CHAPTER I

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by Al Haines.

THE PRINCE OF INDIA

OR

WHY CONSTANTINOPLE FELL

BY LEW. WALLACE

VOL. I.

_Rise, too, ye Shapes and Shadows of the Past

Rise from your long forgotten grazes at last

Let us behold your faces, let us hear

The words you uttered in those days of fear

Revisit your familiar haunts again

The scenes of triumph and the scenes of pain

And leave the footprints of your bleeding feet

Once more upon the pavement of the street_

LONGFELLOW

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE EARTH AND THE SEA ARE ALWAYS GIVING UP THEIR SECRETS

I. THE NAMELESS BAY

II. THE MIDNIGHT LANDING

III. THE HIDDEN TREASURE

BOOK II

THE PRINCE OF INDIA

I. A MESSENGER FROM CIPANGO

II. THE PILGRIM AT EL KATIF

III. THE YELLOW AIR

IV. EL ZARIBAH

V. THE PASSING OF THE CARAVAN

VI. THE PRINCE AND THE EMIR

VII. AT THE KAABA

VIII. THE ARRIVAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE

IX. THE PRINCE AT HOME

X. THE ROSE OF SPRING

BOOK III

THE PRINCESS IRENE

I. MORNING ON THE BOSPHORUS

II. THE PRINCESS IRENE

III. THE HOMERIC PALACE

IV. THE RUSSIAN MONK

V. A VOICE FROM THE CLOISTER

VI. WHAT DO THE STARS SAY?

VII. THE PRINCE OF INDIA MEETS CONSTANTINE

VIII. RACING WITH A STORM

IX. IN THE WHITE CASTLE

X. THE ARABIAN STORY-TELLER

XI. THE TURQUOISE RING

XII. THE RING RETURNS

XIII. MAHOMMED HEARS FROM THE STARS

XIV. DREAMS AND VISIONS

XV. DEPARTURE FROM THE WHITE CASTLE

XVI. AN EMBASSY TO THE PRINCESS IRENE

XVII. THE EMPEROR'S WOOING

XVIII. THE SINGING SHEIK

XIX. TWO TURKISH TALES

XX. MAHOMMED DREAMS

BOOK IV

THE PALACE OF BLACHERNE

I. THE PALACE OF BLACHERNE

II. THE AUDIENCE

III. THE NEW FAITH PROCLAIMED

IV. THE PANNYCHIDES

V. A PLAGUE OF CRIME

VI. A BYZANTINE GENTLEMAN OF THE PERIOD

VII. A BYZANTINE HERETIC

VIII. THE ACADEMY OF EPICURUS

IX. A FISHERMAN'S FETE

X. THE HAMARI

BOOK I

THE EARTH AND THE SEA ARE ALWAYS GIVING UP THEIR SECRETS

THE PRINCE OF INDIA

CHAPTER I.

THE NAMELESS BAY

In the noon of a September day in the year of our dear Lord 1395, a

merchant vessel nodded sleepily upon the gentle swells of warm water

flowing in upon the Syrian coast. A modern seafarer, looking from the

deck of one of the Messagerie steamers now plying the same line of

trade, would regard her curiously, thankful to the calm which held her

while he slaked his wonder, yet more thankful that he was not of her

passage.

She could not have exceeded a hundred tons burthen. At the bow and

stern she was decked, and those quarters were fairly raised. Amidship

she was low and open, and pierced for twenty oars, ten to a side, all

swaying listlessly from the narrow ports in which they were hung.

Sometimes they knocked against each other. One sail, square and of a

dingy white, drooped from a broad yard-arm, which was itself tilted,

and now and then creaked against the yellow mast complainingly,

unmindful of the simple tackle designed to keep it in control. A

watchman crouched in the meagre shade of a fan-like structure

overhanging the bow deck. The roofing and the floor, where exposed,

were clean, even bright; in all other parts subject to the weather and

the wash there was only the blackness of pitch. The steersman sat on a

bench at the stern. Occasionally, from force of habit, he rested a hand

upon the rudder-oar to be sure it was yet in reach. With exception of

the two, the lookout and the steersman, all on board, officers,

oarsmen, and sailors, were asleep--such confidence could a

Mediterranean calm inspire in those accustomed to life on the beautiful

sea. As if Neptune never became angry there, and blowing his conch, and

smiting with his trident, splashed the sky with the yeast of waves!

However, in 1395 Neptune had disappeared; like the great god Pan, he

was dead.

The next remarkable thing about the ship was the absence of the signs

of business usual with merchantmen. There were no barrels, boxes,

bales, or packages visible. Nothing indicated a cargo. In her deepest

undulations the water-line was not once submerged. The leather shields

of the oar-ports were high and dry. Possibly she had passengers aboard.

Ah, yes! There under the awning, stretched halfway across the deck

dominated by the steersman, was a group of persons all unlike seamen.

Pausing to note them, we may find the motive of the voyage.

Four men composed the group. One was lying upon a pallet, asleep yet

restless. A black velvet cap had slipped from his head, giving freedom

to thick black hair tinged with white. Starting from the temples, a

beard with scarce a suggestion of gray swept in dark waves upon the

neck and throat, and even invaded the pillow. Between the hair and

beard there was a narrow margin of sallow flesh for features somewhat

crowded by knots of wrinkle. His body was wrapped in a loose woollen

gown of brownish-black. A hand, apparently all bone, rested upon the

breast, clutching a fold of the gown. The feet twitched nervously in

the loosened thongs of old-fashioned sandals. Glancing at the others of

the group, it was plain this sleeper was master and they his slaves.

Two of them were stretched on the bare boards at the lower end of the

pallet, and they were white. The third was a son of Ethiopia of unmixed

blood and gigantic frame. He sat at the left of the couch,

cross-legged, and, like the rest, was in a doze; now and then, however,

he raised his head, and, without fully opening his eyes, shook a fan of

peacock feathers from head to foot over the recumbent figure. The two

whites were clad in gowns of coarse linen belted to their waists;

while, saving a cincture around his loins, the negro was naked.

There is often much personal revelation to be gleaned from the

properties a man carries with him from home. Applying the rule here, by

the pallet there was a walking-stick of unusual length, and severely

hand-worn a little above the middle. In emergency it might have been

used as a weapon. Three bundles loosely wrapped had been cast against a

timber of the ship; presumably they contained the plunder of the slaves

reduced to the minimum allowance of travel. But the most noticeable

item was a leather roll of very ancient appearance, held by a number of

broad straps deeply stamped and secured by buckles of a metal blackened

like neglected silver.

The attention of a close observer would have been attracted to this

parcel, not so much by its antique showing, as by the grip with which

its owner clung to it with his right hand. Even in sleep he held it of

infinite consequence. It could not have contained coin or any bulky

matter. Possibly the man was on some special commission, with his

credentials in the old roll. Ay, who was he?

Thus started, the observer would have bent himself to study of the

face; and immediately something would have suggested that while the

stranger was of this period of the world he did not belong to it. Such

were the magicians of the story-loving Al-Raschid. Or he was of the

type Rabbinical that sat with Caiphas in judgment upon the gentle

Nazarene. Only the centuries could have evolved the apparition. Who was

he?

In the course of half an hour the man stirred, raised his head, looked

hurriedly at his attendants, then at the parts of the ship in view,

then at the steersman still dozing by the rudder; then he sat up, and

brought the roll to his lap, whereat the rigor of his expression

relaxed. The parcel was safe! And the conditions about him were as they

should be!

He next set about undoing the buckles of his treasure. The long fingers

were expert; but just when the roll was ready to open he lifted his

face, and fixed his eyes upon the section of blue expanse outside the

edge of the awning, and dropped into thought. And straightway it was

settled that he was not a diplomatist or a statesman or a man of

business of any kind. The reflection which occupied him had nothing to

do with intrigues or statecraft; its centre was in his heart as the

look proved. So, in tender moods, a father gazes upon his child, a

husband at the beloved wife, restfully, lovingly.

And that moment the observer, continuing his study, would have

forgotten the parcel, the white slaves, the gigantic negro, the

self-willed hair and beard of pride--the face alone would have held

him. The countenance of the Sphinx has no beauty now; and standing

before it, we feel no stir of the admiration always a certificate that

what we are beholding is charming out of the common lines; yet we are

drawn to it irresistibly, and by a wish vague, foolish--so foolish we

would hesitate long before putting it in words to be heard by our best

lover--a wish that the monster would tell us all about itself. The

feeling awakened by the face of the traveller would have been similar,

for it was distinctly Israelitish, with exaggerated eyes set deeply in

cavernous hollows--a mobile mask, in fact, concealing a life in some

way unlike other lives. Unlike? That was the very attraction. If the

man would only speak, what a tale he could unfold!

