought you to your present

unfortunate case, plead for you in a manner which my clemency cannot

resist. It is my unhappy lot often to be called upon to punish.

To-night, those gloomy dungeons which you have seen will echo, alas,

with the howls of miserable wretches who are responsible for the loss

of the pearl of my soul; for I am persuaded that she has fled with the

son of offal who profaned the words of Allah from the minaret. This

being so, I would temper my proper severity with a merciful deed. You

shall never speak of what you have seen within these walls, save in

terms suitably disguised. You shall never seek to return, nor, by

speech with any man, to confirm whatsoever you may suspect. Upon this

warranty, you shall depart in peace."

He clapped his hands twice, and a houri of most bewitching aspect

glided into the _dîwan_.

"Bring sherbet!" ordered the Pasha.

The maiden departed; and whilst I was yet trying to come to a

decision (the Pasha had mentioned no alternative, but my imagination

was equal to the task of supplying one!) she returned with a tray upon

which were porcelain cups and two vessels of beautifully chased gold.

Harûn Pasha decocted a sparkling beverage, and, with his own hands,

passed the brimming cup to me.

* * * * *

I knew you would not believe it; but I warned you, and I made a

stipulation. Your idea is that I must be a poor sort of animal to

accept so dishonorable a compromise? I agree. But the situation was

even more peculiarly difficult than is apparent to you at the moment.

Without _seeking_ the information, I learned from Hassan of the Scent

Bazaar that his brother had indeed fled with the beauteous Lady

Zohara, no one knew whither; and this confirmation of the Pasha's

sorrows touched a very tender spot in my heart!

Then there is another little point.

When the Pasha removed the elaborate stopper from the first of the

golden vessels to which I have just referred, _my_ eye alone perceived

that a bottle, bearing a familiar black and white label, was contained

in this golden casing. The flavor of the decoction with which we

sealed our infamous bargain clinched the matter.

I was absolutely thrust out of the presence chamber before I had time

for another word; but, looking back from the door and meeting the eye

of the Pasha, I encountered a most portentous wink. Therefore I have

stuck to my bargain.

Oh! I have not given much away. The Pasha is not called Harûn, and the

palace is nowhere near the Coptic Church in Old Cairo. Because, you

see, I only knew one man who winked in quite that elaborate

fashion--and his name was Jack Dunlap!

V

IN THE VALLEY OF THE SORCERESS

I

Condor wrote to me three times before the end (said Neville,

Assistant-Inspector of Antiquities, staring vaguely from his open

window at a squad drilling before the Kasr-en-Nîl Barracks). He dated

his letters from the camp at Deir-el-Bahari. Judging from these,

success appeared to be almost within his grasp. He shared my theories,

of course, respecting Queen Hatasu, and was devoting the whole of his

energies to the task of clearing up the great mystery of Ancient Egypt

which centres around that queen.

For him, as for me, there was a strange fascination about those

defaced walls and roughly obliterated inscriptions. That the queen

under whom Egyptian art came to the apogee of perfection should thus

have been treated by her successors; that no perfect figure of the

wise, famous, and beautiful Hatasu should have been spared to

posterity; that her very cartouche should have been ruthlessly removed

from every inscription upon which it appeared, presented to Condor's

mind a problem only second in interest to the immortal riddle of

Gîzeh.

You know my own views upon the matter? My monograph, "Hatasu, the

Sorceress," embodies my opinion. In short, upon certain evidences,

some adduced by Theodore Davis, some by poor Condor, and some

resulting from my own inquiries, I have come to the conclusion that

the source--real or imaginary--of this queen's power was an intimate

acquaintance with what nowadays we term, vaguely, magic. Pursuing her

studies beyond the limit which is lawful, she met with a certain end,

not uncommon, if the old writings are to be believed, in the case of

those who penetrate too far into the realms of the Borderland.

For this reason--the practice of black magic--her statues were

dishonored, and her name erased from the monuments. Now, I do not

propose to enter into any discussion respecting the reality of such

practices; in my monograph I have merely endeavored to show that,

according to contemporary belief, the queen was a sorceress. Condor

was seeking to prove the same thing; and when I took up the inquiry,

it was in the hope of completing his interrupted work.

He wrote to me early in the winter of 1908, from his camp by the Rock

Temple. Davis's tomb, at Bibân el-Mulûk, with its long, narrow

passage, apparently had little interest for him; he was at work on the

high ground behind the temple, at a point one hundred yards or so due

west of the upper platform. He had an idea that he should find there

the mummies of Hatasu--and another; the latter, a certain Sen-Mût, who

appears in the inscriptions of the reign as an architect high in the

queen's favor. The archæological points of the letter do not concern

us in the least, but there was one odd little paragraph which I had

cause to remember afterwards.

"A girl belonging to some Arab tribe," wrote Condor, "came racing to

the camp two nights ago to claim my protection. What crime she had

committed, and what punishment she feared, were far from clear; but

she clung to me, trembling like a leaf, and positively refused to

depart. It was a difficult situation, for a camp of fifty native

excavators, and one highly respectable European enthusiast, affords no

suitable quarters for an Arab girl--and a very personable Arab girl.

At any rate, she is still here; I have had a sort of lean-to rigged up

in a little valley east of my own tent, but it is very embarrassing."

Nearly a month passed before I heard from Condor again; then came a

second letter, with the news that on the eve of a great discovery--as

he believed--his entire native staff--the whole fifty--had deserted

one night in a body! "Two days' work," he wrote, "would have seen the

tomb opened--for I am more than ever certain that my plans are

accurate. Then I woke up one morning to find every man Jack of my

fellows missing! I went down into the village where a lot of them

live, in a towering rage, but not one of the brutes was to be found,

and their relations professed entire ignorance respecting their

whereabouts. What caused me almost as much anxiety as the check in my

work was the fact that Mahâra--the Arab girl--had vanished also. I am

wondering if the thing has any sinister significance."

Condor finished with the statement that he was making tremendous

efforts to secure a new gang. "But," said he, "I shall finish the

excavation, if I have to do it with my own hands."

His third and last letter contained even stranger matters than the two

preceding it. He had succeeded in borrowing a few men from the British

Archæological camp in the Fáyûm. Then, just as the work was

restarting, the Arab girl, Mahâra, turned up again, and entreated him

to bring her down the Nile, "at least as far as Dendera. For the

vengeance of her tribesmen," stated Condor, "otherwise would result

not only in her own death, but in mine! At the moment of writing I am

in two minds what to do. If Mahâra is to go upon this journey, I do

not feel justified in sending her alone, and there is no one here who

could perform the duty," etc.

I began to wonder, of course; and I had it in mind to take the train

to Luxor merely in order to see this Arab maiden, who seemed to occupy

so prominent a place in Condor's mind. However, Fate would have it

otherwise; and the next thing I heard was that Condor had been brought

into Cairo, and was at the English hospital.

He had been bitten by a cat--presumably from the neighboring village;

and although the doctor at Luxor dealt with the bite at once, traveled

down with him, and placed him in the hand of the Pasteur man at the

hospital, he died, as you remember, in the night of his arrival,

raving mad; the Pasteur treatment failed entirely.

I never saw him before the end, but they told me that his howls were

horribly like those of a cat. His eyes changed in some way, too, I

understand; and, with his fingers all contracted, he tried to

_scratch_ everyone and everything within reach.

They had to strap the poor beggar down, and even then he tore the

sheets into ribbons.

