1939-02-10 — Page 5

IT

CHINA MAIL

FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, FEBRUARY 10, 1939

was a pill started it.

Mack sneezed, one of those shattering sternutations that start cracks in the ceiling and faults In 'the foundations. Sneered again and a third time. Flockhart left the room.

.

He was back in minute with a glass of water and the pill. Mack just grinned sheepishly.

"Flock, I couldn't swallow that if it was to save my life." "Rot!" growled Barrett. Flockhart flicked the pill of quinine into the Tire, drank the water, smiled queerly at Barrett.

"I know what you're thinking, Barrett, but you're wrong. I felt the same way about it till I saw a fellow die just because he couldn't swallow.""

"The floor's yours," Barrett resignedly, wriggling him- self into his chair.

* *

growled

I was in the Palestine Police at the time (began Flockhart) and was supposed to be responsible for quite a largish district between Ber Sheba and the frontier, mean- ing, in simple English, that, if anything went really wrong, I was the bloke that would get shot up. But the pay was good and it wasn't a bad life for anyone who liked that kind of life, Plenty_to_du,

Short Story

plenty of variety, and not much butting in of top-sides about things that didn't matter a hoot. There were drug-smugglers always be trying to run hashish and heroin across Sinai and the tribes were liable to give odd spots of bother. Actually I had my headquarters at Ber Sheba, but I spent most of my time out, trekking around with and sometimes, my eyes open when it seemed wise, very tight shut. And it was on one of these trips that I came across a Beduin encampment in a wadi some ten miles from Ber Sheba.

It was a quaint little spot, look- ed just the sort of scene they'd rig up on the stage, Knowing not a darn thing about it. You came on it suddenly from the dune de sert, just found yourself, before you knew what had happened, slithering down a sandy lane to a trickle of water you could jump over. It came from a surface well at the top of the wadi, rippled along quite ambitiously for about a hundred yards, then lost heart and died away in a patch of wet sand. A bit brackish, but desert thirst can't afford to be particu- lar, and in the hot weather the camels and goats and sheep from miles around would drop in for a nip and a chaser and stay till closing time.

Some of the camels stayed on in that wadi and a good bunch they were, too, I'm no expert on camel flesh, but there's as much difference between a first-class riding camel and the ordinary transport camel as there is. be- tween a butterfly and g moth. And these beasts had a build that spoke of a very nice discretion on the part of their parents. But,

ONE COULDN'T SWALLOW

terested in men than in camels, and I couldn't extend the compli ment to them. Real, scruffy villains they looked, all six of 'em. But there was a seventh as obviously all wrong as the six were wrong and yet all right.

man,

You see, you rather expect the Arab in that part of the country to be a bad hat, that's to say, ac- cording to our code: for robbery and raiding and an odd spot of murder just make up their way of living a natural, peaceful, life. This seventh was all wrong, be- cause I knew instinctively that he couldn't do any of these things.

He seemed an oldish though probably not as old as he looked, apare of body with just the suspicion of a slouch about his shoulders. But it was his face that made me so sure. The grey- white beard-line and moustache, the fine straight nose, the broad deep, wrinkled forehead all seemed to fit in, almost prepared you for the starting calmness, the utter contentment of his deep-set eyes. And, if you still wanted proof that he was different, it was there where the slopes of the wadi faded and the thirsty sand marked its victory

By Richard

Carol

over the upstart rivulet. This strange nomad had actually con trived a garden!

You chaps probably wouldn't have recognised it as a garden. No alyssum and lobelia, or ger- aniums or ramblers over nice little pergolas. Just a plot of dwarf barley, a dožen short rows of beans, some twenty-mingy Arishy tomato plants and, round the edge nearest the water, seven oleanders. That's what got me-the seven oleanders.

The Beduin is a wanderer: it's in his blood. Perhaps he'll scatter a few seeds in the ground and harvest the under-nourished crop--but, after that, he'll move on again some place else. Το

· cultivate properly would be to root himself and sell his birth- right. Yet this strange fellow had reared these seven oleanders that could offer him nothing but the smell and the beauty of their flow- era-unless fie knew something about them that I didn't, *

So I asked him; he seemed afraid, and, for a while I could. get nothing out of him. But, in the end, he confessed he had seen the trees in a wadi in Trans-Jor- dan during a caravan trip and brought back some of the seeds because the flowers were pretty and smelt sweetly.

