It was not until they had debouched (as Crothers termed it) to their
half-right front and had taken to a narrow one-man track that ran
below the wall that any over attention was paid them. Suddenly a
hook-nosed Asiatic gentleman emerged through the once-was gateway--
a picture of a Bible shepherd but for the long-barreled gun he carried
instead of crook--a brown shadow against brown masonry. He challenged
them in Arabic, and Curley Crothers answered him in Queen Victoria's
English that all was well.
"Everything in the garden's lovely!" he asserted, in a deep-sea sing-song.
"How's yourself?"
The man repeated whatever he had said before, this time with a gesture
of impatience.
"Friend!" roared Byng and Curley both together. And the bull terrier
took the joint yell for a war cry, or a bunting call, or possibly
the herald's overture that summons bull pups to Valhalla. He was
bred right and British Navy trained and his was not to reason why.
He waited for no second invitation, but lit out from Byng's arms
like a streak--a whip-tail, snow-white streak--for where the Arab's
hard lean legs shone shiny-brown below his fluttering brown raiment.
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