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.
IX
It was towards evening when Saïd left the place where, weary from long walking in the fierce eye of noon, he had sought shelter and refreshment. A crowd of men, women and children—all who dwelt in that place—went out with him from among the hovels as far as a tall palm-tree, which crowned a smooth hillock green with grass. In the midst of the obsequious rabble Saïd strutted a king, distinguished as he was by the missionary’s brown dressing-gown, braided conspicuously with red, and girt about the waist with a red and tasselled cord; not to speak of the new scarlet