Well, as soon as possible, I made the necessary arrangements to finish

Condor's inquiry. I had access to his papers, plans, etc., and in the

spring of the same year I took up my quarters near Deir-el-Bahari,

roped off the approaches to the camp, stuck up the usual notices, and

prepared to finish the excavation, which, I gathered, was in a fairly

advanced state.

My first surprise came very soon after my arrival, for when, with the

plan before me, I started out to find the shaft, I found it,

certainly, but only with great difficulty.

It had been filled in again with sand and loose rock right to the very

top!

II

All my inquiries availed me nothing. With what object the excavation

had been thus closed I was unable to conjecture. That Condor had not

reclosed it I was quite certain, for at the time of his mishap he had

actually been at work at the bottom of the shaft, as inquiries from a

native of Suefee, in the Fáyûm, who was his only companion at the

time, had revealed.

In his eagerness to complete the inquiry, Condor, by lantern light,

had been engaged upon a solitary night-shift below, and the rabid cat

had apparently fallen into the pit; probably in a frenzy of fear, it

had attacked Condor, after which it had escaped.

Only this one man was with him, and he, for some reason that I could

not make out, had apparently been sleeping in the temple--quite a

considerable distance from Condor's camp. The poor fellow's cries had

aroused him, and he had met Condor running down the path and away from

the shaft.

This, however, was good evidence of the existence of the shaft at the

time, and as I stood contemplating the tightly packed rubble which

alone marked its site, I grew more and more mystified, for this task

of reclosing the cutting represented much hard labor.

Beyond perfecting my plans in one or two particulars, I did little on

the day of my arrival. I had only a handful of men with me, all of

whom I knew, having worked with them before, and beyond clearing

Condor's shaft I did not intend to excavate further.

Hatasu's Temple presents a lively enough scene in the daytime during

the winter and early spring months, with the streams of tourists

constantly passing from the white causeway to Cook's Rest House on the

edge of the desert. There had been a goodly number of visitors that day

to the temple below, and one or two of the more curious and

venturesome had scrambled up the steep path to the little plateau

which was the scene of my operations. None had penetrated beyond the

notice boards, however, and now, with the evening sky passing through

those innumerable shades which defy palette and brush, which can only

be distinguished by the trained eye, but which, from palest blue melt

into exquisite pink, and by some magical combination form that deep

violet which does not exist to perfection elsewhere than in the skies

of Egypt, I found myself in the silence and the solitude of "the Holy

Valley."

I stood at the edge of the plateau, looking out at the rosy belt which

marked the course of the distant Nile, with the Arabian hills vaguely

sketched beyond. The rocks stood up against that prospect as great

black smudges, and what I could see of the causeway looked like a gray

smear upon a drab canvas. Beneath me were the chambers of the Rock

Temple, with those wall paintings depicting events in the reign of

Hatasu which rank among the wonders of Egypt.

Not a sound disturbed my reverie, save a faint clatter of cooking

utensils from the camp behind me--a desecration of that sacred

solitude. Then a dog began to howl in the neighboring village.

The dog ceased, and faintly to my ears came the note of a reed

pipe. The breeze died away, and with it the piping.

I turned back to the camp, and, having partaken of a frugal supper,

turned in upon my campaigner's bed, thoroughly enjoying my freedom

from the routine of official life in Cairo, and looking forward to

the morrow's work pleasurably.

Under such circumstances a man sleeps well; and when, in an uncanny

gray half-light, which probably heralded the dawn, I awoke with a

start, I knew that something of an unusual nature alone could have

disturbed my slumbers.

Firstly, then, I identified this with a concerted howling of the

village dogs. They seemed to have conspired to make night hideous;

I have never heard such an eerie din in my life. Then it gradually

began to die away, and I realized, secondly, that the howling of the

dogs and my own awakening might be due to some common cause. This

idea grew upon me, and as the howling subsided, a sort of disquiet

possessed me, and, despite my efforts to shake it off, grew more

urgent with the passing of every moment.

In short, I fancied that the thing which had alarmed or enraged the

dogs was passing from the village through the Holy Valley, upward

to the Temple, upward to the plateau, and was approaching _me_.

I have never experienced an identical sensation since, but I seemed

to be audient of a sort of psychic patrol, which, from a remote

_pianissimo_, swelled _fortissimo_, to an intimate but silent clamor,

which beat in some way upon my brain, but not through the faculty of

hearing, for now the night was deathly still.

Yet I was persuaded of some _approach_--of the coming of something

sinister, and the suspense of waiting had become almost insupportable,

so that I began to accuse my Spartan supper of having given me

nightmare, when the tent-flap was suddenly raised, and, outlined

against the paling blue of the sky, with a sort of reflected elfin

light playing upon her face, I saw an Arab girl looking in at me!

By dint of exerting all my self-control I managed to restrain the cry

and upward start which this apparition prompted. Quite still, with my

fists tightly clenched, I lay and looked into the eyes which were

looking into mine.

The style of literary work which it has been my lot to cultivate fails

me in describing that beautiful and evil face. The features were

severely classical and small, something of the Bisharîn type, with a

cruel little mouth and a rounded chin, firm to hardness. In the eyes

alone lay the languor of the Orient; they were exceedingly--indeed,

excessively--long and narrow. The ordinary ragged, picturesque finery

of a desert girl bedecked this midnight visitant, who, motionless,

stood there watching me.

I once read a work by Pierre de l'Ancre, dealing with the Black

Sabbaths of the Middle Ages, and now the evil beauty of this Arab face

threw my memory back to those singular pages, for, perhaps owing to

the reflected light which I have mentioned, although the explanation

scarcely seemed adequate, those long, narrow eyes shone catlike in the

gloom.

Suddenly I made up my mind. Throwing the blanket from me, I leapt to

the ground, and in a flash had gripped the girl by the wrists.

Confuting some lingering doubts, she proved to be substantial enough.

My electric torch lay upon a box at the foot of the bed, and,

stooping, I caught it up and turned its searching rays upon the face

of my captive.

She fell back from me, panting like a wild creature trapped, then

dropped upon her knees and began to plead--began to plead in a voice

and with a manner which touched some chord of consciousness that I

could swear had never spoken before, and has never spoken since.

She spoke in Arabic, of course, but the words fell from her lips as

liquid music in which lay all the beauty and all the deviltry of the

"Siren's Song." Fully opening her astonishing eyes, she looked up at

me, and, with her free hand pressed to her bosom, told me how she had

fled from an unwelcome marriage; how, an outcast and a pariah, she

had hidden in the desert places for three days and three nights,

sustaining life only by means of a few dates which she had brought

with her, and quenching her thirst with stolen water-melons.

"I can bear it no longer, _effendim_. Another night out in the desert,

with the cruel moon beating, beating, beating upon my brain, with

creeping things coming out from the rocks, wriggling, wriggling, their

many feet making whisperings in the sand--ah, it will kill me! And I

am for ever outcast from my tribe, from my people. No tent of all the

Arabs, though I fly to the gates of Damascus, is open to me, save I

enter in shame, as a slave, as a plaything, as a toy. My

heart"--furiously she beat upon her breast--"is empty and desolate,

_effendim_. I am meaner than the lowliest thing that creeps upon the

sand; yet the God that made that creeping thing made me also--and you,

you, who are merciful and strong, would not crush any creature because

it was weak and helpless."

I had released her wrist now, and was looking down at her in a sort

of stupor. The evil which at first I had seemed to perceive in her was

effaced, wiped out as an artist wipes out an error in his drawing. Her

dark beauty was speaking to me in a language of its own; a strange

language, yet one so intelligible that I struggled in vain to

disregard it. And her voice, her gestures, and the witch-fire of her

eyes were whipping up my blood to a fever heat of passionate

sorrow--of despair. Yes, incredible as it sounds, despair!

