[Illustration:  “I’M A BRITISH SUBJECT”]

Now the Lady Emir was not listening to all this tirade by any means unmoved.  To begin with, it was not etiquette to speak at all in her presence if unaddressed, and to go on with, although she did not understand one word in ten of what was being spoken, she gathered the gist of it, and this did not tend to compose her.  She threw away the snaky stem of water-pipe, and gripped both hands on the trooper’s sword, till the muscles stood out in high relief.

“Do you say,” she demanded, “you onwilling marry me?”

“Yes,” said Wenlock, with sullen emphasis.

She turned her head, and gave orders in Arabic.  With marvellous readiness, as though it was one of the regular appointments of the place, a couple of the guards trundled a stained-wooden block into the middle of the floor, another took his station beside it with an ominous-looking axe poised over his shoulder, and almost before Wenlock knew what was happening, he was pinned by a dozen men at wrist and ankle, and thrust down to kneel “with his neck over the block.

“Do you say,” the Lady Emir repeated, “you onwilling marry me?”

“I’m a British subject,” Wenlock shouted.  “I’ve a Foreign Office passport in my pocket.  I’ll appeal to my Government over this.”

“My lad,” said Kettle, “you won’t have time to appeal.  The lady isn’t being funny.  She means square biz.  If you don’t be sensible, and see things in the same way she does, it’ll be one che-opp, and what happens afterward won’t interest you.”

“Those spikes,” said Wenlock faintly.

“Above the water-gate?” said Kettle.  “Queer, but the same thing occurred to me, too.  You’d feel a bit lonely stuck up there getting sun-dried.”

“I’ll marry her.”

“You’d better spread a bit more politeness about,” Kettle advised.  “It will be all the more comfortable for you afterward if you do.”  And so Wenlock, with desperation nerving him, poured out all the pretty speeches which he had in store, and which he had looked to use to this very woman under such very different circumstances.  But he did not even suggest taking his future spouse back to England.

She, too, when she graciously pardoned his previous outburst, mentioned her decision on this matter also.

“I am Emir here,” she said, “and I could not be Emir in your England without many fights.  So here I shall stay, and you with me.  When there is war, you shall ride at my side; in peace I will give you a governorship over a ward of this town, from which you can get your taxes.  And if there are children, you shall bring them up.”

The mullah, who knew better than to keep his ruler waiting, had come in, and they were forthwith married, solemnly and irrevocably, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Mohammedan Church, as practised in the kingdom of Dunkhot.  And in witness thereof, Captain Kettle wrote his name from left to right, in contradistinction to all the other signatories, who wrote from right to left, except the bridegroom.