Ahmed knew the Dead Sea.  He knew its moods and a few of its tricks, so he was suitably scared.  He was more of raid of the treacherous sea than of his captors.  They weren’t treacherous in the least.  They were frankly disobedient of any law except their own; respectful of nothing but bullets, brains and their own interpretation of the Will of Allah.  They showed sublime indifference to danger that always comes of ignorance.  Ahmed was for running straight across to cut the voyage short, because of the wind that sometimes blows from the south at dawn.  He said it might kick up a sea that would roll us over, for the weight of the Dead Sea waves in a blow is prodigious.

They overruled his protest with loud-lunged unanimity and lots of abuse.  Anazeh continued to steer a diagonal course for a notch in the Moab Hills that look, until you get quite close to them, as if they rose sheer out of the sea.  The old chief was pretty amateurish at the helm, whatever his other attainments.  Our wake was like a drunkard’s.

What with the danger in that overcrowded boat, and the manifestly compromising fact that I had now become one of a gang who boasted of the murder they had done that night, I did some speculation that seems ridiculous now, at this distance, after a lapse of time.  It occurred to me that Grim might be disguised as a member of Anazeh’s party.  As far as possible in the dark I thoroughly scrutinized each individual.  It is easy to laugh about it now, but I actually made my way to Anazeh’s side and tried to discover whether the old Sheikh’s wrinkles and gray-shot beard were not a very skillfully done make-up.  At any rate, I got from that absurd investigation the sure knowledge that Grim was not in the boat with us.

I could not talk with Anazeh very well, because when he tried to understand my amateurish Arabic and to modify his flow of stately speech to meet my needs, he always put his head down, and the helm with it.  It seemed wisest to let him do one unaccustomed thing at a time.  I did not care to try to talk with any of his men, because that might possibly have been a breach of etiquette.  Arab jealousy is about as quick as fulminate of mercury:  as unreasonable, from a western viewpoint, as a love-sick woman’s.

But there did not seem any objection to talking with Ahmed.  He was at least in theory my co-religionist, and not a person any Moslem in that boat was likely to be jealous of.  He jumped at the notion of making friends with me.  He made no secret of the reason.

“You are safe, effendi.  They will neither rob you, nor kill you, nor let you get killed.  You are their guest.  But as for me, they would cut my throat as readily as that sheep’s, more especially since they have discovered that you know how to start the engine.  My best chance was to make them believe that the engine is difficult to understand.  Because of your knowledge they now feel independent of me.  So I must yield to them in everything.  And if they force me to swear on a Bible, and on my father’s honour, and in the name of God, that I will not give evidence against them, I shall have to swear.”