But he did not speak. Indeed, he seemed to have regarded speech a

weakness to be fortified against. Putting the pleasant thought aside,

he opened the roll, and with exceeding tenderness of touch brought

forth a sheet of vellum dry to brittleness, and yellow as a faded

sycamore leaf. There were lines upon it as of a geometrical drawing,

and an inscription in strange characters. He bent over the chart, if

such it may be called, eagerly, and read it through; then, with a

satisfied expression, he folded it back into the cover, rebuckled the

straps, and placed the parcel under the pillow. Evidently the business

drawing him was proceeding as he would have had it. Next he woke the

negro with a touch. The black in salute bent his body forward, and

raised his hands palm out, the thumbs at the forehead. Attention

singularly intense settled upon his countenance; he appeared to listen

with his soul. It was time for speech, yet the master merely pointed to

one of the sleepers. The watchful negro caught the idea, and going to

the man, aroused him, then resumed his place and posture by the pallet.

The action revealed his proportions. He looked as if he could have

lifted the gates of Gaza, and borne them easily away; and to the

strength there were superadded the grace, suppleness, and softness of

motion of a cat. One could not have helped thinking the slave might

have all the elements to make him a superior agent in fields of bad as

well as good.

The second slave arose, and waited respectfully. It would have been

difficult to determine his nationality. He had the lean face, the high

nose, sallow complexion, and low stature of an Armenian. His

countenance was pleasant and intelligent. In addressing him, the master

made signs with hand and finger; and they appeared sufficient, for the

servant walked away quickly as if on an errand. A short time, and he

came back bringing a companion of the genus sailor, very red-faced,

heavily built, stupid, his rolling gait unrelieved by a suggestion of

good manners. Taking position before the black-gowned personage, his

feet wide apart, the mariner said:

"You sent for me?"

The question was couched in Byzantine Greek.

"Yes," the passenger replied, in the same tongue, though with better

accent. "Where are we?"

"But for this calm we should be at Sidon. The lookout reports the

mountains in view."

The passenger reflected a moment, then asked, "Resorting to the oars,

when can we reach the city?"

"By midnight."

"Very well. Listen now."

The speaker's manner changed; fixing his big eyes upon the sailor's

lesser orbs, he continued:

"A few stadia north of Sidon there is what may be called a bay. It is

about four miles across. Two little rivers empty into it, one on each

side. Near the middle of the bend of the shore there is a well of sweet

water, with flow enough to support a few villagers and their camels. Do

you know the bay?"

The skipper would have become familiar.

"You are well acquainted with this coast," he said.

"Do you know of such a bay?" the passenger repeated.

"I have heard of it."

"Could you find it at night?"

"I believe so."

"That is enough. Take me into the bay, and land me at midnight. I will

not go to the city. Get out all the oars now. At the proper time I will

tell you what further I wish. Remember I am to be set ashore at

midnight at a place which I will show you."

The directions though few were clear. Having given them, the passenger

signed the negro to fan him, and stretched himself upon the pallet; and

thenceforth there was no longer a question who was in control. It

became the more interesting, however, to know the object of the landing

at midnight on the shore of a lonesome unnamed bay.

CHAPTER II

THE MIDNIGHT LANDING

The skipper predicted like a prophet. The ship was in the bay, and it

was midnight or nearly so; for certain stars had climbed into certain

quarters of the sky, and after their fashion were striking the hour.

The passenger was pleased.

"You have done well," he said to the mariner. "Be silent now, and get

close in shore. There are no breakers. Have the small boat ready, and

do not let the anchors go."

The calm still prevailed, and the swells of the sea were scarce

perceptible. Under the gentlest impulse of the oars the little vessel

drifted broadside on until the keel touched the sands. At the same

instant the small boat appeared. The skipper reported to the passenger.

Going to each of the slaves, the latter signed them to descend. The

negro swung himself down like a monkey, and received the baggage,

which, besides the bundles already mentioned, consisted of some tools,

notably a pick, a shovel, and a stout crowbar. An empty water-skin was

also sent down, followed by a basket suggestive of food. Then the

passenger, with a foot over the side of the vessel, gave his final

directions.

"You will run now," he said to the skipper, who, to his credit, had

thus far asked no questions, "down to the city, and lie there

to-morrow, and to-morrow night. Attract little notice as possible. It

is not necessary to pass the gate. Put out in time to be here at

sunrise. I will be waiting for you. Day after to-morrow at

sunrise--remember."

"But if you should not be here?" asked the sailor, thinking of extreme

probabilities.

"Then wait for me," was the answer.

The passenger, in turn, descended to the boat, and was caught in the

arms of the black, and seated carefully as he had been a child. In

brief time the party was ashore, and the boat returning to the ship; a

little later, the ship withdrew to where the night effectually

curtained the deep.

The stay on the shore was long enough to apportion the baggage amongst

the slaves. The master then led the way. Crossing the road running from

Sidon along the coast to the up-country, they came to the foothills of

the mountain, all without habitation.

Later they came upon signs of ancient life in splendor--broken columns,

and here and there Corinthian capitals in marble discolored and sunk

deeply in sand and mould. The patches of white on them had a ghastly

glimmer in the starlight. They were approaching the site of an old

city, a suburb probably of Palae-Tyre when she was one of the

spectacles of the world, sitting by the sea to rule it regally far and

wide.

On further a small stream, one of those emptying into the bay, had

ploughed a ravine for itself across the route the party was pursuing.

Descending to the water, a halt was made to drink, and fill the

water-skin, which the negro took on his shoulder.

On further there was another ancient site strewn with fragments

indicative of a cemetery. Hewn stones were frequent, and mixed with

them were occasional entablatures and vases from which the ages had not

yet entirely worn the fine chiselling. At length an immense uncovered

sarcophagus barred the way. The master stopped by it to study the

heavens; when he found the north star, he gave the signal to his

followers, and moved under the trail of the steadfast beacon.

They came to a rising ground more definitely marked by sarcophagi hewn

from the solid rock, and covered by lids of such weight and solidity

that a number of them had never been disturbed. Doubtless the dead

within were lying as they had been left--but when, and by whom? What

disclosures there will be when at last the end is trumpeted in!

On further, but still connected with the once magnificent funeral site,

they encountered a wall many feet thick, and short way beyond it, on

the mountain's side, there were two arches of a bridge of which all

else had been broken down; and these two had never spanned anything

more substantial than the air. Strange structure for such a locality!

Obviously the highway which once ran over it had begun in the city the

better to communicate with the cemetery through which the party had

just passed. So much was of easy understanding; but where was the other

terminus? At sight of the arches the master drew a long breath of

relief. They were the friends for whom he had been searching.

Nevertheless, without stopping, he led down into a hollow on all sides

sheltered from view; and there the unloading took place. The tools and

bundles were thrown down by a rock, and preparations made for the

remainder of the night. The pallet was spread for the master. The

basket gave up its contents, and the party refreshed themselves and

slept the sleep of the weary.

The secluded bivouac was kept the next day. Only the master went forth

in the afternoon. Climbing the mountain, he found the line in

continuation of the bridge; a task the two arches serving as a base

made comparatively easy. He stood then upon a bench or terrace cumbered

with rocks, and so broad that few persons casually looking would have

suspected it artificial. Facing fully about from the piers, he walked

forward following the terrace which at places was out of line, and

piled with debris tumbled from the mountain on the right hand side; in

a few minutes that silent guide turned with an easy curve and

disappeared in what had yet the appearance hardly distinguishable of an

area wrenched with enormous labor from a low cliff of solid brown

limestone.

The visitor scanned the place again and again; then he said aloud:

"No one has been here since"--

The sentence was left unfinished.

That he could thus identify the spot, and with such certainty pass upon

it in relation to a former period, proved he had been there before.

Rocks, earth, and bushes filled the space. Picking footway through, he

examined the face of the cliff then in front of him, lingering longest

on the heap of breakage forming a bank over the meeting line of area

and hill.

"Yes," he repeated, this time with undisguised satisfaction, "no one

has been here since"--

Again the sentence was unfinished.

He ascended the bank next, and removed some of the stones at the top. A

carved line in low relief on the face of the rock was directly exposed;

seeing it he smiled, and replaced the stones, and descending, went back

to the terrace, and thence to the slaves in bivouac.

From one of the packages he had two iron lamps of old Roman style

brought out, and supplied with oil and wicks; then, as if everything

necessary to his project was done, he took to the pallet. Some goats

had come to the place in his absence, but no living creature else.