In short, as I see it now, this siren of the wilderness was playing

upon me as an accomplished musician might play upon a harp, striking

this string and that at will, and sounding each with such full notes

as they had rarely, if ever, emitted before.

Most damnable anomaly of all, I--Edward Neville, archæologist, most

prosy and matter-of-fact man in Cairo, perhaps--_knew_ that this nomad

who had burst into my tent, upon whom I had set eyes for the first

time scarce three minutes before, held me enthralled; and yet, with

her wondrous eyes upon me, I could summon up no resentment, and could

offer but poor resistance.

"In the Little Oasis, _effendim_, I have a sister who will admit me

into her household, if only as a servant. There I can be safe, there

I can rest. O _Inglîsi_, at home in England you have a sister of your

own! Would you see her pursued, a hunted thing from rock to rock,

crouching for shelter in the lair of some jackal, stealing that she

might live--and flying always, never resting, her heart leaping for

fear, flying, flying, with nothing but dishonor before her?"

She shuddered and clasped my left hand in both her own convulsively,

pulling it down to her bosom.

"There can be only one thing, _effendim_," she whispered. "Do you not

see the white bones bleaching in the sun?"

Throwing all my resolution into the act, I released my hand from her

clasp, and, turning aside, sat down upon the box which served me as

chair and table, too.

A thought had come to my assistance, had strengthened me in the moment

of my greatest weakness; it was the thought of that Arab girl

mentioned in Condor's letters. And a scheme of things, an incredible

scheme, that embraced and explained some, if not all, of the horrible

circumstances attendant upon his death, began to form in my brain.

Bizarre it was, stretching out beyond the realm of things natural and

proper, yet I clung to it, for there, in the solitude, with this

wildly beautiful creature kneeling at my feet, and with her uncanny

powers of fascination yet enveloping me like a cloak, I found it not

so improbable as inevitably it must have seemed at another time.

I turned my head, and through the gloom sought to look into the long

eyes. As I did so they closed and appeared as two darkly luminous

slits in the perfect oval of the face.

"You are an impostor!" I said in Arabic, speaking firmly and

deliberately. "To Mr. Condor"--I could have sworn that she started

slightly at sound of the name--"you called yourself Mahâra. I know

you, and I will have nothing to do with you."

But in saying it I had to turn my head aside, for the strangest,

maddest impulses were bubbling up in my brain in response to the

glances of those half-shut eyes.

I reached for my coat, which lay upon the foot of the bed, and, taking

out some loose money, I placed fifty piastres in the nerveless brown

hand.

"That will enable you to reach the Little Oasis, if such is your

desire," I said. "It is all I can do for you, and now--you must go."

The light of the dawn was growing stronger momentarily, so that I

could see my visitor quite clearly. She rose to her feet, and stood

before me, a straight, slim figure, sweeping me from head to foot with

such a glance of passionate contempt as I had never known or suffered.

She threw back her head magnificently, dashed the money on the ground

at my feet, and, turning, leaped out of the tent.

For a moment I hesitated, doubting, questioning my humanity, testing

my fears; then I took a step forward, and peered out across the

plateau. Not a soul was in sight. The rocks stood up gray and eerie,

and beneath lay the carpet of the desert stretching unbroken to the

shadows of the Nile Valley.

III

We commenced the work of clearing the shaft at an early hour that

morning. The strangest ideas were now playing in my mind, and in some

way I felt myself to be in opposition to definite enmity. My

excavators labored with a will, and, once we had penetrated below the

first three feet or so of tightly packed stone, it became a mere

matter of shoveling, for apparently the lower part of the shaft had

been filled up principally with sand.

I calculated that four days' work at the outside would see the shaft

clear to the base of Condor's excavation. There remained, according

to his own notes, only another six feet or so; but it was solid

limestone--the roof of the passage, if his plans were correct,

communicating with the tomb of Hatasu.

With the approach of night, tired as I was, I felt little inclination

for sleep. I lay down on my bed with a small Browning pistol under the

pillow, but after an hour or so of nervous listening drifted off into

slumber. As on the night before, I awoke shortly before the coming of

dawn.

Again the village dogs were raising a hideous outcry, and again I was

keenly conscious of some ever-nearing menace. This consciousness grew

stronger as the howling of the dogs grew fainter, and the sense of

_approach_ assailed me as on the previous occasion.

I sat up immediately with the pistol in my hand, and, gently raising

the tent flap, looked out over the darksome plateau. For a long time

I could perceive nothing; then, vaguely outlined against the sky, I

detected something that moved above the rocky edge.

It was so indefinite in form that for a time I was unable to identify

it, but as it slowly rose higher and higher, two luminous

eyes--obviously feline eyes, since they glittered greenly in the

darkness--came into view. In character and in shape they were the eyes

of a cat, but in point of size they were larger than the eyes of any

cat I had ever seen. Nor were they jackal eyes. It occurred to me that

some predatory beast from the Sûdan might conceivably have strayed

thus far north.

The presence of such a creature would account for the nightly

disturbance amongst the village dogs; and, dismissing the

superstitious notions which had led me to associate the mysterious

Arab girl with the phenomenon of the howling dogs, I seized upon this

new idea with a sort of gladness.

Stepping boldly out of the tent, I strode in the direction of the

gleaming eyes. Although my only weapon was the Browning pistol, it was

a weapon of considerable power, and, moreover, I counted upon the

well-known cowardice of nocturnal animals. I was not disappointed in

the result.

The eyes dropped out of sight, and as I leaped to the edge of rock

overhanging the temple a lithe shape went streaking off in the

greyness beneath me. Its coloring appeared to be black, but this

appearance may have been due to the bad light. Certainly it was no

cat, was no jackal; and once, twice, thrice my Browning spat into the

darkness.

Apparently I had not scored a hit, but the loud reports of the weapon

aroused the men sleeping in the camp, and soon I was surrounded by a

ring of inquiring faces.

But there I stood on the rock-edge, looking out across the desert in

silence. Something in the long, luminous eyes, something in the

sinuous, flying shape had spoken to me intimately, horribly.

Hassan es-Sugra, the headman, touched my arm, and I knew that I must

offer some explanation.

"Jackals," I said shortly. And with no other word I walked back to my

tent.

The night passed without further event, and in the morning we

addressed ourselves to the work with such a will that I saw, to my

satisfaction, that by noon of the following day the labor of clearing

the loose sand would be completed.

During the preparation of the evening meal I became aware of a certain

disquiet in the camp, and I noted a disinclination on the part of the

native laborers to stray far from the tents. They hung together in a

group, and whilst individually they seemed to avoid meeting my eye,

collectively they watched me in a furtive fashion.

A gang of Moslem workmen calls for delicate handling, and I wondered

if, inadvertently, I had transgressed in some way their iron-bound

code of conduct. I called Hassan es-Sugra aside.

"What ails the men?" I asked him. "Have they some grievance?"

Hassan spread his palms eloquently.

"If they have," he replied, "they are secret about it, and I am not in

their confidence. Shall I thrash three or four of them in order to

learn the nature of this grievance?"

"No thanks all the same," I said, laughing at this characteristic

proposal. "If they refuse to work to-morrow, there will be time enough

for you to adopt those measures."

On this, the third night of my sojourn in the Holy Valley by the

Temple of Hatasu, I slept soundly and uninterruptedly. I had been

looking forward with the keenest zest to the morrow's work, which

promised to bring me within sight of my goal, and when Hassan came to

awaken me, I leaped out of bed immediately.

