"
After that he stood flashing his white teeth for half an hour watching
Mabel bandage Jeremy and me, for it always amuses a Sikh to watch a
white man eat punishment. Sikhs are a fine race--but curious--
distinctly curious and given to unusual amusement. When Mabel had
finished with me at last I stuck a needle into him, and he laughed,
accepting the stab as a compliment.
A strange thing is how men settle down after excitement. Birds do the
same thing. A hawk swoops down on a hedgerow; there is a great
flutter, followed by sudden silence. A minute later the chattering
begins again, without any reference to one of their number being torn in
the plunderer's beak. And so we; even Grim loosened up and gossiped
about Feisul and the already ancient days when Feisul was the up-to-date
Saladin leading Arab hosts to victory.
But there was an even stranger circumstance than that. We weren't the
only people in the train; our car, for instance, was fairly well
occupied by Armenians, Arabs, and folk whose vague nationality came
under the general heading of Levantine. The car ahead where the fight
took place, though not crowded, wasn't vacant, and there were others in
the car behind.
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