Aylia was the comeliest of the dark-eyed daughters of the desert.
Sixteen tropical summers had already ripened a form modelled in that
exquisite perfection which nature is wont to bestow upon her wildest
works, and the native symmetry of the sylph-like maid was yet
unblemished by any of those barbarous improvements wherein her nation
delight. Her sparkling eye, fringed with long silken lashes, in
brilliancy eclipsed the pet gazelle that ever bounded by her side; and
the graceful gambols of the sportive fawn would seem to have been
inspired by the fairy footstep of its blooming mistress. Luxuriant hair
fell in elf-like tresses over her ebon shoulder. Teeth of ivory
whiteness were revealed by a radiant smile that ever played over her
animated features; and few indeed of her virgin charms were veiled under
the folds of the slender drapery that belongs to the Bedouin
shepherdess.
[Note 1. The following narrative, recounted by one of the Woema escort,
although necessarily enlarged, is as strictly literal as the embodiment
of the subject would admit; and it will convey to the English reader a
better picture of life in the desert than could be painted in a less
connected form.]
The maid tended her father's flocks in the vale of Errur, which forms a
constant scene of predatory incursion on the part of the ruthless
savages that hover round the border. When least expected, the Galla
war-hawks of the adjacent mountains were wont to stoop from their rocky
fastnesses, and to sweep away the riches of the Woema. The treacherous
Eesah, although ready to extend the hand which should have denoted
friendship, was nothing loath to the appropriation of other men's
chattels; and throughout all the nomade Adel hordes, whose tents were
erected during the more sultry months, the feud and the desultory
skirmish favoured the inroads of the foe. Amongst the surrounding
clans, even her own tribe was not notorious for its honesty, and by
frequent depredations abroad, it invited the foray of reprisal. Thus
the brawl and the mortal encounter would follow the stillness of
indolent existence with a rapidity not less startling than frequent, and
none knew what the next hour might bring forth.
But fear had no place in the breast of the daughter of old Ali. Nursed
in the lap of strife, the Bedouin blood of her roving sire coursed
through her young veins, and she pursued her Arcadian occupation beneath
the spreading boughs of the venerable acacia, chanting to her gazelle
the wild ditty that revealed the thraldom of her heart, or listening to
the bleat of her black-faced lambs from the Hejaz. Often had the shrill
war-whoop rung through the wild valley, and the rush of the gathering
warriors who flew to answer the summons, arrested her plaintive song,
but only lately had it caused her to spring to her feet with a bosom
throbbing audibly; and now she would sigh as she sank again upon the
smooth bank that formed her favourite seat, for the swain for whom her
soft eyes had been strained across the flickering desert was not among
the number of those that had swept past, and she knew not why, nor
whither he had gone.
Many were the ardent suitors who had wooed the hand of the blooming
Aylia, and often-times had she been sought from her avaricious father,
who viewed the still expanding attractions of his daughter as a certain
source of increase to his ill-gotten and idolised wealth. None,
however, had yet been able to produce the price set upon the damsel's
charms, neither had any possessed an advocate in her eloquence. Her
heart had already been tacitly relinquished, but her hand she knew to be
in the gift of her sire, and therefore not her own to bestow.
Ambeesa it was who had silently gained this ascendancy over the green
affections of the maid. The milch goats of Irripa, his mother, were by
her driven daily to pasture, and his wigwam was within spear's throw of
her own. The twain had known each other from earliest infancy, for they
came upon the world's stage in the self-same hour. They had feasted and
they had played together as children; and now that their young hearts
had become entwined, it was his wont to accompany the nymph into the
vale, where they would hold converse the livelong day. The vapid
language of the savage admits of but a limited embodiment of the softer
passions; but the simple courtship of the uncultivated was ably
sustained. Aylia felt the force of her charms when she saw the warrior
grasp the spear and the shield, without which no Bedouin ever crosses
the threshold of his cabin--in order that he might chase the fawn that
she had coveted; or when he drew water from the well in her gourd, to
replenish again and again the ox-hide that formed a drinking trough for
her thirsty flock. And Ambeesa felt himself amply rewarded when the
slender fingers of the blooming girl decked his hair with the aromatic
herbs that she had plucked in the wild meadow, or she counted over the
ewes that they were shortly to possess in common.
