“'E's gone to fetch his pals. Look out, mate!” warned Joe Byng.
“Not 'im!” vowed Crothers. “'E's 'ad enough, that's all! We've seen the last of 'im!”
And the most amazing thing of all was that Crothers believed just what he said—Curley Crothers, to whom Red Sea and Persian Gulf ports were as an open book, and to whom the Arab customs and religion and reprehensible tendencies were currently supposed to be first-reader knowledge. It was he who had proved there were no harems—he who coined the Navy adage, “Search an Arab first, and sit on him, before you come to terms!”
Yet here he was, advising Byng to disregard a looted Arab's spittle! There is no accounting, ever, for the ways of shore-leave sailor-men.
“Come on, Joe,” he said. “Lead 'the dawg—he can walk now—and let's see what Adra looks like.”
IV.
All might have been well, and both seamen might have reached the Puncher again with dignity and grace, had they not entered Adra, past the only jail in that part of Arabia. And an Arab jail being rarer and one percent more evil than any other evil thing there is, the two of them quite naturally paused to make its closest possible acquaintance.
“Look out for vermin!” cautioned Curley, standing on tiptoe to peer in through the close-spaced iron bars.
They forgot the dog. The jail, for the moment, challenged all their waking senses, the olfactory by no means least.