Adventure Magazine Cover — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

118 He had broken into a house at random, where he had held up a patriarch and the whole family—had explained as much as he thought fit and demanded food, ef cetera. Apparently he hadn’t needed his rifle. Although he was somewhat reticent about the affair, we gathered that as he hadn't expected us home till the dawn, expressly stated, he had consented to accept the hos- pitality of the patriarch and incidentally his pretty daughters. Trust Billy for that! He had, so he said, spent the whole night in sounding the head of the family. Here, as in all, or nearly all, Mohammedan towns I have ever known or heard of, there were Jews who are always persecuted by the Mohammedans and always have more money than all the others. What they had in the way of goldware was enough to make a pirate swoon, said Billy. However, he had not succeeded as far as he knew in mak- ing any practical arrangement for getting away; solely, he insisted, because they were so almighty scared. So Billy. Anyway we were always good—through Billy apparently—for food and water and also wine of a crude and fierce variety, as he proved. However, on the way back he had found the heroes at their posts and had had to pot the gentleman who opposed his road, the ensuing uproar being the fusillade after him into the sacred wood where, as Sabah had said, none dared to follow. In the mean time the sun had come and Sabah had finished his devotions, to which Allah I never could determine; but as there are in Islam, as in other religions, sixty-and- seven different sects, I suppose it wasn’t of much importance. Having suggested that Fieldmorre explain the position to Billy, I undertook to entertain the king of the bugs, as I irreverently called him. WZ, he picked up his prayer carpet, and for our own nefarious purposes said as politely as I knew how: “‘See here, Sabah, Lord Fieidmorre and my friend who’s just come back want to talk the matter over. If you—um— Watch the sunrise with me, huh?” Sabah looked at me. He had turned and was facing the east again; the blood glow of the sun was on his face. The eyes and the features which had been like those of an old man were twenty years younger; his flesh I WALKED back to meet Sabah as Adventure seemed firm, and the network of wrinkles was clean wiped out. I remember kind of staring at him and thinking— “Glory, the poets talk about love; but that’s no kind of dope like this!” He looked at me and quietly sat on the ruined wall; and at the moment Fox, the film man, if he could have seen him, would have given half a million bucks to have him pose as John the Baptist. Ill admit I felt uncomiortable. I’m no diplomat anyway, which fact Billy is too fond of rubbing in to me. Said Sabah— “You don’t—like me, Mr. Tromp.” “T don’t, Sabah!” said I, nearly laughing. “But you don’t like me, as you were so mighty kind to point out.” “Tt is impossible!” “T’m with you,” I agreed heartily. “You do not understand, as it is impossi- ble that the West shall understand the East.” “How about Lord Fieldmorre then?” I queried, wondering what he’d say. ‘“‘Hle comes from the East, for he is of an ancient family, a Celt. But yet he is ruined. For you of the West build vour houses on the future, which is sand; and we of the East build on the past, which 1s rock.”’ Somehow I reckon my slumbering demo- cratic spirit was riled. I felt kind of mad with all this king and lord stuff. “Now say, Sabah,” said I, “if you want to talk, that’s what we’d call sophistry. You seem to think that every guy in the States is some sort of a cross between a dago and a squarehead. Now I’m not given to showing the high spots; but as for family, ——, man! If you must know, my mother was Queen of the Gas-House Gang and my father was the Prince of the Ten Der Loin. His father was the Duke Bronx, who was descended from an illegitimate son of Charlemagne. You've heard of him, have- n’t you, Sabah?” ‘Yes, sir, I have read of him.” “Well, Charlemagne was the direct descendant of Bay Bee Doll, the King of the Ya Hoos. Get that?”’ “Ves, sir. And the Ya Hoos?” said Sabah in a distinctly different voice. ‘‘Were they of an eastern race?” “Sure they were,” said I solemnly. ‘The first Aryan race, who, as you must know, came from the Mesopotamian Valley. My great ancestor, Bay Bee Doll, was the king who reigned in the seventeenth century cCoOmiclook S (C@