the ground. He untied the string which closed the
end of one of the legs and signed to me to stoop
down and take a drink. As I put my mouth to the
opening he punched the gurbah slightly in the ribs,
or rather where the ribs had once been, causing the
contents to overflow. It was sour camel’s milk a
most acceptable drink, when you are used to it, on a
hot day.
He offered my men a drink, and when they had
eagerly availed themselves of his offer, he tied up
the opening to the skin, and hung it up again in its
place. He then swung his foot into the slack of his
camel’s neck, and so hoisted himself into the saddle.
When in his seat he turned round, wished us a
pleasant journey and good-bye, and then rode off at
a trot. A pleasanter murderer it would be impossible
to find!
The squabble between Aissa and El Ayed,
though at an end for a time, was only in abeyance,
and soon flared out again.
I was the innocent cause of its renewal. The
camel had been made to kneel in order for me to
mount, and I had just got up on to a sort of pad
which Aissa had arranged over his hump by means
of the tent and a bundle of rugs, when the brute
suddenly rose to his feet before I had had time to
get hold of the saddle to keep myself in my place,
with the result that I fell off, turned a complete
somersault and fell, fortunately for me, upon my
feet.E
l Ayed burst out laughing at my mishap.
Aissa was in one of his most irritable moods, and
had been trying ever since the squabble on the day
before to pick a quarrel with his fellow henchman.
He turned round upon him furiously, and began to
call him every name that he could lay his tongue to.
He told him that he was a dirty Bedouin, an
ill-mannered pig, a son of a dog, and not fit to
associate with such respectable Arabs as himself and
El Haj, much less with a European. He then
began to criticise, I fear with some truth, his
personal character, and to hint, in a most tasteless
manner, at certain scandals in his family history
which had much better have been left unmentioned.
He gradually worked himself up by his own oratory
into such a frenzy that at the end he was fairly
screaming with rage.
El Ayed took it at first in very good part, merely
laughing contemptuously at his remarks. But as
this only served to add fuel to the fire, with the result
that Aissa became more and more abusive, he began
at length to become nettled at his words. He ceased
to laugh and became ominously serious. I saw his
hand go beneath his burnous to where his knife and
pistol lay, and he began to creep slowly forward
towards his traducer.
In a few more seconds the two would have come
to blows, but fortunately at that moment El Haj,
scenting a fight in the air, and very anxious not to
be left out of it, sauntered, kasrullah in hand,
casually up in readiness to anticipate any attack
upon his cousin by whacking his assailant over the
head.
El Haj was a person to be reckoned with, and