is devout and learned as an Imam. His people call him Malik. Of the prayers he knows everything. As the hours arrive, he lifts the curtains of his litter, and calls them with a voice like Belal’s. The students in the mosque would expire of envy could they see him bend his back in the benedictions.”
“Bismillah!”
“They say also that in the journey from El Katif to Medina he travelled behind the caravan when he might have been first.”
“I see not the virtue in that. The hill-men love best to attack the van.”
“Tell me, O Emir, which wouldst them rather face, a hill-man or the Yellow Air?”
“The hill-man,’” said the other decidedly.
“And thou knowest when those in front abandon a man struck with the disease?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“The vultures and the jackals have their rights.”
“True, O Emir, but listen. The caravan left El Katif three thousand strong. Three hundred and more were struck with the plague, and left to die; of those, over one hundred were brought in by the Indian, They say it was for this he preferred to march in the rear. He himself teaches a saying of theHadis, that Allah leaves his choicest blessings to be gathered from amidst the poor and the dying.”
“If he thou describest be not a Prince of India as he claims, he is a”—
“A Mashaikh. ”7
“ Ay, by the Most Merciful! But how did he save the castaways?”
“By a specific known only to kings and lords in his country. Can he but reach the plague-struck before death, a drop on the tongue will work a cure, Thou heardst what he did at Medina?”
“No.”
“The Masjid El Nabawi8 as thou knowest, O Emir, hath many poor who somehow live in its holy shade.”
“I know it,” said the Emir, with a laugh. “I went into the house rich, and came out of it poorer than the poorest of the many who fell upon me at the doors.”
“Well,” the ensign continued, not heeding the interruption, “he called them in, and fed them; not with rice, and leeks, and bread ten days sour, but with dishes to rejoice a Kaliph; and they went away swearing the soul of the Prophet was returned to the world.”
At this juncture a troop of horsemen ascending the hill brought the conversation to a stop. The uniformity of arms and armor, the furniture of the steeds, the order and regularity of the general movement, identified the body as some favorite corps of the Turkish army; while the music, the bristling lances, the many-folded turbans, and the half-petticoated trousers threw about it a glamor of purest orientalism.
In the midst of the troop, a vanguard in front, a rearguard behind them, centra] objects of care and reverence, moved the sacred camels, tall, powerful brutes, more gigantic in appearance because of their caparisoning and the extraordinary burdens they bore. They too were in full regalia, their faces visored in silk and gold, their heads resplendent with coronets of drooping feathers, their ample neck cloths heavy with tasselled metallic fringing falling to the knees. Each one was covered with a mantle of brocaded silk arranged upon a crinoline form to give the effect somewhat of the curved expansion on the rim of a bell. On the humps rose pavilions of silk in flowing draperies, on some of which the entire Fátihah was superbly embroidered. Over the pavilions arose enormous aigrettes of green and black feathers. Such were the mahmals, containing, among other things of splendor and fabulous value, the Kiswah which the Sultan was forwarding to the Scherif of Mecca to take the place of the worn curtains then draping the Tabernacle or House of God.
The plumed heads of the camels, and the yet more richly plumed pavilions, exalted high above the horsemen, moved like things afloat. One may not tell what calamities to body and soul would overtake the Emir El Hajj did he fail to deliver the mahmals according to consignment.
While the cavalry came up the hill the musicians exerted themselves; at the top, the column turned and formed line left of the Emir, followed by strings of camels loaded with military properties, and a horde of camp-followers known as farrash. Presently another camp was reared upon the eminence, its white roofs shining afar over the plain, and in their midst one of unusual dimensions for the Sultan’s gifts.
The caravans in the meantime began to emerge from the dun cloud of their own raising, and spread at large over the land; and when the young Emir was most absorbed in the spectacle the Prince’s Shaykh approached him.
“O Emir!” the Arab said, after a salaam.
A wild fanfare of clarions, cymbals, and drums drowning his voice, he drew nearer, almost to the stirrup.
“O Emir!” he said again.
This time he was heard.
“What wouldst thou?”
There was the slightest irritation in the tone, and on the countenance of the speaker as he looked down; but the feeling behind it vanished at sight of a negro whose native blackness was intensified by the spotless white of the Ihram in which he was clad. Perhaps the bright platter of beaten copper the black man bore, and the earthen bottle upon it, flanked by two cups, one of silver, the other of crystal, had something to do with the Emir’s change of manner and mind.
“What wouldst thou?” he asked, slightly bending towards them.
The Shaykh answered:
“The most excellent Hadji, my patron, whom thou mayst see reclining at the door of his tent, sends thee greeting such as is lawful from one true believer to another travelling for the good of their souls to the most Holy of Cities; and he prays thou wilt accept from him a draught of this water of pomegranates, which he vouches cooling to the tongue and healthful to the spirit, since he bought it at the door of the House of the Prophet—to whom be prayer and praise forever.”
During the speech, the negro, with a not unpractised hand, and conscious doubtless of the persuasion there was in the sound and sparkle of the beverage, especially to one not yet dismounted from a long ride on the desert, filled the cups, and held them up for acceptance.
Stripping the left hand of its steel-backed gauntlet, the Emir lifted the glass, and, with a bow to the pilgrim then arisen and standing by the tent-door, drank it at a draught; whereupon, leaving the ensign to pay like honor to the offered hospitality, he wheeled his horse, and rode to make acknowledgment in person.
“The favor thou hast done me, O Hadji,” he said, dismounted, “is in keeping with the acts of mercy to thy fellow-men with which I hear thou hast paved the road from El Katif as with mother-of-pearl.”
“Speak not of them, I pray,” the Wanderer answered, returning the bow he received. “Who shall refuse obedience to the law?”
“I see plainly thou art a good man,” the Emir said, bowing again.
“It would not become me to say so. Turning to something better, this tent in the wilderness is mine, and as the sun is not declined to its evening quarter, perhaps, O gallant Emir, it would be more to thy comfort were we to go within. I, and all I have, are at thy command.”
