were in constant demand. Its revenues were a big item on the credit side
of the Cabell ledger.

Kirby's personal factotum, as well as superintendent of the mine, was
this squat little Syrian, Najib, who had once spent two blissfully
useless years with an All Nations Show, at Coney Island; and who there
had picked up a language which he proudly believed to be English; and
which he spoke exclusively when talking with the manager.

Kirby's rare knowledge of the East had enabled the mine to escape ruin a
score of times where a manager less conversant with Oriental ways must
have blundered into some fatal error in the handling of his men or in
dealing with the local authorities.

Remember, please, that in the East it is the seemingly insignificant
things which bring disaster to the feringhee, or foreigner. For example,
many an American or European has met unavenged death because he did not
realize that he was heaping vile affront upon his Bedouin host by eating
with his left hand. Many a foreign manager of labour has lost instant
and complete control over his fellaheen by deigning to wash his own
shirt in the near-by river or for brushing the dirt from his own
clothes. Thereby he has proved himself a labourer, instead of a master
of men. Many a foreigner has been shot or stabbed for speaking to a
native whom he thought afflicted with a fit and who was really engaged
in prayer. Many more have lost life or authority by laughing at the
wrong time or by glancing--with entire absence of interest, perhaps--at
some passing woman.

Yes, Kirby had been invaluable to his employers by virtue of his inborn
knowledge of Syrian ways. Yet, now, he was not enough of an Oriental to