The Patriarch, who looked for all the world like Abraham at his most benevolent, and who was the hardest rider to hounds, or, rather, into battle, and the most inveterate gambler in Arabia, held up his hand, upon which the rest of the inveterate gamblers nudged each other with the mijan, the small stick the Bedouin usually carries, and felt for their counters or dice or whatever they fancied most in games of chance.
“Thou sayest, O Asad, mighty of muscle and clear of understanding, that our mistress desires the death of the white woman, so that there shall be a portion of truth in the tale she has told the white man of the death of this white woman, who still lives.”
Al-Asad nodded. He was loth to see his plans go awry, but he would have been still more loth to lose the chance of an hour’s gambling.
“We say that for her mocking this white woman shall die this night, thou sayest she must live until the night of the great feasting which our mistress prepareth for us, so that in the sounds of singing and dancing her passing shall be unnoticed by the women, who, were it otherwise, might prattle about her death. I will play thee for her death! Choose thou the game.”
Came a positive roar, which brought Helen upsitting upon her bed, as each man shouted to his neighbour, and Al-Asad drew from out his loin-cloth a set of cherished dice, whilst Yussuf drew nearer the fire with his counters in his hand.
Logs were thrown on the fires, so that orange, red and yellow flames shot skywards, against which the infuriated, excited men stood out in startling relief as they gesticulated and laughed and cursed; bets were laid against the time of Helen Raynor’s death, and the particular kind of death she should die for her breaking of the great law of hospitality, with side bets upon every conceivable trifle which by the wildest stretch of the most prolific Oriental imagination could be possibly connected with the case.
“Thou Yussuf!” shouted Bowlegs, as he walked towards the blind man with the roll of a sailing ship in the Bay. “My eldest daughter—who is as fair favoured as an ostrich without feathers—against thy spavined mare that the white woman dies upon the night of the feast.”
Yussuf leaned forward so that the firelight shone upon his terrible face whilst the men gathered about the two, forgetting their own concerns, for the moment, in the interest they always took in the doings and sayings of the afflicted man.
“I prefer the gentle company of my spavined mare, though she be useless for the chase or the battle, O my brother, but I will lay my jewel-encrusted nagileh against a handful of dates that the white woman dies to-night. This woman without compassion, this breaker of the Arab’s law. I have suffered much, my brethren, but to the death I uphold our mistress against one who abuses her. For is it not written, ‘A well from which thou drinkest, throw not a stone in it’?” Yussuf was playing to the gallery and throwing sand across his brethren’s vision, whilst praying secretly to Allah the Compassionate and the Merciful to hold the scales of justice well balanced between the two women.