Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/24

He looked at me mockingly.

"Bitter words," he said casually, "and they, too, will be washed out in blood."

"A dead jackal does not bite," I said, and laughed; "or do you think that perhaps Ali-Khan will show you mercy? Yes, yes," I added, still laughing, "he is a soft man, with the manners of a Persian. Assuredly he will show you mercy."

"Yes," he replied, "perhaps he will show me mercy." Again the cunning look shone in his eyes, and a second later he broke into riotous, high-shrilling laughter.

"Why the laughter?" I asked, astonished.

"Because you shall behold the impossible."

"What?"

"When the impossible happens, it is seen," he answered, using the Sufi saying: "for eyes and ears prove the existence of that which cannot exist: a stone swims in the water; an ape sings a Kabuli love-song—"

"Go on!" I interrupted him impatiently, rubbing his side with my rifle.

So we walked along, and every few seconds he would break into mad laughter, and the look of cunning would shine in his gray eyes. Suddenly he was quiet. Only he breathed noisily through his nostrils, and he rolled his head from side to side like a man who has taken too much bhang. And that also was strange, for, with his hands tied behind his back, he could not reach for his opium-box, and I could not make it out at all.

A few minutes later we came in sight of Ali-Khan. He was sitting on a stone ledge near a bend of the road, flowers about him, carefully wrapped in moist, yellow moss so that they would keep fresh for the