"Well, you don't want anybody recognizing us, do you? If this girl o' yours knows you're Private Alf 'Iggins of 'Ackney she'll never look at you. But if you shaves off yer mustache and calls yerself Wentworth, and dresses yerself like a gentleman—what ho, how about it?"
"You are a one," said Alf admiringly, wiping his lips and then his eyes. "You think of everything. This stuff don't 'arf tickle you up, do it? What about you? You 'aven't got a mustache to shave off. Will you 'ave a false one?"
"Eh? Oh, I don't marrer," said Bill thickly.
The effects of the drink—whatever it was—were now the reverse of stimulating. They were swift and complete. When Mustapha entered a moment later his lord and his lord's companion were side by side on the floor in stertorous slumber. At his command a party of slaves entered and carried the recumbent forms reverently upstairs.
* * * * * * *
Next morning Alf was awakened by the sun shining through the latticed windows and falling in brightly colored patches across his room. Wherever the light struck there was a glitter almost unbearable to his heavy eyes. He was lying in a bed of wonderful softness in a lofty chamber in which everything about him gave the impression of sumptuousness and luxury. Where the sunlight struck his coverlit it shimmered and shone and twinkled till he was completely dazzled. It was made of cloth of gold thickly sewn with diamonds and pearls.
He gazed about with an idiotic expression, for his intellect was still in abeyance; and he tried without much success to remember where he was and how he got there. He could recall nothing clearly since he had fallen asleep in the great hall, still in his worn khaki with the dust of France upon him. He knew in a dim way that much had happened to him since then. There were various hazy recollections in his mind: of a bath, warm and scented, wherein he had lain at ease while other hands than his had cleansed him; of being clothed in garments more gorgeous than his imagination could have conceived, and of reclining with Bill (no less gorgeously clad than himself) on a divan where strange foods had been brought to them by lustrous-eyed girls; of listening to weird music and witnessing queer, sinuous dances. Lying here this morning he could not say whether these things had really happened or whether he had dreamed them. Only he knew that the effort to think made his head ache, and that judging by his general condition he must have had a remarkably "thick" night.
He closed his eyes and dozed uneasily, but was soon awakened by the sound of stealthy footsteps and the swish of silken draperies. He half opened his eyes, and, glancing cautiously under lowered lids saw that his room was gradually filling with people whose one care seemed to be to avoid waking him. They disposed themselves round the chamber in some kind of settled order and, with eyes fixed on his recumbent form, stood waiting. Alf, still wondering what this might mean, suddenly noticed that quite half of his unexpected visitors were women—just such women as haunted his hazy recollections of the night before.
Shocked to the depths of his respectable soul, Alf opened his eyes and sat up. Instantly the entire assemblage prostrated themselves—except some of the women, who, Alf saw with horror, carried musical instruments and displayed every sign of being about to play upon them.