fall the one word:

"Hags!"

The epithet gave rise to a burst of merriment. But Don Luis, as though in
a hurry to finish his story, at once went on:

"In any case, they saved my life, the hussies, and their aid never failed
me. My forty-two watch-dogs, deprived of their arms and shaking with fear
in those solitudes where everything is a trap and where death lies in
wait for you at any minute, gathered round me as their real protector.
When we joined the great tribe to which they belonged I was their actual
chief. And it took me less than three months of dangers faced in common,
of ambushes defeated under my advice, of raids and pillages effected by
my direction, to become the chief also of the whole tribe.

"I spoke their language, I practised their religion, I wore their
dress, I conformed to their customs: alas! had I not five wives?
Henceforward, my dream, which had gradually taken definite shape in my
mind, became possible.

"I sent one of my most faithful adherents to France, with sixty letters
to hand to sixty men whose names and addresses he learned by heart.
Those sixty men were sixty associates whom Arsene Lupin had disbanded
before he threw himself from the Capri cliffs. All had retired from
business, with a hundred thousand francs apiece in ready money and a
small trade or public post to keep them occupied. I had provided one
with a tobacconist's shop, another with a job as a park-keeper, others
with sinecures in the government offices. In short, they were
respectable citizens.

"To all of them--whether public servants, farmers, municipal
councillors, grocers, sacristans, or what not--I wrote the same letter,
made the same offer, and gave the same instructions in case they should
accept.... Monsieur le President, I thought that, of the sixty, ten or
fifteen at most would come and join me: sixty came, Monsieur le
President, sixty, and not one less! Sixty men punctually arrived at the
appointed place.

"On the day fixed, at the hour named, my old armed cruiser, the
_Ascendam_, which they had brought back, anchored in the mouth of the
Wady Draa, on the Atlantic coast, between Cape Nun and Cape Juby. Two
longboats plied to and fro and landed my friends and the munitions of war
which they had brought with them: camp furniture, quick-firing guns,
ammunition, motor-boats, stores and provisions, trading wares, glass
beads, and cases of gold as well, for my sixty good men and true had
insisted on turning thei