The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

of strength, and a most berser­kerish delight in using it. “Are you afraid to fight me without weapons?” I asked, laughing into Mujrim’s face.

      His answer was to vault from his camel without a word, throw all his weapons on the ground, and start to strip himself. I followed suit, and the rest all naak-ed the camels in a wide semi-circle.

      “Don’t use your fists on him,” Grim whispered. “’Twouldn’t be fair. These Arabs don’t understand that gentle art.”

      Then he went and squatted on top of a rock facing the semicircle, to watch proceedings.

      * * * *

      The other men all squatted in front of the kneeling camels. Jael went and sat near Grim. Ayisha took up a position of her own on Grim’s left hand, midway between him and the semicircle; and I had time to notice that both she and Jael were as eager for the spectacle as any one. After that I sized up my antagonist, and liked the look of him—as Narayan Singh, catching the clothes I tossed to him, did not.

      “Stick a thumb in his eye if he strangles you, sahib!” he whispered.

      Standards of ethics vary slightly as you travel farther East.

      All either of us kept on were our cotton trousers, and there wasn’t much to choose between us as the sun beat down on muscles bulging under healthy skin. I am a sunburned man, but my skin looked white and satiny against his coppery bronze. He had several inches the advantage over me in height and length of arm, and was pretty obviously quicker on his feet; but twenty years of roughing it have taught me not to trouble much about the other fellow’s odds. The main thing is to reckon up your own, and discover his point of weakness.

      “Are you both ready?” Grim called out, and we walked in and faced each other.

      “Go!” he shouted, and Mujrim began to stalk me crab-wise with both arms thrust forward, looking for an opening.

      One weak point became obvious at once. He considered himself a wrestler, and fully expected to rush me and win in sixty seconds. So I gave him the chance he looked for, and that first fall was easy; he went over my head on to his back on the sand with a thump that shook the wind out of him.

      But all I scored by that, of course, was to spoil a little of his confidence. He wasn’t likely to repeat such a mistake. He got to his feet pretty quickly, and I have seen a wounded lion look less pugnacious. The gang shouted a lot of good advice to him to wring my neck, kneel on my stomach, pull my arms out by the roots, and, in fact, to go in and rid the earth of me; and he threw one swift glance in their direction as much as to say he wouldn’t fail them. Then I took the fight to him, and we closed.

      Well, I’ve had many a good fight in my day, having to admit, with less shame than some think seemly, that I’m kind of willing to mix it with any strong antagonist who wants to take my number down. But, looking back, I think that was the best of all. It was rather spoiled at one stage by Mujrim’s biting when I had him in a painful hold he could not break. But you can’t expect a half-savage to act like a white man all the way, and he only tore an inch or two of skin loose. Besides, he made up for it handsomely before the end.

      The game was fast, for one thing, which suits my temperament. Middle age hasn’t made me a dawdler yet. And as we rolled and tossed over and over, grunting, and sweating so in the sun that we could usually slip out of a hold as easily as break it, the speed took the gang by the heartstrings, and from time to time I had visions of Grim beating them off with his camel-stick as they crowded in to scream advice to their champion.

      I never fought over so much ground before or since. I knew I had my man beaten, and Mujrim, I think, guessed it after the first five minutes; he seemed to think his only chance was to spread the battle over half an acre, dragging and rolling me this and that way with the idea of wearing me out. But I was the stronger of the two, and it was I who did the wearing down.

      There came a moment when he lay under me and gasped, and I even had time to grow conscious of surroundings—a thing you can’t do if the man you’re up against is still fit to make you use all you’ve got. Then, in between the bass booming of Narayan Singh, I distinguished Ayisha’s shrill voice screaming to Mujrim to tear my tongue out.

      There is something barbaric in a woman’s scream that puts new fight into most uncivilized folk, and especially into all the desert people. Mujrim must have heard that shrilling, for he suddenly revived, and over and over we went with nearly bursting muscles in a series of sudden spurts, until we lay panting again pretty close to Ayisha’s feet. I couldn’t see her, naturally, for my back was uppermost; and Mujrim had murder in his eye; I did not dare relax the pressure on him for a second. His right hand was groping wildly for a handful of my thigh muscles, and what she did was to slip a dagger into it.

      His fingers closed on the thing before he realized what it was, and before Grim or any one could intervene. I didn’t know what had happened. My eyes were full of sweat and dust in any case, and the trick took place behind me. But Mujrim, suddenly aware of what was in his hand, threw the thing away like the sportsman he was at heart; and the effort gave me my opportunity.

      I got a sudden hold that pinned his left arm to his side—rose to my feet, lifting him with the old bag-heaver’s hoist that uses every muscle in your body, and was considering whether the time had come to lay him pretty gently on his back, or whether he needed another shake-up, when something stung the calf of my leg as if a snake had bitten it.

      At that there was an angry yell from everybody. I hurled my man clear of me, and Grim stepped in between us, stopping the fight. When I could get the sweat out of my eyes I saw there was blood running pretty freely down from my calf into my shoe. Grim stooped and picked up Ayisha’s dagger. The minx had been so bent on seeing me murdered that when Mujrim refused to use the thing she had picked it up again and thrown it—fortunately doing no more harm than to open a cut two inches long that bled more freely than it hurt.

      Mujrim was more annoyed than any one. He had all the exercise he needed, and lay on his back with his brothers all about him sluicing him with water from one of the camel-bags. He sent them to sluice me too, and called out to me between gasps for breath to be good enough to believe that the wound was none of his doing.

      Ayisha was perfectly unconcerned about it. Beyond demanding the dagger back from Grim she made no comment. He gave it to her with the remark that if she should play a trick like that again he would have her hanged to the nearest tree; but she didn’t believe him any more than I did, and showed her teeth in as merry a smile as ever lone bachelor set eyes on.

      Jael, on the other hand, was indignant—not at my being wounded, for she wasn’t exactly a stickler for ethics, and my welfare was no concern of hers—but because Grim should neglect such an obvious chance.

      “The least you might do is to have the hussy beaten,” she insisted. “You’ll never make a leader of men, my friend. You don’t know enough to be drastic. You’re weak!”

      Yet, if you ask me, I think Grim came out of it pretty well. There wasn’t another word from the defaulters. Mujrim had been wrenched and bruised too badly to be fit for much for an hour or two, and it was out of the question to make him walk back. But Grim tossed the amber necklaces to one of the others, pointed with his stick toward the three camel-loads of miscellaneous “presents,” and said his final say on that subject.

      “Back you go now! Take those loads and walk!”

      They went off without a murmur. And bear in mind that if there is one thing on earth that Arabs of their stamp consider beneath their dignity, it is to carry loads. They expect their women-folk to do that when camels or asses are not available.

      Mujrim got to his feet after they had gone, and apologized to Grim handsomely.

      “Wallahi, Jimgrim, you were in the right! There should be but one captain—and his word law, even when he says that white is black!”

      It was pretty safe to say that looting was at an end as far as that expedition was concerned. And if you think, as I have heard some say, that it wasn’t Grim, but I who pulled off that affair, I don’t agree with you. You might