But the kid was in torment.  His idea of manliness precluded any exhibition of fear in front of me, if he could possibly restrain himself.  He would not have minded breaking down in front of Grim, for he knew that Grim knew him inside out.  On the contrary, he looked down on me, as a mere amateur at the game, who had never starved at the Jaffa Gate, nor eaten candle-ends, or gambled for milliemes* with cab-drivers’ sons while picking up odds and ends of gossip for a government that hardly knew of his existence.  In front of me he proposed to act the man—­guide—­ showman—­mentor.  He considered himself my boss. [The smallest coin of the country.]

But it was stem work.  If there had been a little noise to make the shadows less ghostly; if Suliman had not been full of half-digested superstition; or if he had not overheard enough to be aware that a prodigious, secret plot was in some way connected with that cavern, he could have kept his courage up by swaggering in front of me.

He nearly fell asleep, with his head in my lap, at the end of half-an-hour.  But when there was a sound at last he almost screamed.  I had to clap my hand over his mouth; whereat he promptly bit my finger, resentful because he knew then that I knew he was afraid.

It proved to be approaching footsteps—­the sheikh of the mosque again, leading the man from Trichinopoli and a party of three friends.  Their rear was brought up by Noureddin; Ali’s spy, anxious about me, but pretending to want to overhear the sheikh’s account of things.

The sheikh reeled it all off in a cultured voice accustomed to using the exact amount of energy required, but even so his words boomed in the cavern like the forethought of thunder.  You couldn’t help wondering whether a man of his intelligence believed quite all he said, however much impressed the man from Trichinopoli might be.

“We are now beneath the very rock on which Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.  This rock is the centre of the world.  Jacob anointed it.  King Solomon built his temple over it.  The Prophet of God, the Prince Mahommed, on whose head be blessings! said of this place that it is next in order of holiness after Mecca, and that one prayer said here is worth ten elsewhere.  Here, in this place, is where King Solomon used to kneel in prayer, and where God appeared to him.  This corner is where David prayed.  Here prayed Mahommed.

“Look up.  This hollow in the roof is over the spot where the Prophet Mahommed slept.  When he arose there was not room for him to stand upright, so the Rock receded, and the hollow place remains to this day in proof of it.  Beneath us is the Bir-el-Arwah, the well of souls, where those who have died come to pray twice weekly.  Listen!”

He stamped three times with his foot on the spot about two feet in front of where I sat, and a faint, hollow boom answered the impact.