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THE PRAYER OF BOOB AHEERA
In the harbour, between the liner and the palms, as the huge ship's
passengers came up from dinner, at moonrise, each in his canoe, Ali
Kareeb Ahash and Boob Aheera passed within knife thrust.
So urgent was the purpose of Ali Kareeb Ahash that he did not lean
over as his enemy slid by, did not tarry then to settle that long
account; but that Boob Aheera made no attempt to reach him was a
source of wonder to Ali. He pondered it till the liner's electric
lights shone far away behind him with one blaze and the canoe was near
to his destination, and pondered it in vain, for all that the eastern
subtlety of his mind was able to tell him clearly was that it was not
like Boob Aheera to pass him like that.
That Boob Aheera could have dared to lay such a cause as his before
the Diamond Idol Ali had not conceived, yet as he drew near to the
golden shrine in the palms, that none that come by the great ships
ever found, he began to see more clearly in his mind that this was
where Boob had gone on that hot night. And when he beached his canoe
his fears departed, giving place to the resignation with which he
always viewed Destiny; for there on the white sea sand were the tracks
of another canoe, the edges all fresh and ragged. Boob Aheera had
been before him. Ali did not blame himself for being late, the thing
had been planned before the beginning of time, by gods that knew their
business; only his hate of Boob Aheera increased, his enemy against
whom he had come to pray. And the more his hate increased the more
clearly he saw him, until nothing else could be seen by the eye of his
mind but the dark lean figure, the little lean legs, the grey beard
and neat loin-cloth of Boob Aheera, his enemy.
That the Diamond Idol should have granted the prayers of such a one he
did not as yet imagine, he hated him merely for his presumptuousness
in approaching the shrine at all, for approaching it before him whose
cause was righteous, for many an old past wrong, but most of all for
the expression of his face and the general look of the man as he has
swept by in his canoe with his double paddle going in the moonlight.
Ali pushed through the steaming vegetation. The place smelt of
orchids. There is no track to the shrine though many go. If there
were a track the white man would one day find it, and parties would
row to see it whenever a liner came in; and photographs would appear
in weekly papers with accounts of it underneath by men who had never
left London, and all the mystery would be gone away and there would be
nothing novel in this story.
Ali had scarcely gone a hundred yards through cactus and creeper
underneath the palms when he came to the golden shrine that nothing
guards except the deeps of the forest, and found the Diamond Idol. The
Diamond Idol is five inches high and its base a good inch square, and
it has a greater lustre than those diamonds that Mr. Moses bought last
year for his wife, when he offered her an earldom or the diamonds, and
Jael his wife had answered, "Buy the diamonds and be just plain Mr.
Fortescue."
Purer than those was its luster and carved as they carve not in
Europe, and the men thereby are poor and held to be fearless--yet they
do not sell that idol. And I may say here that if any one of my
readers should ever come by ship to the winding harbour where the
forts of the Portuguese crumble in infinite greenery, where the baobab
stands like a corpse here and there in the palms, if he goes ashore
where no one has any business to go, and where no one so far as I know
has gone from a liner before (though it's little more than a mile or
so from the pier), and if he finds a golden shrine, which is near
enough to the shore, and a five-inch diamond in it carved in the shape
of a god, it is better to leave it alone and get back safe to the ship
than to sell that diamond idol for any price in the world.
Ali Kareeb Ahash went into the golden shrine, and when he raised his
head from the seven obeisances that are the due of the idol, behold!
it glowed with such a lustre as only it wears after answering recent
prayer. No native of those parts mistakes the tone of the idol, they
know its varying shades as a tracker knows blood; the moon was
streaming in through the open door and Ali saw it clearly.
No one had been that night but Boob Aheera.
The fury of Ali rose and surged to his heart, he clutched his knife
till the hilt of it bruised his hand, yet he did not utter the prayer
that he had made ready about Boob Aheera's liver, for he saw that Boob
Aheera's prayers were acceptable to the idol and knew that divine
protection was over his enemy.
What Boob Aheera's prayer was he did not know, but he went back to the
beach as fast as one can go through cacti and creepers that climb to
the tops of the palms; and as fast as his canoe could carry him he
went down the winding harbour, till the liner shone beside him as he
passed, and he heard the sound of its band rise up and die, and he
landed and came that night into Boob Aheera's hut. And there he
offered himself as his enemy's slave, and Boob Aheera's slave he is to
this day, and his master has protection from the idol. And Ali rows
to the liners and goes on board to sell rubies made of glass, and thin
suits for the tropics and ivory napkin rings, and Manchester kimonos,
and little lovely shells; and the passengers abuse him because of his
prices; and yet they should not, for all the money cheated by Ali
Kareeb Ahash goes to Boob Aheera, his master.
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