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Updated: June 8, 2025
Arrange good terms for my ransom, and I will see that Ali Higg wipes off Ayisha's score." "We shall see about that; we shall see," he answered. "Yes, yes! You go and see! Go to him now!" "When we halt," the Sikh answered. "In an hour it may be too late," she insisted. "If Ali Higg is prowling and should swoop down on you who would bargain then?"
Narayan Singh, rifle in hand, sprang on to Ayisha's little Bishareen, and she jumped into the shibriyah, like a pair doing stunts at the circus. So far good. But the rest was amateurish. We milled badly. Grim away in front had halted to let the line close, and we swarmed around him like a herd of steers that smell wolves, and nobody seemed to know which way to look, or what to do next.
There was a rift in the side-wall there, making a pitch-dark corner where the camels could lie unseen and grumble to one another safe enough until daylight, unless they should see ghosts and try to stampede for the open. Grim sent the women and Ayisha's four men up to the caves with only Narayan Singh to watch them, for there was no way of escape, except by that twelve-inch goat-track.
Perched on top of the lady Ayisha's beast was a thing they call a shibrayah a sort of tent with a top like an umbrella, resting on the loads slung to the camel's flanks. From inside that she was busy abusing everybody.
Grim chose Mujrim Ali Baba's eldest son a black-bearded, forty-year-old giant two of the younger men, Narayan Singh and me; and with the lady Ayisha's beast in tow with the empty shibrayah set off directly the sun was a span high over the nearest dune. We rode almost straight toward the sun, and in five minutes it appeared how close we were to the village whence danger might be expected.
Around Grim now were Narayan Singh, Ayisha, and myself with our prisoner Yussuf, and Ayisha's four. Grim watched his chance and sent me to bring back four of Ali Baba's men, and by the time I had done that he had lessened the distance perceptibly between himself and the three lone individuals in front.
"Get in quick, then, and kidnap him," I urged. "Man alive," he answered, "we've no kind of right to do that. Bring her down," he told Narayan Singh, "and then have Mujrim tie those four men of Ayisha's so they've no chance to escape." Jael Higg came down in a livid passion altogether too near home to enjoy taking secondhand orders from an Indian in the dark.
That was what I should have done. But suddenly Grim turned and pushed the muzzle of his pistol into Ayisha's face as she leaned out of the shibrayah to watch. It caught her under the jawbone, so that she could not see what his finger was doing, and did not dare try to move away. "Now shout!" he ordered her. "Tell 'em your name Wallahi! Yell, or I'll kill you."
They came to a halt ten yards away from Ayisha's tent, and stared at her in silence, realizing, apparently for the first time, that they had come within rifle-shot of strangers. We could see her talking to them, but could not hear what she said. Perhaps that was as well.
So Narayan Singh cast appraising eyes on the shibriyah, and curled up in it like a big dog, without troubling to ask Ayisha's permission. Sleep was his first intention, but he was for killing two birds with one stone; I did not realize at the time what a chance that was going to provide for making the first advances to the lady.
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