pacer of speed and endurance) under the great gateway of the Jam’s fort—­high enough for a camel-rider to pass unstooping and long enough for a relwey-tunnel—­he came upon Mahmud Ibrahim and his friends and followers (for he had many such, who thought he might succeed his father as Vizier) doing a thing that enraged my brother very greatly.  Swinging at the end of a cord tied to his hands, which were bound behind his back, was the boy Moussa Isa the Somali, apparently dead, for his eyes were closed and he gave no sign of pain as Ibrahim’s gang of pimps, panders, bullies and budmashes[18] kept him swinging to and fro by blows of lathis[19] and by kicks, while Ibrahim and his friends, at a short distance, strove to hit the moving body with stones.  I suppose the agony of hanging forward from the arms, and the blows of staff and stone, had stunned the lad—­who had offended Ibrahim, it appeared, by preventing him from entering my brother’s house—­probably to poison his water-lotah[20] and gurrah[21]—­at the door of which he, Moussa Isa, lay sick.  My brother, Mir Jan, sprang from his camel without waiting for the driver to make it kneel, and going up to Ibrahim, he struck him with his closed, but empty, hand.  Not with the slap that stings and angers, he struck him, but with the thud that stuns and injures, upon the mouth, removing certain of his teeth,—­such being his anger and his strength.  Rising from the ground and plucking forth his knife, Ibrahim sprang at my brother who, unarmed, straightway smote him senseless, and that is talked of in Mekran Kot to this day.  Yea—­senseless.  Placing the thumb upon the knuckles of the clenched fingers, he smote at the chin of Ibrahim, and laid him, as one dead, upon the earth.  Straight to the front from the shoulder and not downwards nor swinging sideways he struck, and it was as though Ibrahim had been shot.  The Sahib being English will believe this, but many Baluchis and Pathans do not.  They cannot believe it, though to me Subedar-Major Mir Daoud Khan Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan of the 99th Baluch Light Infantry of the Army of the King Emperor of India, they pretend that they do, when I tell of that great deed....  Then my brother loosed Moussa Isa with his own hand, saying that even as he had served Ibrahim Mahmud so would he serve any man who injured a hair of the head of his body-servant.  And Moussa Isa clave to my brother yet the more, and when a great Sidi slave entered the room of my brother by night, doubtless hired by Ibrahim Mahmud to slay him, Moussa Isa, grappling with him, tore out his throat with his teeth, though stabbed many times by the Sidi, ere my brother could light torch or wick to tell friend from foe.  Whether he were thief or hired murderer, none could say—­least of all the Sidi when Moussa Isa, at my brother’s bidding, loosed his teeth from the man’s throat.  But all men held that it was the work of Ibrahim, for, on recovering his senses that day of the blow, he had walked up to my brother Mir Jan and said:—­