dy knows
adding provinces doesn't always pay much nowadays."

Captain Boyle frowned in a slightly puzzled fashion. Being cloudily
conscious of never having heard of the Zimmernes in his life, he
could only remark, stolidly:

"Well, one can't be a Little Englander."

Horne Fisher smiled, and he had a pleasant smile.

"Every man out here is a Little Englander," he said. "He wishes he
were back in Little England."

"I don't know what you're talking about, I'm afraid," said the
younger man, rather suspiciously. "One would think you didn't really
admire Hastings or--or--anything."

"I admire him no end," replied Fisher. "He's by far the best man
for this post; he understands the Moslems and can do anything with
them. That's why I'm all against pushing Travers against him, merely
because of this last affair."

"I really don't understand what you're driving at," said the other,
frankly.

"Perhaps it isn't worth understanding," answered Fisher, lightly,
"and, anyhow, we needn't talk politics. Do you know the Arab legend
about that well?"

"I'm afraid I don't know much about Arab legends," said Boyle,
rather stiffly.

"That's rather a mistake," replied Fisher, "especially from your
point of view. Lord Hastings himself is an Arab legend. That is
perhaps the very greatest thing he really is. If his reputation went
it would weaken us all over Asia and Africa. Well, the story about
that hole in the ground, that goes down nobody knows where, has
always fascinated me, rather. It's Mohammedan in form now, but I
shouldn't wonder if the tale is a long way older than Mohammed. It's
all about somebody they call the Sultan Aladdin, not our friend of
the lamp, of course, but rather like him in having to do with genii
or giants or something of that sort. They say he commanded the
giants to build him a sort of pagoda, rising higher and higher above
all the stars. The Utmost for the Highest, as the people said when
they built the Tower of Babel. But the builders of the Tower of
Babel were quite modest and domestic people, like mice, compared
with old Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven--
a mere trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven and rise
above it, and go on rising for ever and ever. And Allah cast him
down to earth with a thunderbolt, which sank into the earth, boring
a hole deeper and deeper, till it made a well that was without a
bottom as the tower was to have been without a top. And down t