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Updated: October 18, 2025
The lady Ayisha heard that remark, and the things she said for the next ten minutes about men in general and old Ali Baba in particular were as poisonous as the brimstone that once rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah.
Shout to 'em; d'you hear!" "Ayisha! What does this mean? Ali? Ali Higg? You here? I don't understand!" "You'll be dead before you understand if you don't call those men off," Grim answered; and his pistol demonstrated that he meant it, for her men were closing in on us. So she knelt up on her camel and cried out that Ali Higg was there, bidding them keep their distance.
When he said he wished the devil might pitch me into hell and roast me forever he wasn't exaggerating. But I got off my camel and boarded the engine nevertheless. Ayisha had handed over her mount to Ali Baba and entered the caboose, ignoring the protests of the uniformed conductor who, having not much faith in fortune, did not care whom he offended.
Suppose you go and see him, 'Crep, or send for him, and ask him straight out to provide camels for the lady Ayisha. He'll send his own men along with them, of course, and give them private instructions. Let's see four men and a woman plus provisions, and he'll probably send five men with them twelve camels, eh? Who else can raise seven good camels in this place?" "Easy. I know where to get 'em."
But nobody moved to do his bidding, and it dawned on him a second time that he was cornered. He wasn't a man who took such a discovery mildly. "Ayisha shall be dealt with at the proper time!" he snarled. "I have not accepted those gifts. Take them up! You who have entered Petra without my leave shall account to my men presently. Thereafter we will talk of gifts." "Which men?"
Neither woman spoke for a minute, or made any sign, but you could almost see the alternating current of scorn and hate that passed between them. Then Ayisha fell back on insolence and walked past Jael deliberately, with dark eyes flashing and a thin smile on her lips. "So you are now a Pathan's light o' love?" Jael sneered in Arabic. At that Ayisha turned again and faced her. "Who speaks?
Jael, the older one, offered Ayisha forgiveness if she would obey henceforth; but Ayisha gave her only hard words, saying that in a day or so it will be seen whose cock crows loudest. So Jael called to two of the men who have been with Ayisha all this time, and they squatted in the mouth of her cave. As it was very dark I crept quite close and listened.
"I will pay for my place in the caravan, according to the custom the half now and the other half on arrival." Without gesture, without moving a muscle of his face, Grim turned down that proposal desert-fashion, that is emphatically, with a reservation. "Ya sit Ayisha, may Allah do so to me, and more, if I will accept a price for this. Between Ali Higg and me let this thing be."
So long!" So Narayan Singh and I, followed by Ayisha and two of Ali Baba's sons, left that ancient temple bearing the medicine-chest as well as presents, and I hope the others did not feel as scared as I did. "Yet I Forgot to Speak of the Twenty Aeroplanes!" You can expect anything, of course, of Arabs.
* A scandalous piece of blasphemy "Give me the poison first, and we shall see," she laughed. "Very well; leave us for a while, Ayisha. I will persuade this master of mine, who has a vein of caution, since he lacks the zeal of love. I will bring you the stuff when he and I have talked it over." "Strong, strong stuff," she insisted. "Stuff that would eat iron. Ali Higg's belly is tough."
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