Hassan es-Sugra, having performed his duty, did not, as was his

custom, retire; he stood there, a tall, angular figure, looking at me

strangely.

"Well?" I said.

"There is trouble," was his simple reply. "Follow me, Neville

Effendi."

Wondering greatly, I followed him across the plateau and down the

slope to the excavation. There I pulled up short with a cry of

amazement.

Condor's shaft was filled in to the very top, and presented, to my

astonished gaze, much the same aspect that had greeted me upon my

first arrival!

"The men----" I began.

Hassan es-Sugra spread wide his palms.

"Gone!" he replied. "Those Coptic dogs, those eaters of carrion, have

fled in the night."

"And this"--I pointed to the little mound of broken granite and

sand--"is their work?"

"So it would seem," was the reply; and Hassan sniffed his sublime

contempt.

I stood looking bitterly at this destruction of my toils. The

strangeness of the thing at the moment did not strike me, in my anger;

I was only concerned with the outrageous impudence of the missing

workmen, and if I could have laid hands upon one of them it had surely

gone hard with him.

As for Hassan es-Sugra, I believe he would cheerfully have broken the

necks of the entire gang. But he was a man of resource.

"It is so newly filled in," he said, "that you and I, in three days,

or in four, can restore it to the state it had reached when those

nameless dogs, who regularly prayed with their shoes on, those

devourers of pork, began their dirty work."

His example was stimulating. _I_ was not going to be beaten, either.

After a hasty breakfast, the pair of us set to work with pick and

shovel and basket. We worked as those slaves must have worked whose

toil was directed by the lash of the Pharaoh's overseer. My back

acquired an almost permanent crook, and every muscle in my body seemed

to be on fire. Not even in the midday heat did we slacken or stay our

toils; and when dusk fell that night a great mound had arisen beside

Condor's shaft, and we had excavated to a depth it had taken our gang

double the time to reach.

When at last we threw down our tools in utter exhaustion, I held out

my hand to Hassan, and wrung his brown fist enthusiastically. His eyes

sparkled as he met my glance.

"Neville Effendi," he said, "you are a true Moslem!"

And only the initiated can know how high was the compliment conveyed.

That night I slept the sleep of utter weariness, yet it was not a

dreamless sleep, or perhaps it was not so deep as I supposed, for

blazing cat-eyes encircled me in my dreams, and a constant feline

howling seemed to fill the night.

When I awoke the sun was blazing down upon the rock outside my tent,

and, springing out of bed, I perceived, with amazement, that the

morning was far advanced. Indeed, I could hear the distant voices of

the donkey-boys and other harbingers of the coming tourists.

Why had Hassan es-Sugra not awakened me?

I stepped out of the tent and called him in a loud voice. There was

no reply. I ran across the plateau to the edge of the hollow.

Condor's shaft had been reclosed to the top!

Language fails me to convey the wave of anger, amazement, incredulity,

which swept over me. I looked across to the deserted camp and back to

my own tent; I looked down at the mound, where but a few hours before

had been a pit, and seriously I began to question whether I was mad or

whether madness had seized upon all who had been with me. Then, pegged

down upon the heap of broken stones, I perceived, fluttering, a small

piece of paper.

Dully I walked across and picked it up. Hassan, a man of some

education, clearly was the writer. It was a pencil scrawl in doubtful

Arabic, and, not without difficulty, I deciphered it as follows:

"Fly, Neville Effendi! This is a haunted place!"

Standing there by the mound, I tore the scrap of paper into minute

fragments, bitterly casting them from me upon the ground. It was

incredible; it was insane.

The man who had written that absurd message, the man who had undone

his own work, had the reputation of being fearless and honorable. He

had been with me before a score of times, and had quelled petty

mutinies in the camp in a manner which marked him a born overseer. I

could not understand; I could scarcely believe the evidence of my own

senses.

What did I do?

I suppose there are some who would have abandoned the thing at once

and for always, but I take it that the national traits are strong

within me. I went over to the camp and prepared my own breakfast;

then, shouldering pick and shovel, I went down into the valley and

set to work. What ten men could not do, what two men had failed to do,

one man was determined to do.

It was about half an hour after commencing my toils, and when, I

suppose, the surprise and rage occasioned by the discovery had begun

to wear off, that I found myself making comparisons between my own

case and that of Condor. It became more and more evident to me that

events--mysterious events--were repeating themselves.

The frightful happenings attendant upon Condor's death were marshaling

in my mind. The sun was blazing down upon me, and distant voices could

be heard in the desert stillness. I knew that the plain below was

dotted with pleasure-seeking tourists, yet nervous tremors shook me.

Frankly, I dreaded the coming of the night.

Well, tenacity or pugnacity conquered, and I worked on until dusk. My

supper despatched, I sat down on my bed and toyed with the Browning.

I realized already that sleep, under existing conditions, was

impossible. I perceived that on the morrow I must abandon my one-man

enterprise, pocket my pride, in a sense, and seek new assistants, new

companions.

The fact was coming home to me conclusively that a menace, real and

not mythical, hung over that valley. Although, in the morning sunlight

and filled with indignation, I had thought contemptuously of Hassan

es-Sugra, now, in the mysterious violet dusk so conducive to calm

consideration, I was forced to admit that he was at least as brave a

man as I. And he had fled! What did that night hold in keeping for me?

* * * * *

I will tell you what occurred, and it is the only explanation I have

to give of why Condor's shaft, said to communicate with the real tomb

of Hatasu, to this day remains unopened.

There, on the edge of my bed, I sat far into the night, not daring to

close my eyes. But physical weariness conquered in the end, and,

although I have no recollection of its coming, I must have succumbed

to sleep, since I remember--can never forget--a repetition of the

dream, or what I had assumed to be a dream, of the night before.

A ring of blazing green eyes surrounded me. At one point this ring was

broken, and in a kind of nightmare panic I leaped at that promise of

safety, and found myself outside the tent.

Lithe, slinking shapes hemmed me in--cat shapes, ghoul shapes,

veritable figures of the pit. And the eyes, the shapes, although they

were the eyes and shapes of cats, sometimes changed elusively, and

became the wicked eyes and the sinuous, writhing shapes of women.

Always the ring was incomplete, and always I retreated in the only

direction by which retreat was possible. I retreated from those

cat-things.

In this fashion I came at last to the shaft, and there I saw the tools

which I had left at the end of my day's toil.

Looking around me, I saw also, with such a pang of horror as I cannot

hope to convey to you, that the ring of green eyes was now unbroken

about me.

And it was closing in.

Nameless feline creatures were crowding silently to the edge of the

pit, some preparing to spring down upon me where I stood. A voice

seemed to speak in my brain; it spoke of capitulation, telling me to

accept defeat, lest, resisting, my fate be the fate of Condor.

Peals of shrill laughter rose upon the silence. The laughter was mine.

Filling the night with this hideous, hysterical merriment, I was

working feverishly with pick and with shovel filling in the shaft.

The end? The end is that I awoke, in the morning, lying, not on my

bed, but outside on the plateau, my hands torn and bleeding and every

muscle in my body throbbing agonisingly. Remembering my dream--for

even in that moment of awakening I thought I had dreamed--I staggered

across to the valley of the excavation.

Condor's shaft was reclosed to the top.

VI

POMEGRANATE FLOWER

I

There are not so many _Antereeyeh_ (story-tellers) in Cairo now (said

my acquaintance, Hassan of the Scent Bazaar, staring, reflectively, at

two American ladies paying fabulous prices for the goods of his

mendacious neighbor on the left). They have adopted other, and more

lucrative, professions; but in my father's time, it was an excellent

business.

