Praised be Allah, I shall be obeyed at last!" It was his worst shock yet when even Jael did not start at once to carry out his order.

Instead, she sat down on the rug, so that she and Ali Higg and Grim formed a triangle.
"O Lion of Petra," she said--for it would not have been manners to call him by his right name in front of strangers--"what was written has come to pass, and my foreboding was a true one.

If we had let the tribes at El-Maan be, and if you had kept those forty men instead of sending them to raid the Beni Aroun, this could not have happened.

Now twenty men have cornered us, while Ibrahim ben Ah eats up provisions to no purpose, sitting idly in the desert." "Then the El-Maan men were not scattered to the winds ?" groaned Ali Higg.

"O Allah, may shame devour you as it tortures me! Those dogs will have looted a train and will say that Ali Higg no longer dares interfere! The sun rises, but it sets at evening, since Allah wills; but is my day so short ?" "By no means," answered Grim.