§ 11
The bark was in the open roadstead, cargo all ready, Levantine pilot on board. A reaching breeze from the north and all favorable. And when he would get home to Liverpool, he had a design to spend a few weeks in Ulster.... The roads would be glistening with frost there, and the pleasant Ulster moon at the full.... The turf would be nearly black, and bare as a board, and there would be coursing of hares ... November mists, and the trees red and brown.... Eh, hard Ulster, pleasant Ulster!
He should have been happy, as he made his way down the Beirut streets to go aboard, leaving the land of his adoption for the land of his birth, leaving pleasant Fenzile for the shrewd pleasantry of his own folk.... A little while of Ulster and he would be coming back again.... One's heart should lift the glory of the world, the bold line of Ulster and the lavish color of Syria; the sincere, dour folk of Ulster and the warmth of Fenzile.... He should have left so warmly. "In a little while, dearest, I'll be back and my heart will speak to your twin green eyes." "Yes, Zan. I'll be here." But he had left dourly. And Fenzile had watched him go with quivering lip.... Oh, damn himself for his suspicions, for his annoyance, and damn the fatuous Arab fool for arousing them.... Christ, if only he had that fellow on board ship. And suddenly he met him, with his attendants and hangers-on. The wrestler drew aside with his insolent smile. Campbell's temper broke loose.
"Listen, O certain person," he insulted the Aleppo man, "there is a street in Beirut down which it does not please me to see you go."
"Will the foreign gentleman tell me," the wrestler's voice drawled, and he smelled his rose, "who will stop a Moslem from going down a Moslem street?"
"By God, I would!" The Syrians of Ahmet Ali's escort gathered around, smiling.
"The foreign gentleman forgets that I am the wrestler from Aleppo."
"Just so. I happen to be a bit of a wrestler myself."
"Some day perhaps the foreign gentleman will condescend to try a fall with me."
Syrians, Egyptians, Turks, were pouring from all quarters. Six French soldiers, walking gapingly along the bazaars, stopped wonderingly.
"Dites, les soldats," Shane called. "Vous ne voulez pas voir quelque chose d'interessant?"
"Mais si, Monsieur!"
"Eh bien, je vais lutter contre l'homme avec la rose. C'est un lutteur arabe. Voulez-vous-y assister?"
"Mais, pour bien sur, Monsieur."
"All right, then, by God!" Shane looked square at Ahmet Ali. "We'll wrestle right here and now."
"But the stones, the street," Ahmet Ali looked surprised. "You might get hurt."
"We'll wrestle here and now."
"Oh, all right." The Arab lifted an expressive shoulder. Carefully he removed the great white robe and handed it to an attendant. To another he gave the rose. Shane handed his coat and hat to a saturnine French corporal. Ahmet Ali took his shirt off. Kicked away his sandals. There was the dramatic appearance of an immense bronze torso. The Syrians smiled. The French soldiers looked judicially grave. Ahmet Ali stood talking for an instant with one of his men, a lean bilious-seeming Turk. The Turk was urging something with eagerness. The wrestler's soft girl's face had concentrated into a mask of distaste. He was shaking his head. He didn't like something.
"How God-damned long are you going to keep me here?"
Ahmet turned. There was a smile on his face, as of amused, embarrassed toleration. He was like a great athlete about to box with a small boy. And the boy in earnest.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Any time," Shane snapped.
"All right."
Very easily he came forward over the cobbled street. He was like some immense bronze come suddenly to life and shambling. Like the brazen servant Thomas Aquinas made under the influence of particular stars. His great brown shoulders, his barreled chest, his upper arms like a man's leg, his packed forearms, his neck like a bull's, his shaven head. All seemed superhuman, and then came his shy embarrassed smile, his troubled eyes. One felt he hated to do this....
He dropped suddenly, easily, into his wrestler's crouch. His shoulders swayed lightly. He pawed like a bear.
Campbell stood easily, left foot forward, like a boxer. His left arm shot out suddenly. The heel of his hand stopped, jolted, Ahmet on the chin. The Syrian shook his head. Pawed again. Campbell slapped him on the forearms, jolted him again on the chin, broke away easily to the right. Ahmet's brown forehead frowned. "Don't be childish," he seemed to chide Campbell. The crowd pressed. The French soldiers rapped them back with the scabbard of their sidearms. En arrière, les puants, en arrière! "Back, sons of polecats, get back." The scabbards clacked like slapsticks.
Ahmet Ali stood up straighter. He wanted to get away from that annoying hand on his chin. His forearms moved faster now, like brown pistons. There was a slight frown on his face. He was becoming impatient. Shane broke again to the right. Ahmet followed, his immense hands poised. Campbell feinted for the chin again with his left hand. The wrestler's smile flickered. His right arm went out in guard. Campbell shifted, caught the brown wrist in his right hand, his left hand shot forward to the chin again. He brought forward all his forces to twisting that gigantic arm. He held the Syrian locked. The right arm began to give. If he could only shift his feet, get some sort of leverage. But how in God's name, how? How could he get behind. With an immense wrench of shoulders Ahmet got free. He stood for an instant, nursing his numbed wrist. He nodded and grinned. "That wasn't bad," he seemed to say. The lean bilious Turk on the edge of the crowd began talking viciously. The saturnine French corporal turned and smacked him terribly across the nose with the edge of the scabbard of his bayonet. "Et-ta sœur!" He had the air of a schoolmaster reproving a refractory pupil. But his language was obscene and his blow broke the man's nose.... He vouchsafed no further interest in the Turk, but turned to watch the wrestling, twirling an oiled mustache....
