All through his argument he had
held a pure-white bull terrier between his knees as proof that he
knew whereof he spoke.
"Can any of you hold him without being bitten?" he demanded. And
they did not seem to care to try.
"I know the ways of these men!" be asserted, drawing extravagant
expressions of contentment from the dog in proof of it.
So the others in the stuffy council place gave the dog a wide berth
and no privilege, but conceded him the right to hold the beast, if
he wanted to, without personal defilement. And since the way of
the world is that a man who has won the first of his contentions
can win all the rest with half the ease, he persuaded them with a
hurricane of black man's rhetoric to do what Arabs consider almost wicked.
Unbelievers who are prisoners should die, beyond all question.
"As the dregs of oil shall the fruit of the tree of Al Zakkum boil
in the bellies of the damned!" the sheik quoted. "They should be
hurried, therefore, to the punishment that waits!"
But Hassen Ah outargued him.
"Then they will land men from the ship, who will search our houses,"
he asserted.
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