“It doesn’t matter much if he does, does it? He won’t try it while we are hereabout. He’ll hardly try it in the dark when we are gone; and if he does, and gets safely to the bottom, he’ll take so long finding his way to the village that we shall have done our business there—if we’re going to do it at all.” “Still, I think we’ll make sure. There are one or two bits of rock sticking out that give a slight foothold; Abdul may as well knock them off. He won’t want them himself when we come back to release the Jew.” “Suppose we don’t come back!” “You mean, suppose we come to grief ourselves! Well, he’ll be able to signal for help from the mouth of the cave to-morrow; some of his cronies are sure to wonder what’s become of him and be prowling about. It won’t matter to us then, for we shall have either succeeded or failed.” “Suppose we can’t come back, and nobody sees his signals!” “That’s his lookout! Didn’t we rescue him from the shark, which would have snapped him up when the tide rose another few inches? How has he repaid us? By trying to do for us. And it isn’t as if he were a Moor, serving his country. He hasn’t an ounce of patriotism in his composition. He’s simply on the make. He wanted to get a good haul out of the sheikh for giving us away, and upon my word, considering all things, I think he gets off pretty easily. If he’d treated Moors as he has treated us, he’d be dying a particularly slow death by this time. I don’t think we need distress ourselves about Salathiel ben Ezra.” Leaving the Jew to his solitary reflections, the two made their way back to the airship and began to overhaul the machinery. Meanwhile Abdul had gone to the summit of the hill to bring down one or two things which had been left there. He returned with the news that he had seen in the far distance a single horseman slowly climbing the steep hill-path to the village. “That’s our man, depend upon it,” said Oliphant. “He’ll give us away, Dorrell, as sure as fate.” “What can’t be cured must be endured. We could catch him, I dare say; but we haven’t any too much fodder for the engine, and we should certainly be seen. He must tell the sheikh all he knows, and, upon my word, I should like to hear his account of us. It would probably be very funny.” “But it will put the sheikh on his guard.” “My dear fellow, you haven’t enough faith in the terrors of the unknown, or the misknown. The Moor’s story will be such a mass of exaggeration, ignorance, and superstition, that they’ll be in a state of jumps, and dread the apparition ten times more even than if it came upon them without preparation.” “Then why go to the trouble of preventing the Jew from getting into the village?” “Just because he _knows_ the thing, you see, and would stick to the bare truth. His story would lay more stress on the object of our visit; the Moor’s will be mainly about the airship. Really, he may help us in the end.”