Adventure Magazine Cover — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

I22 street of the quarter, a young Jew and a donkey turned the co aer. Billy brought his rifle up. The man squawked and fled, leaving his laden donkey. We stopped a moment to put on our slippers, for no one but a slave or a Jew would walk barefoot in a town. “Now we get into a bazaar street,” said Billy. ‘One thing, theyll think we’re Arabs and won’t scarce dare look at us. My old pal lives down a side lane beyond here.” ii THE market street was crowded Na with men and women, the men all Ss wearing black soutanes and em- broidered yellow slippers, and the women red ones, as here in their own quarters they were allowed to do so. The tiny shops, about three feet from the ground beneath the ragged and broken mats stretched overhead as an awning from house to house, were still crowded with the morning marketers. Except for cringing out of our way as we swaggered slowly along—for speed on foot would have been suspicious—scarcely a man looked at us. Without incident we arrived before the usual iron-studded gates of a Moorish house but painted Jewish style a bright blue. Holding our guns beneath our robes in order not to scare the inmates, Billy thumped on the door, and to the negro slave who appeared, demanded in a grum- bling, guttural Arabic to see the master. We were shown into the usual guest-room, not forgetting to leave our slippers on the threshold, and presently there appeared an old fellow who, in his black soutane and venerable beard, looked as if he had stepped out of that picture of Elijah feeding the ravens. In Arabic he politely welcomed us to his house and all that was his, in the customary manner; but it didn’t take half an eye to see that he was mighty scared, for he well knew that did the Arabs learn that he had sheltered us they would make it a good excuse to sack his home, at the very least. Yet in spite of that he did not forget his courtesy, and while talking oriental com- monplaces caused his daughters to wait on us with wine and sweetmeats on golden plates—young girls with blue-black hair and what I thought big pop eyes. How- ever, Billy seemed to get along with them Adventure fine, and evidently they were unanimous in their opinion of him. Later when Billy explained exactly what we needed I think the old boy was tickled to death that the demand was so light. Anyway he sent a slave out in an almighty hurry to buy jelabah of camel hair, a grayish color with bits of colored ribbon seattered about it, and dirty rozzah, such as is affected by the country and desert tribes. We hadn’t any means of paying for them, but to offer would not have been etiquette, and I, who had never had much to do with the Jewish element, made a ghastly error by calling down the blessings of Allah upon his venerable head. However, he didn’t take it amiss—being accustomed, I guess, to more serious insults than that—and made haste to offer us food. But he was obviously yearning for our departure; yet he was quite a sport, was old Ibrahim ibn Yusuf, and never by the flicker of an eye did he show how mad he was. He left us alone for an hour after the meal to rest and then came to bid us farewell. Billy didn’t see any more of the girls or he might have been tempted to linger. So about eight-thirty A.M. with our rifles slung under our armpits beneath the voluminous jelabah we went out into the glare again. Of course neither Billy nor I knew the road nor, except vaguely, the direction of the palace. We sauntered along in that general direction until we came to the walls of the millah, and by following them came to the gate and so into the main city. Wandering through an arch, we found our- selves in the courtyard of a mosque. In the center, as usual, was the pool for making the ablutions. Now as I hadn’t had a bath or even a wash for so long that I couldn’t remember the last time, so to speak, that cool waterthad some attraction. Of course I, during those awful years, had learned every action of the ceremonial ritual; but the trouble was that I didn’t know whether Billy did; and as there were two men busy we mighty betray ourselves if Billy unwittingly made a blunder. I asked him in a low voice in Arabic if he knew and he assented; so, strolling up, we doffed our slippers and began. One of the two men was a hawk-nosed son of a gun who looked like one of our Tuareg friends. As I was at work, longing to strip and get right in, I noticed that he was staring hard. I glanced at Billy, scared CO@ DOOK S (©