I stepped smilingly forward, looking into Yazouk's eyes. The black giant—he stood six feet four in his bare feet and was a splendid physical specimen—put his hand on the knife in his belt. But before he could guess at my intention he was sprawling on the sand. He uttered the yell of an angry wild beast and, springing up, rushed at me with bare blade. I stepped aside and kicked him in the stomach. He collapsed, howling dismally. I marched up to the rest, who were all handling their knives, and showed them my revolver. Two minutes later they were all disarmed and I was a walking arsenal. I turned to the dragoman. "I am going away, Mehemet—to my own camp. But so that you will have no trouble with this scum, I shall take their chief with me. I need a servant."
Mehemet bowed to the very ground. "Your Excellency knows best," he muttered reverently.
"Yazouk," said I, "yonder is my ass. Go saddle him for me."
Yazouk went. He returned with the ass saddled and bridled before I was half through a cigarette. I mounted forthwith and started towards my long-deserted camp. "Come, Yazouk!" I called out carelessly, and I took good care not to look back. There is no means surer of making an African obey you than to act as if you are certain he has no alternative. Perhaps Yazouk hesitated for a moment, torn with fear and hate, but he followed me. Soon I heard the patter of his footsteps on the sand. Then I said to myself, "Now, if this man is to remain with me and be my servant I must make him fear me as he would the plague. But how?" I solved the riddle at the end of five miles. I must show him that I despised him utterly. So I stopped. He stopped. Twenty paces separated us. "Yazouk," I said, "come here!"
He approached, eyeing me like a wolf. "From this day for a month, Yazouk, you shall be my slave," I observed calmly. "If you prove a good slave I shall pay you when the term ends at the rate of fifty piasters a day. If you offend me by so much as winking an eyelash I shall not only pay you nothing, but I shall ask Poseidon to transform you into a hyena. Will you like that?"
Yazouk did not remark on my dreadful threat, but there was murder in his eyes. I smiled at him, and, always looking him full in the face, I took one by one the knives I had taken from his fellows, from my belt and cast them on the sand at his feet. "It is not fit for a lord to carry such trash when he has a slave," I said. "Pick up those knives."
Yazouk obeyed me. When he stood upright again there was a great doubt in his eyes. I thought to myself, it would be quite easy for this ruffian to murder me at any time in my sleep, and already I am a wreck for want of sleep. I threw my revolver on the sand. "Carry that, too!" I commanded loftily—and spurred my ass on. Probably a volume might be written on the state of Yazouk's mind as he trudged along behind me to my camp—a whole compendium of psychology. But I cannot write it, because I never once glanced at him, and, therefore, I can only guess at the turmoil of his thoughts. But the event justified my expectations. I was so mortally wearied when I reached my camp that I had no heart left even to discover whether my precious manuscripts had been disturbed by some chance wayfarer of the wilderness. It sufficed me that my tent was standing and that it contained a cot. I cast myself down, without even troubling to remove my boots, and I slept like the dead for sixteen solid hours. When I awoke it was high noon. A steaming bowl of coffee stood upon my table and a mess of baked rice and fish. Beside the plate lay my revolver, and every one of the knives I had given Yazouk to carry. Yazouk himself stood at the flap of the tent, a monstrous, stolid sentinel. When I arose he bent almost double. I swept the armoury into a drawer and attacked my breakfast with the relish of a famished man. Then I set to work with the energy of a giant refreshed; and with short intervals for meals, sleep and exercise, I toiled at my book thereafter till it was roughly finished. So twenty days sped by. Throughout Yazouk waited upon me like the slave of Aladdin's lamp. I had not a fault to find with him. Indeed, he was a perfect jewel of a servant, and he stood in such abject terror of my every movement, nod or smile or frown, that I could have wished to retain his services for ever. But that was not to be. On the twenty-first morning he accidentally dropped a cup and broke it. I heard the smash and looked up. It was to see Yazouk flying like a panic-stricken deer into the desert. I shouted to recall him, but he only sped the faster.