After nightfall the master woke the slaves, and made final preparation

for the venture upon which he had come. The tools he gave to one man,

the lamps to another, and the water-skin to the negro. Then he led out

of the hollow, and up the mountain to the terrace visited in the

afternoon; nor did he pause in the area mentioned as the abrupt

terminus of the highway over the skeleton piers. He climbed the bank of

stones covering the foot of the cliff up to the precise spot at which

his reconnoissance had ended.

Directly the slaves were removing the bank at the top; not a difficult

task since they had only to roll the loose stones down a convenient

grade. They worked industriously. At length--in half an hour

probably--an opening into the cliff was discovered. The cavity, small

at first, rapidly enlarged, until it gave assurance of a doorway of

immense proportions. When the enlargement sufficed for his admission,

the master stayed the work, and passed in. The slaves followed. The

interior descent offered a grade corresponding with that of the bank

outside--another bank, in fact, of like composition, but more difficult

to pass on account of the darkness.

With his foot the leading adventurer felt the way down to a floor; and

when his assistants came to him, he took from a pocket in his gown a

small case filled with a chemical powder which he poured at his feet;

then he produced a flint and steel, and struck them together. Some

sparks dropped upon the powder. Instantly a flame arose and filled the

place with a ruddy illumination. Lighting the lamps by the flame, the

party looked around them, the slaves with simple wonder.

They were in a vault--a burial vault of great antiquity. Either it was

an imitation of like chambers in Egypt, or they were imitations of it.

The excavation had been done with chisels. The walls were niched,

giving them an appearance of panelling, and over each of the niches

there had been an inscription in raised letters, now mostly defaced.

The floor was a confusion of fragments knocked from sarcophagi, which,

massive as they were, had been tilted, overturned, uncovered,

mutilated, and robbed. Useless to inquire whose the vandalism. It may

have been of Chaldeans of the time of Almanezor, or of the Greeks who

marched with Alexander, or of Egyptians who were seldom regardful of

the dead of the peoples they overthrew as they were of their own, or of

Saracens, thrice conquerors along the Syrian coast, or of Christians.

Few of the Crusaders were like St. Louis.

But of all this the master took no notice. With him it was right that

the vault should look the wreck it was. Careless of inscriptions,

indifferent to carving, his eyes ran rapidly along the foot of the

northern wall until they came to a sarcophagus of green marble. Thither

he proceeded. He laid his hand upon the half-turned lid, and observing

that the back of the great box--if such it may be termed--was against

the wall, he said again:

"No one has been here since"--

And again the sentence was left unfinished.

Forthwith he became all energy. The negro brought the crowbar, and, by

direction, set it under the edge of the sarcophagus, which he held

raised while the master blocked it at the bottom with a stone chip.

Another bite, and a larger chip was inserted. Good hold being thus had,

a vase was placed for fulcrum; after which, at every downward pressure

of the iron, the ponderous coffin swung round a little to the left.

Slowly and with labor the movement was continued until the space behind

was uncovered.

By this time the lamps had become the dependencies for light. With his

in hand, the master stooped and inspected the exposed wall.

Involuntarily the slaves bent forward and looked, but saw nothing

different from the general surface in that quarter. The master beckoned

the negro, and touching a stone not wider than his three fingers, but

reddish in hue, and looking like mere chinking lodged in an accidental

crevice, signed him to strike it with the end of the bar.

Once--twice--the stone refused to stir; with the third blow it was

driven in out of sight, and, being followed vigorously, was heard to

drop on the other side. The wall thereupon, to the height of the

sarcophagus and the width of a broad door, broke, and appeared about to

tumble down.

When the dust cleared away, there was a crevice unseen before, and wide

enough to admit a hand. The reader must remember there were masons in

the old time who amused themselves applying their mathematics to such

puzzles. Here obviously the intention had been to screen an entrance to

an adjoining chamber, and the key to the design had been the sliver of

red granite first displaced.

A little patient use then of hand and bar enabled the workman to take

out the first large block of the combination. That the master numbered

with chalk, and had carefully set aside. A second block was taken out,

numbered, and set aside; finally the screen was demolished, and the way

stood open.

CHAPTER III

THE HIDDEN TREASURE

The slaves looked dubiously at the dusty aperture, which held out no

invitation to them; the master, however, drew his robe closer about

him, and stooping went in, lamp in hand. They then followed.

An ascending passage, low but of ample width, received them. It too had

been chiselled from the solid rock. The wheel marks of the cars used in

the work were still on the floor. The walls were bare but smoothly

dressed. Altogether the interest here lay in expectation of what was to

come; and possibly it was that which made the countenance of the master

look so grave and absorbed. He certainly was not listening to the

discordant echoes roused as he advanced.

The ascent was easy. Twenty-five or thirty steps brought them to the

end of the passage.

They then entered a spacious chamber circular and domed. The light of

the lamps was not enough to redeem the ceiling from obscurity; yet the

master led without pause to a sarcophagus standing under the centre of

the dome, and when he was come there everything else was forgotten by

him.

The receptacle of the dead thus discovered had been hewn from the rock,

and was of unusual proportions. Standing broadside to the entrance, it

was the height of an ordinary man, and twice as long as high. The

exterior had been polished smoothly as the material would allow;

otherwise it was of absolute plainness, looking not unlike a dark brown

box. The lid was a slab of the finest white marble carven into a

perfect model of Solomon's Temple. While the master surveyed the lid he

was visibly affected. He passed the lamp over it slowly, letting the

light fall into the courts of the famous building; in like manner he

illuminated the corridors, and the tabernacle; and, as he did so, his

features trembled and his eyes were suffused. He walked around the

exquisite representation several times, pausing now and then to blow

away the dust that had in places accumulated upon it. He noticed the

effect of the transparent whiteness in the chamber; so in its day the

original had lit up the surrounding world. Undoubtedly the model had

peculiar hold upon his feelings.

But shaking the weakness off he after a while addressed himself to

work. He had the negro thrust the edge of the bar under the lid, and

raise it gently. Having thoughtfully provided himself in the

antechamber with pieces of stone for the purpose, he placed one of them

so as to hold the vantage gained. Slowly, then, by working at the ends

alternately, the immense slab was turned upon its centre; slowly the

hollow of the coffin was flooded with light; slowly, and with seeming

reluctance, it gave up its secrets.

In strong contrast to the plainness of the exterior, the interior of

the sarcophagus was lined with plates and panels of gold, on which

there were cartoons chased and beaten in, representing ships, and tall

trees, doubtless cedars of Lebanon, and masons at work, and two men

armed and in royal robes greeting each other with clasped hands; and so

beautiful were the cartoons that the eccentric medalleur, Cellini,

would have studied them long, if not enviously. Yet he who now peered

into the receptacle scarcely glanced at them.

On a stone chair seated was the mummy of a man with a crown upon its

head, and over its body, for the most part covering--the linen

wrappings, was a robe of threads of gold in ample arrangement. The

hands rested on the lap; in one was a sceptre; the other held an

inscribed silver tablet. There were rings plain, and rings with jewels

in setting, circling the fingers and thumbs; the ears, ankles, even the

great toes, were ornamented in like manner. At the feet a sword of the

fashion of a cimeter had been laid. The blade was in its scabbard, but

the scabbard was a mass of jewels, and the handle a flaming ruby. The

belt was webbed with pearls and glistening brilliants. Under the sword

were the instruments sacred then and ever since to Master Masons--a

square, a gavel, a plummet, and an inscribing compass.

The man had been a king--so much the first glance proclaimed. With him,

as with his royal brethren from the tombs along the Nile, death had

asserted itself triumphantly over the embalmer. The cheeks were

shrivelled and mouldy; across the forehead the skin was drawn tight;

the temples were hollows rimmed abruptly with the frontal bones; the

eyes, pits partially filled with dried ointments of a bituminous color.

The monarch had yielded his life in its full ripeness, for the white

hair and beard still adhered in stiffened plaits to the skull, cheeks,

and chin. The nose alone was natural; it stood up thin and hooked, like

the beak of an eagle.

At sight of the figure thus caparisoned and maintaining its seat in an

attitude of calm composure the slaves drew back startled. The negro

dropped his iron bar, making the chamber ring with a dissonant clangor.

Around the mummy in careful arrangement were vessels heaped with coins

and pearls and precious stones, cut and ready for the goldsmith.

Indeed, the whole inner space of the sarcophagus was set with basins

and urns, each in itself a work of high art; and if their contents were

to be judged by what appeared overflowing them, they all held precious

stones of every variety. The corners had been draped with cloths of

gold and cloths embroidered with pearls, some of which were now falling

to pieces of their own weight.

