"Take us as far as Damascus," answered Ryanne. "We can get on from there well enough."
"What's your name?" directly.
"Ryanne."
"And yours?"
"Fortune Chedsoye."
"Next?"
"Jones."
The humorous bruskness put a kind of spirit into them all, and they answered smilingly.
"Ryanne and Jones are familiar enough, but Chedsoye is a new one. Here, you!" whirling suddenly upon the boys who were pressing about. He volleyed some Arabic at them, and they dropped back. "Well, I've heard some strange yarns myself in my time, but this one beats them all. Shanghaied from Cairo! Humph! If some one had told me this, anywhere else but here, I'd have called him a liar. And you, Mr. Ryanne, went into Bagdad alone and got away with that Yhiordes! It must have been the devil's own of a job."