Ambeesa was ever in the foremost rank when the spear was thrown over the
shoulder of the brave; and successful in every foray, he had won wealth
as well as fame. None appeared more frequently in the many-tailed
leopard spoils which form the garb of victory; and the white feather
always floated above his raven locks. But his father having been
treacherously murdered by the Eesah, a blood feud clung to the old man's
sole descendant; and it formed to him a source of self-reproach, that
although he had for years dogged the footsteps of the assassin, the
opportunity had never yet occurred when he might wash out the stain! A
skulker amongst his clansmen at a distant oasis, the cowardly savage had
profited of his deep cunning to baffle the creese of the avenger; and he
still vaunted his trophy of blood without any account of its acquisition
having been required.
But the day of reckoning and of retribution was now nigh at hand. The
mother of Ambeesa had counted out the dowry demanded of any who should
espouse young Aylia, and had claimed the girl as her daughter-in-law
elect. At the sight of the beeves and the fat rams and the trinkets and
the trumpery cloths, the sole remaining eye of the old sheikh glistened
with a lustre that it had not known for years; but his haughty soul
could ill brook the thought of his daughter being wedded to one whose
father's death thus rested unavenged. "Get thee hence, young man," he
exclaimed sternly, shaking his silvered locks, after a short inward
conflict with his avarice--"Get thee hence, nor show thy face again
within my doors as a suitor until thou hast appeased the spirit of thy
murdered sire. The blood of him to whom thou art indebted for existence
crieth aloud to thee for vengeance; and _Wullahi_, until the grave of
Hassan shall have been soaked by thy hands, thou shalt not talk to Ali
of his daughter."
Ambeesa sought not his dark mistress, but snatching the spear and
buckler which had been carefully deposited in a corner of the cabin,
stalked forth without uttering a syllable. Passing his own hut in
mental abstraction, he took the road to the brook, and throwing himself
upon his face, drew a deep draught to allay the fever that consumed him.
Then whetting his brass-mounted creese to the keenest edge upon a
smooth stone, he muttered a dread oath betwixt his clenched teeth, and
strode moodily across the sandy plain.
The great annual fair had already assembled at the sea-port of Berbera,
and tribes from all parts of the country were flocking thither with
their motley wares. The curious stalls of the fat Banians from India
were thronged from morning until night with barbarians from the adjacent
districts, who brought peltries and drags to be exchanged; and the
clamour of haggling and barter was hourly increased by the arrival of
some new caravan of toil-worn pedlars from the more remote depths of the
interior, each laden with an accession of rich merchandise to be
converted into baubles and blue calico at a clear net profit to the
specious Hindoo of two hundred per cent. Myrrh, ivory, and gum-arabic;
civet, frankincense, and ostrich feathers, were piled in every corner of
his booth; and the tearing of ells of Nile stuff and Surat cloth, and
the counting out of porcelain beads, was incessant so long as the
daylight lasted. Withered beldames, with cracked penny-trumpet voices,
were meanwhile actively employed in the erection of new edifices; and
more and more camels were ever pouring towards the scene of primitive
commerce, loaded with the long elastic ribs, and the coarse date matting
which form the skeleton and shell of the nomade's wigwam.
It was dusk when Ambeesa entered the long centre street of this busy
scene. He had journeyed many days alone and on foot, and his mantle and
his arms and his lofty brow were alike deeply stained with the
disguising dust of the desert. A gang of _Bones_, with a stalking
ostrich, driving before them sundry asses laden with the spoils of the
chase, arrived at the same moment from the opposite direction. Rude
parchment-covered quivers, well stocked with poisoned shafts, hung
negligently by their side, suspended by the tufted tail of a lion, and
with their classic bows over their wiry shoulders, the gypsey votaries
of Diana advanced swearing and blaspheming towards the Eesah quarter of
the straggling encampment.
