goat-track.

Then, because Ali Baba's sons and grandsons were nervous about
the "old man their father," and because the one thing that more
than all other circumstances combined could ruin our slim chance
would be panic, Grim squatted on the sand in the gorge with the
men all around him and began to tell stories.

Right there in the very jaws of death, within a mile of the lair
of Ali Higg, in possession of two of the tyrant's wives, with an
army at our rear that might at that minute be following old Ali
Baba into the gorge to cut off our one possible retreat, he told
them the old tales that Arabs love, and soothed them as if they
were children.

That was the finest glimpse of Grim's real manhood I had
experienced yet, although I could not see him for the darkness.
You couldn't see any one. It was a voice in the night--strong,
reassuring--telling to born thieves stories of the warm humanity
of other thieves, whose accomplishments in the way of cool cheek
and lawless altruism were hardly more outrageous than the task in
front of us.

And he told them so well that even when a chill draft crept along
the bottom of the gorge two hours before dawn, taking the place
of the hot air that had ascended, and you could feel the shiver
that shook the circle of listeners, they only drew closer and
leaned forward more intently--almost as if he were a fire at
which they warmed themselves.

But heavens! It seemed madness, nevertheless. We had no more
pickets out than the enemy had. We were relying utterly on Grim's
information that he had extracted from the women and the
prisoners, and on his judgment based on that.

No doubt he knew a lot that he had not told us, for that is his
infernal way of doing business; but neither that probability, nor
his tales that so suited the Arab mind, nor the recollection of
earlier predicaments in which his flair for solutions had been
infallibly right, soothed my nerves much; and I nearly jumped out
of my skin when a series of grunts and stumbling footfalls broke
the stillness of the gorge behind us.

It sounded like ten weary camels being cursed by ten angry men,
and I supposed at once that Ibrahim ben Ah had sent a detachment
to investigate and that this was their advance-guard. Who else
would dare to lift his voice in that way in the gorge? You could
hear the words presently:

"Ill-bred Somali beast! Born among vermin in a black man's kraal!
Allah give thee to the crows! Weary? What of