He sat down before any one could answer him, and whispered to Ali Shah al Khassib, who called on another man to speak at once.  It was a pretty obvious piece of concerted strategy, but he got by with it for the moment.  The general feeling seemed to be in favour of a raid if only some one would start it.  Nobody seemed to mind much how the decision was arrived at, so long as the responsibility was passed to some one else.

The man now called on was a smooth-tongued, tall, lean individual with shifty eyes, and a flow of talk of the coffeeshop variety.  At the end of his first sentence any fool would have known that he had been put up to quiz Abdul Ali, in order that Abdul Ali might have an excuse to justify himself.  He attacked him very mildly, with much careful hedging and apologetic gesture, on the ground that possibly the Damascene was ignoring their interests while urging them to take action that would suit his own.

Even with that mild criticism he set loose quite a murmur of minority agreement.  For the first time since the speech-making began Anazeh barked approval.  I thought for a moment the old man was going to get to his feet.  But Abdul Ali was up again first, and launched on the seas of self-esteem.

If I had not listened to equally childish political maneuvers in the States, and seen them succeed for the reason that people who want something want also to be fooled into getting it by special arguments, it would have seemed incredible that a man, who had recently boasted of statesmanship, should dare to make such a public ass of himself.  Yet, for fifteen minutes he carried the whole meeting with him, and the warmth of his self-satisfied emotion made him ooze resplendent sweat.

“Now he speaks of you, effendi,” Mahommed ben Hamza whispered; and in confirmation of it Anazeh clutched my arm, as if to keep the tide of eloquence from washing me away.

Had the British done anything for the country this side of Jordan?  Anything for the people’s education, for instance?  No!  Instead, they had taken away the missionaries.  Better than nothing were those missionaries.  They had their faults.  They undermined religion.  But they taught.  And the British had called them in, giving some ridiculous excuse about danger.  It had remained then for him—­Abdul Ali of Damascus and of El-Kerak —­the same individual who was now urging them to strike for their own advantage—­to take the first step for the establishment in El-Kerak of a school that should be independent of the British.  He, Abdul Ali, greatly daring because he had the interest of El-Kerak at heart, had introduced that day into the mejlis a distinguished guest from the United States, whose sole desire—­ whose only object in life—­whose altruistic and divine ambition was to establish an American secular school in El-Kerak!

He sat down, glowing with super-virtue.  And then the fur flew.  Anazeh was first on his feet.