five hundred dollars on Black Araby for fifty miles."
"Make it a hundred miles and I will take you."
"The bet is on," said Ben Abi simply. "We will start in the morning."
And that was how Joie got his special bath that afternoon instead of a week later. This was not a simple dousing with a bucket of water, or a sprinkling with a hose, but a real bath, such as all the elephants get every four months. Joie was first soaped with fifty pounds of the best soap; he was lathered until he looked like a mountain of soap-bubbles and cream. When that had dried, he was sandpapered, so as to get off all the grit and loose skin. Then he was oiled with fifty pounds of the best olive-oil. That was to put him in the very best nature, as Sahib Ander-
