It is an enormous tower.  The wireless apparatus connected with it can talk with Paris and Calcutta.  From the top you feel as if you were seeing “all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.”  There are no other buildings to cut off the view or tamper with perspective.  The Dead Sea was growing dark.  The Moab Hills beyond it looked lonely and savage in silhouette.

“Down there on your left is Jericho,” said Grim.  “That winding creek beyond it is the Jordan.  As far eastward as that there’s some peace.  Beyond that, there is hardly a rock that isn’t used for ambush regularly.  Let your eye travel along the top of the hills—­nearly as far as the end of the Dead Sea.  Now—­d’you see where a touch of sunlight glints on something?  That’s the top of the castle-wall of El-Kerak.  Judge what strategists those old crusaders were.  That site commands the ancient high road from Egypt.  They could sit up there and take toll to their hearts’ content.  The Turks quartered troops in the castle and did the same thing.  But the Turks overdid it, like everything else.  They ruined the trade.  No road there nowadays that amounts to anything.”

“It looks about ten miles away.”

“More than eighty.”

The sun went down behind us while we watched, and here and there the little scattered lights came out among the silent hills in proof that there were humans who thought of them in terms of home.

Venus and Mars shone forth, yellow and red jewels; then the moon, rising like a stage effect, too big, too strongly lighted to seem real, peering inch by inch above the hills and ushering in silence.  We could hear one muezzin in Jerusalem wailing that God is God.

“That over yonder is savage country,” Grim remarked.  “I think maybe you’ll like it.  Time to go now.”

He said nothing more until we were scooting downhill in the car in the midst of a cloud of dust.

“You won’t see me again,” he said then, “until you get to El-Kerak.  There are just one or two points to bear in mind.  D’you care if I lecture?”

“I wish you would.”

“When the messenger comes from ben Nasir, go to the Governorate, just outside the Damascus Gate, phone OETA, say who you are, and ask for the car.  Travel light.  The less you take with you, the less temptation there’ll be to steal and that much less danger for your escort.  I always take nothing, and get shaved by a murderer at the nearest village.  If you wash too much, or change your shirt too often, they suspect you of putting on airs.  Can’t travel too light.  Use the car as far as Jericho, or thereabouts, and send it back when the messenger says he’s through with it.  After that, do whatever the leader of the escort tells you, and you’ll be all right.”

“How do I cross the Dead Sea?”

“That’s ben Nasir’s business.  There’s another point I’ll ask you to bear in mind.  When you see me at El-Kerak, be sure not to make the slightest sign of recognition, unless and until you get word from me.  Act as if you’d never seen me in your life before.”