Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/97

Rh mental strife, Najib’s visage shone like a full moon that is streaked by dun dust clouds.

“Furthermore, howadji!” he hailed his chief as soon as he was within earshot, “the shipment for Alexandretta is on its wayward—over than an hour earlier than it was due to bestart itself. And those poor hell-selected fellaheen are betoiling themselfs grand. Have I done well, oh, howadji?”

“Najib!” stammered Kirby, still dazed.

“And here is that most sweet book of great worthiness and wit, which I borrowed me of you in the night, howadji,” pursued Najib, taking from the soiled folds of his abieh a large old volume, bound in stout leather, after the manner of religious or scientific books of a half-century ago. On the brown back a scratched gold lettering proclaimed the gruesome title:

“Martyrs of Ancient and Modern Error.”

Well did Kirby know the tome. Hundreds of times, as a child, had he sat on the stone floor of his father’s cell-like mission study at Nablous, and had pored in shuddering fascination over its highly coloured illustrations. The book was a compilation—chiefly in the form of multichrome pictures with accompanying borders of text—of all the grisly scenes of martyrdom which the publishers had been able to scrape together from such classics as “Fox’s Book of Martyrs” and the like. Twice this past year he had surprised Najib scanning the gruesome pages in frank delight.

“I betook the book to their campfire, howadji, and I smote upon my breast and I bewept me and I wailed aloud and I would not make comfort. Till at last they all awoken and they came out of their huts and they reviled at me for disturbing them as they slept themselfs so happily. Then I spake much to them. And all the time I teared with my eyes and moaned aloudly.”

“But,” put in Kirby, “I don’t see what this”

“In a presently you shall, howadji. Yesterday I begot your goat. To-day I shall make you to frisk with peacefulness of heart. Those fellaheen cannot read. They are not of an education, as I am. And they know my wiseness in reading. For over than a trillion times