For one thing, the stories which you call the _Arabian Nights_ are

no longer recited, because they are said to be unlucky. This has

considerably reduced the story-teller's stock-in-trade; for unless

a man is blessed with much originality, he cannot well refrain from

using in his narratives some part of the thousand and one tales.

To this day, however, there is in the city of Cairo a tale-teller of

much repute. With his tale-telling he combines the profession of a

barber; and like the famous barber of the _Arabian Nights_ bears the

nickname Es-Samit (the Silent). An old man is this Es-Samit, who no

more will know his ninetieth year, of dark countenance, and white

beard and eyebrows, with small ears like the ears of a gazelle, and

a long nose like that of a camel, and a haughty aspect. This barber

enjoys every comfort in his declining years by reason of his amusing

manner, and because his ridiculous stories and disclosures respecting

his six brothers (for in all things he resembles, or claims to

resemble, his famous namesake) divert all who hear them, causing him

whose bosom is contracted with woe to swoon with excessive laughter,

and filling the saddest heart with joy; such is the absurd loquacity

and impertinence of the barber called Es-Samit, the Silent.

It chanced one day that I found myself at the wedding festivities of a

prosperous merchant distantly related to me; and for the entertainment

of his guests, this wealthy man, in addition to the usual dances and

songs, had engaged Es-Samit to divert us with one of his untruthful

stories. In order to refresh the _Anteree's_ mendacity, the host thus

addressed the barber--

"O Es-Samit, thou silent one! it hath come to my ears that in thine

exceeding paucity of speech thou hast omitted, hitherto, to relate the

story of thy seventh brother. Since thou hast a seventh brother, let

not thy love of silence (in thee even greater than in thy famous

ancestor) deprive us of a knowledge of his depravity, but acquaint us

with his case."

"O Merchant Prince!" replied the barber, "to none other than

thyself--so handsome, so liberal, and of such excellent

morality--would I break my vow, to speak of that wretched villain,

that malevolent mule, that vilest of the vile, my twin brother

Ahzab."

My cousin, feigning astonishment at the manner of his speech, said--

"Thy twin brother, O Es-Samit, was not, like thee, a man of rectitude,

of exalted mind, and of enlightened intelligence?"

"Alas!" replied the barber, "he was a dog of the most mongrel kind. My

bosom is pierced when I utter his accursed name! At the hands of

Ahzab, my twin brother, I met with every indignity, and with penalties

of a most unfortunate description."

When the host heard this, he laughed exceedingly, saying--

"Acquaint us, O Es-Samit, with his shameless misdeeds."

The barber, sighing as though his soul sought rest from all earthly

afflictions, proceeded as follows:

* * * * *

Know, O light of my eyes! that my other brother, Ahzab, was born in

the city of Cairo, and his birth was unattended by a darkening of the

sun and other unpleasant calamities only by reason of the fact that

_I_ was born in the same hour!

My twin brother, Ahzab, was blessed with handsome stature, an elegant

shape, a perfect figure, with cheeks like roses, with eyebrows meeting

above an aquiline nose brightly shining. In short, this shame of my

mother was endowed with all those perfections which Allah (whose name

be exalted) had also bestowed upon me; but his heart was the heart of

a serpent, and he lacked the nobility of mind which thou hast

observed in thy servant, O Paragon, of wisdom!

When we were yet in the bloom and blossom of handsome youth, a dispute

arose between us, and for many moons I saw not Ahzab, but pursued my

occupation as a barber and teller of wonderful stories in a distant

part of the city. In this way it befell that I knew of his state only

by report, until one day as I sat before my shop observing if the

ascendent of the hour were favorable to one who waited to be shaved,

there came to me a negro most handsomely dressed, who said:

"My Master, Ahzab the Merchant, desires that you repair as soon as

possible to his magazine. He hath urgent need of thee."

Upon hearing these words, and observing the richness of the negro's

apparel, I perceived that those reports which had come to me,

respecting Ahzab's wealth, were no more than true; and I spoke thus to

myself:

"Within the vilest heart may bloom the flower of brotherly affection.

Ahzab desires to share with me, the most enlightened of his family,

this good fortune which hath befallen him."

Accordingly, I shut up my shop, dismissing the one who waited to be

shaved, and followed the black to the Khân Khalîl, where were the

shops of the wealthy silk merchants. My brother received me

affectionately, embracing me and saying:

"O Es-Samit, ever have I loved thee. Lo! Thou growest more like myself

each year. Save that thou art more dignified and noble. Enter into

this private apartment with me, for it is important that no one shall

see thee."

Much surprised at his words, I followed him to an elegant apartment

above the shop, and there he ordered the servants to roast a lamb and

to bring to us fruit and wine; and while we thus pleasantly employed

ourselves, he unfolded to me his case.

"Know, O my brother, that I have accumulated great wealth; and this

I have done by observing those wise precepts of conduct laid down by

thee. By the charm of my speech, which I have fashioned upon thine,

and the elegance of my manner, in which I have, though poorly,

imitated thine own, and by the dignity and the modesty of my conduct,

I have endeared all hearts and am esteemed above all the other

merchants in Cairo.

"It is necessary that I repair to Damascus, and during my absence I

wish nothing better than that thou shouldst take my place here. This

will be favorable to both of us; for I will reward thy services with

five hundred piastres and an interest in my affairs, and thou wilt

pass for me; for all will say, 'Lo! Ahzab the Merchant waxes more

handsome each day; such is the benign influence of righteous

prosperity and conscious rectitude!' My affairs stand thus and thus,

and my steward, who will be in our confidences, will acquaint thee

with all matters necessary. Thou wilt wear my costly garments, and sit

in my shop. Each evening thou wilt secretly repair to thine own

abode."

Upon hearing those words, my bosom swelled with joy; for I observed

that Ahzab had not failed to perceive my exalted qualities. We sat

far into the night in conversation respecting our plans; and on the

following day, Ahzab having departed secretly for Damascus, I repaired

to his shop, as arranged, and took my seat there.

By the number of the persons who saluted me, and by the manner of

their speech, I perceived, more and more, the great prosperity of

my brother; and being of a thoughtful mind, I passed the days very

pleasantly in contemplation of my good fortune.

Upon the fourth day after the departure of my brother, as I sat in his

shop, there came past a damsel accompanied by female attendants. This

damsel was riding upon a mule with a richly embroidered saddle, with

stirrups of gold, and she was covered with an _izar_ of exquisite

fabric; and about her slender waist was a girdle of gold-embroidered

silk. I was stricken speechless with the beauty and elegance of her

form; and when she alighted and came into the shop, the odors of sweet

perfumes were diffused from her, and she captivated my reason by her

loveliness.

Seating herself beside me, she raised her _izar_, and I beheld her

black eyes. And they surpassed in beauty the eyes of all human beings,

and were like the eyes of the gazelle. She had a mouth like the Seal

of Suleyman, and hair blacker than the night of affliction; a forehead

like the new moon of Ramadan, and cheeks like anemones, with lips

fresher than rose petals, teeth like pearls from the sea of

distraction, and a neck surpassing in whiteness molten silver, above

a form that put to shame the willow branch.

She spoke to me, saying:

"O Ahzab! I have returned as I promised thee!"

At the sound of her voice, by Allah (whose name be exalted!) I was

entangled in the snare of her love; fire was burning up my heart on

her account; a consuming flame increased within my bosom, and my

reason was drowned in the sea of my desire.

