“Keep still!  Listen!”

Between sleeping and waking the boy forgot all about the iron self-control he practised for Grim’s exacting sake.

“What is it?  I am afraid!”

“Be still, confound you!  Listen!”

“How close beneath us are the souls of the dead?  Oh, I am afraid!”

“Silence!  Breathe through your mouth.  Make no noise at all!”

He took my hand and tried to sit absolutely still; but the gnawing noise began again, more distinctly, followed by two or three dull thuds from somewhere beneath us.

“Oh, it is the souls of dead men!  Oh—­”

“Shut up, you little idiot!  All right, I’ll tell Jimgrim!”

Fear and that threat combined were altogether too much for him.  One sprig of seedling manhood remained to him, and only one—­the will to smother emotion that he could not control a second longer.  He buried his head in my lap, stuffing his mouth with the end of the abiyi to choke the sobs back.  I covered his head completely and, like the fabled ostrich, in that darkness he felt better.

Suddenly, as clear as the ring of glass against thick glass in the distance, something gave way and fell beneath us.  Then again.  Then there were several thuds, followed by a rumble that was unmistakable—­falling masonry; it was the noise that bricks make when they dump them from a tip-cart, only smothered by the thickness of the cavern floor.  I shook Suliman again.

“Come on.  We’re going.  Now, let me have a good account of you to give to Jimgrim.  Shut your teeth tight, and remember the part you’ve got to play.”

He scrambled up the steps ahead of me, and I had to keep hold of the skirts of his smock to prevent him from running.  But he took my hand at the top, and we managed to get out through the north door without exciting comment, and without waking the spy, although I would just as soon have wakened him, for Grim seemed to think it important that his alibi and mine should be well established; however, there were two others watching by the hotel.  Ten minutes later I was glad I had not disturbed him.

I gave Suliman a two-piastre piece to pay the man who had charge of my slippers at the door, and the young rascal was so far recovered from his fright that he demanded change out of it, and stood there arguing until he got it.  Then, hand-in-hand, we crossed the great moonlit open court to the gate by which Grim had brought us in.

Looking back, so bright was the moon that you could even see the blue of the tiles that cover the mosque wall, and the interwoven scroll of writing from the Koran that runs around like a frieze below the dome.  But it did not look real.  It was like a dream-picture—­perhaps the dream of the men who slept huddled under blankets in the porches by the gate.  If so, they dreamed beautifully.

There was a Sikh, as Grim had said there would be, standing with fixed bayonet on the bottom step leading to the street.  He stared hard at me, and brought his rifle to the challenge as I approached him—­a six-foot, black-bearded stalwart he was, with a long row of campaign ribbons, and the true, truculent Sikh way of carrying his head.  He looked strong enough to carry an ox away.