"By Allah, the bint* has poisoned me!"
————- * Literally girl; about as respectful as the word "skirt" would be if used of one's wife. ————-
She screamed and ran. He fired, but she was already past the corner, and the bullet grazed the rock. Moreover, croton oil is a drastic cathartic, and waits on no man's convenience. He dropped the rifle, groaned—and I would rather not set down quite all the rest.
Sufficient that it gave Narayan Singh and me our opportunity. It made him too weak to resist, and we took care of him. I let him go on believing he was poisoned, and gave him harmless doses that he presently believed had saved his life; so that even the tyrannical fanatic felt a kind of gratitude.
Held like a baby in the Sikh's enormous arms with no less than half a dozen terrified women looking on—for they had all run one way while Ayisha ran the other—he slowly recovered control of his emotions, while the women loudly praised my medicinal skill.
And since I knew almost nothing at all of medicine, and therefore could say anything I chose without feeling guilty—like the fellow on a soapbox who harangues a crowd on politics—I told him he must have the boils lanced there and then, or otherwise the poison might get to them and inflame them beyond all hope.
I suppose the men who had met us at the corner of the great flight of steps did not come and interrupt because they had had enough of his temper for one morning and did not choose to sample it again uninvited. The rifle-shot did not bring them, because it was nothing new for him to vent displeasure by shooting at folk; and if there were a corpse, and it had not fallen over the cliff or been kicked over, they would come and remove it when ordered, but certainly not sooner.
Ali Higg has strength enough left to assure me that if I killed him he would wait for me in the next world and settle the account there. I told him what was perfectly true, that I would rather lose my hand than kill him, so he added that if I hurt him more than was reasonable four camels should be told off afterward to hurt me.
Seeing he was to be sole judge of what was reasonable pain, and having no means of guessing whether Grim was still alive and able to protect me, I decided to give him a hypodermic, and put a shot into his arm that would have quieted a must elephant. Maybe I rather overdid that, but as I have no medical diploma nobody can call me to account.
And the operation was successful, if unpleasant. I used one of the presentation razors.