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Craven looked suddenly exhausted, and Yoshio who had stolen in noiselessly, was standing at the head of the bed beyond the range of his master's eyes making urgent signals to the visitor to go. With a jest and a cheery word Said obediently removed his picturesque person. It was nearly four months before Craven left the camp of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah.
He had met them half-way, sinking his own inclinations and disarming their suspicions of him. At the same time he had let it be clearly understood that he meant to be absolute as his father had been. In spite of the civilisation that had bitten so deeply he was still too much an Arab, too much the son of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, to be anything but an autocrat at heart.
The older men the headmen in particular more prejudiced still, who, like Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, had centred all their hopes on Omar, were beginning to comprehend that their fears of Said's rule were unfounded and that his long sojourn among the hated dominant race had neither impaired his courage nor fostered practices abhorrent to them.
He had known them both on his previous visits, though he had not recognised them in the dark hours of the dawn when they joined the troop, and remembered them as two of the most dare-devil and intrepid of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's followers.
He hardly knew for what he looked for their destination lay many miles further southward and the possibility of unexpected attack had been foreseen by Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, whose scouts had ranged the district for weeks past, but the impression once aroused of an impending something lingered persistently and fixed his attention.
Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, elderly when his sons had been born, had aged with startling suddenness since the death of Omar. He had all at once become an old man, unable to rally from the shock of his bereavement, bewailing the fate of his elder and favourite son, and trembling for the future of his beloved tribe left to the tender mercies of a man he now recognised to be more Frenchman than Arab.
To rule a tribe who have become too powerful to have enemies; to listen to interminable tales of theft and disputed inheritances and administer justice to people who swear by the Koran and then lie in your face; to marry a wife and beget sons that the tribe of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah may not die out. Grand Dieu, what a life!" The tragic misery of his voice left no doubt as to his sincerity.
The opposing force appeared to outnumber them considerably, but he knew from Said that Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's men were better equipped and better trained. It would be skill against brute force, though it yet remained to be seen how far Omar's men would respond to their training when put to the test.
Twice before he had visited the tribe as the guest of the Sheik Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's younger son, an officer of Spahis whom he had met in Paris, and the warm hospitality shown him had left a deep impression. A sudden unaccountable impulse had led him to revisit a locality where he had spent some of the happiest months of his life.
As soon as he had been able to get about again Craven had visited Mukair Ibn Zarrarah in his darkened tent and been shocked at his changed appearance.
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