Afar in the Forest | Page 3

Arab cause is lost."
"Why lost?" demanded Jeremy. "There are plenty more Arabs."
"But only one Feisul. He's the only man who can unite them all."
"I know a chance for him," said Jeremy. "Let him come with us three to
Australia. There are thousands of fellers there who fought alongside
him and don't care a damn for the French. They'll raise all the hell there
is before they'll see him ditched."
"Uh-huh! London's the place for him," Grim answered. "The British
like him, and they're ashamed of the way he's been treated. They'll give
him Mesopotamia. Baghdad's the old Arab capital, and that'll do for a
beginning; after that it's up to the Arabs themselves."
"Well? Where does my gold mine come in?" Jeremy asked.
"Feisul has no money. If it was made clear to him that he could serve
the Arabs best by going to London, he'd consider it. The objection
would be, though, that he'd have to make terms in advance with
hog-financiers, who'd work through the Foreign Office to tie up all the
oil and mine and irrigation concessions. If we tell him privately about
your gold mine at Abu Kem he can laugh at financiers."
"All right," said Jeremy, "I'll give him the gold mine. Let him erect a
modern plant and he'll have millions!"
"Uh-huh! Keep the mine secret. Let him go to London and arrange
about Mespot. Just at present High Finance could find a hundred ways
of disputing his title to the mine, but once he's king with the Arabs all
rooting for him things'll be different. He'll treat you right when that
time comes, don't worry."
"Worry? Me?" said Jeremy. "All that worries me is having to see this
business through before we can make a wake for Sydney. I'm homesick.
But never mind. All right, you fellers, I'll make one to give this Feisul

boy a hoist!"
CHAPTER II
"Atcha, Jimgrim sahib! Atcha!"
That conversation and Jeremy's conversion to the big idea took place
on the way across the desert to Jerusalem--a journey that took us a
week on camel-back--a rowdy, hot journey with the stifling simoom
blowing grit into our followers' throats, who sang and argued
alternately nevertheless. For, besides our old Ali Baba and his sixteen
sons and grandsons, there were Jeremy's ten pickups from Arabia's
byways, whom he couldn't leave behind because they knew the secret
of his gold-mine.
Grim's authority is always at its height on the outbound trail, for then
everybody knows that success, and even safety, depends on his swift
thinking; on the way home afterward reaction sets in sometimes,
because Arabs are made light-headed by success, and it isn't a simple
matter to discipline free men when you have no obvious hold over
them.
But that was where Jeremy came in. Jeremy could do tricks, and the
Arabs were like children when he performed for them. They would be
good if he would make one live chicken into two live ones by pulling it
apart. They would pitch the tents without fighting if he would swallow
a dozen eggs and produce them presently from under a camel's tail. If
he would turn on his ventriloquism and make a camel say its prayers,
they were willing to forgive--for the moment anyhow--even their
nearest enemies.
So we became a sort of travelling sideshow, with Jeremy ballyhooing
for himself in an amazing flow of colloquial Arabic, and hardly ever
repeating the same trick.
All of which was very good for our crowd and convenient at the
moment, but hardly so good for Jeremy's equilibrium. He is one of
those handsome, perpetually youthful fellows, whose heads have been a

wee mite turned by the sunshine of the world's warm smile. I don't
mean by that that he isn't a tophole man, or a thorough-going friend
with guts and gumption, who would chance his neck for anyone he
likes without a second's hesitation, for he's every bit of that. He has
horse sense, too, and isn't fooled by the sort of flattery that women
lavish on men who have laughing eyes and a little dark moustache.
But he hasn't been yet in a predicament that he couldn't laugh or fight
his way out of; he has never yet found a job that he cared to stick at for
more than a year or two, and seldom one that could hold him for six
months.
He jumps from one thing to another, finding all the world so interesting
and amusing, and most folk so ready to make friends with him, that he
always feels sure of landing softly somewhere over the horizon.
So by the time we reached Jerusalem friend Jeremy was ripe for almost
anything except the plan we had agreed on. Having talked that over
pretty steadily most of