All they'll have to divide between them soon, at the rate he's going, will be his half-pay.
He has fought for promotion all his days, to keep abreast of expenses.

What that string of cormorants will do with his four hundred pounds a year, when he oversteps at last and gets retired, beggars imagination! However, let's get busy." Business consisted in dressing me up as an Arab with the aid of Suliman, and drilling me painstakingly for half-an-hour, both of them using every trick they knew to make me laugh or show surprise, and Grim nodding approval each time I contrived not to.
More difficult than acting deaf and dumb was the trick of squatting with my legs crossed, but I had learned it after a fashion in India years ago, and only needed schooling.
"You'll get scuppered if you're caught," he warned me.

"If Suliman wasn't so scared of devils I wouldn't risk it, but I must have somebody to keep an eye on him when the time comes; that'll be tomorrow, I think." "Suppose you tell me the object of the game," I suggested.

"I'm sick of only studying the rules." "Well--your part will be to sit over those two tons of TNT and see that nobody explodes them ahead of time.

There's a conspiracy on foot to blow up the Dome of the Rock." "You mean the Mosque of Omar ?" "The place tourists call the Mosque of Omar.