And, being gentlemen after a fashion quite their own,
they smilingly apologized.
Arabia lies in the middle of the zone where laughter is not wisdom.
And a smile lies midway in the measure of a laugh. A laugh might
be unintentional. A smile must be deliberate. And the Arab's spittle
was run dry. Creed, custom, law of tooth for tooth and the thought
of half a hundred co-religionists all watching him from crannies
in the wall combined to make him shoot, since further means of showing
malice were denied him; and he raised the long butt to his shoulder
with meaning that was unmistakable.
And so, with sorrow that the East should be so lacking in good fellowship,
but with the ready instinct of men who have been trained for war,
they closed with him from two directions, swiftly, bull-dog-wise,
and took his gun away. And how could even an able seaman help the
dog's taking a share in the game again?
So far, nobody had done anything intended to be wrong--least of all
the dog. The Arab was defending institutions; Crothers and Joe Byng
were bent on holiday, and full of kind regards for anything that lived;
and the dog was living dogfully up to well-bred-terrier tradition.
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