Perceiving my state, she quickly lowered her veil in pretended

displeasure, and desired to look at some pieces of silk. While she

thus employed herself, she surpassed the branches in the beauty of

her bending motions, and my eyes could not remove themselves from

her. I thus communed with myself:

"O Es-Samit, thou didst contract with thy brother to do this and that,

and to render unto him a proper account of thy dealings. But though

he hath made thee no mention of his affair with this damsel--it is

important that thou conductest this matter as he would have done, so

that he cannot reproach thee with negligence!" For I was ever a just

as well as a discreet and silent man.

Accordingly I spoke as follows:

"O my mistress, who art the most lovely person God has created, rend

not my heart with thy displeasure, but take pity upon me. Know that

love is difficult, and the concealment of it melteth iron and

occasioneth disease and infirmity. Thou hast returned as thou didst

promise; therefore I conjure thee, conceal not thy face from thy

slave!"

The damsel thereupon raised her head and put aside her veil, casting

a glance upon me and looked sideways at the attendants, and placed one

finger upon her lips; so that I knew her to be as discreet as she was

lovely. She laughed in my face, and said:

"I will take this piece of embroidered silk that I have chosen. What

is the price?"

And I answered:

"One hundred piasters; but I pray thee let it be thine, and a gift

from Ahzab!"

Upon this, she looked into my eyes and the sight of her face drew from

me a thousand sighs, and took the silk, saying:

"O my master, leave me not desolate!"

So she departed, while I continued sitting in the market-street until

past the hour of afternoon prayer, with disturbed mind enslaved by her

beauty and loveliness. I returned to my house and supper was placed

before me, but reflecting upon the damsel, I could eat nothing. I laid

myself down to rest, but passed the whole night sleepless, communing

with myself how I could best carry out this affair and obtain

possession of the damsel ... for my brother, Ahzab!

II

Scarcely had daybreak appeared when I arose and repaired to the

market-place and put on a suit of my brother's clothing, richer and

more magnificent than that I had worn the day before; and having drunk

a cup of wine, I sat in the shop. But all that day she came not, nor

the next, but upon the third day she came again, attended only by one

attendant, and she saluted me and said in a speech never surpassed in

softness and sweetness:

"O my master, reproach me not that I thus reveal the interest I have

in thee, but I could not speak to thee when my women were in hearing;

and this one is in my confidence. I have told thee that my father will

never give me to thee because of my rank, but thou hast wounded my

heart, and more and more do I love thee each day--for each day thou

growest more beautiful and elegant. Forever I must be desolate. Alas!

I have placed thy letter in the box thou didst give me, and no day

passes that it is not wet with my tears. Farewell! O my beloved!"

On hearing this, my love and passion grew so violent that I almost

became insensible. The damsel rose to leave the shop, and the one who

was with her spoke softly in her ear; but she shook her head,

expressing displeasure, and went away.

When I perceived that indeed she was gone, verily the tears descended

upon my cheek like rain, and my soul had all but departed. My heart

clung to her--I followed in the direction of her steps through the

market-place, and lo! the attendant came running back to me, and said:

"Here is the message of my mistress: 'Know that my love is greater

than thine, and on Friday next my servant will come to thee and tell

thee how thou mayest see me for a short interview before my father

comes back from prayers.'"

When I heard these words of the girl, the anguish of my heart ceased,

and I was intoxicated with love and rapture, and in my joy and

longing, I omitted to ask the girl the abode of her mistress--neither

did I know the name of my beloved; but reflecting upon these matters,

I returned to my brother's shop, and sat there until late, and then I

repaired secretly to my abode.

I paused in a quiet street, and seated myself upon a _mastabah_ to

scent the coolness of the air, and to abandon myself to exquisite

reflections.

But no sooner had I thus seated myself than a negro of gigantic

stature, and most hideous aspect, suddenly appeared from the shadow

of a door, and threw himself upon me, exclaiming:

"This is thine end, as it was written, O Ahzab the Merchant!"

By Allah! (whose name be exalted) I thought it was even as he said;

and none but myself had fallen into sudden dissolution, but that

everything slippery is not a pancake, and the jar that is struck may

yet escape unbroken.

So it befell that by great good fortune and by the exercise of my

agility and intelligence, I tripped the negro and his head came in

contact with the _mastabah_, and before he could recover himself, I

held to his ebony throat the blade of a razor which, by the mercy of

God, and because it was a custom of my profession, I carried in my

_kamar_.

"O thou dog!" I exclaimed, "prepare to depart to that utter darkness

and perdition that awaits assassins! For assuredly I am about to slay

thee!"

But he humbled himself to the ground before me, and embraced my feet,

crying:

"Have mercy, O my master! I but obeyed the commands!"

"Of whom, thou vile and unnamable vermin?" I asked of him.

"Of whom else but Abu-el-Hassan, the son of the Kadî! For hath he not

revealed to thee that for what has passed with Jullanar (Pomegranate

Flower), the daughter of the Walî, he will slay thee?"

"He hath revealed this to me?" I asked of him, astonished at his

words.

And he replied: "Thou knowest, master, it was by my hand that the

message was borne."

Whereupon I praised Allah (whose name be exalted) and spurned the

slave with my foot, saying:

"Depart, O thou black son of filth, and report that I am dead. I give

thee thy wretched life; depart!"

But when he had gone, I again lifted up my voice in thanksgiving. And

having come to my abode, I performed the preparatory ablution, and

recited the prayer of night-fall; after which I recited the chapters

"Ya-Sîn" (The Cow) and "Two Preventatives." For I perceived that this

was the true purport of my brother's absence, and that in his love

and affection he had resigned to me this affair, well knowing that I

should perish!

It was by the mercy of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, that my

case was not as he had foreseen. The damsel called Jullanar, daughter

of the Walî, was famed from Cairo to the uttermost islands of China

for her elegance and loveliness, and I knew that my beloved could be

none other than she, and that Abu-el-Hassan, son of the Kadî, could be

none other than the betrothed chosen of her father the Walî.

I slept not that night, but passed the hours until sunrise reflecting

upon this matter, and upon the dangers which awaited my father's

handsome son on Friday. And I went not to the market on the next day,

but sent a message to my brother's steward saying that I was smitten

with sickness and enjoining him to acquaint the girl, who presently

would come, where I was to be found.

Thus it befell that at noon on Friday the same girl that had been with

Jullanar came to me, sent thither from the shop of Ahzab by the

steward, saying:

"O my master, answer the summons of my mistress. This is the plan that

I have proposed to her: Conceal thyself within one of the large chests

that are in thy shop, and hire a porter to carry thee to the house of

the Walî. I will cause the _bowwab_ to admit the chest to the

apartment of the Lady Jullanar. She doth trust her honor to thy

discretion, by reason of her love for thee, and because she will die

if she see thee not to bid thee farewell. I will arrange for thee to

be secretly conveyed from the house, ere the Walî returns."

And at her words I was like to have swooned with ecstasy; and I

forgot, in the transport of love and delight, the black assassin and

the threatened vengeance of Abu-el-Hassan. I set at naught my fears at

trusting my father's favorite son within the walls of the Walî's

house. I thought only of Jullanar of the slender waist and heavy hips,

of the dewy lips, more intoxicating than wine, and the eyes of my

beloved like wells of temptation to swallow up the souls of men.

I shaved and went to the bath, and repaired to the shop of Ahzab. My

brother's steward was not there, whereat I rejoiced, and arrayed

myself in the most splendid suit that I could find, and having

perfumed myself with essences and sweet scents, I summoned a boy and

said:

"Go thou and bring here a porter. Order him to carry yon large chest

to the house of the Walî, near the Mosque of Ibn-Mizheh, and ask for

the lady Jullanar who hath purchased this box and a number of things

which are in it. See that he be a strong man, for the box is very

heavy."