The light which gleamed through the black goat-hair awning of a Gurague
slave-merchant, fell upon the features of the wild party as it passed;
and Ambeesa's heart beat high with exultation when, in the person of one
whose matted locks were decorated with a dirty ostrich plume, he fancied
he could recognise the very foe of whom he was in search. The archer
was in truth a most truculent-looking knave--one who, if his visage did
not strangely belie him, might have been the perpetrator of any given
atrocity. The tail fat of four Berbera rams encrusted his head in a
perfect helmet of tallow, and the putrid entrails of the antelope he had
last slain, were slung in noisome coils about his neck, to the pollution
of the atmosphere he breathed. His repulsive front displayed through
the accumulated filth of forty years a perfect maze of mystic figures in
tattooed relief, on which were imbedded amulets stitched in greasy
leather; and the distended lobes of his enormous ears were so loaded
with pewter rings, that not another could have been squeezed in. A gap,
consequent upon the loss of five front teeth in a recent brawl, made
room for a quid of no ordinary dimensions. Two small sunken blear eyes,
which appeared to work upon a swivel, squinted alternately, as the
inflamed balls were revealed by turns according to the employment of the
wearer's sinister vision; and on his meagre sunken cheek yawned a seam
five inches in length, which precisely corresponded with a gash known to
have been inflicted by the youth's father during a certain moonless
night at Errur, when a stab in the back had aroused the veteran from
deep sleep to his mortal struggle.
"Stay you here, Moosa," quoth one of the bowmen, addressing this
captivating hero, as they stopped before the doorway of an unfinished
cabin at no great distance beyond the rover's pall,--"tarry you here,
and _Inshallah_, we'll turn out these lazy wenches to unload the asses."
The name had not been lost upon Ambeesa, who, like all of his bigot
creed, placed the firmest reliance in fate. He had sworn never to
return until he should have given the body of Moosa to the wild beasts,
where the vultures might pick out his eyes. The object of his weary
journey was by the interference of destiny in his favour, already within
his clutches. He who murdered his sire was assuredly alone with him in
a dark lane, and Aylia was without doubt his own!
"_Wogerri maani, wogerri maani, wogerri maani_" repeated the Woema
coldly, as he extended his open hand towards the doomed victim in token
of amity. "_Wogerri, wogerri, wogerri_," carelessly returned the savage
thus accosted, at the same time passing his greasy fingers mechanically
over the palm presented. The same triple salutation again reiterated,
was thrice returned; and it gradually dwindled away to an assenting "_um
hum_," in itself fully as frigid as the wearisome repetitions of inquiry
had been deeply treacherous.
Moosa stooped to shake the pebbles from his dilapidated sandal. His
bare back was towards the Woema, for his garment had fallen from his
brawny shoulder. It was enough. Muttering through his closed teeth an
inaudible invocation to Allah, Ambeesa suddenly drew his creese, plunged
the razor-edged blade to the very hilt into the yielding spine of his
unsuspecting foe, tore the vaunting white feather from his greasy locks,
spumed the prostrate carcase with his foot, spat upon the unseemly
features now distorted in the agonies of death, and fled into the
wilderness.
Months had elapsed, and the festive season had now returned at which the
Bedouins annually celebrate their weddings. Many a dark-eyed damsel had
been led by her happy swain to the nuptial wigwam, when a gayer
procession than usual was to be seen passing up the centre street of the
encampment at Gaiel. Eight wrinkled matrons led, brandishing swords and
creeses with truly Amazonian gestures, whilst they danced to a wild song
in which all joined chorus to the dissonant thumping of a kettle-drum.
The charms of the maiden bride who followed, and had been long
betrothed, were screened from vulgar gaze beneath a canopy of blue
calico, home by a party of the village belles, splendid with porcelain
jewellery and grease--their arms, like those of the sister Graces,
entwining each other's waists; whilst every idle blackguard that could
be mustered, swelled the nuptial train. At intervals, the music of the
tambourine gave place to a shrill vocal solo, when the nymphs pirouetted
in a mazy circle; and the procession, after thus parading through the
hamlet, was preceded on its return by a party of dirty urchins bearing
the dower in ornamented baskets woven of the wiry leaf of the palm.