We know that kings and queens are but men and women subject to the same

passions of common people; that they are generous or sordid according

to their natures; that there have been misers amongst them; but this

one--did he imagine he could carry his amassments with him out of the

world? Had he so loved the gems in his life as to dream he could

illumine his tomb with them? If so, O royal idiot!

The master, when an opening had been made sufficiently wide by turning

the lid upon the edge of the sarcophagus, took off his sandals, gave a

foot to one of his slaves, and swung himself into the interior. The

lamp was then given him, and he surveyed the wealth and splendor as the

king might never again. And as the king in his day had said with

exultation, Lo! it is all mine, the intruder now asserted title.

Unable, had he so wished, to carry the whole collection off, he looked

around upon this and upon that, determining where to begin. Conscious

he had nothing to fear, and least of all from the owner in the chair,

he was slow and deliberate. From his robe he drew a number of bags of

coarse hempen cloth, and a broad white napkin. The latter he spread

upon the floor, first removing several of the urns to obtain space;

then he emptied one of the vessels upon it, and from the sparkling and

varicolored heap before him proceeded to make selection.

His judgment was excellent, sure and swift. Not seldom he put the large

stones aside, giving preference to color and lustre. Those chosen he

dropped into a bag. When the lot was gone through, he returned the

rejected to the vessel, placing it back exactly in its place. Then he

betook himself to another of the vessels, and then another, until, in

course of a couple of hours, he had made choice from the collection,

and filled nine bags, and tied them securely.

Greatly relieved, he arose, rubbed the benumbed joints of his limbs

awhile, then passed the packages out to the slaves. The occupation had

been wearisome and tensive; but it was finished, and he would now

retire. He lingered to give a last look at the interior, muttering the

sentence again, and leaving it unfinished as before:

"No one has been here since"--

From the face of the king, his eyes fell to the silver tablet in the

nerveless hand. Moving close, and holding the lamp in convenient

position, he knelt and read the inscription.

I.

"There is but one God, and He was from the beginning, and will be

without end.

II.

"In my lifetime, I prepared this vault and tomb to receive my body, and

keep it safely; yet it may be visited, for the earth and sea are always

giving up their secrets.

III.

"Therefore, O Stranger, first to find me, know thou!

"That in all my days I kept intercourse with Solomon, King of the Jews,

wisest of men, and the richest and greatest. As is known, he set about

building a house to his Lord God, resolved that there should be nothing

like it in the world, nothing so spacious, so enriched, so perfect in

proportions, so in all things becoming the glory of his God. In

sympathy with him I gave him of the skill of my people, workers in

brass, and silver, and gold, and products of the quarries: and in their

ships my sailors brought him the yield of mines from the ends of the

earth. At last the house was finished; then he sent me the model of the

house, and the coins, and cloths of gold and pearl, and the precious

stones, and the vessels holding them, and the other things of value

here. Ad if, O Stranger, thou dost wonder at the greatness of the gift,

know thou that it was but a small part of what remained unto him of

like kind, for he was master of the earth, and of everything belonging

to it which might be of service to him, even the elements and their

subtleties.

IV.

"Nor think, O Stranger, that I have taken the wealth into the tomb with

me, imagining it can serve me in the next life. I store it here because

I love him who gave it to me, and am jealous of his love; and that is

all.

V.

"So thou wilt use the wealth in ways pleasing in the sight of the Lord

God of Solomon, my royal friend, take thou of it in welcome. There is

no God but his God!

"Thus say I--HIRAM, KING OF TYRE."

"Rest thou thy soul, O wisest of pagan kings," said the master, rising.

"Being the first to find thee here, and basing my title to thy wealth

on that circumstance, I will use it in a way pleasing in the sight of

the Lord God of Solomon. Verily, verily, there is no God but his God!"

This, then, was the business that brought the man to the tomb of the

king whose glory was to have been the friend of Solomon. Pondering the

idea, we begin to realize how vast the latter's fame was; and it ceases

to be matter of wonder that his contemporaries, even the most royal,

could have been jealous of his love.

Not only have we the man's business, but it is finished; and judging

from the satisfaction discernible on his face as he raised the lamp and

turned to depart, the result must have been according to his best hope.

He took off his robe, and tossed it to his slaves; then he laid a hand

upon the edge of the sarcophagus preparatory to climbing out. At the

moment, while giving a last look about him, an emerald, smoothly cut,

and of great size, larger indeed than a full-grown pomegranate, caught

his eyes in its place loose upon the floor. He turned back, and taking

it up, examined it carefully; while thus engaged his glance dropped to

the sword almost at his feet. The sparkle of the brilliants, and the

fire-flame of the great ruby in the grip, drew him irresistibly, and he

stood considering.

Directly he spoke in a low voice:

"No one has been here since"--

He hesitated--glanced hurriedly around to again assure himself it was

not possible to be overheard--then finished the sentence:

"No one has been here _since I came a thousand years ago_."

At the words so strange, so inexplicable upon any theory of nature and

common experience, the lamp shook in his hand. Involuntarily he shrank

from the admission, though to himself. But recovering, he repeated:

"Since I came a thousand years ago."

Then he added more firmly:

"But the earth and the sea are always giving up their secrets. So saith

the good King Hiram; and since I am a witness proving the wisdom of the

speech, I at least must believe him. Wherefore it is for me to govern

myself as if another will shortly follow me. The saying of the king is

an injunction."

With that, he turned the glittering sword over and over admiringly.

Loath to let it go, he drew the blade partly from the scabbard, and its

clearness had the depth peculiar to the sky between stars at night.

"Is there anything it will not buy," he continued, reflectively. "What

king could refuse a sword once Solomon's? I will take it."

Thereupon he passed both the emerald and the sword out to the slaves,

whom he presently joined.

The conviction, but a moment before expressed, that another would

follow him to the tomb of the venerated Tyrian, was not strong enough

to hinder the master from attempting to hide every sign which might aid

in the discovery. The negro, under his direction, returned the lid

exactly to its former fitting place on the sarcophagus; the emerald and

the sword he wrapped in his gown; the bags and the tools were counted

and distributed among the slaves for easy carriage. Lamp in hand, he

then walked around to see that nothing was left behind. Incidentally he

even surveyed the brown walls and the dim dome overhead. Having reached

the certainty that everything was in its former state, he waved his

hand, and with one long look backward at the model, ghostly beautiful

in its shining white transparency, he led the way to the passage of

entrance, leaving the king to his solitude and stately sleep, unmindful

of the visitation and the despoilment.

Out in the large reception room, he paused again to restore the wall.

Beginning with the insignificant key, one by one the stones, each of

which, as we have seen, had been numbered by him, were raised and

reset. Then handfuls of dust were collected and blown into the slight

crevices till they were invisible. The final step was the restoration

of the sarcophagus; this done, the gallery leading to the real vault of

the king was once more effectually concealed.

"He who follows, come he soon or late, must have more than sharp eyes

if he would have audience with Hiram, my royal friend of Tyre," the

adventurer said, in his meditative way, feeling at the same time in the

folds of his gown for the chart so the object of solicitude on the

ship. The roll, the emerald, and the sword were also safe. Signing the

slaves to remain where they were, he moved slowly across the chamber,

and by aid of his lamp surveyed an aperture there so broad and lofty it

was suggestive of a gate rather than a door.

"It is well," he said, smiling. "The hunter of spoils, hereafter as

heretofore, will pass this way instead of the other."

The remark was shrewd. Probably nothing had so contributed to the long

concealment of the gallery just reclosed the second time in a thousand

years as the high doorway, with its invitation to rooms beyond it, all

now in iconoclastic confusion.

Rejoining his workmen, he took a knife from the girdle of one of them,

and cut a slit in the gurglet large enough to admit the bags of

precious stones. The skin was roomy, and received them, though with the

loss of much of the water. Having thus disposed of that portion of the

plunder to the best advantage both for portage and concealment, he

helped swing it securely upon the negro's shoulder, and without other

delay led from the chamber to the great outdoors, where the lamps were

extinguished.

The pure sweet air, as may be imagined, was welcome to every one. While

the slaves stood breathing it in wholesome volumes, the master studied

the stars, and saw the night was not so far gone but that, with

industry, the sea-shore could be made in time for the ship.

Still pursuing the policy of hiding the road to the tomb much as

possible, he waited while the men covered the entrance as before with

stones brought up from the bank. A last survey of the face of the rock,

minute as the starlight allowed, reassured him that, as to the rest of

the world, the treasure might remain with its ancient owner undisturbed

for yet another thousand years, if not forever; after which, in a

congratulatory mood, he descended the mountain side to the place of

bivouac, and thence in good time, and without adventure, arrived at the

landing by the sea. There the negro, wading far out, flung the tools

into the water.

