This entirely novel and disquieting conceit recalled his strange obsession when, first he looked out over the desert at night from the bows of the yacht, and the memory brought with it the legend of his house--that the Roysons were descendants of Coeur-de-Lion. He saw now that which he had never realized from the glowing pages of written romance, that the Crusaders must have mixed with people nearly identical in manner and speech with the strange human miscellany of Massowah. During those medieval campaigns in an arid and poverty-stricken land, feudal pomp and regal glitter would yield perforce to the demands of existence. Richard of England and Philip of France, with many another noble warrior of high repute, had doubtless been glad enough, times without number, to seek the shelter and meager fare of just such a jumble of darkened tenements as that through which his guide was leading him. But why should he, Richard Royson, acknowledge an occult acquaintance with this unknown scene? And what was the fascination which the squalid life of the bazaar had exercised occasionally on men of exalted rank at different periods of the world's history? The mere notion that he might succumb to it--that he should even feel its glamour by the operation of some subtle trait of heredity--was so grotesque that he laughed aloud. He happened to be crossing a tiny square at the moment, and a bearded moullah was entering a mosque which filled one whole side of it. The unbeliever's mirth doubtless disturbed a pious meditation, and the moullah turned and muttered something. The words might be a verse of the Koran, but they had the ring of a malediction. Mulai Hamed was abashed and angry. He spoke apologetically to the holy man, alluded to the "giaour" more than once, and proceeded to give Dick a voluble lecture, enlightening him, most probably, as to the exceeding importance of politeness where a Mahomedan priest was concerned. Royson was unable to explain that his hilarity was not intended as a slight on the follower of the Prophet. Yet dignity demanded he should not remain dumb, so he pointed ahead, and vociferated, with a fairly accurate assumption of his skipper's voice and manner: "Lead on, you swab, and keep silent, or I'll alter the shape of your face."