Told in the East, Talbot Mundy [crime books to read .txt] 📗

acquaintance with the reef, and his small-boat seamanship, born of hard pulling in the trough of beam-on-seas, was well suited to the local type of craft.

So nobody questioned his right to the title of harbor pilot. And if certain perquisites went with an otherwise barren office, that was to be expected. Who worked for nothing, or for the empty honor of it, in Arabia?

Nobody can pass the reef at night in shallow-draft lateen-sail boats without having him on board; and though he was never ostensibly paid for his services, it was understood that he performed pilot service in return for certain other opportunities that sometimes came his way. When things happened on the high sea that were not discussed in public, it was understood that Hassan Ah could have discussed them as thoroughly as anybody if he chose.

On the whole, then, and within limits that were only more or less definable, he was something of a personality. Men listened to him when he raised his voice in argument, and as one who could grant favors on occasion his words had weight.

The sun was very nearly in its zenith, beating down on dry Arabia between racing black clouds, when he had finished talking to the local council in the ramshackle old council-house, skin and mat curtained, that faced the sheik's where the main street broadened for a hundred filthy yards into a market-place. All through his argument he had held a pure-white bull terrier between his knees as proof that he knew whereof he spoke.

“Can any of you hold him without being bitten?” he demanded. And they did not seem to care to try.

“I know the ways of these men!” he asserted, drawing extravagant expressions of contentment from the dog in proof of it.

So the others in the stuffy council place gave the dog a wide berth and no privilege, but conceded him the right to hold the beast, if he wanted to, without personal defilement. And since the way of the world is that a man who has won the first of his contentions can win all the rest with half the ease, he persuaded them with a hurricane of black man's rhetoric to do what Arabs consider almost wicked.

Unbelievers who are prisoners should die, beyond all question.

“As the dregs of oil shall the fruit of the tree of Al Zakkum boil in the bellies of the damned!” the sheik quoted. “They should be hurried, therefore, to the punishment that waits!”

But Hassen Ah outargued him.

“Then they will land men from the ship, who will search our houses,” he asserted. “Is there a majority in the council who would like to be searched by unbelievers?”

“Then bind them, and take them to their ship, and tell a tale of much drunkenness and wrong-doing. Ask an indemnity, and show the proofs, which will be easy to arrange.”

“They, too, will tell their tale!” said Hassan Ah in perfect Arabic.

Unlike the more enlightened peoples of the West, Arabs do not encourage the mutilation of their mother-tongue; they teach it as carefully as they talk it, and this negro spoke like an Arab of the blood.

“There are certain damages they have received—some bruises on the face and tears in the clothing that does not belong to them but their government,” he continued. “They would lay all the blame on us, and would breathe in the face of an appointed man, in proof that they were not drunk. And who could get other drink than coffee or water here? And who would believe the rest of our story, having found that part to be a lie? There would be a landing, and a search for proof, and much unpleasantness. Besides—”

If he had intended to add further arguments, the sheik saw fit to nip them in the bud; for there were some men in the council-room who did not know as much as Hassan Ah. Any free man may speak in council in Arabia.

“What is thy way, then?” he asked.

The woolly headed pilot laughed aloud, taking care to make it evident that he was laughing at the prisoners; to laugh at a sheik or a sheik's bewilderment would be too dangerous.

“I would send them to the ship well satisfied,” he answered.

“With money?” asked the sheik.

“With whose money?” asked Hassan Ah.

“With thine?” shot back the sheik.

“In the name of Allah, no!”

The black man laughed again, and rose to lean against the wall behind him, gathering the dog up in his arms.

“If it is the order of the council,” he asserted, “I will send them back satisfied, with a tale to tell that will bring about no landing. Also, I will give the council much amusement.”

“But will other sailors land afterward, seeking similar amusement?” asked the sheik.

“No! There will be an order that none land!”

The sheik took a vote on it. Heads nodded solemnly all around the room as his eyes sought each half-veiled face in turn. His own face was almost altogether shielded by the brown linen head-dress, for men of his race like to reach a judgment unobserved. They were all nods that answered him, and he saw fit to keep his own opinion to himself.

“Thou seest? These others are all with thee. Have it thine own way, Hassan Ah. Unlock thou the riddle and on thy head be the answer! Thou hast our leave to go.”

So Hassan Ah set out undaunted for the jail, with a terrier in tow behind him and a huge smile on his broad-beamed face. And behind him a murmur rose that:

“It was well. He brought the warship in, instead of leaving it outside or—as any wise man would have done—wrecking it on the outer reef, where it could have been plundered at discretion. Let him send the sailors back again and bear the consequences!”

And within a minute of the pilot's arrival at the window of the jail (through which he peered for two minutes before speaking) the whole of Adra's council, followed by the city's children in a noisy horde, proceeded in a cluster after him and took up position, each as he saw fit, at different vantage points.

Then Hassan Ah shook a loose bar of the window until it rattled, and so called attention to himself. Crothers and Joe Byng raced for the window neck and neck, and reached it simultaneously.

“You two men want you-ah dog?” asked Hassan Ah, and the chained dog leaped up at the window as both men swore at once.

“You pass him in here! Come on, you black-faced cornerman! There'll be a cutter's crew ashore pretty soon to rescue us, and if you don't hand that dog over before they get here you'll get the worst whipping you ever had in all your black life!”

“They'll feed you to the dog when they're through with you!” vowed Byng.