es of the Occident, but quite as reliable and to the point.
It started with a word of admiration in the servants' hall of the Tamerlani merchant who had entertained Aziza Nurmahal in Peshawar:
“A most proper man is Al Nakia, the princess' cousin. Strong and quick and courageous as the male elephant whose cheeks are streaked with passion. There is talk of trouble and mutiny in the western marches of Tamerlanistan, and Al Nakia has sworn a great oath on his blade that he will make the rebel governor eat seventy-seven times seventy-seven pecks of dirt! Such were his exact words!”
That night, one of the merchant's grooms repeated it to a nautch girl of his acquaintance in an opium shop near the Kashmere Gate, adding:
“Al Nakia has been long away from his own country. He has been in Belait—in Europe—and has become a Frank in everything, even as to his language. For I attended to his Rorse, and when he saw that the saddle girth had rubbed the stallion's back raw, I heard him talk English under his breath. 'Damn' he said—twice”—and he continued, with a certain haughty negligence—“I also know the language of the saheb-log. 'Damn—Hell—jolly corkin'!' I know a great deal.”
All this the nautch girl retailed, an hour later, over a cup of brandy flavored with honey and rose water, to a Goorkha soldier who, the next morning, mounted guard in the Khybar Pass and told it to a friend of his, a rough Mahmoud tribesman with oily locks and a hawkish, predatory face.
Thus the tale took wings, spanning streams and
