"He might have other plans." The Sikh turned that over in his mind during one whole circuit of the palm-trees, stroking his great beard with his right hand the while as if the friction would inspire his brain.
"Jimgrim will say she is a woman and therefore must not be killed in any event," he answered at last.

"But that is of the nature of his error, all men suffering delusion in some form, since none is perfect.

If we submit the problem to him he will answer wrongly; but we shall then have received orders, which, as faithful men, we must not disobey.
"As concerns ourselves, being men without specific orders on that point, the question is simple: Of that woman and that man, if the one must live and the other die, which shall it be?
And I say Jimgrim shall live, if I die afterward even by his hand for it." It sounded logical.

The arguments with which an unselfish, honest fellow deceives himself into wrong-doing always do bear quite a lot of investigation.

But I was at sea before the mast once, where I learned painfully that the captain commands the ship; not even the notions of the buckiest bucko mate amount to as much as a barnacle's bootlace if the old man disagrees from them.
"What makes you think he doesn't understand the obvious danger of Ayisha ?" said I.
"No man from the West ever understood a woman of the East," he answered.
That being obviously true--Adam did not understand Eve, and no man from anywhere has understood any woman since--I had to rack my brains for a different argument.
"There are two sure ways of discovering treason," I said at last.
"One way is to pick a quarrel with the person you suspect.