Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/53

He shut his teeth with a little dry click. His heart felt swollen, as if he had washed it in brackish water, and he asked God—it seemed a personal issue between him and God—if he should be cheated of his revenge because an old woman, thin of sleep, was rummaging about the zenana in search of charcoal and hubble-bubble and Latakia tobacco spiced with rose water and grains of musk.

And, steadily, as he waited, his finger immobile on the bolt of the door, undecided what to do, the sun was rising, striking the jagged cliffs with dusted gold, tumbling broken-rayed into the courtyard and drinking the newly thawed snow. Already the east was flushing with pink and orange as the mists drifted through the valley, shearing a glittering crimson slice from the morning sun. Already, looking nervously over his shoulder, he saw down the path one of the Red Chief's peasants carrying a rough, iron-tipped milking yoke across his shoulders. Still he stood, undecided, ears and eyes tense.

The thousand noises of the waking day were about him. Somewhere a tiny koel bird was gurgling and twittering. A little furry bat cheeped dismally. A peacock-blue butterfly flopped quick—quick as the shadow of a leaf through summer dusk. A mousing owl rustled in the byre thatch.

The stallions whinnied. There was a metallic buzzing of flies around a gnarled siris tree.

Then, through the drowsy canticle of waking day, straight through the cheeping and rustling and whinnying and buzzing, the hadji heard another sound—a cry—faint, then louder, decreasing, then stabbing out sharp and distinct: "Father!"

A human cry, calling for human help; rising to an