Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “But hasn’t Crep got a pledge from the head-men?”

  “Sure. They’ll stand by that. They say that if the Jews of this place bring back the fire-gift tonight as promised they’ll spare them. But they haven’t made any promise to spare us and they’re going to blot out the Jerusalem Jews whether we like it or not. They won’t believe there are no rifles in the Governorate, so they’re coming here first — soon as the show’s over!”

  “What’s Crep doing now?”

  “Arresting a few of the noisiest ones. I brought along half a dozen and left them in the jail. I’m going back there now to stand by and stiffen the jail guard. So long, in case my number’s up!”

  He went out again, examining his revolver and Grim got off the window- seat to pace the floor a time or two.

  “Maybe I’d better send you,” he said. “It’s thirty miles. D’you think you could reach Jerusalem on foot by midnight?”

  “What’s the matter with a camel?”

  “You’d be held up. You’re all right until the camel hits a good sharp clip; after that they’d spot you for a white man from a mile away. You’ll have to walk in that disguise, and take your chance with the sentries outside Jerusalem.”

  “Ask for Sikhs, I suppose?”

  “Yes. Sorry to have to do it. ‘Fraid we must. I’d hoped to help these boys pull through without squealing. Do ’em both good with the Administration. Having to yell for help means they’ll get no credit for all that’s gone before. Damnit! I hate to do it.”

  So did I hate it. Setting aside the mere physical exertion of the thirty- mile run, with a good chance of getting knifed or potted on the way and an even better one of being “spiked” by a British sentry in the dark under Jerusalem’s walls, I did not want to miss the big event.

  “If I get mine on the road,” I objected, “you’ll be no better off than you were before.”

  “No. But you’ll have done your best along with the rest of us.”

  You couldn’t answer that. I pulled my boots off, to put soap on my socks.

  “Better give me some grub in a handkerchief and lend me a gun, then.”

  “Sure.”

  But he did nothing about it. He was pacing the floor again, thinking.

  “No!” he said suddenly. “Two of Ali Baba’s men must make the trip. If one gets scuppered, the other may get through. I’ll give them two identical letters. They’ll hate to do it, but I can talk the old man round and they’ll obey him. But it’s rotten having to squeal after all this! Damn! I hate it! Jiminy! No! Wait! By gorry, man; I’ll be durned if I won’t try that first!”

  “Try what?”

  But one of a dozen things you can never make Grim do is talk over the details of a plan that is only half-formed in his mind. He quit pacing the floor, and went and squatted Arab-fashion on the window-seat again.

  * * * * *

  I DID not get a glimmer of what he intended until half an hour later de Crespigny came in, bringing the Sheikh of the mosque with him. Grim gave the Sheikh the window-seat and took the darker corner for himself; taking the hint, I squatted in the curtained alcove leading to the hall, where I might be presumed to be door-keeper and could overhear without being too much seen.

  Grim began by asking the Sheikh what arrangements he had made for the night and listened gravely, making no comment.

  “Do you think the whole plan is good?” he asked at last.

  “Allah! It is your plan! How should you ask that?”

  “I propose to call it off!” said Grim and even de Crespigny gasped.

  “Ma bisir abadan! [That will never do!] Call it off now, after I have stood up in the mosque before all the people and told of a vision and persuaded them and all? How can you call it off? They will simply massacre the Jews!”

  “No. It seems to me it would be simpler after all to tell the truth about it.”

  “Who will believe you?”

  “Every one! I have the man who invented the whole trick as well as those who carried it out. They are all Moslems. I propose to tell the people quite simply that the whole thing was a trick, with you a party to it. I can go and talk to them when they gather before the mosque tonight. They might kill the Jews then, afterward, but attend to you first!”

  “And you! They would kill you too!”

  “Perhaps. But why me? I don’t think that in the circumstances they would kill a British officer, who had exposed you for playing tricks on them!”

  “A British officer? I don’t understand.”

  “I’m a British officer.”

  “You?”

  “Sure. Used to be Governor of Hebron. Grim’s my name. I’m better known as Jimgrim.”

  “Hah! Then that is simple! Denounce me tonight. Taib! I will denounce you for having entered the mosque by a trick. I will denounce you for sacrilege!”

  “All right. Then they’ll kill us both.”

  “But what good will that do you, Jimgrim?”

  “No good.”

  “Nor me either!” The Sheikh laughed like a man who believes he is conversing with a lunatic.

  “If you don’t want to be exposed tonight,” said Grim, “you’d better offer to make terms.”

  “Terms about what?”

  “You know as well as I do that the mob is planning to attack this Governorate after tonight’s ceremony, kill everybody in it, plunder it of arms, and march on Jerusalem.”

  “I can do nothing about that.”

  “Yes you can.”

  “Allah!”

  “You can think up some way of keeping the crowd idle until morning.”

  “I? They will not listen to me outside the mosque.”

  “All right. Talk to ’em inside the mosque.”

  “I have talked enough. I have already accepted risk enough. My place is enough in danger as it is.”

  “Can’t you have another vision?”