In the appointed time the galley came down from the city, and, under

impulsion of the oars, disappeared with the party up the coast

northward.

The negro unrolled the pallet upon the deck, and brought some bread,

Smyrna figs, and wine of Prinkipo, and the four ate and drank heartily.

The skipper was then summoned.

"You have done well, my friend," said the master. "Spare not sail or

oar now, but make Byzantium without looking into any wayside port. I

will increase your pay in proportion as you shorten the time we are

out. Look to it--go--and speed you."

Afterward the slaves in turn kept watch while he slept. And though the

coming and going of sailors was frequent, not one of them noticed the

oil-stained water-skin cast carelessly near the master's pillow, or the

negro's shaggy half-cloak, serving as a wrap for the roll, the emerald,

and the sword once Solomon's.

The run of the galley from the nameless bay near Sidon was without stop

or so much as a headwind. Always the blue sky above the deck, and the

blue sea below. In daytime the master passenger would occasionally

pause in his walk along the white planks, and, his hand on the gunwale,

give a look at some of the landmarks studding the ancient Cycladean

Sea, an island here, or a tall promontory of the continent yonder,

possibly an Olympian height faintly gray in the vaster distance. His

manner at such moments did not indicate a traveller new to the highway.

A glance at the points such as business men closely pressed give the

hands on the face of a clock to determine the minute of the hour, and

he would resume walking. At night he slept right soundly.

From the Dardanelles into the Hellespont; then the Marmora. The captain

would have coasted, but the passenger bade him keep in the open. "There

is nothing to fear from the weather," he said, "but there is time to be

saved."

In an afternoon they sighted the great stones Oxia and Plati; the

first, arid and bare as a gray egg, and conical like an irregular

pyramid; the other, a plane on top, with verdure and scattering trees.

A glance at the map shows them the most westerly group of the Isles of

the Princes.

Now Nature is sometimes stupid, sometimes whimsical, doing

unaccountable things. One gazing at the other isles of the group from a

softly rocking caique out a little way on the sea divines instantly

that she meant them for summer retreats, but these two, Oxia and Plati,

off by themselves, bleak in winter, apparently always ready for

spontaneous combustion in the heated months, for what were they

designed? No matter--uses were found for them--fitting uses. Eremites

in search of the hardest, grimmest places, selected Oxia, and pecking

holes and caves in its sides, shared the abodes thus laboriously won

with cormorants, the most gluttonous of birds. In time a rude convent

was built near the summit. On the other hand, Plati was converted into

a Gehenna for criminals, and in the vats and dungeons with which it was

provided, lives were spent weeping for liberty. On this isle, tears and

curses; on that, tears and prayers.

At sundown the galley was plying its oars between Oxia and the European

shore about where St. Stephano is now situated. The dome of Sta. Sophia

was in sight; behind it, in a line to the northwest, arose the tower of

Galata. "Home by lamplighting--Blessed be the Virgin!" the mariners

said to each other piously. But no! The master passenger sent for the

captain.

"I do not care to get into harbor before morning. The night is

delicious, and I will try it in the small boat. I was once a rower, and

yet have a fancy for the oars. Do thou lay off and on hereabouts. Put

two lamps at the masthead that I may know thy vessel when I desire to

return. Now get out the boat."

The captain thought his voyager queer of taste; nevertheless he did as

told. In a short time the skiff--if the familiar word can be

pardoned--put off with the negro and his master, the latter at the oars.

In preparation for the excursion the gurglet half full of water and the

sheepskin mantle of the black man were lowered into the little vessel.

The boat moved away in the direction of Prinkipo, the mother isle of

the group; and as the night deepened, it passed from view.

When out of sight from the galley's deck, the master gave the rowing to

the negro, and taking seat by the rudder, changed direction to the

southeast; after which he kept on and on, until Plati lay directly in

his course.

The southern extremity of Plati makes quite a bold bluff. In a period

long gone a stone tower had been constructed there, a lookout and

shelter for guardsmen on duty; and there being no earthly chance of

escape for prisoners, so securely were they immured, the duty must have

been against robbers from the mainland on the east, and from pirates

generally. Under the tower there was a climb difficult for most persons

in daylight, and from the manoeuvring of the boat, the climb was

obviously the object drawing the master. He at length found it, and

stepped out on a shelving stone. The gurglet and mantle were passed to

him, and soon he and his follower were feeling their way upward.

On the summit, the chief walked once around the tower, now the merest

ruin, a tumbledown without form, in places overgrown with sickly vines.

Rejoining his attendant, and staying a moment to thoroughly empty the

gurglet of water, on his hands and knees he crawled into a passage much

obstructed by debris. The negro waited outside.

The master made two trips; the first one, he took the gurglet in; the

second, he took the mantle wrapping the sword. At the end, he rubbed

his hands in self-congratulation.

"They are safe--the precious stones of Hiram, and the sword of Solomon!

Three other stores have I like this one--in India, in Egypt, in

Jerusalem--and there is the tomb by Sidon. Oh, I shall not come to

want!" and he laughed well pleased.

The descent to the small boat was effected without accident.

Next morning toward sunrise the passengers disembarked at Port St.

Peter on the south side of the Golden Horn. A little later the master

was resting at home in Byzantium.

Within three days the mysterious person whom we, wanting his proper

name and title, have termed the master, had sold his house and

household effects. In the night of the seventh day, with his servants,

singular in that all of them were deaf and dumb, he went aboard ship,

and vanished down the Marmora, going no one but himself knew whither.

The visit to the tomb of the royal friend of Solomon had evidently been

to provide for the journey; and that he took precious stones in

preference to gold and silver signified a journey indefinite as to time

and place.

BOOK II

THE PRINCE OF INDIA

CHAPTER I

A MESSENGER FROM CIPANGO

Just fifty-three years after the journey to the tomb of the Syrian

king--more particularly on the fifteenth day of May, fourteen hundred

and forty-eight--a man entered one of the stalls of a market in

Constantinople--to-day the market would be called a bazaar--and

presented a letter to the proprietor.

The Israelite thus honored delayed opening the linen envelope while he

surveyed the messenger. The liberty, it must be remarked, was not a

usual preliminary in the great city, the cosmopolitanism of which had

been long established; that is to say, a face, a figure, or a mode, to

gain a second look from one of its denizens, had then, as it has now,

to be grossly outlandish. In this instance the owner of the stall

indulged a positive stare. He had seen, he thought, representatives of

all known nationalities, but never one like the present visitor--never

one so pinkish in complexion, and so very bias-eyed--never one who

wrapped and re-wrapped himself in a single shawl so entirely, making it

answer all the other vestments habitual to men. The latter peculiarity

was more conspicuous in consequence of a sack of brown silk hanging

loosely from the shoulder, with leaves and flowers done in dazzling

embroidery down the front and around the edges. And then the slippers

were of silk not less rich with embroidery, while over the bare head a

sunshade of bamboo and paper brilliantly painted was carried.

Too well bred to persist in the stare or attempt to satisfy his

curiosity by a direct question, the proprietor opened the letter, and

began reading it. His neighbors less considerate ran together, and

formed a crowd around the stranger, who nevertheless bore the

inspection composedly, apparently unconscious of anything to make him

such a cynosure.

The paper which the removal of the envelope gave to the stall-keeper's

hand excited him the more. The delicacy of its texture, its softness to

the touch, its semi-transparency, were unlike anything he had ever

seen; it was not only foreign, but very foreign.

The lettering, however, was in Greek plainly done. He noticed first the

date; then, his curiosity becoming uncontrollable, and the missive

being of but one sheet, his eyes dropped to the place of signature.

There was no name there--only a seal--an impression on a surface of

yellow wax of the drooping figure of a man bound to a cross.

[Illustration]

At sight of the seal his eyes opened wider. He drew a long breath to

quiet a rising feeling, half astonishment, half awe. Retreating to a

bench near by, he seated himself, and presently became unmindful of the

messenger, of the crowd, of everything, indeed, except the letter and

the matters of which it treated.

The demand of the reader for a sight of the paper which could produce

such an effect upon a person who was not more than an ordinary dealer

in an Eastern market may by this time have become imperious; wherefore

it is at once submitted in free translation. Only the date is

modernized.

"ISLAND IN THE OVER-SEA. FAR EAST. _May_ 15, A.D. 1447.

"Uel, Son of Jahdai.

"Peace to thee and all thine!

