Selim.

Then he went out into the market-place and gave himself up to the fat
sergeant. As they reached the outskirts of the village a sorry camel
came with a sprawling gallop after them, and swaying and rolling above it
was Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, his naboot of dom-wood across his knees.

"What dost thou come for, friend of the mercy of God?" asked Mahommed
Selim.

"To be thy messenger, praise be to God!" answered Yusef, swinging his
water-bottle clear for a drink.




V

In Egypt, the longest way round is not the shortest way home, and that
was why Mahommed Selim's court-martial took just three minutes and a
half; and the bimbashi who judged him found even that too long, for he
yawned in the deserter's face as he condemned him to death.

Mahommed Selim showed no feeling when the sentence was pronounced. His
face had an apathetic look. It seemed as if it were all one to him. But
when they had turned him round to march to the shed where he was to be
kept, till hung like a pig at sunrise, his eyes glanced about restlessly.
For even as the sentence had been pronounced a new idea had come into his
mind. Over the heads of the Gippy soldiers, with their pipestem legs,
his look flashed eagerly, then a little painfully--then suddenly stayed,