"Tame yourself, howadji, I enseech you! Why are you not rejoiceful? Will
it not mean much money for you; and--"

"You mangy brown rat!" shouted Kirby in fury. "What in blazes have you
done? You know, as well as I do, that such an idea will never get out of
those fellaheens' skulls, once it's really planted there. They'll
believe every word of that wall-eyed rot you've been telling them! And
they'll go on a _genuine_ strike on the strength of it. They'll--"

"Of an assuredly, howadji, they will," assented the bewildered Najib. "I
made me very assured of that. Four times I told it all over to them,
until even poor Imbarak--whose witfulness hath been beblown out from his
brain by the breath of the Most High--until even Imbarak understood. But
why it should enrouse you to a lionsome raging I cannot think. I
bethought you would be pleasured--"

"Listen to me!" ordered Kirby, fighting hard for self-control and
forcing himself to speak with unnatural slowness. "You've done more
damage than if you had dynamited the whole mine and then turned a river
into the shaft. This kind of news spreads. In a week there won't be a
worker east of the Jordan who won't be a strike fan. And these people
here will work the idea a step farther. I know them. They'll decide that
if one strike is good, two strikes are better. And they will strike
every week--loafing between times."

This prospect brought a grin of pure bliss to Najib's swarthy face. He
looked in new admiration upon his farsighted chief. Kirby went on:

"Not that that will concern us. For this present strike will settle the