Tales of Three Hemispheres

  THE PRAYER OF BOOB AHEERA

  In the harbour, between the liner and the palms, as the huge ship'spassengers came up from dinner, at moonrise, each in his canoe, AliKareeb Ahash and Boob Aheera passed within knife thrust.

  So urgent was the purpose of Ali Kareeb Ahash that he did not leanover as his enemy slid by, did not tarry then to settle that longaccount; but that Boob Aheera made no attempt to reach him was asource of wonder to Ali. He pondered it till the liner's electriclights shone far away behind him with one blaze and the canoe was nearto his destination, and pondered it in vain, for all that the easternsubtlety of his mind was able to tell him clearly was that it was notlike Boob Aheera to pass him like that.

  That Boob Aheera could have dared to lay such a cause as his beforethe Diamond Idol Ali had not conceived, yet as he drew near to thegolden shrine in the palms, that none that come by the great shipsever found, he began to see more clearly in his mind that this waswhere Boob had gone on that hot night. And when he beached his canoehis fears departed, giving place to the resignation with which healways viewed Destiny; for there on the white sea sand were the tracksof another canoe, the edges all fresh and ragged. Boob Aheera hadbeen before him. Ali did not blame himself for being late, the thinghad been planned before the beginning of time, by gods that knew theirbusiness; only his hate of Boob Aheera increased, his enemy againstwhom he had come to pray. And the more his hate increased the moreclearly he saw him, until nothing else could be seen by the eye of hismind but the dark lean figure, the little lean legs, the grey beardand neat loin-cloth of Boob Aheera, his enemy.

  That the Diamond Idol should have granted the prayers of such a one hedid not as yet imagine, he hated him merely for his presumptuousnessin approaching the shrine at all, for approaching it before him whosecause was righteous, for many an old past wrong, but most of all forthe expression of his face and the general look of the man as he hasswept by in his canoe with his double paddle going in the moonlight.

  Ali pushed through the steaming vegetation. The place smelt oforchids. There is no track to the shrine though many go. If therewere a track the white man would one day find it, and parties wouldrow to see it whenever a liner came in; and photographs would appearin weekly papers with accounts of it underneath by men who had neverleft London, and all the mystery would be gone away and there would benothing novel in this story.

  Ali had scarcely gone a hundred yards through cactus and creeperunderneath the palms when he came to the golden shrine that nothingguards except the deeps of the forest, and found the Diamond Idol. TheDiamond Idol is five inches high and its base a good inch square, andit has a greater lustre than those diamonds that Mr. Moses bought lastyear for his wife, when he offered her an earldom or the diamonds, andJael 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 inEurope, and the men thereby are poor and held to be fearless--yet theydo not sell that idol. And I may say here that if any one of myreaders should ever come by ship to the winding harbour where theforts of the Portuguese crumble in infinite greenery, where the baobabstands like a corpse here and there in the palms, if he goes ashorewhere no one has any business to go, and where no one so far as I knowhas gone from a liner before (though it's little more than a mile orso from the pier), and if he finds a golden shrine, which is nearenough to the shore, and a five-inch diamond in it carved in the shapeof a god, it is better to leave it alone and get back safe to the shipthan to sell that diamond idol for any price in the world.

  Ali Kareeb Ahash went into the golden shrine, and when he raised hishead from the seven obeisances that are the due of the idol, behold!it glowed with such a lustre as only it wears after answering recentprayer. No native of those parts mistakes the tone of the idol, theyknow its varying shades as a tracker knows blood; the moon wasstreaming 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 knifetill the hilt of it bruised his hand, yet he did not utter the prayerthat he had made ready about Boob Aheera's liver, for he saw that BoobAheera's prayers were acceptable to the idol and knew that divineprotection was over his enemy.

  What Boob Aheera's prayer was he did not know, but he went back to thebeach as fast as one can go through cacti and creepers that climb tothe tops of the palms; and as fast as his canoe could carry him hewent down the winding harbour, till the liner shone beside him as hepassed, and he heard the sound of its band rise up and die, and helanded and came that night into Boob Aheera's hut. And there heoffered himself as his enemy's slave, and Boob Aheera's slave he is tothis day, and his master has protection from the idol. And Ali rowsto the liners and goes on board to sell rubies made of glass, and thinsuits for the tropics and ivory napkin rings, and Manchester kimonos,and little lovely shells; and the passengers abuse him because of hisprices; and yet they should not, for all the money cheated by AliKareeb Ahash goes to Boob Aheera, his master.