The men, restored to good humour by the promise in the old man’s voice, shouted with laughter as they aimed friendly blows at the Nubian, who stood close to the Patriarch’s side.
“My son!” said the old man as he stroked his beard, which was about his one possession he would not have staked against fortune. “I will play thee for the death of the white man. If I throw three sixes he dies this night, if thou throwest three sixes then he takes Zarah the Gentle as wife for the length of six moons, after which he dies so that thou mayest take his place at her side. And may Allah show thee the path through the maze of love which spreads about thee and her and the white man.”
Helen, sitting on the edge of her bed, covered her ears with her hands at the savagery in the shouts of the men, whilst Yussuf strode forward with his counters in his hand.
“My spavined mare against a bowl of rice cooked by thy daughter—and may her cooking be better favoured than is her face—that the white man—and may his soul be as black in Jehannam as his skin is white on earth—dieth this dawn in the stead of the thrice accursed white woman,” he cried, whilst praying secretly and fervently to Allah the Merciful to strike the Patriarch dead.
They threw the dice unavailingly till dawn, whilst the elder women, wakened by the gentle method of applying the foot to their slumbering persons, rose and made coffee for their lords, half of whom, at the last throw of the dice, were to find themselves minus coffee beans, daughters, horses, weapons or piastres.
The sky shone like an opal in the east, the birds sang, the smoke of the fires in the women’s quarter clung like mist against the mountainside as Al-Asad shook the dice in his hands and flung them up to the flaming heavens.
The men backed as the ivory squares fell amongst them, and made way for the Patriarch and the Nubian to examine the result.
The Patriarch raised his hands, Al-Asad laughed, the men shouted with laughter and smote him friendly-wise, hip and thigh.
He had thrown three sixes.