“An oath given under compulsion—­” I began.  But he laughed cynically.

“Ah!  You do not know this land—­these folk, effendi.  If I were to break such an oath as that, they would burn my house, steal my cattle, ravish my wife, and hunt me to the death.  If I ran away to America, Arabs in Chicago and New York would continue the hunt.  This is a land where an oath is binding, unless you are the stronger.  I am weak—­an unimportant person.”

“What is your business?” I asked.

“There is no business for a man like me.  The regulations forbid commerce in the only goods for which there is a real demand among Bedouins.”

“So you’re a smuggler, eh?”

He laughed, between pride and caution, and changed the subject.

“I shall do what they order me, effendi.  I think they will keep my boat over there to bring you back again.  But when I get back the Sikhs will arrest me.  So I ask you to bear me witness that I was compelled by threats and force to go with these people.  In that way, with a little ingenuity—­that is to say, the ingenious use of piastras—­perhaps I can contrive to get out of the difficulty without being punished by both Arabs and British.”

I promised to tell no more than I had seen and heard.  On the strength of that we became as fast friends as suspicion permitted.  We trusted each other, because we more or less had to, like a couple of thieves “on the lam.”  It suited me.  He was a very good interpreter and slavishly anxious to please.  But I lived to regret it later.  When my evidence had cleared him of collusion in the raid, he chose on the strength of that to claim me as his friend for life.  He turned up in the United States and tried to live on his wits.  I had to pay a lawyer to defend him in Federal Court.  He writes me piously pathetic letters from Leavenworth Penitentiary.  And when he gets out I suppose I shall have to befriend him again.  However, at the moment, he was useful.

It was just dawn when old Anazeh ran the launch into a cove between high rocks.  Ahmed let out a shriek of anguish at the violence done the hull.  They pitched the sheep overboard to wade ashore without remembering to untie its legs; it was almost drowned before it occurred to any one to rescue it.  Perhaps it was dead.  I don’t know.  Anyhow, one fellow prayed in a hurry while his companion cut the sheep’s throat to make it lawful meat.

“God is good,” old Anazeh remarked to me, “and blessed be His Prophet, who forbade us faithful, even though we hunger, to defile ourselves with the flesh of creatures whose blood did not flow from the knife of the slayer.”

After that they all prayed, going first into the oily-feeling, asphaltic water for the ceremonial washing.  They were quite particular about it.  Then they spread prayer-mats, facing Mecca.  Every single cut-throat had brought along his prayer-mat, and had treasured it as carefully as his rifle.