“Thus it is!” he was declaiming.  “Even as I have sought to show you, oh, addle-witted offspring of mangy camels and one-eyed mules!  In that far country, when men are dissatisfied with their wage, they take counsel together and they say, one unto the other:  ’Lo, we shall labour no more, unless our hire be greater and our toil hours less!’ Then go they to their sheikh or whomever he be who hath hired them, and they say to him:  ’Oh, favoured of Allah, behold we must have such and such wage and such and such hours of labour!’ Then doth their sheikh cast ashes upon his beard and rend his garments.  For doth he not know his fate is upon him and that his breath is in his nostrils?  Yet will they not listen to his prayers; but at once they make ‘strike.’

“Then doth their sheikh betake himself to the pasha with his grievance; beseeching the pasha, with many rich gifts, that he will throw those strike-making labourers into prison and scourge their kinsmen with the kourbash.  But the pasha maketh answer, with tears:  ’Lo, I am helpless!  What saith the law?  It saith that a man may make strike at will; and that his employer must pay what is demanded!’ Now, this pasha is named ‘General.’  And his heart is as gall within him that he may not accept the rich gifts offered by the sheikh; and punish the labourers.  Yet the law restraineth him.  Then the sheikh, perchance, still refuseth the demands of his toilers.  And they say to him then:  ’If you will not employ us and on the terms we ordain, then shall ye hire none others, for we shall overthrow those whom you set in our places.  And perchance we shall destroy your warehouses or barns or shops!’ This say they, when they know he hath greatest need of them.  Then boweth their master his head upon his breast and saith:  ’Be it even as ye will, my hirelings!  For I must obey!’ And he giveth them, of his substance, whatsoever they may require.  And all are glad.  And under the new law, even in this land of ours, none may imprison or beat those who will not work.  And all may demand and receive what wage they will.  And—­”

And Kirby waited to hear no more.  With a groan of disgust at the orator’s imbecility, he went back, up the hill, to his own tent.

There, he drew forth his rickety sea chair and placed it in front of a patch of campfire that twinkled in the open space in front of the tent door.  For, up there in the hills, the nights had an edge of chill to them; be the days ever so hot.

Stretching himself out lazily in his long chair, Kirby exhumed from a shirt pocket his disreputable brier pipe, and filled and lighted it.  The big white Syrian stars glinted down on him from a black velvet sky.  Along the nearer peaks and hollows of the Moab Mountains, the knots of prowling jackals kept up a running chorus of yapping—­a discordant chant punctuated now and then by the far-away howl of a hunting wolf; or, by the choking “laugh” of a hyena in the valley below, who thus gave forth the news of some especially delicious bit of carrion discovered among the rocks.