It isn't a moral viewpoint exactly; he doesn't invariably disapprove; but he isn't deceived as to the possibilities, and yields no jot or tittle of the upper hand if he can only once assume it.

There was scant love lost between him and old Ali Baba.
_"Nharak said,_* O ye thieves!" he remarked, looking down into Ali Baba's mild old eyes.

[* Greeting!] Squatting in loose-flowing robes, princely bred, and almost saintly with his beautiful gray beard, the patriarch looked frail enough to be squashed under the Sikh's enormous thumb.

But he wasn't much impressed.
"God give thee good sense, Sikh!" was the prompt answer.
"Fear Allah, and eschew infidelity while there is yet time!" boomed a man as big as the Sikh and a third as heavy again--Ali Baba's eldest son, a sunny-tempered rogue, as I knew from past experience.
"Whose husband have you put to shame by fathering those two brats ?" asked a third man.
Mahommed that was, Ali Baba's youngest, who had saved Grim's life and mine at El-Kerak.
They all laughed uproariously at that jest, so Mahommed repeated it more pointedly, and the Sikh turned his back to consider the sunshine through the open door and the rising heat within.
Suliman and the other little gutter-snipe proceeded to make friends with the whole gang promptly, giving as good as they got in the way of repartee, and nearly starting a riot until Grim called Ali Baba into the dining-room, where de Crespigny was shaking up the second round of warm cocktails in a beer-bottle.
Ali Baba chose to presume that the mixture was intended for himself.

The instant de Crespigny set the bottle on the table the old rascal tipped the lot into a tumbler and drank it off.
"It is good that the Koran says nothing against such stuff as this," he said, blinking as he set the glass down.