The Thief of Bagdad. Achmed Abdullah
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climbing up the rope ladder that led to the mouth of the abandoned well.
“Where to?”
“To the palace!”
“The palace?”
“Yes,” replied the Thief of Bagdad. “Often and greatly have I desired to see it—from the inside. I wager there is loot in there worthy of my agile fingers and cunning brain.”
“Doubtless! But they will not let you in!”
“They may!”
“How?”
“I have an idea, Bird-of-Evil!” And, when the other commenced asking and arguing: “I have no time to explain now. Come. And don’t forget your black camel’s-hair cloak.”
“It is not cold today.”
“I know. But we shall need the cloak.”
“Why?”
“Wait and see, O son of an impatient father.”
They were out of the well, ran down the street, and just beyond the corner caught up with the tail-end of the procession of porters that moved through the broad, tree-lined avenue toward the Caliph’s palace. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Most of them were gigantic, plum-colored, frizzy, tattooed Central Africian slaves, and they stepped along with the tireless lope, the swaying hips and long body-pull of their jungly breed, balancing bundles and bales and baskets and jars on their kinky polls, with Arab overseers trotting on either side and driving on the lagging with knotted, rawhide whips. At the end of the avenue, surrounded by a huge garden ablaze with flowers, the palace closed the vista like an enormous seal of marble and granite. Rising high in even tiers, curving inward like a bay of darkness dammed by the stony sweep of the crenellated, wing-like battlements, soaring North and South into two cube-shaped granite towers, topped by a forest of turrets and spires and domes, it descended beyond the horizon in a bold avalanche of square-clouted, fantastically painted masonry. The frontal gateway was covered by a door—rather a diphanous, but strong, almost unbreakable net—of closely woven iron-and-silver chains, that rattled down into a groove as the captain of the gate wardens saw the porters approaching and motioned to his armed, turbaned assistants.
The porters passed in singly and by twos and threes. The last was a tall negro who carried an earthen jar filled with golden, flower-scented Shiraz wine. But—wait!—here came still another porter. Not a negro he, but a lithe young Arab, naked to the waist, his legs covered by silken, baggy breeches, and balancing on his head a squat bundle that was hidden by a black camel’s-hair cloak.
Just as the man was about to cross the threshold, the captain’s narrow eyes contracted into slits. Quickly he motioned to his assistants who raised the chain door.
“Let me in!” demanded the young porter. “Let me in!”
“No, no!” laughed the red-bearded, pot-bellied captain. “No, no, my clever bazar hound!”
“Let me in!” repeated the other. “Let me in, O gross mountain of pig’s flesh. I am bringing a hundred-weight of precious Bokhara grapes for the morrow’s feasting!”
Again the captain laughed.
“Soul of my soul,” he said, “these grapes of yours are curious grapes! Behold! They move—as if they were alive! Hayah! Hayah!”—raising his lance and pricking the bundle which thereupon squirmed, squeaked, squealed loudly—“a bunch of grapes with a human voice! Precious grapes, indeed! Most wondrous and unique grapes of Allah’s creation!”
“Pah!” The Thief of Bagdad spat disgustedly. He let drop the bundle which, the camel’s-hair cloak dropping away, disclosed Bird-of-Evil, vigorously rubbing his haunches where they had struck the pavement and wailing noisily.
“My darling,” continued the captain, nor unkindly, “the Caliph’s palace is not a healthy place for robbers.”
“How dare you. …”
“I can see it in your eyes,” the other interrupted. “They are humorous eyes—yes! Likable eyes—yes, yes! But not honest eyes! And so——” came the cryptic warning—“be pleased to consider the fate of the donkey?”
“What donkey, O swag-bellied ruffian?”
“The donkey who traveled abroad looking for horns—and lost its ears! Beware, my friend! All day the place is watched by the Caliph’s soldiers. And all night—look!”—he pointed through the iron mesh of the door—“do you see these traps, these grooves and grottoes and cages? They contain the warden’s of the night: man-eating striped tigers from Bengal, black-maned Nubian lions, and long-armed, dog-toothed gorillas from the far forests! Take heed, my clever bazar hound!”
“It was your fault, Bird-of-Evil!” Ahmed turned to his friend when the captain had walked away. “Why did you move just as I was crossing the threshold?”
“I could not help it! A flea bit me!”
“And now a mule will kick you!” Ahmed raised his right foot.
Bird-of-Evil squirmed rapidly away.
“Wait! Wait!” he implored. “Wait until tonight! Then we shall climb the walls!”
“Impossible, fool! They are too steep!”
“You forget the magic rope!”
“Right—by the Prophet’s toe-nails!”
And so when night came, closing in overhead like an opaque dome of dark-green jade encrusted with a shimmering net of stars, drop ping over sleeping Bagdad with a brown, clogging pall of silence, Ahmed and Bird-of-Evil went quietly on their way, the magic rope coiled about the former’s left arm. They reached the palace. It stabbed up to the sky’s dark tent with fantastic, purple outlines pierced here and their, where the slaves were still about some late duty, by glittering pencils of light. They stopped in the shadow-blotch of the outer wall that, at a height of twenty-odd feet, was crowned with an elaborate balustrade of carved, fretted, pink marble. They waited; listened, sucking in their breath. They could hear a captain of the night watch going the rounds, the steady tramp-tramp-tramp of his booted feet, a faint crackling of steel, the swish of his curved sabre scraping across stone flags. The sounds died away. Came other sounds—the voices of the savage beasts that guarded the palace, prowling and slinking about the garden: the vibrant growl of the lions beginning in a deep basso and ending in a shrill, stabbing treble; the angry hissing and spitting, as of enormous cats, of the great, ruddy Bengal tigers; the chirp and whistle—ludicrously in contrast to their size—of the long-armed gorillas.
Ahmed uncoiled his rope.
“Can you make it?” whispered Bird-of-Evil.
“Easily.”
“But—the lions and tigers. … ?”
“Beyond the outerwall—I noticed it this afternoon—at a distance of a few feet is a second wall, a broad ledge with a door set in. Once on top of the outer wall, I can leap across to the ledge and fool those jungly pets. Then through the door and—for the rest—I shall rely on my nose, my fingers, and my luck.”
“May Allah the One protect you!” mumbled Bird-of-Evil piously.
“Allah? Bah!” sneered the Thief of Bagdad. “It is mine own strength and cleverness that will protect me! Wait down here, O ancient goat of my soul. Within the hour I shall be back with a king’s ransom tucked away in my breeches.”
He tossed the rope into the air. He spoke the secret word. The rope obeyed. It stood straight. A minute later, climbing hand over hand, Ahmed was on top of the outer wall. He looked down into the flat, emerald-green eyes of a tiger that crouched below, swishing its tail from side to side and doubtless thinking that here was a late supper provided by Fate itself. Then, measuring the distance to the ledge with his eyes, he fooled both tiger and Fate by leaping across, neatly, lithely, and safely. He opened the door that gave unto the ledge; and found himself in an