PART FOUR
THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO
§ 1
"Ya Zan," came his wife's slow grave voice, "O Shane, when your ship is in trouble, or does not go fast, do the passengers beat you?"
"Of course not," Campbell laughed. "What put that in your little head?"
"When I went with my uncle, Arif Bey, on the pilgrimage to Mecca—Arif was a Moslem that year"—she bit the thread of the embroidery she was doing with her little sharp teeth, tkk!—"our ship anchored for the night in Birkat Faraun—Pharaoh's Bay. In the morning it would not move, so the Maghrabi pilgrims beat the captain terribly. And once at Al-Akabah, when the captain lost sight of shores for one whole long day, the Maghrabis beat him again. They said he should have known better. Don't—don't they ever beat you, ya Zan?"