"If thou hast kept faithfully the heirlooms of thy progenitors,

somewhere in thy house there is now a duplication of the seal which

thou wilt find hereto attached; only that one is done in gold. The

reference is to prove to thee a matter I am pleased to assert, knowing

it will at least put thee upon inquiry--I knew thy father, thy

grandfather, and his father, and others of thy family further back than

it is wise for me to declare; and I loved them, for they were a

virtuous and goodly race, studious to do the will of the Lord God of

Israel, and acknowledging no other; therein manifesting the chiefest of

human excellences. To which, as more directly personal to thyself, I

will add that qualities of men, like qualities in plants, are

transmissible, and go they unmixed through many generations, they make

a kind. Therefore, at this great distance, and though I have never

looked into thy face, or touched thy hand, or heard thy voice, I know

thee, and give thee trust confidently. The son of thy father cannot

tell the world what he has of me here, or that there is a creature like

unto me living, or that he has to do with me in the least; and as the

father would gladly undertake my requests, even those I now reveal unto

thee, not less willingly will his son undertake them. Refusal would be

the first step toward betrayal.

"With this preface, O Son of Jahdai, I write without fear, and freely;

imparting, first, that it is now fifty years since I set foot upon the

shores of this Island, which, for want of a name likely to be known to

thee, I have located and described as 'In the Over-Sea. Far East.' Its

people are by nature kindly disposed to strangers, and live simply and

affectionately. Though they never heard of the Nazarene whom the world

persists in calling the Christ, it is truth to say they better

illustrate his teachings, especially in their dealings with each other,

than the so-called Christians amongst whom thy lot is cast. Withal,

however, I have become weary, the fault being more in myself than in

them. Desire for change is the universal law. Only God is the same

yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow eternally. So I am resolved to seek

once more the land of our fathers and Jerusalem, for which I yet have

tears. In her perfection, she was more than beautiful; in her ruin, she

is more than sacred.

"In the execution of my design, know thou next, O Son of Jahdai, that I

despatch my servant, Syama, intrusting him to deliver this letter. When

it is put into thy hand, note the day, and see if it be not exactly one

year from this 15 May, the time I have given him to make the journey,

which is more by sea than land. Thou mayst then know I am following

him, though with stoppages of uncertain duration; it being necessary

for me to cross from India to Mecca; thence to Kash-Cush, and down the

Nile to Cairo. Nevertheless I hope to greet thee in person within six

months after Syama hath given thee this report.

"The sending a courier thus in advance is with a design of which I

think it of next importance to inform thee.

"It is my purpose to resume residence in Constantinople; for that, I

must have a house. Syama, amongst other duties in my behalf, is charged

to purchase and furnish one, and have it ready to receive me when I

arrive. The day is long passed since a Khan had attractions for me.

Much more agreeable is it to think my own door will open instantly at

my knock. In this affair thou canst be of service which shall be both

remembered and gratefully recompensed. He hath no experience in the

matter of property in thy city; thou hast; it is but natural,

therefore, if I pray thou bring it into practice by assisting him in

the selection, in perfecting the title, and in all else the project may

require doing; remembering only that the tenement be plain and

comfortable, not rich; for, alas! the time is not yet when the children

of Israel may live conspicuously in the eye of the Christian world.

"Thou wilt find Syama shrewd and of good judgment, older than he

seemeth, and quick to render loyalty for my sake. Be advised also that

he is deaf and dumb; yet, if in speaking thou turn thy face to him, and

use the Greek tongue, he will understand thee by the motion of thy

lips, and make answer by signs.

"Finally, be not afraid to accept this commission on account of

pecuniary involvement. Syama hath means of procuring all the money he

may require, even to extravagance; at the same time he is forbidden to

contract a debt, except it be to thee for kindness done, all which he

will report to me so I may pay them fitly.

"In all essential things Syama hath full instructions; besides, he is

acquainted with my habits and tastes; wherefore I conclude this writing

by saying I hope thou wilt render him aid as indicated, and that when I

come thou wilt allow me to relate myself to thee as father to son, in

all things a help, in nothing a burden.

"Again, O Son of Jahdai, to thee and thine--Peace!"

[Seal.]

The son of Jahdai, at the conclusion of the reading, let his hands fall

heavily in his lap, while he plunged into a study which the messenger

with his foreign airs could not distract.

Very great distance is one of the sublimities most powerful over the

imagination. The letter had come from an Island he had never heard

named. An Island in the Over-Sea which doubtless washed the Eastern end

of the earth, wherever that might be. And the writer! How did he get

there? And what impelled him to go?

A chill shot the thinker's nerves. He suddenly remembered that in his

house there was a cupboard in a wall, with two shelves devoted to

storage of heirlooms; on the upper shelf lay the _torah_ of immemorial

usage in his family; the second contained cups of horn and metal, old

phylacteries, amulets, and things of vertu in general, and of such

addition and multiplication through the ages that he himself could not

have made a list of them; in fact, now his attention was aroused, he

recalled them a mass of colorless and formless objects which had ceased

to have history or value. Amongst them, however, a seal in the form of

a medallion in gold recurred to him; but whether the impression upon it

was raised or sunken he could not have certainly said; nor could he

have told what the device was. His father and grandfather had esteemed

it highly, and the story they told him about it divers times when he

was a child upon their knees he could repeat quite substantially.

A man committed an indignity to Jesus the pretended _Christ_, who, in

punishment, condemned him to linger on the earth until in the fulness

of time he should come again; and the man had gone on living through

the centuries. Both the father and grandfather affirmed the tale to be

true; they had known the unfortunate personally; yet more, they

declared he had been an intimate of the family, and had done its

members through generations friendlinesses without number; in

consequence they had come to consider him one of them in love. They had

also said that to their knowledge it was his custom to pray for death

regularly as the days came and went. He had repeatedly put himself in

its way; yet curiously it passed him by, until he at last reached a

conviction he could not die.

Many years had gone since the stall-keeper last heard the tale, and

still more might have been counted since the man disappeared, going no

one knew whither.

But he was not dead! He was coming again! It was too strange to

believe! It could not be! Yet one thing was clear--whatever the

messenger might be, or presuming him a villain, whatever the lie he

thought to make profitable, appeal could be safely and cheaply made to

the seal in the cupboard. As a witness it, too, was deaf and dumb; on

its face nevertheless there was revelation and the truth.

Through the momentary numbness of his faculties so much the son of

Jahdai saw, and he did not wait. Signing the messenger to follow, he

passed into a closet forming part of the stall, and the two being

alone, he spoke in Greek.

"Be thou seated here," he said, "and wait till I return."

The messenger smiled and bowed, and took seat; thereupon Uel drew his

turban down to his ears, and, letter in hand, started home.

His going was rapid; sometimes he almost ran. Acquaintances met him on

the street, but he did not see them; if they spoke to him, he did not

hear. Arrived at his own door, he plunged into the house as if a mob

were at his heels. Now he was before the cupboard! Little mercy the

phylacteries and amulets, the bridle-spanglery of donkeys, the

trinketry of women, his ancestresses once famous for beauty or many

children--little mercy the motley collection on the second shelf

received from his hands. He tossed them here and there, and here and

there again, but the search was vain. Ah, good Lord! was the medalet

lost? And of all times, then?

The failure made him the more anxious; his hands shook while he essayed

the search once more; and he reproached himself. The medal was valuable

for its gold, and besides it was a sacred souvenir. Conscience stung

him. Over and over he shifted and turned the various properties on the

shelf, the last time systematically and with fixed attention. When he

stopped to rest, the perspiration stood on his forehead in large drops,

and he fairly wrung his hands, crying, "It is not here--it is lost! My

God, how shall I know the truth now!"

At this pause it is to be said that the son of Jahdai was wifeless. The

young woman whom he had taken as helpmeet in dying had left him a girl

baby who, at the time of our writing, was about thirteen years old.

Under the necessity thus imposed, he found a venerable daughter of

Jerusalem to serve him as housekeeper, and charge herself with care of

the child. Now he thought of that person; possibly she knew where the

seal was. He turned to seek her, and as he did so, the door of an

adjoining room opened, and the child appeared.

He held her very dear, because she had the clear olive complexion of

her mother, and the same soft black eyes with which the latter used to

smile upon him in such manner that words were never required to assure

him of her love. And the little one was bright and affectionate, and

had prettinesses in speech, and sang low and contentedly the day long.

Often as he took her on his lap and studied her fondly, he was

conscious she promised to be gentle and beautiful as the departed one;

beyond which it never occurred to him there could be superior

excellences.

