I have kept that Bible as a souvenir, with the verses from the Koran written on the flyleaf in Arabic in Grim’s fine hand.  Underneath them, in Greek characters with a pencil line scrawled through them, is the only sentence that interested me at the moment: 

“This looks good.  Keep Anazeh quiet and sober.”

Anazeh was beginning to hold forth again, shaking his fist at Abdul Ali and making the roof echo to his mighty bellowing.  I tugged at the skirt of his cloak, and after a minute he sat down to discover what I wanted.  He seemed to think I needed reassurance.  He began to flood me with promises of protection.  It was about a minute before I could get a word in edgeways.  Then: 

“Jimgrim says,” said I.

“Jimgrim!  Is he here?”

“He surely is.”

“How do you know?”

“We have a sign.  Jimgrim says, ’Be quiet, and drink no strong drink.’”

He leaned across to Mahommed ben Hamza, doubting his ears and my Arabic.  I repeated the message, and ben Hamza translated.

“I don’t believe Jimgrim is here!” said Anazeh.  “I would know him among a million.”

“It is true,” said ben Hamza, grinning from ear to ear, “for I myself know where he sits!”

“Where then?” Anazeh demanded excitedly.

“Don’t you dare!” said I, and ben Hamza grinned again.

“He is my friend.  I say nothing,” he answered.

Anazeh put in the next five minutes minutely examining every face within range, while the din of argument rose louder and more violent than ever, and suspicion of me seemed to be gaining.

But suddenly Suliman ben Saoud got to his feet and there was silence.  They were all willing to listen to a member of the Ichwan sect, for the news of its power and political designs had spread wherever men talk Arabic.  He spoke gutturally in a dialect that ben Hamza did not find it any too easy to follow, so I only got the general gist of Grim’s remarks.

He said that he had much experience of raids and of making preparations for them.  A raid aimed at the Zionists—­at this moment—­might be good—­perhaps.  They were better judges of that than he.  But it was all-important to know who was in favour of the raid, and exactly why.  The words men spoke were not nearly so impressive as the deeds they did.  Therefore, when the illustrious Sheikh Abdul Ali of Damascus urged a raid on the one hand, and boasted of provision for a school in El-Kerak on the other, it would be well to examine this foreign effendi, whom Abdul Ali claimed to have introduced.  The claim was disputed, but the claim was not made for nothing.  In his judgment, based on vast experience of politics in Arabia, motives were seldom on the surface.  All depended on the motives of the illustrious Abdul Ali.  This stranger from America—­he glared balefully at me—­should be investigated thoroughly.  As a man of vast experience with the interests of El-Islam at heart, he offered respectfully to examine this stranger thoroughly with the aid of an interpreter.  He confessed to certain suspicions; should they prove unfounded, then it might be reasonable to credit the rest of Abdul Ali’s statements; if not, no.  He was willing, if the honourable mejlis saw fit, to take the stranger aside and put many questions to him.