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Updated: June 11, 2025
"But that is all nonsense!" he tried to assure himself, as he took his binoculars from the rack and sighted at the forbidding, mysterious range. "Am I responsible for a Moslem's superstitions, or his fanatic irrationality?" The Master's own narrow escape from death disturbed him not at all. He hardly even thought of it. All he strove for, now, was to exculpate himself for Rrisa's death.
Suddenly he leaped from the berth, strode to the table and caught up Rrisa's dagger. "Allah! What's this?" he exclaimed. "Rrisa he's been here and with a knife? For a second or two he stood there, staring at the jambiyeh in his grip. His powerful frame tautened; his thick, corded neck swelled with the intensity of his emotion as his head went forward, staring. His jaw set hard.
The words issued from his unwilling throat as if torn out by main force. "But I earnestly beg of you, my sheik, do not make me do this thing!" "Rrisa, if I command, thou must obey me! 'There is only one thing can ever loose the bonds I have knotted about thee." "That is certainty! It means Jehannum, and an unhappy couch shall it be!" Rrisa's face grew even more drawn and lined.
What I would most like to know is this: where is all that treasure, now?" "I cannot tell you, Master." "At Mecca?" "No, Master, not at Mecca." "Then where?" "M'almé! "Not against the commands of thy sheik and I am thy sheik!" Rrisa's lips twitched. The inner struggle of his soul reflected itself in his lean, brown face.
With more precipitation than was customary with him, he dressed and went to Rrisa's cabin. Its emptiness confirmed his suspicions. Returning along the outer gallery, a little pale, he reached the railing opposite his own window. Here a scratch on the metal drew his attention. Closely he scrutinized this scratch.
In Rrisa's fighting-blood the supreme battle of his whole existence was aflame duty of annihilating the violator of his Faith combating duty of loyalty absolute to one whose salt he had eaten, to one who had preserved his life. So, in the dark he stood there, a shadow among shadows.
A hint of whitish metal told the tale metal the Master recognized as having been abraded from a ring the Master himself had given him; a ring of aluminum alloy, fashioned from part of a Turkish grenade at Gallipoli. The Master's face contracted painfully. In his mind he could reconstitute the scene Rrisa's hands gripping the rail, his climb over it, his leap.
Undoubtedly hard as this was to understand, and much as it contradicted Rrisa's prediction the attitude of these Jannati Shahr folk was friendly. Unless, indeed, all this meant ambush. But to look into those grave, deep eyes, to see that furrowed countenance of noble, straight-forward uprightness, seemed to negative any such suspicion.
The Arab's face, with white-rimmed eyes and with lips drawn back from teeth, had become that of a wild animal. Rrisa's nostrils were dilated, to scent out the enemy. He was breathing hard, as if he had run a mile. "They are near, now, Ya M'almé!" said he. "They are close at hand, these nakhawilah! Allah, the high, the great, hath delivered them into our hands.
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