Distressed as the poor man was, he took the child in his arms, and

kissed her on the round cheek, and was putting her down when he saw the

medal at her throat, hanging from a string. She told him the

housekeeper had given it to her as a plaything. Untied at last--for his

impatience was nigh uncontrollable--he hurried with the recovered

treasure to a window, to look at the device raised upon it; then, his

heart beating rapidly, he made comparison with the impression sunk in

the yellow wax at the foot of the letter; he put them side by

side--there could be no mistake--the impression on the wax might have

been made by the medallion!

Let it not be supposed now that the son of Jahdai did not appreciate

the circumstance which had befallen. The idea of a man suffering a doom

so strange affected him, while the doom itself, considered as a

judgment, was simply awful; but his thought did not stop there--it

carried him behind both the man and the doom. Who was He with power by

a word, not merely to change the most fixed of the decrees of nature,

but, by suspending it entirely, hold an offending wretch alive for a

period already encroaching upon the eternal? One less firmly rooted in

the faith of his fathers would have stood aghast at the conclusion to

which the answer as an argument led--a conclusion admitting no escape

once it was reached. The affair in hand, however, despite its

speculative side, was real and urgent; and the keeper of the stall,

remembering the messenger in half imprisonment, fell to thinking of the

practical questions before him; first of which was the treatment he

should accord his correspondent's requests.

This did not occupy him long. His father, he reflected, would have

received the stranger cordially, and as became one of such close

intimacy; so should he. The requests were easy, and carried no

pecuniary liability with them; he was merely to aid an inexperienced

servant in the purchase of a dwelling-house, the servant having plenty

of funds. True, when the master presented himself in person, it would

be necessary to determine exactly the footing to be accorded him; but

for the present that might be deferred. If, in the connection, the son

of Jahdai dwelt briefly upon possible advantages to himself, the person

being presumably rich and powerful, it was human, and he is to be

excused for it.

The return to the market was less hurried than the going from it. There

Uel acted promptly. He took Syama to his house, and put him into the

guest-chamber, assuring him it was a pleasure. Yet when night came he

slept poorly. The incidents of the day were mixed with much that was

unaccountable, breaking the even tenor of his tradesman's life by

unwonted perplexities. He had not the will to control his thoughts;

they would go back to the excitement of the moment when he believed the

medallion lost; and as points run together in the half-awake state on

very slender threads, he had a vision of a mysterious old man coming

into his house, and in some way taking up and absorbing the life of his

child. When the world at last fell away and left him asleep, it was

with a dread tapping heavily at his heart.

The purchase which Uel was requested to assist in making proved a light

affair. After diligent search through the city, Syama decided to take a

two-story house situated in a street running along the foot of the hill

to-day crowned by the mosque Sultan Selim, although it was then the

site of an unpretentious Christian church. Besides a direct eastern

frontage, it was in the divisional margin between the quarters of the

Greeks, which were always clean, and those of the Jews, which were

always filthy. It was also observed that neither the hill nor the

church obstructed the western view from the roof; that is to say, it

was so far around the upper curve of the hill that a thistle-down would

be carried by a south-east wind over many of the proudest Greek

residences and dropped by the Church of the Holy Virgin on Blacherne,

or in the imperial garden behind the Church. In addition to these

advantages, the son of Jahdai was not unmindful that his own dwelling,

a small but comfortable structure also of wood, was just opposite

across the street. Everything considered, the probabilities were that

Syama's selection would prove satisfactory to his master. The

furnishment was a secondary matter.

It is to be added that in course of the business there were two things

from which Uel extracted great pleasure; Syama always had money to pay

promptly for everything he bought; in the next place, communication

with him was astonishingly easy. His eyes made up for the deficiency in

hearing; while his signs, gestures, and looks were the perfection of

pantomime. Of evenings the child never tired watching him in

conversation.

While we go now to bring the Wanderer up, it should not be forgotten

that the house, completely furnished, is awaiting him, and he has only

to knock at the door, enter, and be at home.

CHAPTER II

THE PILGRIM AT EL KATIF

The bay of Bahrein indents the western shore of the Persian Gulf. Hard

by the point on the north at which it begins its inland bend rise the

whitewashed, one-story mud-houses of the town El Katif. Belonging to

the Arabs, the most unchangeable of peoples, both the town and the bay

were known in the period of our story by their present names.

The old town in the old time derived importance chiefly from the road

which, leading thence westwardly through Hejr Yemameh, brought up,

after many devious stretches across waterless wastes of sand, at El

Derayeh, a tented capital of the Bedouins, and there forked, one branch

going to Medina, the other to Mecca. In other words, El Katif was to

Mecca on the east the gate Jeddo was to it on the west.

When, in annual recurrence, the time for the indispensable Hajj, or

Pilgrimage, came, the name of the town was on the lips of men and women

beyond the Green Sea, and southwardly along the coast of Oman, and in

the villages and dowars back of the coast under the peaks of Akdar,

only a little less often than those of the holy cities. Then about the

first of July the same peoples as pilgrims from Irak, Afghanistan,

India, and beyond those countries even, there being an East and a Far

East, and pilgrims from Arabia, crowded together, noisy, quarrelsome,

squalid, accordant in but one thing--a determination to make the Hajj

lest they might die as Jews or Christians.

The law required the pilgrim to be at Mecca in the month of Ramazan,

the time the Prophet himself had become a pilgrim. From El Katif the

direct journey might be made in sixty days, allowing an average march

of twelve miles. By way of Medina, it could be made to permit the

votary to be present and participate in the observances usual on the

day of the Mysterious Night of Destiny.

The journey moreover was attended with dangers. Winds, drouth, sand

storms beset the way; and there were beasts always hungry, and robbers

always watchful. The sun beat upon the hills, curtained the levels with

mirage, and in the _fiumuras_ kindled invisible fires; so in what the

unacclimated breathed and in what they drank of the waters of the land

there were diseases and death.

The Prophet having fixed the month of Ramazan for the Hajj, pilgrims

accustomed themselves to assemblage at Constantinople, Damascus, Cairo

and Bagdad. If they could not avoid the trials of the road, they could

lessen them. Borrowing the term caravan as descriptive of the march,

they established markets at all convenient places.

This is the accounting for one of the notable features of El Katif from

the incoming of June till the caravan extended itself on the road, and

finally disappeared in the yellow farness of the Desert. One could not

go amiss for purveyors in general. Dealers in horses, donkeys, camels,

and dromedaries abounded. The country for miles around appeared like a

great stock farm. Herds overran the lean earth. Makers of harness,

saddles, box-houdahs, and swinging litters of every variety and price,

and contractors of camels, horses, and trains complete did not wait to

be solicited; the competition between them was too lively for dignity.

Hither and thither shepherds drove fatted sheep in flocks, selling them

on the hoof. In shady places sandal merchants and clothiers were

established; while sample tents spotted the whole landscape. Hucksters

went about with figs, dates, dried meats and bread. In short, pilgrims

could be accommodated with every conceivable necessary. They had only

to cry out, and the commodity was at hand.

Amongst the thousands who arrived at El Katif in the last of June,

1448, was a man whose presence made him instantly an object of general

interest. He came from the south in a galley of eight oars manned by

Indian seamen, and lay at anchor three days before landing. His ship

bore nothing indicative of nationality except the sailors. She was

trim-looking and freshly painted; otherwise there was nothing uncommon

in her appearance. She was not for war--that was plain. She floated too

lightly to be laden; wherefore those who came to look at her said she

could not be in commercial service.

Almost before furling sail, an awning was stretched over her from bow

to stern--an awning which from the shore appeared one great shawl of

variegated colors. Thereupon the wise in such matters decided the owner

was an Indian Prince vastly rich, come, like a good Mohammedan, to

approve his faith by pilgrimage.

This opinion the stranger's conduct confirmed. While he did not himself

appear ashore, he kept up a busy communication by means of his small

boat. For three days, it carried contractors of camels and supplies

aboard, and brought them back.

They described him of uncertain age; he might be sixty, he might be

seventy-five. While rather under medium height, he was active and

perfectly his own master. He sat in the shade of the awning

cross-legged. His rug was a marvel of sheeny silk. He talked Arabic,

but with an Indian accent. His dress was Indian--a silken shirt, a

short jacket, large trousers, and a tremendous white turban on a red

tarbousche, held by an aigrette in front that was a dazzle of precious

stones such as only a Rajah could own. His attendants were few, but

they were gorgeously attired, wore _shintyan_ swung in rich belts from

their shoulders, and waited before him speechless and in servile

posture. One at his back upheld an umbrella of immense spread. He

indulged few words, and they were strictly business. He wanted a full

outfit for the Hajj; could the contractor furnish him twenty camels of

burden, and four swift dromedaries? Two of the latter were to carry a

litter for himself; the other two were for his personal attendants,

whom he desired furnished with well-shaded _shugdufs_. The camels he

would load with provisions. While speaking, he would keep his eyes upon

the person addressed with an expression uncomfortably searching. Most

extraordinary, however, he did not once ask about prices.