  “Mustahil! [Impossible!] They have had enough of visions! They are simple people, but determined. They intend to march on Jerusalem to protect their co-religionists before it is too late. Who can stop them?”

  “You can. You can hold them until it’s too late to make the attempt.”

  “I? How?”

  “You know as well as I do what will happen to them. They’ll be met by machine guns outside the walls of Jerusalem and mowed down.”

  “I cannot help that!”

  “Yes you can. It’s up to you. If that happens it will be on your head! Now, if we’re willing to go through with this performance tonight to save your position for you at the mosque, you ought to be willing to go a step further to save that crowd from the machine guns. Never mind about us. Consider the crowd.”

  “Ya hain! [Oh, the pity of it!] How I regret that I did not denounce those thieves in the first place!”

  “Regret’s no good! What are you going to do now; that’s the point. See here: If you’ll — yes, that’ll do the trick! — most of the ringleaders will be inside the mosque, for they’re a holy lot of rascals! — if you’ll get up in the pulpit and give them a long harangue to the effect that your spirit tells you to warn them — to go slow — to be cautious — to wait for the word; and that you’ll give ’em the word at the proper minute — you can leave the rest to us; and we’ll fix it so that you get credit as a prophet. Will you do that?”

  “Taib. I will do it. But I doubt that it will do any good.”

  “All right, that’s a bargain, then.” Grim turned to the governor. “Crep, old boy, trumps are all out; we must score the last trick with the deuce of spades!”

  CHAPTER XI. “Allahu akbar! La illahah il-allah!”

  YOU know that feeling at a melodrama of the old sort, when all the villain’s plans are prospering and a ghastly death stares the hero in the face; even although some fool has told you the plot in advance, so that you know what the end is going to be, you can’t pretend not to be all worked up about it. And most men — and more women — have faced at some time the imminent risk of death, wit
h just one chance of pulling through.

  Well, we enjoyed both sensations that night. We were spectators of a play and actors in it, not knowing yet whether it was comedy or tragedy. We hoped we could foresee the end, but weren’t at all sure.

  “We’re betting on the merest guess,” said Grim. “We may as well not fool ourselves. Perhaps we can hold the crowd until tomorrow morning. Perhaps not. If we succeed, perhaps the Sikhs will come. We’re betting they’ll come. If they do, good; Crep and Jonesy’ll be slated for promotion. If they don’t, we’ll none of us need rations ever any more, amen! Let’s go.”

  It was about nine o’clock — no moon — and the roar of El-Kalil was like the voice of a long tunnel full of railway trains, made all the more unholy by utter darkness. After a long consultation de Crespigny had left two policemen on guard at the jail and taken the other eight with him.

  The lonely little one-horse plan finally decided on, as the best possible in the event of an outbreak, was for de Crespigny and his eight police to fight their way to the jail, gather up the two guards, the jailer and his assistant, leave the jail and prisoners to the mob, and fall back on the Governorate. The rest of us were to join de Crespigny if we could and Doctor Cameron and the nurse were to take their chance of being unmolested at the hospital, seeing that neither of them would hear of any other course.

  It was decided that to make a last stand at the hospital, supposing we could ever reach it, would only seal the fate of two people whom the mob might otherwise treat as noncombatants.

  De Crespigny had ridden off, with his eight policemen tramping stolidly behind him, awfully afraid, yet proud as Lucifer to be the bodyguard of Law where no law would be otherwise, and encouraged by the sight of his brave young back bolt-upright in the saddle. A man’s back often tells a truer story than his face.

  Grim and I went on foot — to the Ghetto first, leaving Jones alone in the Governorate; for somebody had to hold headquarters, and the joyless job is the junior’s by right of precedent. Grim had a word to say to the jail-guards on the way and we reached without incident the narrowing gut where the street passes into the city by a fragment of the ancient wall.

  From that point onward it was one long struggle to force a way through the crowd. All Hebron was out, trying to win to the Ghetto gate and see the preliminaries. There was not room in the street for seven men to stand abreast, nor space by the Ghetto for a crowd of fifty; yet several thousand men were milling and crushing for a front view, like long-horn steers that smell water — and all in the dark. You couldn’t see the face of a man three paces off.

  We soon got jammed up hopelessly and only contrived to keep together by clinging and wrestling. The hilt of a man’s sword took me under the ribs and pressed until I nearly yelled aloud with agony. I trod on his instep to give him a different sense of direction and if he could have drawn the sword I should have learned the feel of its sharper end. He started an argument, spitting out the savage abuse within six inches of my face and I did not dare answer him for fear of betraying myself with an obviously foreign accent. Grim saved that situation by a trick as old as Hebron is — a trick that has saved armies before now.

  He started to sing, choosing the lilting air the Hebron men love most, and making up the words to it, as nearly every singer does in that town of surviving customs.

  Oh, fortunate and famous are the men of El-Kalil!

  Allah watches them! Oh, Allah watches them!

  They are gallant to the stranger, to the stranger in the gates!

  Allah watches them! Oh, Allah watches them!

  They caught the refrain and throat after throat took it up, beginning to sway a little in time to it and ceasing from the cattle-thrust all in one direction that was pinning them choked and helpless between walls. The man who wanted my blood laughed and began to sing too.

