Two of them sprang from one side of the road upon the soldier’s back. The two who jumped from the other side rushed him from in front. There was a moment or so of horrid drubbing and struggling. Abdullah hastened to help, though he hastened somewhat hesitantly because he had never hit anyone in his life.

While he approached, a whole set of miracles seemed to happen. The two fellows on the soldier’s back went sailing away in opposite directions, to either side of the road, where one of them hit his head on a tree and did not trouble anyone again, while the other collapsed in a sprawl. Of the two facing the soldier, one received almost at once an interesting injury, which he doubled up to contemplate. The other, to Abdullah’s considerable astonishment, rose into the air and actually, for a brief instant, became draped over the branch of a tree. From there he fell with a crash and went to sleep in the road.

At this point, the doubled-up young man undoubled himself and went for the soldier with a long, narrow knife. The soldier seized the wrist of the hand that held the knife. There was a moment of grunting deadlock, which Abdullah found he had every faith would soon be resolved in favor of the soldier. He was just thinking that his concern about this soldier had been completely unnecessary, when the fellow sprawled in the road behind the soldier suddenly unsprawled himself and lunged at the soldier’s back with another long, thin knife.

Quickly Abdullah did what was needful. He stepped up and clouted the young man over the head with the genie bottle. “Ouch!” cried the genie. And the fellow dropped like a fallen oak tree.

At the sound the soldier swung around from apparently tying knots in the other young man. Abdullah stepped back hurriedly. He did not like the speed with which the soldier turned or the way he held his hands, with the fingers tightly together, like two blunt but murderous weapons.

“I heard them planning to kill you, valiant veteran,” he explained quickly, “and hurried to warn or help.”

He found the soldier’s eyes fixed on his, very blue but no longer at all innocent. In fact, they were eyes that would have counted as shrewd even in the Bazaar at Zanzib. They seemed to sum Abdullah up in every possible way. Luckily they seemed satisfied with what they saw. The soldier said, “Thanks, then,” and turned to kick the head of the young man he had been tying into knots. He stopped moving, too, making the full set.

“Perhaps,” suggested Abdullah, “we should report this to a constable.”