SHIPWRECK AND WAR "You call them dogs, eh ?" asked the chief.

"And why ?" "What else are such apostate fanatics?
People who live by robbery and plunder--people who, if they find no gold in your money-belt, will rip your stomach open to see if you've swallowed it! People who boast of being _harami_ (highwaymen), and who respect the _jallah_ (slave-driver)! "People who practice the barbaric _thar_, or blood-feud! People who torture their victims by cutting off the ends of their fingers before beheading or crucifying them! People who glory in murdering the 'idolators of Feringistan,' as they call us white men! Let me advise you now, my Captain, when dealing with these people or fighting them, never use your last shot on them.

Always keep a mercy-bullet in your gun!" "A mercy-bullet ?" "For yourself!" The Master pondered a moment or two, as _Nissr_ drifted on toward the now densely massed Arabs on the beach, then he said: "You seem to know these folk well." "Only too well!" The Master's next words were in the language of the desert: "_Hadratak tet kal'm Arabi ?_" (You speak Arabic ?) "_Na'am et kal'm!_" affirmed the lieutenant, smiling.

And in the same tongue he continued, with fluent ease: "Indeed I do, _Effendi_.

Yes, yes, I learned it in Algiers and all the way south as far as the headwaters of the Niger.
"Five years I spent among the Arabs, doing air-work, surveying the Sahara, locating oases, mapping what until then were absolutely unknown stretches of territory.