Massive ear-rings of brass and copper were amongst the treasures, and
the much-prized, though far from becoming coif of blue calico which
forms the badge of the wedded wife, had not been forgotten.
Aylia was still the fairest of all the daughters of her tribe, and
Ambeesa ever the foremost when the spear was thrown over the shoulder of
the warrior. Happiness and content reigned in the rude hut. No harsh
word had ruffled the existence of the young pair, and the stranger never
passed the door without the ready draught of milk being proffered, or
the kind word exchanged. But in accordance with the barbarous usage of
the Adel Bedouin, the wife was to remain an inmate of her father's
dwelling, until she should have become the mother of three children.
'Twas mid-day in the sultry summer months, and the fiery sun poured his
fiercest rays from his meridian throne. No human eye was able to endure
the broad glare that pervaded the vast sandy plain of Errur, which at
intervals was scoured by towering whirlwinds, imparting the aspect of a
manufacturing town with its huge steam-engines at work. All animate
nature shrank under the scorching heat, which had even curled the few
scanty tufts of withered vegetation. The stillness of death pervaded a
desolate scene over which floated the treacherous mirage. Not a
creature moved, and no sound was heard save the roar of the angry
whirlwind tearing every thing before it, as it swept in reckless wrath
across the encampment, eliciting while it raged among the frail mat
tenements of the location--unroofing some and filling others with dust
and pebbles--a curse from the drowsy savage whose rest it had disturbed.
Suddenly a shrill cry arose in the distance, the well-known tocsin for
the assembly of the men-at-arms. Electrical in its effect, every
slumberer started to his feet, and each hut, which had for hours been
silent as the tomb, poured forth its warrior, armed and ready for the
fight. On the verge of the plain was descried a band of the Alla Galla
driving off a troop of camels, and with the points of their spears
goading the awkward animals to a grotesque gallop. Their remoteness,
and the unnatural speed to which they had been urged, imparted, through
the medium of the mirage, the appearance of dismembered animals flying
in portions through the deceptive atmosphere. Now a head attached to a
long neck was separated from the body, and elevated many feet above its
proper place; and now animated legs of exaggerated length could alone be
perceived flitting fast over the sultry desert. Unattached tails danced
in the quivering vapour, and the entire distance was alive with
fragments of men and dromedaries, which seemed to have been hurled
through the air by the bursting of an exploded mine.
Galla and Woema, pursuer and pursued, scoured for some hours over the
sandy waste; and it was near sunset when the pagan marauders were
overtaken on the confines of their own territories. A sharp conflict
ensued; and two on each side having fallen, the booty was retaken, and
the unbelievers put to flight by the sons of the Faithful.
From the door of her father's wigwam Aylia watched with inward
misgivings the return of the victors; and as she saw the bodies of the
fallen borne upon the shoulders of their comrades, her young heart
throbbed audibly, for her newly-wedded husband was one of those who had
gone forth. As her straining gaze fell upon the still gory corse of him
she loved, a flood of hot tears dimmed her lustrous eyes, and uttering a
piercing shriek, she sank senseless at the threshold. Roused again to
life, the bereaved girl filled the hut with her doleful cries, and
shriek succeeded shriek as she bewailed her fallen condition. Death
would indeed have been almost preferable to the lot accorded by her
destiny. The property brought at his marriage by the deceased was
resumed by his grasping relatives, and the late light-hearted wife
became once again a slave under the roof of her avaricious parent, there
to lead a life of drudgery until another wealthy suitor should pay the
dower fixed upon her charms. But the light elastic step was gone, by
which Aylia had erst been distinguished above all the Woema maidens.
The full black orbs had lost their wonted lustre, and the radiant smile
no longer beamed over her faded features. The orphan pledge of her
first love clung to a widowed breast, and the heart that beat beneath
was broken by the untimely fate of the brave youth Ambeesa.
Volume One, Chapter XXXIII.