Arabia has some peculiarities, not all of them discreditable, which she does not share with any other country. There is, for instance, the kind custom that dictates the setting free of slaves when they have rendered seven years' good service.
That rule (and it is rather rule than law) tends to eliminate all class and color prejudice. Provided that a man will bow to Mecca three times daily and refrain from pork and wine, he may wear whatever skin God gave him and yet mingle with the best. He may even marry whom he will and can afford; and he may be whatever his ability, ambition, and audacity dictate.
And Hassan Ah had never been a slave, so he had even less to overcome than might have been the case. He stalked Adra socially uncondemned where once he had caught fish, groomed camels, and done other irritating jobs. His old fish-catching days had given him an intimate acquaintance with the reef, and his small-boat seamanship, born of hard pulling in the trough of beam-on-seas, was well suited to the local type of craft.
So nobody questioned his right to the title of harbor pilot. And if certain perquisites went with an otherwise barren office, that was to be expected. Who worked for nothing, or for the empty honor of it, in Arabia?
Nobody can pass the reef at night in shallow-draft lateen-sail boats without having him on board; and though he was never ostensibly paid for his services, it was understood that he performed pilot service in return for certain other opportunities that sometimes came his way. When things happened on the high sea that were not discussed in public, it was understood that Hassan Ah could have discussed them as thoroughly as anybody if he chose.
On the whole, then, and within limits that were only more or less definable, he was something of a personality. Men listened to him when he raised his voice in argument, and as one who could grant favors on occasion his words had weight.
The sun was very nearly in its zenith, beating down on dry Arabia between racing black clouds, when he had finished talking to the local council in the ramshackle old council-house, skin and mat curtained, that faced the sheik's where the main street broadened for a hundred filthy yards into a market-place. All through his argument he had held a pure-white bull terrier between his knees as proof that he knew whereof he spoke.
“Can any of you hold him without being bitten?” he demanded. And they did not seem to care to try.
“I know the ways of these men!” he asserted, drawing extravagant expressions of contentment from the dog in proof of it.
So the others in the stuffy council place gave the dog a wide berth and no privilege, but conceded him the right to hold the beast, if he wanted to, without personal defilement. And since the way of the world is that a man who has won the first of his contentions can win all the rest with half the ease, he persuaded them with a hurricane of black man's rhetoric to do what Arabs consider almost wicked.
Unbelievers who are prisoners should die, beyond all question.
“As the dregs of oil shall the fruit of the tree of Al Zakkum boil in the bellies of the damned!” the sheik quoted. “They should be hurried, therefore, to the punishment that waits!”
But Hassen Ah outargued him.
“Then they will land men from the ship, who will search our houses,” he asserted. “Is there a majority in the council who would like to be searched by unbelievers?”
“Then bind them, and take them to their ship, and tell a tale of much drunkenness and wrong-doing. Ask an indemnity, and show the proofs, which will be easy to arrange.”
“They, too, will tell their tale!” said Hassan Ah in perfect Arabic.
Unlike the more enlightened peoples of the West, Arabs do not encourage the mutilation of their mother-tongue; they teach it as carefully as they talk it, and this negro spoke like an Arab of the blood.
“There are certain damages they have received—some bruises on the face and tears in the clothing that does not belong to them but their government,” he continued. “They would lay all the blame on us, and would breathe in the face of an appointed man, in proof that they were not drunk. And who could get other drink than coffee or water here? And who would believe the rest of our story, having found that part to be a lie? There would be a landing, and a search for proof, and much unpleasantness. Besides—”
If he had intended to add further arguments, the sheik saw fit to nip them in the bud; for there were some men in the council-room who did not know as much as Hassan Ah. Any free man may speak in council in Arabia.
“What is thy way, then?” he asked.
The woolly headed pilot laughed aloud, taking care to make it evident that he was laughing at the prisoners; to laugh at a sheik or a sheik's bewilderment would be too dangerous.
“I would send them to the ship well satisfied,” he answered.
“With money?” asked the sheik.
“With whose money?” asked Hassan Ah.
“With thine?” shot back the sheik.
“In the name of Allah, no!”
The black man laughed again, and rose to lean against the wall behind him, gathering the dog up in his arms.
“If it is the order of the council,” he asserted, “I will send them back satisfied, with a tale to tell that will bring about no landing. Also, I will give the council much amusement.”
“But will other sailors land afterward, seeking similar amusement?” asked the sheik.
“No! There will be an order that none land!”
The sheik took a vote on it. Heads nodded solemnly all around the room as his eyes sought each half-veiled face in turn. His own face was almost altogether shielded by the brown linen head-dress, for men of his race like to reach a judgment unobserved. They were all nods that answered him, and he saw fit to keep his own opinion to himself.
