“They will!” corrected Kirby with grim hopelessness.

“But soon Cabell Effendi will reply to your letter,” went on Najib.  “And then the double paying—­”

“To my letter!” mocked the raging Kirby.

Then he paused, a sudden inspiration smiting him.

“Najib,” he continued after a minute of concentrated thought, “you have sense enough to know one thing:  You have sense enough to know you people can’t get that extra pay till I write to Mr. Cabell and demand it for you.  There’s not another one of you who can write English.  There’s no one here but yourself who can speak or understand it or make shift to spell out a few English words in print And Mr. Cabell doesn’t know a word of Arabic—­let alone the Arabic script.  And your own two years at Coney Island must have shown you that no New Yorkers would know how to read an Arabic letter to him.  Now I swear to you, by every Christian and Moslem oath, that I shan’t write such a letter!  So how are you going to get word to him that you people are on strike and that you won’t do another lick of work till you get double pay and half time?  How are you going to do that?”

Najib’s solid face went blank.  Here at last was an argument that struck home.  He had known Kirby for years, long enough to know that the American was most emphatically a man of his word.  If Kirby swore he would not act as the men’s intermediary with the company, then decisively Kirby would keep his oath.  And Najib realized the futility of getting any one else to write such a letter in any language which the Cabell Smelting Company’s home office would decipher.

He peered up at Kirby with disconsolate astonishment.  Quick to take advantage of the change, the manager hurried on: 

“Now, the men are on strike.  That’s understood.  Well what are you and they going to do about it?  When the draft for the monthly pay roll comes to the bank, at Jerusalem as usual, I shall refuse to indorse it.  I give you my oath on that, too.  I am not going to distribute the company’s cash among a bunch of strikers.  Without my signature, the bank won’t cash the draft.  You know that.  Well, how are you going to live, all of you, on nothing a month?  When the present stock of provisions gives out I’m not going to order them renewed.  And the provision people in Jerusalem won’t honour any one’s order for them but mine.  This is the only concern in Syria to-day that pays within forty per cent, of the wages you chaps are getting.  With no pay and no food you’re due to find your strike rather costly.  For when the mine shuts down I’m going back to America.  There’ll be nothing to keep me here.  I’ll be ruined, in any case.  You people will find yourself without money or provisions.  And if you go elsewhere for work it will be at a pay that is only a little more than half what you are getting now.  Your lookout isn’t cheery, my striking friend!”

He made as though to go into his tent.  After a brief pause of horror, Najib pattered hurriedly and beseechingly in his wake.