Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/89

Rh last I made them understand. And they rejoiced of it. So it is all settled most sweetly. You may not fear that they will not stand by it. As soon as that was made sure I came to you to tell”

“Najib!” groaned Kirby, his head awhirl. “Will you stop chewing chunks of indigestible language, and tell me what you are jabbering about? What was it you thought over? And what is ‘all settled’? What will”

“The strike, of an assuredly,” explained Najib, as if in pity of his chief’s denseness. “To-night we make strike. All of us. That is one tiding. And you, too, make strike with us. That is the other tiding. Making two tidings. We make strike. To-morrow we all sleep late. No work is to be made. And so it shall be, on each dear and nice and happy day, until Cabell Effendi—be his sons an hundred and his wives true!—shall pay us the money we ask and make short our hours of toil. Then”

Kirby sought to speak. But his breath was gone. He only gobbled. Taking the wordless sound for a token of high approval, Najib hastened on, more glibly, with his program.

“On the to-morrow’s morning, howadji,” he said, “we enseech that you will write a sorrowsome letter to Cabell Effendi, in the Broad Street of New York; and say to him that all of us have made strike and that we shall work no more until we have from his hands a writing that our payment shall be two mejidie for every mejidie we have been capturing from his company. Also and likewise that we shall work but half time. And that you, howadji, are to receive even as we; save only that your wage is to be enswollen to three times over than what it is now. And say to him, howadji, that unless he does our wish in this striking we shall slay all others whom he may behire in our place and that we shall dynamitely destroy that nice mine. Remind him, howadji—if perchancely he does not know of such things—that the law is with us. Say, moreoverly, that there be many importanceful shipments and contracts just now. And say he will lose all if he be so bony of head as to refuse