“Thou seest? These others are all with thee. Have it thine own way, Hassan Ah. Unlock thou the riddle and on thy head be the answer! Thou hast our leave to go.”
So Hassan Ah set out undaunted for the jail, with a terrier in tow behind him and a huge smile on his broad-beamed face. And behind him a murmur rose that:
“It was well. He brought the warship in, instead of leaving it outside or—as any wise man would have done—wrecking it on the outer reef, where it could have been plundered at discretion. Let him send the sailors back again and bear the consequences!”
And within a minute of the pilot's arrival at the window of the jail (through which he peered for two minutes before speaking) the whole of Adra's council, followed by the city's children in a noisy horde, proceeded in a cluster after him and took up position, each as he saw fit, at different vantage points.
Then Hassan Ah shook a loose bar of the window until it rattled, and so called attention to himself. Crothers and Joe Byng raced for the window neck and neck, and reached it simultaneously.
“You two men want you-ah dog?” asked Hassan Ah, and the chained dog leaped up at the window as both men swore at once.
“You pass him in here! Come on, you black-faced cornerman! There'll be a cutter's crew ashore pretty soon to rescue us, and if you don't hand that dog over before they get here you'll get the worst whipping you ever had in all your black life!”
“They'll feed you to the dog when they're through with you!” vowed Byng.
“Come on, MacHassan!” ordered Crothers. “Get the key and pass the dog in. That'll settle your account. T hen you's free. You needn't be 'fraid.”
“Ah'm English,” said the pilot of the day before, with an enormous grin that showed a pound or two of yellow ivory. “Ah'm not afraid; Ah can lick you; Ah can fight same as you men. Ah'm English!”
“Fight? You Irish Chink! Which of us two do you want to fight?” asked the outraged Byng. “Come on in here! I'll fight you!”
But to Byng's amazement Hassan Ah pointed to Crothers, who was heavier by forty pounds or more and taller by at least half a head.
“Ah choose him!” he grinned; and Curley Crothers clenched both fists in absolute but quite unterrified amazement.
“Come on, then,” he answered. “Open the door.” Then, as an afterthought—“I'll fight you for the dog.”
“Ah don't want to kill that little man,” said Hassan Ah. “But Ah'll give you the dog, win or lose, if you'll fight me. You fight fair? You fight English?”
“Well, I'm damned!” said Crothers. “I fight Queensberry rules. That suit you?”
“Oh-ah, yes! Keensby rules, that's it. All right-o!”
Hassan Ah produced his key and turned it in the creaking lock. He was stripping himself even before the two sailors were out in the sun, and by the time that Crothers and Joe Byng had realized that there was an audience of something like a thousand, including children, he was standing posed like a gladiator, with the straight-down tropic sun streaming off his ebony hide. As Crothers, not quite sure even yet that the whole affair was not a joke, began to doff his blouse it dawned on him that if the thing were true it would not be a picnic.
“Do you mean this?” he asked.
“Ah shohly do. Are you afraid o' me?”
That, of course, settled matters. The thing was not a joke, and Englishman or nigger—black, green, white, or gray—the plot must be licked forthwith and in accordance with the rules.
Crothers spat into his hands, while Joe Byng folded up his blouse and knelt on it. He eyed his antagonist for at least a minute, summing him up and ignoring none of the woolly-headed one's physical advantages in weight and strength, in height and reach, in being used to the climate and the glare, the odds were all with Hassan Ah. Then he sized up the moral odds; and though a biased audience might be at first supposed to weigh against him too, the sight of all those Arabs waiting to see him beaten roused his fighting dander.
“Do you represent the bloke that spat on us two men?” asked Crothers.
“Ah represent maself! Ah'm English! Ah fight English, and Ah'll prove it!”
“Aw, wade into him!” advised Joe Byng. “London Prize Rules—no time called until a man's down. Go on, Curley—lead!”
“Do you agree?” asked Crothers.
“Suttainly!” The black man seemed disposed to agree to anything so long as he could get what he was after.
“Then here goes!” said Crothers; and he stepped in and led for the honor of the British Navy.
Oh! It was a fight! Crothers knew what he was up against the instant that his left fist slid along an ebony forearm and his nose collided with what seemed like an iron club. Steamship pilot this man might not be, but fighting man he very surely was. He hit straight and guarded high. He was no untutored savage. He had the hardest to acquire of all the Christian arts at his fingers' (or rather his fists') ends, and the heavyweight champion of Gosport took a double reef in his fighting tactics while he sparred for time in which to recover from the shock of that first blow. The claret was streaming down his face and he was dizzy.
“Oh, wade into him, mate!” urged Joe.
It is always easier to see what should be done than to do it. The sand was not slipping and giving under Joe Byng's feet, nor were his fists and wrists aching from contact with hard ebony. To him the thing seemed easy, and he was as anxious to get into the fight himself as was the terrier that strained at his chain. But Crothers, who had won a hundred fights at least in cleaner climes, fought canny and tried to make the black man tire himself with wasted effort.