  Hither came Er-Rahman [Abraham], hither across deserts, hither to make friendship with the men of El-Kalil!

  Allah watches them! Oh, Allah watches them!

  None else had befriended him. None had housed the stranger. Wondering he wandered to the tents of El-Kalil!

  Allah watches them! Oh, Allah watches them!

  Now the whole street was thundering the refrain and a rival singer took up the story of Abraham, for rivalry is keen among the bards of that place and no “sweet singer” lets a new man hold attention long if he can help it. And because the men of El-Kalil, like those of other cities, have their own moods and their own expressions of emotion they began to form groups and face inward, little by little easing the forward pressure as the men in the rear made room to sway and swing in time to the improvised ballad.

  Grim did not waste time then. He grabbed me by the arm and hauled me into a doorway, kicked on the door until a woman opened and then without a word of explanation rushed past her up a rickety old stair-way to the roof. We were followed by a dozen men before she could get the door closed again and whether Grim knew the way or not they showed it to us — up over roof after roof — flat ones, domed ones, — along copings — jumping here and there across dark ditches that were Hebron “streets” and frequently scaring women off the roofs in front of us — pursued all the way by the thunder of the song Grim started.

  Allah watches them! Oh! Allah watches them!

  You could have recognized the Ghetto by the change of smells. But there was a glow of light there too, and rival music snarling from somewhere out of sight, tinny and thin but carrying its theme through endless bars instead of pausing to repeat, as Arab music does.

  We lay at the end of a roof and looked over — down on a sight so weird that the modern world and all that belonged to it became a dream forthwith. Not that this looked real; there was nothing real any longer. Life was a myth. We were dreamers, peering down into the vale of dreams.

  Have you ever seen the ancient Jewish costume? Purple and apricot-color — ancient Jews in turbans, with their long, curled earlocks, and the gestures that signify race-consciousness refusing not to be expressed? And the Jewish boys, togged out like their sires, gawky and awkward in the ancient costume, full of all the fiery zeal of their race and not yet trained to self-suppression?

  It was a courtyard below us, connected to the street by that dark passage we had entered the evening before. The passage was still as black as pitch, but open windows facing on the court bathed that in golden-yellow light. Framed in the windows there were Jewesses — Esthers, Rachels, Rebeccas — crowding for a front view, bejeweled with long gold ear-rings, open-mouthed, afraid — gleaming-eyed women.

  There was a committee of Arabs, thirty or forty strong, armed to the teeth, standing back to the wall around two sides of the court, eying the whole scene with owlish attention to detail. Back to the entrance of the passageway stood Ali Baba, with his sixteen sons behind him in a semi-circle; and behind them again, dimly discernible in shadow was an old muballir chanting nasally from a copy of the Koran held with both hands on his lap. The Jewish music, out of the darkness in the corner opposite was, presumably by way of opposition to that heresy.

  The most striking figure of them all was Cohen, standing in the midst, facing Ali Baba, with the Chief Rabbi on his right hand and another on his left. He wore a turban, to which false ringlets had been pinned, and was nearly naked to the waist, his skin gleaming in the mellow light.

  They had togged him out like an Orthodox Jew, but there was a girdle about his waist and all the upper part of his clothing hung down from that, so that he looked like a butcher about to slay according to ancient ritual.

  The armed Arabs began to grow impatient and two or three of them called out, but I could not catch what was said. The cry was taken up by the younger Jews behind, and without waiting for the muballir to finish chanting Ali Baba stepped up to Cohen and breathed fire on him.

  Instantly the whole of Cohen’s torso seemed to leap into flame — blue flame, of the sort that dances on a Christmas pudding — flame that crawled snake-fashion, changing shape to disappear in one plac
e and appear in another. The Arabs roared delight; the women shrilled in the windows, and the young Jews at the rear set up a dogfight din that might have meant anything.

  Cohen took something in his hands — a sponge it might have been — pressed it to his breast, and that, too, caught fire. The flame died down on his body and flickered out, but the thing in his hands burned on. Ali Baba bowed to the ground in front of it, all his sons following suit; then the sons made way down their midst for him and turned behind him four abreast as he started for the street. The band of Jewish musicians struck up a lively air with cymbals, and Cohen started after them, followed by two Rabbis and at least two hundred other Jews, all chanting, while the Arabs waited to come last, flashing their swords in air and yelling in praise of Allah.

  The last I saw of the procession just then was a ball of fire in the black passage that rose and fell as Cohen tossed it and the weird sheen on his arms and breast as the blue light flashed on them.

  “Let’s go!” said Grim and we crossed by an arch above a dark street that was all one voice of roaring men, who milled and mobbed to get out of the way of the fire-gift, urged to it by men on wiry gray ponies who pricked at them with spear-tips and cursed in the name of the Most High. The Jewish music penetrated through and above the din like the wail of forgotten ages; but every minute or so every other sound was suddenly drowned beneath the Moslem roar that answers all arguments, confounds all doubters, satisfies all requirements.

  “Allahu akbar! La illahah il-allah! God is great. There is no god but God!”