Besides, an Arab’s hospitality is proverbial.  He very seldom kills a visitor on sight.

On the other hand a man, and particularly a British sailor, who runs has reason, as a rule.  Therefore these two men were evidently guilty.  Therefore they must not escape.  In five seconds the affair had changed from a spectacular amusement, with Adra’s population in the role of super-heated audience, to a hunt of Crothers and Joe Byng.

Within ten seconds each of the sailors lay with his face pressed hard into the sand and at least a dozen Arabs sitting on him.  Scamp—­utterly forgotten now by all except the sailors—­still behind the one stray pariah and ahead of all the rest but beginning to appreciate the fact that he was hunted, and beginning to feel spent—­raced on, took three sharp turns in close succession, and was gathered all unwilling in the arms of an enormous black man who snatched him from the very teeth of the following pack and dispersed them, howling, by means of well-directed kicks.

“Ah seed you yesterday, Ah did,” said his deliverer in English; and, recalling principle, the terrier bit at him—­only to find himself muzzled by a horny, huge fist that caressed even while it rendered impotent.

“Ah’m fond of little dogs!  Ah’m English!”

Scamp understood nothing of the conversation, but with canine instinct realized that he was safe; and after that he was satisfied to lie and pant.  With five red inches of tongue hanging out, and no sign whatever of his white-uniformed guardians to trouble him, a black man’s arms were as good as any other place; he did not waste half a thought on Byng and Crothers.

But Byng, three turnings back, spat filthy sand out of his mouth the moment an Arab deemed it safe to leave off sitting on his head, looked wildly around for Crothers, and bellowed—­

“Where’s the pup?”

Crothers, spitting out sand, too, twenty yards behind where the swifter Byng had fallen, called back: 

“Dunno.  Whistle him!”

Byng tried to whistle, and the Arabs mistook the effort for a signal.  In an instant both men were face-downward again, struggling for breath and clawing at the dirt.  Then worse befell.  The gentleman whose brown anatomy had suffered from the seamen’s feet and fists just previous to their invasion of the town limped up with his eye teeth showing and his flapping cotton raiment still unmended where the dog had torn it.  Any other wrath, however awful, could be nothing but the shadow of his state of mind; and since he knew the more vindictive portions of the Koran all by heart, and was quoting as he came, there was little need of words to illustrate further his attitude.

He seemed to be a person of authority.  An Arab town or village is a democracy in which each free man has his say; not even a sheik can overrule the vote of a majority, and this man was no sheik.  But rage and self-assertion will generally exercise a certain weight in tribal councils, and the crowd in this case was too doubtful of the facts to have any settled notions of its own.