And the Arabs sat in silence, like a row of vultures waiting for the end. Even the little children held their clamor and subsided into motionless calm. There was not a movement along the roofs or the wall, or in the rings of those who squatted. Arabia was spellbound, watching something she had never seen before and trying to puzzle out the wherefore of it. There were knives and guns available, yet these men fought without weapons. The white contender had a friend, but the friend did not join in. Why? Had Allah struck all three men mad? They sat still to see the end, having no doubt but that it would prove to be a judgment.
Curley Crothers was the first to close a round. He put an end to round one at the end of three minutes by missing with a heavy right swing, ducking to avoid terrific punishment, slipping in the yielding sand and falling.
“Back with you!” yelled Joe Byng, afraid that the pilot would take liberties and ready to jump in and stop him if need be. But he wasted his excitement.
“Ah told you Ah'm English!” said the pilot, stepping back and letting Crothers find his corner.
Curley was glad enough of a rest on Joe Byng's knee, and too intent on getting back his wind to listen over carefully to Joe's advice. When Joe called “Time” he stepped in readily again; and this time it was Hassan Ah who suffered from surprise.
Curley had been getting out of practise on board ship; he had needed waking up, and round one had done it for him. Round two and the six that followed it were exhibitions of the “noble art” that men in any of the larger cities of the world would have paid out a fortune to have seen.
There was racial prejudice, and service pride, as well as the usual decent man's desire to win to make a real mill of what might have been nothing out of ordinary; and there were the quite considerable odds against him that—after the first repulse—usually make men like Crothers do their utmost.
Even the Arabs lost their stoicism while round two was under way. Byng yelled, and the terrier yelped, but the Arabs only shifted their position. That, though, was proof enough of their excitement; they actually sighed in unison when Hassan Ah thrust his ungainly chin in the way of a crushing right-hand smash, and laid his broad back on the sand.
After that it was slug-and-come-again with both of them, each getting wilder as round succeeded round, but neither man obtaining much advantage. Twice it was Crothers who went down; then he discovered a soft spot in Hassan's ribs, and after that he kept the black man busy on the desperate defensive.
There was no doubt of the end, then, barring accidents. Even Hassan Ah could not have doubted it; but he did his black man's uttermost to put it off, and he fought as gamely as anybody ever fought since prize-ring rules were drafted. He did not foul, or take undue advantage once.
It was a plain, right-handed, battering-ram punch to the neck that ended things, and Hassan Ah lay coughing on the sand with bulging eyes while Joe Byng tended Curley's hurts.
“Hasn't the nigger got any pals?” asked Crothers; and then it occurred to Byng that the most hurt man was surely most in need of mending. Both he and Crothers bent over him, then, and they soon had him on his feet again.
“Ah told you Ah'm English!” were the first words he succeeded in spluttering through swollen lips.
“Now, what d'you mean by that exactly?” asked Joe Byng, his attitude toward him almost entirely changed. A man who loses gamely is entitled to respect if not to friendship.
Hassan Ah searched in the tattered shirt that he had laid aside, and pulled out a folded piece of paper after a lot of fumbling. He opened it gingerly, and holding one corner of it displayed the rest with evident intention not to allow it out of his grasp.
“That says Ah'm English!” he explained.
“Oh!” said Crothers, rubbing an injured eye in order to see it better. “Can you read, you black heathen?”
“No,” said the pilot. “That says Ah'm English, but Ah can't read!”
“Well, MacHassan,” said Curley Crothers, reading the document a second time. “Black or white, you fight like a gentleman. I'm proud to have licked you. Good-by, and good luck! Here's my hand!”
They shook hands, and the seamen started shoreward with the terrier in tow.
“Did you read the paper?” asked Crothers. “It was dated Aden—non-coms' mess of some regiment or other. 'This is to certify that this regiment taught Hassan Ah to use his fists, and that he has since licked every single mother's son of us!' Pity I didn't see that first, eh?”
“Oh, I dunno,” said Joe Byng, who had not had to do the fighting. “You licked the savage, anyway.”
Hassan Ah was right. There was no more shore leave granted. Crothers and Joe Byng were punished with extra duty and “confined to ship” for coming back with the marks of fighting on them; and the Puncher gave no further signs of life until, some three I days later, her long-suffering engines turned again and she departed through the channel that had brought her in.
Then the sheik and three others and a certain Hassan Ah went down at midnight to the jail and lifted with the aid of long poles passed through the rings in them the largest floor stones of that vermin-infested building. But the vermin did not trouble them. What they were after and what they lifted out was the cases of guns and cartridges the Puncher had contrived to miss.
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