The boy replied, "On the head," and departed on his errand.

Thereupon I commended my soul to Allah, and entered the box, closing

the lid upon me. Scarcely had I concealed myself, when the porter

entered and lifted the chest. The boy assisted him to take it upon

his back, and he bore it out into the market-street.

"Now by the beard of the Prophet (on whom be peace)," I exclaimed to

myself, "it is well that I am named Es-Samit, the Silent; for had it

been otherwise, I must have lifted up my voice against this son of

perdition who carries me with my soles raised to heaven!"

The porter conveyed me for some distance, panting beneath the weight

of the box, and, presently, coming to a _mastabah_, dropped one end

of the box upon it, whilst he rested himself.

"Now as Allah is great, and Mohammed his only prophet," I said in my

beard, "I am fortunate in that I have acquired a paucity of diction.

There is no other in Cairo, but the joy of my mother, that could

refrain from speech when dropped upon his skull on a stone bench!"

After a while, the porter raised the chest again, and resumed his

journey, presently coming to the house of the Walî, and dropping the

box into the courtyard.

"Allah be praised!" I said. "For if this porter, whose name be

accursed, did but carry me a quinary further, my silence would become

even more surprising than it is; for my affair would finish, and I

should speak no more to any man!"

The _bowwab_ now cried out:

"What is in this chest?"

"Purchases of the lady Jullanar," said the girl, whom I recognized

by her voice. "Permit the porter to carry it to her apartments."

"I must obey the orders of the Walî my master," replied the

door-keeper. "The box must be opened."

I was bereft of the power to control myself, and seized with a colic

from excess of fear; I almost died from the violent spasms of my

limbs.

"O Es-Samit!" I said, "this is the reward of him whom love leads to

the house of the Walî!"

I felt certain that my destruction approached. The intoxication of

love now ceased in me, and reflection came in its place. I repented

of what I had done, and prayed a happy solution of my dangerous case.

Whether as a result of my prayers, I know not, but some arrangement

was come to, and the porter once more raised the chest, and, striking

my head upon the end of it at each step, bore me up to the apartments

of Jullanar, which I thus entered feet first.

He deposited the box, lid downward, upon the soft mattress of a

_dîwan_, so that I found myself upon all fours, like a mule with my

face between my hands! Ere I could break my habitual silence, he

lifted some heavy piece of furniture--I know not what--and placed it

on top of the box!

A voice sweeter than the songs of the Daood spoke:

"Slave! what art thou doing!"

"I _am_ thy slave!" spoke another voice, at the accursed sound whereof

I almost died of spleen. "Knowest thou me not, my beloved? I have

devised a new stratagem and come to thee in the guise of a porter!

But lo! beneath my uncomely garments, I am Ahzab, thy lover!"

III

As a man who sleeps ill after a protracted feast, I heard her answer,

saying:

"Is it true thou hast come to me, or is this a dream?"

"Verily, it is true!" answered the accursed, the vile, the unspeakable

Ahzab, my brother--for it was he. "From the time when I first saw

thee, neither sleep hath been sweet to me, nor hath wine possessed the

slightest flavor! I have come to thee thus, fragrant bloom of the

pomegranate, because I would not have thee see me in a posture so

undignified as that of one crouched in a box! So that thy people might

be compelled to give me access to thine apartments, I have put a

mendicant in my place, rendering the chest heavy!"

And she said, "Thou art welcome!" and embraced him.

By Allah (whose name be exalted), I gnawed my beard until I choked!

"Thou art changed, beloved!" she said to him; "thou art always

beautiful, but to-day thou seemest less rosy-cheeked to mine eyes!"

The accursed Ahzab, like an enraged mule, kicked the box wherein

I dissolved in flames of wrath.

"I am burnt up with love and longing for thee!" he replied. "O my

love! how beautiful thou art!"

Whereat my command of silence forsook me! As Allah is the one god,

and Mohammed his only Prophet, I became as one possessed of a devil!

"Robber!" I cried; and my words lost themselves within the box.

"Cheat! accursed disgrace of my father! infamy of my race! O dog!

O unutterable dirt!"

Jullanar cried out in fear, but my accursed brother took her in his

bosom, soothing her with soft words.

"Fear not, O my beloved!" he said. "I gave the mendicant wine that

his heart might warm to his lowly task, but I fear he has become

intoxicated!"

"O thou liar!" I cried. "O malevolent scoundrel! O son of a disease!"

And with all my strength I sought to raise the weight that bore me

down; but to no purpose.

"Know, my beloved," continued my thrice-accursed brother, "what I have

suffered on thy account. But three days since I was attacked by four

gigantic negro assassins despatched by Abu-el-Hassan to slay me! But I

vanquished them, killing one and maiming a second, whilst the others

escaped and ran back to their wretched master."

"O unutterable liar!" I groaned. For I was near to hastening my

predestined end both from suffocation and consuming rage. "Thou didst

fly, thou jackal! from that peril, and reapest the fruits of my

courage and dexterity! O, mud! O, stench!"

"Lest he should despatch a number too great for me to combat, I have

lurked in hiding, delight of souls! in a most filthy hovel belonging

to a barber!"

"May thy tongue turn into a scorpion and bite thee!" I cried. "My

abode is as clean as the palace of the Khedive! Thou hast never

entered it, O thou gnat's egg! Thou hast hidden in I know not what

hole, like the unclean insect thou art, until thy steward (may his

beard grow backward and smother him!) informed thee of this! O Allah!

(to whom be ascribed all might and glory) give me strength to move

this accursed box that I may crush him!"

Scarce had I uttered the last word, when a girl came running into the

apartment, crying: "Fly, my master! O my mistress! The Walî! the

Walî!"

Upon hearing these words, my rage departed from me and in its place

came excessive fear. My breath left my body, and my heart ceased to

beat.

"He that falleth in the dirt be trodden on by camels," I reflected.

"It is not enough, O Es-Samit, that thou hast suffered the attack of

the assassin; that thou hast all but died of fear at the door of the

Walî's house; that thou hast been torn from the arms of the loveliest

creature God hath created; thou are destined, now, O most unfortunate

of men, to be detected by the Walî in his daughter's apartments,

concealed in a box!"

And I pronounced the _Takbîr_, crying, "O Allah! thy ways are

inscrutable!"

"Fly, my beloved!" cried Jullanar to Ahzab. "My women will conceal

thee!" Wherewith she swooned and fell upon the floor senseless.

"Quick! follow me closely, O my master!" cried the girl, and I heard

my perfidious brother depart from the room by one door, as the Walî

entered by another.

"Ah!" cried the Walî, clapping his hands. "Slaves! what is this?"

And people came running to his command; some carrying out the lady

Jullanar to her sleeping apartment, and sprinkling rose-water upon

her, and some remaining.

"What is in this box upon the _dîwan_!" demanded the Walî. "Bring it

hither and open it!"

At that I knew that I was lost, and my soul as good as departed, and

I bade farewell to life and invoked Mohammed (whom may God preserve)

to intercede for me that I might die an easy death.

The chest was dragged into the middle of the floor and thrown open.

"Name of my mother!" exclaimed the Walî. "It is Ahzab the Merchant! It

is the villain who hath presumed to make love to my daughter! O Allah!

my daughter hath disgraced me! By the beard of the Prophet, I can no

more hold up my head among honest men!"

