There he passed the blazing hours, registering the location of the path by the lay of the sun upon the rocks and his mutilated face; and never once, afterwards, did he fail by day to find his way, unaided, either going out or coming in, across the narrow way.
He crossed to the desert at night upon the back of either one or the other of the two animals he loved to ride, and which, with the help of “His Eyes” and much patience, he trained to negotiate the path without fear and without help of guiding hand or knee.
During the training, Lulah, spoilt and sensitive, had wellnigh lost her life more times than could be numbered; whereas Fahm, the black dromedary, ambled indifferently across the dangerous path as though its great, cushioned feet trod the desert sands.
A magnificent beast, this black _hejeen_ of Oman.
Brainless as a sheep, swift as the wind, as enduring as it was obstinate, it was worth the price of many blood-red rubies on account of its colour, and had fallen to Yussuf as his share of the spoil resultant upon a sanguinary and none too successful attack upon a caravan of camels belonging to the great Sheikh Hahmed, the Camel King.
And with it all he waited, patiently and with the Oriental’s fatalism, throughout the years, for his revenge upon Zarah the Arabian.
Subtle, crafty, determined that by his hand alone should punishment fall upon her, he had argued with and beseeched the Sheikh and his fellow-men to spare her. Even upon the night of the disaster had he whispered, between the cut lips held together by the hour in Namlah’s tender fingers—had whispered in urgent entreaty, until the men, crowding about his couch, thinking him crazed with fever, touched their foreheads as they looked at each other and made oath upon the beard of the Prophet to do so.
They had thought him crazed with fever then, thereafter they ever thought him slightly mad.
They would touch their foreheads when he spoke gently of the girl, and would shake their heads when he questioned them closely about the suitors who, afire with the tales of her beauty and her wealth, came themselves or sent emissaries laden with gifts, piled high on camel back, to ask her hand in marriage.
They thought him slightly mad, whereas, if they could but have seen into his sane and cunning mind, they would have understood that his interest in the girl’s marriage had root in a great fear that he would so be cheated of his revenge.