The Syrian closed his mouth, breathed heavily through his nostrils. His brow corrugated. His eyes became pinpoints. He was a workman out to do a job. He began to weave in, his brown arms describing slow arabesques. The crowd around became oppressively silent. They breathed hissingly.
Shane feinted, dodged, broke away. Doggedly Ahmet Ali followed. Faster than time, Shane's right hand shot out and gripped the wrestler's right wrist. His right foot hooked around the Syrian's right ankle. He pulled downward with sudden, vicious effort. Ali crashed forward on his face, a great brown hulk like an overturned bronze statue. Shane stooped down for either the half-Nelson and hammer-lock, or full Nelson.... An instant too long of hesitation. Light as a lightweight acrobat Ahmet Ali had rolled aside, put palm to ground, sprung to his feet. His face was bloody, his right knee shook. With the back of his hand he wiped the blood from his eyes. There was a twitter from the Syrians. The wrestler lumbered forward again.... A little quake of fear came into Campbell's being. There was an impersonal doggedness about the wrestler from Aleppo's eyes, a sense of inevitability.... Shane's eyes shifted, right and left....
Then suddenly, the wrestler had him....
He felt a twirl to his shoulder, and then he was pinioned by two immense brown arms. They caught him above the elbows around the chest. First they were like boys' arms, light. They became firm as calipers. They settled, snugged. Then they tightened slowly, with immense certainty. There was something about it like the rise of the tide. A gigantic cable around his chest. At his shoulder-blades the Syrian's pectoral muscles pressed like shallow knobs of steel. His arms began to hurt. His breathing began to be hard with every output of breath. The arms tightened.... All his vitality was flying through his opened mouth.... He hit futilely with his knuckles at the rope-like sinews of the brown forearms.... His head throbbed like drums.... In an instant he would be like a bag bound midways ... his ribs giving like saplings in the wind ... Lights danced....
Stupidly he looked down at the clasped hands, and a sudden fury of fighting came on him.... Something terrible, sinister, cold. His free hands caught the Syrian's little finger, tugged, pulled, bent, tore.... He wanted to shred it from its hand.... Rip it like silk.... He felt the great arms about him quiver, grow uncertain.... Tear, tear!...
With a little whine like a dog's, the wrestler let go.... He nursed the finger for an instant like a hurt child.... Opening and shutting the hand.... Looking worried.... Great waves of air came into Shane's chest.... His knees were weak.... The Syrian walked around an instant, thinking, worrying.... He was serious now.... Suddenly he plunged....
But swifter than Ahmet's plunge was thought and memory.... Of a day at Nagasaki ... of a little brown smiling Japanese and a burly square-head sailorman.... Of the Japanese's courteous explanation in smiling Pidgin.... With luck and timing he could do it.... Fast, but not too fast, and steady.... Handsomely, as the ship-word was.... There!
The hands trained to whipping lanyards caught Ahmet's wrists as he plunged. Shane's right leg went outward, foot sunk home. Backward he fell, leg taunt, hands pulling. Above him Ahmet's great bulk soared, hurtled grotesquely. For an instant; a flash.... The squeals of startled Syrians, the panic of feet.... Then a crash, an immense crash....
A long shuddering, frightened eh from the crowd.... A French soldier mumbling ... "'Cré nom de nom de nom de nom de Jésus Chri!"
He staggered to his feet, put his hand to his face.... It came away dripping.... His face was like the leeward deck of a flying yacht ... swimming.... A few feet away Syrians and French soldiers were milling over ... something.... The corporal wrenched Shane's arms into his coat. Pushed his hat into his hands.
"Courez donc, le citoyen.... Come on, get away.... Get...."
"Is he dead?"
"No, not dead.... But get away.... He'll never wrestle again.... Vite, alors!"
He pushed him down the street.
"But——"
[Illustration]
"Go on. We can take care of ourselves...." He shoved him roughly forward.... Shane staggered, walked, ran a little.... Behind him a few blocks away, an ominous hum. He ran on.... Some one was shrieking....
"Ma hala ya ma hala Kobal en Nosara.... How sweet, oh, how sweet, to kill the Christians...." The crack of a gun.... Tumult.... The long Moslem war-song.... Two rifles. "A nous, les Français.... A nous, la Légion!"
A nausea, a great weakness, an utter contempt for himself came over him in the boat pulling him toward his ship ... God! He had fought with and nearly killed—possibly killed—a man for personal hatred! From irritation, and in a public place! A spectacle for donkey-boys and riff-raff of French towns.... He tottered on the ship's ladder.... The sailors caught him. The mate ran up.
"Anything wrong, sir? You look like a ghost."
"No, nothing. All aboard? Everything ready? Is she a-drawing? Anchor a-peak? All right. Get her up...."