And he slapped his face and plucked his beard, and fell insensible

upon the floor. As he did so, I leaped from the box and would have

escaped, but two blacks seized me; and the noise, or the refreshing

quality of the rose-water with which the women were sprinkling him,

revived the Walî, who recovered, fixing upon me a terrible gaze.

"O thou dog!" he said; "thou who hast wrought my disgrace! As thou

didst enter my house in yonder box, in yonder box shalt thou quit the

world! Cast him back again, fasten the box with ropes, and throw it

into the Nile at nightfall!"

IV

Now were my powers of silence most surprisingly displayed. For I spoke

no word, but dumb as a tongueless man, I allowed myself to be knocked

backward into the box. The lid closed upon me, ropes bound about the

box, and the seal of the Walî affixed to it. Negroes carried it out,

and threw it into some cellar to await nightfall.

"O Es-Samit!" I said, "this is the end that was appointed to thy

father's wisest son! To this pass thy silence and wisdom have brought

thee! O Allah (to whom be all glory), grant that one of the fishes

that eat me in the Nile shall be served up to Ahzab, my twin brother,

and choke him!"

And then my thoughts turned to Jullanar, and I sighed and groaned;

and the torments I suffered through lying drawn up in the box were

delights to the agonies that my reflections respecting her case

occasioned in me; so that, with the excess of my woe and misery,

I became insensible. How long I remained so I know not, but I was

awakened by a knocking at the lid of the box, and the voice of the

Walî spoke, saying:

"Prepare to die, O wretch! for my servants are about to convey thee

to the river and cast thee in! Thou dog! who didst presume to raise

thine eyes to my daughter!--know that this is the reward of such

malefactors; for assuredly if thou escapest alive, thou shalt wed

Jullanar!"

Whereat he laughed until he almost swooned and kicked the box until

I thought he had burst it. Blacks raised me, and I was borne down a

long flight of steps and onward in I know not what direction.

"From here?" said one of them, and through a crack in the lid, I saw

the light of a torch, and the whispering of the river came to my ears.

"Yes!" replied another.

And I commended my soul to Allah as the box was swung to and fro and

hurled through the air. With a sound in my ears as of the shrieking

of ten thousand _efreets_, I was plunged into the water!

Far under the surface I went and knew all the agonies of dissolution;

but the box was strongly and cunningly made and rose again; then it

began to fill and sink once more, and again I tasted of the final

pangs. Throughout all this time, a strong current was bearing the box

along, and presently, as, for the fiftieth occasion, I was seeking to

die and to end my misery, I heard voices.

The most miserable life is sweet to him who feels it slipping from his

grasp, and I summoned sufficient strength to raise a feeble cry.

"O Allah!" I cried, "if it be thy will, grant that these persons whose

voices I hear take pity upon my unfortunate condition, and draw me

forth."

Even as I spoke, something stayed the onward progress of the box. It

was a fisherman's net! And the fishermen began to draw me into the

boat, I praising Allah the while.

But when they had the box upon the edge of the boat, and heard my

voice proceeding from within, and saw the Walî's seal upon the

lid--"By the beard of the Prophet!" cried one, "this is some evil

_ginn_ or magician whom the Walî hath imprisoned in this chest! Allah

avert the omen! Cast him back, comrades!"

Alas! I could find no words wherewith to entreat them to take pity;

never had paucity of speech served me so ill! A great groan issued

from my bosom as I was consigned again to the Nile!

Allah is great, and it was not written that I should perish in that

manner. For another current now seized upon the box, and just as I was

on the point of dissolution, cast it upon a projecting bank, where it

was perceived by a band of four robbers, who derived a livelihood from

plundering such vessels as lay unprotected in the river.

These waded out and dragged the box ashore. I was too near my end to

have spoken had I desired to speak, but from my unfortunate adventure

with the fishermen, I had learned that silence was wisdom, now as

always. Thus I lay in the box like a dog that has been all but

drowned, and listened to the words of my rescuers.

These were arguing respecting the contents and value of the box, one

holding this opinion and another that. One, who seemed to be their

leader, was about to unfasten the ropes, but another claimed that

this was his due. So, from angry words, they came to blows, and by the

grace of God (whose name be exalted) they drew their knives, and three

of the four were slain. The fourth removed the ropes and opened the

box, thinking to enjoy, alone, the treasures which he supposed it to

contain.

Whereupon I uprose and looked up to where Canopus shone, and said:

"There is no God but God! Praise be to Allah who has preserved me

from an unfortunate and unseemly end!"

At that, the robber, with wild cries of fear, turned and ran, and I

saw him no more. Such, O bountiful patron, is the disgraceful story

of the dog Ahzab, my seventh and twin brother. But all that which I

endured happened by Fate and Destiny, and from that which is written

there is no escape nor flight.

* * * * *

Our worthy host (concluded Hassan) laughed heartily at this story,

saying:

"O Es-Samit, it is evident to me that thy paucity of speech alone

preserved thee from drowning! But acquaint us, I beg, with the fate

of thy dog of a brother, and of thy beautiful Pomegranate Flower."

"O glory of beholders!" replied the barber, "by the mouth of the girl

who was in Jullanar's confidence--Ahzab, that shame of mules, learned,

whilst in hiding, how the Walî had said in the presence of many

witnesses: 'Assuredly if thou escapest alive, thou shalt wed

Jullanar.'"

"Tellest thou me that he had the effrontery to demand the fulfilment

of a pledge so spoken, O Es-Samit?"

"Alas!" replied the barber, with tears pouring like rain down the

wrinkles of his aged cheek, "he lived with her the most joyous, and

most agreeable, and most comfortable, and most pleasant life, until

they were visited by the terminator of delights, and the separator

of companions!"

THE END.

* * * * *

* * * *

Transcriber's Note:

The following printer's errors have been corrected in the text:

Page 16, passsd amended to passed (passed through the finger ring)

Page 16, instrinsic amended to intrinsic (Its intrinsic value)

Page 20, whcih amended to which (for which I would gladly)

Page 26, wordly amended to worldly (terminated my worldly affairs)

Page 42, remakable amended to remarkable (taciturnity was remarkable)

Page 42, dsitinguished amended to distinguished (behavior was

distinguished)

Page 46, exhausing amended to exhausting (journey had been most

exhausting)

Page 87, Suit amended to Suite (Harêm Suite is occupied)

Page 89, releived amended to relieved (relieved by a small snowy

turban)

Page 98, bougainvillia replaced with bougainvillea (bougainvillea

blossom)

Page 104, veiled amended to Veiled (features of the Veiled Prophet)

Page 112, Chundermyer amended to Chundermeyer (Mr. Chundermeyer

gagged)

Page 115, partciular compositoin amended to particular composition

(particular composition of the perfume)

Page 130, oportunity ammended to opportunity (the seeming opportunity)

Page 130, cheecks amended to cheeks (my cheeks were burning)

Page 149, Abî ammended to Abû (Abû Tabâh assured me)

Page 149, alhtough amended to although (although she who is)

Page 152, folowing amended to following (on the following morning)

Page 158, met amended to me (invited me to visit)

Page 160, acess amended to access (door giving access to)

Page 175, pantomine amended to pantomime (grotesque kind of pantomime)

Page 222, tesitfy amended to testify (as I can testify)

Page 243, cresent amended to crescent (crescent of Islâm)

Page 250, menioned amended to mentioned (which I have mentioned)

Page 275, severly amended to severely (The features were severely)

Page 280, incliniation amended to inclination (I felt little

inclination)

Page 301, sumons amended to summons (summons of my mistress)

Page 306, dexerity amended to dexterity (my courage and dexterity)

Page 311, bossom amended to bosom (groan issued from my bosom)