Talbot Mundy

“ While we were eating breakfast in a circle in front of the tents, all sticking our right hands into a common messpan and eating like wolves—you have to be awfully careful not to use your left hand, and unless you eat fast you’ll get less than your share—there came five men on camels out of a wady—a shallow valley that lay like a cut throat with red rocks on its edge something over a mile away beyond the egg-shaped rock. ”

“ Grim took to sleeping in a tent with Mujrim and Ali Baba.
Considering the customs of that land—the savage, accepted way in which women swap owners when tribes are at war, and between times when the raids are made on caravan routes—it would be altogether wide of the mark to blame her too severely. Grim is a good-looking fellow, even in the khaki officer’s uniform that makes most Christians look alike. Disguised as an Arab he takes the eye of any man, to say nothing of women. ”

“ THE terms that Grim had imposed on Abbas Mahommed were perfectly well understood by every one concerned. The Arab is an individualist of fervid likes and dislikes, and the thing that perhaps he hates most of all is to be observed by strangers; he does not like it even from his own people. ”

“ And it may be they would have looked favorably on the chance to transfer allegiance from Ali Higg to Grim, who had crucified nobody yet; as Ayisha’s servants they would doubtless go with her, should she change owners.
She asked me repeatedly for love-potions, to be slipped into Grim’s food or into his drink, and was so importunate about it that, after consulting Grim, I gave her some boric powder. The next morning Grim told her that her eyes were like a young gazelle’s, so my reputation as a hakim rose several degrees.
“Is he mad?” growled Narayan Singh. “Ah! Each man has his weakness! ”

“ Some say that the very steel of the rails is sacred, because it was built to carry pilgrims to the Prophet’s tomb. But some say not. And those who lost the carrying trade on account of it, and the tribes that used to lie in wait in mountain passes for the Damascus caravan in the month of pilgrimage, say distinctly not. Between those two opinions there is a third, that of the gentry who declare it is a curse, to be turned back on the heads of those who use it. ”