He had heard all, and he knew the sardonic meaning behind Nahoum's words.

Fat High Pasha, the Chief Chamberlain, the corrupt and corruptible,
intervened. "It is not so hard to be careless when care would be
useless," he said, with a chuckle. "When the khamsin blows the dust-
storms upon the caravan, the camel-driver hath no care for his camels.
'Malaish!' he says, and buries his face in his yelek."

"Life is beautiful and so difficult--to save," observed Nahoum, in a tone
meant to tempt David on one hand and to reach the ears of the notorious
Achmet Pasha, whose extortions, cruelties, and taxations had built his
master's palaces, bribed his harem, given him money to pay the interest
on his European loans, and made himself the richest man in Egypt, whose
spies were everywhere, whose shadow was across every man's path. Kaid
might slay, might toss a pasha or a slave into the Nile now and then,
might invite a Bey to visit him, and stroke his beard and call him
brother and put diamond-dust in the coffee he drank, so that he died
before two suns came and went again, "of inflammation and a natural
death"; but he, Achmet Pasha, was the dark Inquisitor who tortured every
day, for whose death all men prayed, and whom some would have slain, but
that another worse than himself might succeed him.

At Nahoum's words the dusky brown of Achmet's face turned as black as the
sudden dilation of the pupil of an eye deepens its hue, and he said with
a guttural accent:

"Every man hath a time to die."

"But not his own time," answered Nahoum maliciously.