gled with the gust
of wrath and impotent amaze which gripped him.

Najib smiled up at him as might a dog that had just performed some
pretty new trick, or a child who has brought to its father a gift. But
the aspect of Kirby's distorted face there in the dying firelight
shocked the Syrian into a grunt of terror. Scrambling to his feet, he
sputtered quaveringly.

"Tame yourself, howadji, I enseech you! Why are you not rejoiceful? Will
it not mean much money for you; and--"

"You mangy brown rat!" shouted Kirby in fury. "What in blazes have you
done? You know, as well as I do, that such an idea will never get out of
those fellaheens' skulls, once it's really planted there. They'll
believe every word of that wall-eyed rot you've been telling them! And
they'll go on a _genuine_ strike on the strength of it. They'll--"

"Of an assuredly, howadji, they will," assented the bewildered Najib. "I
made me very assured of that. Four times I told it all over to them,
until even poor Imbarak--whose witfulness hath been beblown out from his
brain by the breath of the Most High--until even Imbarak understood. But
why it should enrouse you to a lionsome raging I cannot think. I
bethought you would be pleasured--"

"Listen to me!" ordered Kirby, fighting hard for self-control and
forcing himself to speak with unnatural slowness. "You've done more
damage than if you had dynamited the whole mine and then turned a river
into the shaft. This kind of news spreads. In a week there won't be a
worker east of the Jordan who won't be a strike fan. And these people
here will work the idea a step farther. I know them. They'll decide that
if one strike is good, two strikes are better. And they will strike
every week--loafing between times."

This prospect brought a grin of pure bliss to Najib's swarthy face. He
looked in new admiration upon his farsighted chief. Kirby went on:

"Not that that will concern us. For this present strike will settle the
Cabell mine. It means ruin to our business here, and the loss of all
your jobs, as well as my own. Why, you idiot, can't you see what you've
done? If you don't take that asinine grin off your ugly face, I'll knock
it off!" he burst out, his hard-held patience momentarily fraying.

Then, taking new hold on his self-control, Kirby began again to talk. As
if addressing a defective child, which, as a matter of fact, he was
doing, he expounded the hideous situation.

He explained the disloyalty to the