The Flying Legion | Page 3

Then once more he fell to pacing; and as he walked that weary space, up and down, he muttered to himself with words we cannot understand.
After a certain time, Rrisa came silently back, sliding into the soft dusk of that room almost like a wraith. He bore a silver tray with a hook-nosed coffee-pot of chased metal. The cover of this coffee-pot rose into a tall, minaret-like spike. On the tray stood also a small cup having no handle; a dish of dates; a few wafers made of the Arabian cereal called temmin; and a little bowl of khat leaves.
"M'almé, al khat aja" (the khat has come), said Rrisa.
He placed the tray on the table at his master's side, and was about to withdraw when the other stayed him with raised hand.
"Tell me, Rrisa," he commanded, still speaking in Arabic, "where wert thou born? Show thou me, on that map."
The Arab hesitated a moment, squinting by the dim light that now had faded to purple dusk. Then he advanced a thin forefinger, and laid it on a spot that might have indicated perhaps three hundred miles southeast of Mecca. No name was written on the map, there.
"How dost thou name that place, Rrisa?" demanded the Master.
"I cannot say, Master," answered the Arab, very gravely. As he stood there facing the western afterglow, the profound impassivity of his expression--a look that seemed to scorn all this infidel civilization of an upstart race--grew deeper.
To nothing of it all did he owe allegiance, save to the Master himself--the Master who had saved him in the thick of the Gallipoli inferno. Captured by the Turks there, certain death had awaited him and shameful death, as a rebel against the Sublime Porte. The Master had rescued him, and taken thereby a scar that would go with him to the grave; but that, now, does not concern our tale. Only we say again that Rrisa's life lay always in the hands of this man, to do with as he would.
None the less, Rrisa answered the question with a mere:
"Master, I cannot say."
"Thou knowest the name of the place where thou wast born?" demanded the Master, calmly, from where he sat by the table.
"A (yes), M'almé, by the beard of M'hámed, I do!"
"Well, what is it?"
Rrisa shrugged his thin shoulders.
"A tent, a hut? A village, a town, a city?"
"A city, Master. A great city, indeed. But its name I may not tell you."
"The map, here, shows nothing, Rrisa. And of a surety, the makers of maps do not lie," the Master commented, and turned a little to pour the thick coffee. Its perfume rose with grateful fragrance on the air.
The Master sipped the black, thick nectar, and smiled oddly. For a moment he regarded his unwilling orderly with narrowed eyes.
"Thou wilt not say they lie, son of Islam, eh?" demanded he.
"Not of choice, perhaps, M'almé," the Mussulman replied. "But if the camel hath not drunk of the waters of the oasis, how can he know that they be sweet? These Nasara (Christian) makers of maps, what can they know of my people or my land?"
"Dost thou mean to tell me no man can pass beyond the desert rim, and enter the middle parts of Arabia?"
"I said not so, Master," replied the Arab, turning and facing his master, every sense alert, on guard against any admissions that might betray the secret he, like all his people, was sworn by a Very great oath to keep.
"Not all men, true," the Master resumed. "The Turks--I know they enter, though hated. But have no other foreign men ever seen the interior?"
"A, M'almé, many--of the True Faith. Such, though they come from China, India, or the farther islands of the Indian Ocean, may enter freely."
"Of course. But I am speaking now of men of the Nasara faith. How of them? Tell me, thou!"
"You are of the Nasara, M'almé! Do not make me answer this! You, having saved my life, own that life. It is yours. Ana bermil illi bedakea! (I obey your every command!) But do not ask me this! My head is at your feet. But let us speak of other things, O Master!"
The Master kept a moment's silence. He peered contemplatively at the dark silhouette of the Arab, motionless, impassive in the dusk. Then he frowned a very little, which was as near to anger as he ever verged. Thoughtfully he ate a couple of the little temmin wafers and a few dates. Rrisa waited in silent patience.
All at once the Master spoke.
"It is my will that thou speak to me and declare this thing, Rrisa," said he, decisively. "Say, thou, hath no man of the Nasara faith ever penetrated as far as to the place of thy birth?"
"Lah (no), M'almé, never. But three did reach an oasis not far