There came one tremendous yell as the men rushed to form a ring, then a very babel of voices as they laid their last qamis and their last piastre upon the outcome of the struggle between the two men who stood locked in a mighty grip.
“My shirt of silk to thy sandals,” yelled Bowlegs, “that the foreigner is crushed like a mouse in the Lion’s maw.”
“Taken, O thou little one with legs like the full moon,” yelled his neighbour, who had learnt a thing or two in the fine art of wrestling when he had fought so magnificently for the whites. “The white man will use our brother as a cloth with which to wipe the marks of thy misshapen feet from the ground. Bulk counts not against knowledge.”
Bowlegs spat as he glanced at Ralph Trenchard, who, trained to a hair, stood well over six feet, yet looked like a stripling beside the gigantic Nubian, who overtopped him by inches.
The men’s attention was diverted for one moment when Helen ran up the steps of the dais, and they held their breath in sheer delight when the Arabian rose from her chair to confront her.
The two girls were about the same height, both of an amazing beauty, and they both loved the same man, who was likely to have his neck broken within the next few minutes.
What more could they desire as an evening’s entertainment?
“Will you take a bet, Zarah?”
The lamps seemed likely to spill their oil as they swung to the men’s shouting.