Well, at my headquarters in Ber

· Sheba, I had quite s decentish patch myself. I like a spot of colour and the taste of a végeta- ble straight from the ground: and I'm always ready to talk around and about things that grow 80 long as Latin names don't come into it. So, for quite a while, we chattered and, before I left the wadi, I told him if he happen-

at the time, I was much more in-od to be Ber Shebi way any time

just to drop in at my place and Tå arrange for Arif, my garden- er, to give him any seeds or plants I could spare. Good Lord, from the look on his face you'd have thought Id promised the old Tel- low a front stall in Paradise.

I saw Sand regularly after that I got to like dropping over. Somehow it seemed to fill a gap somewhere. He had mustered up 'courage enough to take advan- tage of my offer and nothing Arif "spared" him seemed to fail. He Was a positive, green-fingered marvel. And his enthusiasm was like a child's. He was already planning to add to his plot, had the picture of it glowing in his head.

Then one day he wasn't there when I rode into the wadi. And his goatskin tent and rugs had vanished. And a row of seedlings dropped in the weakness of a long thirst. Three or four of the other Beduin of the wadi had strolled together and were looking. at me in a sort of sullen curiosity. I went over and asked them blunt- ly what had become of Saad.

Shoulders were shrugged. One waved a hand vaguely towards Sinai.

"Gone," said another laconically, as if the one word explained everything.

It would have in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred.. Sand was the hundred and it didn't explain his absence to me, not by a long chalk. I questioned them further: When had he departed? Six days back, seven, perhaps. Had he said when he would return? He had said nothing. They had asked him?

"Does the officer not know that one asks no questions in the de: sert? Perhaps he has gone to visit a very sick father at Aqaba:”

"His father lives at Aqaba?" I inquired eagerly...

The Arab just grinned insolen- tly at me.

"Who knows? All men have

fathers and why not at Aqaba ?"

"Well, I was never fond of bang- ing my head against a brick wall so I packed up, kicking myself for : giving these damned Beduin the chance to get one up on me. But I'd got it so fixed in my head that Saad would stick in that wadi as long as water babbled from the well

·

"Yes, I'd been surprised and forgotten I was a policeman. Put my questions like a curious school- boy and got what I asked for. Damn it, the sly fellow who'd sug- gested Saad had gone to see his sick father had probably told the truth. It would tickle him to death to think he'd done that and· yet made me disbelieve him. It certainly explained Saad leaving his beloved garden; and, after, all, who was going to do any harm to a peaceful old chap like Saad? By the time I got back to Ber Sheba I was quite easy in my mind again. I'd give him a little time to get back and then make a point of dropping over.

But various odd spots of bother cropped up and it must have been a good six weeks before I could... slip over to the wadi to have an- other crack, with Saad. He wasn't

his

there. I stroiled through garden, thinking how he would feal when he did return and se what the desert had done while tits back was turned. His seedlings dead, his crops dying. Only the oleanders, rooted in the wet sandi where the rivulet seeped away, still flourished.

Then I was staring incredulos- ly, at something that lived and flourished between two of the oleanders. I stared till I had the picture of it in my mind. I stopped by the tent of one of the Beduin just a moment to pass the obviously idiotic remark that Sand had not yet returned. Then I was hell for leather back to Ber Sheba.

I looked at an orderly, row of vigorous: green fronds in my gar- den and knew I had made no mis- take. Then I had a word with Arif, my tame gardener. When had Saad last been in to see him? Arif thought a long time: nearly two moon back it must have been- Had he given Saad anything?

My excitement must have in- duced a quite unintentional snap in my voice. Arif hung his head, rubbed his hands uncomfortably against his galübeyah, began mut- tering something about master saying he could give Saad any-

he had too much of. Again asked him and this time I did snap.

**The seed of the new carrot you get from England,” confessed the now thoroughly frightened Arif. “It just come when Baad come. There seemed so much. I give Sand a little, just very little."

The carrots growing in the wadi between the two oleanders were the English carrots I had got out to try, for the local carrots were rotten little things. And they were growing in a bunch. Saad might leave his garden to see a dying father-but he would never sow precious carrots in a bunch. Next morning I went out to the wadi with a dozen men, arrested they were

e half dozeu Beduin. I told them 8 suspected to being con- cerned in a tribal raid and were (Continued on Page 7)

PLEASE MOTHER-

I WANT POWDER THAT'S ANTISEPTIC

MENNEN

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