rab must
boast at every opportunity, began to whisper in my ear.

_"Wallahi!_ Was I not wise? It was I who told her if she wanted
our Jimgrim she should tell the world she is his wife and he the
veritable Ali Higg! It takes an old man's tongue to guide the
cleverest woman!"

The train screamed then in the distance, and a Syrian station
agent in tattered khaki uniform went through the wholly
unnecessary process of letting down a signal. We got off the
track and rode our camels round on to the platform. The crowd
gave way before us, and Ayisha thrust herself this and that way
among them, breaking up groups, striking me over the wrist with
the stick she had for flogging the camel because I tried to
regain the rifle.

By the time the rusty, creaking, groaning rattletrap of a train
drew up there was not an element of cohesion left in the crowd.
She knew too much to drive them away to where they might have
regained something of determination, but let them stand there
under her eye where they could see in herself the ruthless symbol
of Ali Higg's ruthlessness. And not even the sight of the
frightened passengers, in a panic because of tales that had been
told them up the line, could restore their plunder-lust.

As a matter of fact that was a romantic little mixed train when
you come to think of it. The Arab engine-driver, piloting his
charge through no-man's land, where the bones of former train
crews lay bleaching, simply because he was an engine-driver and
that was his job; the freight in locked steel cars consigned by
optimists who hoped it might reach its destination; the four
guards armed with worn-out rifles that they did not dare use; the
four passenger-cars with their window-glass all shot away; the
half-dozen Arab artisans carried along for makeshift repairs en
route; and the more than brave--the too-fatalist-to-care-much
passengers wondering which of their number had an enemy at every
halting-place; and along with that the formalism--the observance
of conventions such as blowing the whistle and pulling down the
signal, on a track that carried one train one way once a week; it
made you feel like taking off your hat to it all, reminding me in
a vague way of those Roman legionaries who kept up the semblance
of their civilization after the power of Rome had waned.

I rode over beside the engine-driver and warned him to pull out
before trouble started. But he had to take in water first. And he
seemed to be an expe