VIII

As Saïd was making his way downstairs, with less of caution than he had observed in his ascent (the joy of his new finery had elated him beyond all prudence), a door was opened in the hall below and a woman came out. Beholding him she drew her veil hastily across the lower part of her face. Her eyes were bright and her movements had the grace of youth.

“Who art thou? What dost thou here?” she cried shrilly. “The khawaja is on a journey and Cassim is gone to the village. I am alone in the house, the old woman, my mother, being ill. If perchance thou hast an errand to my master I can give word to him on his return.”

Of a sudden her voice rose to anger.

“Allah, pardon! Where gottest thou that cloak? Thief that thou art! It is the robe of my lord, which hangs always in his own chamber. O Cassim, there is a thief in the house! A thief! O Cassim, a thief!”

She ran screaming to the outer door and opened her mouth wide towards the olive grove, crying always, “O Cassim! O Cassim! A thief! a thief!”

Saïd rushed on her and pinioned her arms.

He tried to fling her to the ground, but she struggled like a mad thing, and at length, bending swiftly, with the yell of a wild beast, bit the fisherman’s hand so that he cried out with pain. Need to look at the wound made him loose his hold, whereupon she broke away and fled within the house, barring a door behind her.

Saïd frowned at the marks of her teeth in his flesh, from which the blood began to ooze. He put the place to his mouth and sucked it⁠—an act which prevented a storm of curses. And even as he was tending his wound in such a manner as Nature prompted, the screams of the woman broke out anew, as of one in a frenzy⁠—

“O Cassim! Help! a thief! O Cassim! O Cassim!”

This time there came an answering shout from the olive grove.

Turning, he beheld the negro running towards the house as fast as his long black legs could carry him. Saïd snatched up his slippers from the doorstep. With the spring of a hunted animal he leapt out into the sunlight, and gathering up his new robe, sped away from house and olive-trees, out into the wide plain, where hot air swam along the distance in liquid mist.

Once he turned to look back. The negro had set down his basket and was pursuing at a steady trot which meant business. Saïd fled on, but with slackened pace. He had need to husband his breath, for the race was like to be a long one. Panting, sweating from every pore, he stumbled across a wady where a little freshet of water tinkled among boulders from pool to pool. Brushing through the belt of oleanders on the further bank, he ran on across the bare land, trampling rank grass, thistles and creeping plants.

But the negro had long legs. Saïd learnt, by the growing beat of footfalls in his ears, that he was losing ground. Soon he could hear also the hard breathing of his pursuer. He made a spirt, though his heart was near to breaking, it thumped so against his ribs.

“Allah is merciful!” He had almost fallen into a deep hole, overgrown with weeds at the mouth⁠—a disused cistern, it might be. He had lengthened his stride only just in time. A piteous shriek came from behind him. He turned to glance back, still running. The black was nowhere to be seen. He dropped to the ground, pressing his hand on his heart. “Praise to Allah!” he gasped, and then lay still, panting.

The sun beat hotly upon him there in the open plain. He longed for some patch of shade, were it but of a shrub, enough to shelter his head and face. Only a few paces distant a lonely carub-tree of great size spread its gnarled boughs and glossy dark foliage over a rough pavement⁠—a pious foundation for the repose of travellers. Saïd dragged himself thither and lay a great while with eyes closed.

“Praise be to Allah!” he exclaimed again, when breath had quite returned. Then he bethought him of the black man and that the hole might be of no great depth after all. He rose and went to the place.

While he was searching among weeds and dwarf shrubs for the mouth of the pit he saw a black hand come up out of the ground and clutch the stalk of a big blue thistle. Then he regretted bitterly that he had flung away his staff lest it should prove a hindrance in running. For want of it he took a jagged stone in his hand and beat viciously with it upon the bony parts of the fingers. The desired yell at once reached his ears, and the hand was nimble as a lizard to slip back into its hole. Then Saïd, lying flat upon his stomach, wriggled forward until he could look down into the prison. There was his enemy standing upright in a narrow place like a well, but dry to all appearance. By stretching down his arm he could almost have touched the negro’s white turban. Cassim glared up at him with white eyes of hate. Saïd could hear him grind his teeth for rage of helplessness.

He looked forth over the wide brown plain with faint blue mountains everywhere along the skyline, and back to where the house of the Frank at the foot of the hill was like a tiny white box shut tight with a high red lid.

Then peering again into the hole, he laughed aloud.

“Is it cool down there, O son of a pig?” he inquired. “By Allah, thou art well housed and I envy thee. Up here I am roasting in the noonday, whilst thou, within arm’s length of me, dost enjoy the cool of night. There is a road not far from thy dwelling, O foul scion of a race of swine; also a great tree where travellers may rest in the shade. But for all that, help is far from thee. Men will take fright at thy cries, coming from under the earth, and will fly swiftly as from a place of sin. I have it in my mind, thou dog, to drop earth down on thee and stones, and so bury thee. What sayest thou, ugly one? It would give me joy to defile thy grave!”

Of a sudden the negro made a great leap with hand upstretched. His nails grazed Saïd’s face, causing him to draw back in alarm.

“Curse thy father, son of a dog that thou art!” came a terrible voice from the pit. “May thy life be cut short! May all thy children rot, and thy woman betray thee to an enemy!”

“A wise man gives fair words to his master,” retorted Saïd, and his voice was like a leopard’s paw, so soft yet dangerous. “What art thou to me that I should delay to slay thee? At my elbow there is a nice stone which would break thy head as it were an egg. Speak smoothly to thy master, O Cassim, son of a pig!”

A fresh outbreak of cursing answered from the hole. Then Saïd reflected that he had wasted time enough in play by the wayside. The shadow of the carub-tree, lying like a blot of ink upon the whitening land, tempted him to rest there yet a little while. But two fears urged him onward. The negro might in the end get out of the hole, when Saïd could hope for no mercy if caught napping thereabouts; and the woman he had assailed, alarmed at Cassim’s nonappearance, would soon raise the hue-and-cry, if she had not already done so.

Saïd knew that his road lay towards those faint blue distant mountains with the whiteness among their crests, and there his knowledge ended. The plain stretched burning and treeless in that direction, but at a point far away a ripple of foliage broke the level. He could make out the shape of a palm-tree, seeming of no more substance than a blade of grass, so distant it was, and the quiver of hot air between. Palms do not grow solitary like weeds or carub-trees. A village was therefore near it, where he could inquire his road more perfectly. There remained only to take farewell of the prisoner.

He drew near once more to the mouth of the pit. With a look of concentration he leaned over and spat full in the upturned face of the negro. Then he rose lightly and went his way.