One of the Shaykhs ventured an inquiry.

"How great will his Highness' suite be?"

"Four."

The Shaykh threw up his hands.

"O Allah! Four dromedaries and twenty camels for four men!"

"Abuser of the salt," said the stranger calmly, "hast thou not heard of

the paschal charity, and of the fine to the poor? Shall I go empty

handed to the most sacred of cities?"

Finally an agent was found who, in concert with associates, undertook

to furnish the high votary with all he asked complete.

The morning of the fourth day after his arrival the Indian was pulled

ashore, and conducted out of town a short distance to where, on a

rising ground, a camp had been set up provisionally for his inspection.

There were tents, one for storage of goods and provisions; one for the

suite; one for the chief Shaykh, the armed guards, the tent pitchers,

and the camel drivers; and a fourth one, larger than the others, for

the Prince himself. With the dromedaries, camels, and horses, the camp

was accepted; then, as was the custom, the earnest money was paid. By

set of sun the baggage was removed from the ship, and its partition

into cargoes begun. The Prince of India had no difficulty in hiring all

the help he required.

Of the thirty persons who constituted the train ten were armed

horsemen, whose appearance was such that, if it were answered by a

commensurate performance, the Prince might at his leisure march

irrespective of the caravan. Nor was he unmindful in the selection of

stores for the journey. Long before the sharp bargainers with whom he

dealt were through with him, he had won their best opinion, not less by

his liberality than for his sound judgment. They ceased speaking of him

sneeringly as the _miyan_. [Footnote: Barbarous Indian]

Soon as the bargain was bound, the stranger's attendants set about the

furnishment of the master's tent. Outside they painted it green. The

interior they divided into two equal compartments; one for reception,

the other for a _maglis_ or drawing-room; and besides giving the latter

divans and carpets, they draped the ceiling in the most tasteful manner

with the shawls which on the ship had served for awning.

At length, everything in the catalogue of preparation having been

attended to, it remained only to wait the day of general departure; and

for that, as became his greatness, the Prince kept his own quarters,

paying no attention to what went on around him. He appeared a man who

loved solitude, and was averse to thinking in public.

CHAPTER III

THE YELLOW AIR [Footnote: The plague is known amongst Arabs as "the

Yellow Air."]

One evening the reputed Indian sat by the door of his tent alone. The

red afterglow of the day hung in the western sky. Overhead the stars

were venturing timidly out. The camels were at rest, some chewing their

cuds, others asleep, their necks stretched full length upon the warm

earth. The watchmen in a group talked in low voices. Presently the cry

of a muezzin, calling to prayer, flew in long, quavering, swelling

notes through the hushed air. Others took up the call, clearer or

fainter according to the distance; and so was it attuned to the feeling

invoked by the conditions of the moment that no effort was required of

a listener to think it a refrain from the sky. The watchmen ceased

debating, drew a little apart from each other, spread their _abbas_ on

the ground, and stepping upon them barefooted, their faces turned to

where Mecca lay, began the old unchangeable prayer of Islam--_God is

God, and Mahomet is His Prophet_.

The pilgrim at the tent door arose, and when his rude employes were

absorbed in their devotions, like them, he too prayed, but very

differently.

"God of Israel--my God!" he said, in a tone hardly more than speaking

to himself. "These about me, my fellow creatures, pray thee in the hope

of life, I pray thee in the hope of death. I have come up from the sea,

and the end was not there; now I will go into the Desert in search of

it. Or if I must live, Lord, give me the happiness there is in serving

thee. Thou hast need of instruments of good; let me henceforth be one

of them, that by working for thy honor, I may at last enjoy the peace

of the blessed--Amen."

Timing his movements with those of the watchmen, he sank to his knees,

and repeated the prayer; when they fell forward, their faces to the

earth in the _rik'raths_ so essential by the Mohammedan code, he did

the same. When they were through the service, he went on with it that

they might see him. A careful adherence to this conduct gained him in a

short time great repute for sanctity, making the pilgrimage enjoyable

as well as possible to him.

The evening afterglow faded out, giving the world to night and the

quiet it affects; still the melancholy Indian walked before his tent,

his hands clasped behind him, his chin in the beard on his breast. Let

us presume to follow his reflections.

"Fifty years! A lifetime to all but me. Lord, how heavy is thy hand

when thou art in anger!"

He drew a long breath, and groaned.

"Fifty years! That they are gone, let those mourn to whom time is

measured in scanty dole."

He became retrospective.

"The going to Cipango was like leaving the world. War had yielded to

contentions about religion. I wearied of them also. My curse is to

weary of everything. I wonder if the happiness found in the affection

of women is more lasting?"

He pursued the thought awhile, finishing with a resolution.

"If the opportunity comes my way, I will try it. I remember yet the

mother of my Lael, though I did not understand the measure of the

happiness she brought me until she died."

He returned then to the first subject.

"When will men learn that faith is a natural impulse, and pure religion

but faith refined of doubt?"

The question was succeeded by a wordless lapse in his mind, the better

apparently to prolong the pleasure he found in the idea.

"God help me," he presently resumed, "to bring about an agreement in

that definition of religion! There can be no reform or refinement of

faith except God be its exclusive subject; and so certainly it leads to

lopping off all parasitical worships such as are given to Christ and

Mahomet.... Fifty years ago the sects would have tortured me had I

mentioned God as a principle broad and holy enough for them to stand

upon in compromise of their disputes; they may not be better disposed

now, yet I will try them. If I succeed I will not be a vulgar monument

builder like Alexander; neither will I divide a doubtful fame with

Caesar. My glory will be unique. I will have restored mankind to their

true relations with God. I will be their Arbiter in Religion. Then

surely"--he lifted his face appealingly as to a person enthroned amidst

the stars--"surely thou wilt release me from this too long life.... If

I fail"--he clinched his hands--"if I fail, they may exile me, they may

imprison me, they may stretch me on the rack, but they cannot kill me."

Then he walked rapidly, his head down, like a man driven. When he

stopped it was to say to himself uncertainly:

"I feel weak at heart. Misgivings beset me. Lord, Lord, how long am I

to go on thus cheating myself? If thou wilt not pardon me, how can I

hope honor from my fellow men? Why should I struggle to serve them?"

Again he clinched his hands.

"Oh, the fools, the fools! Will they never be done? When I went away

they were debating, Was Mahomet a Prophet? Was Christ the Messiah? And

they are debating yet. What miseries I have seen come of the dispute!"

From this to the end, the monologue was an incoherent discursive

medley, now plaintive, now passionate, at times prayerful, then

exultant. As he proceeded, he seemed to lose sight of his present aim

at doing good in the hope of release from termless life, and become the

Jew he was born.

"The orators called in the sword, and they plied each other with it

through two hundred years and more. There were highways across Europe

blazoned with corpses.... But they were great days. I remember them.

remember Manuel's appeal to Gregory. I was present at the Council of

Clermont. I heard Urban's speech. I saw Walter, the beggar of Burgundy,

a fugitive in Constantinople; but his followers, those who went out

with him--where were they? I saw Peter, the eremite and coward, dragged

back, a deserter, to the plague-smitten camps of Antioch. I helped vote

Godfrey King of Jerusalem, and carried a candle at his coronation. I

saw the hosts of Louis VII and Conrad, a million and more, swallowed up

in Iconia and the Pisidian mountains. Then, that the persecutors of my

race might not have rest, I marched with Saladin to the re-conquest of

the Holy City, and heard Philip and Richard answer his challenge. The

brave Kurd, pitying the sorrows of men, at last agreed to tolerate

Christians in Jerusalem as pilgrims; and there the strife might have

ended, but I played upon the ambition of Baldwin, and set Europe in

motion again. No fault of mine that the knight stopped at

Constantinople as King of the East. Then the second Frederick presumed

to make a Christian city of Jerusalem. I resorted to the Turks, and

they burned and pillaged it, and captured St. Louis, the purest and

best of the crusaders. He died in my arms. Never before had I a tear

for man or woman of his faith! Then came Edward I., and with him the

struggle as a contest of armies terminated. By decision of the sword,

Mahomet _was_ the Prophet of God, and Christ but the carpenter's

son.... By permission of the Kaliphs, the Christians might visit

Jerusalem as pilgrims. A palmer's staff in place of a sword! For

shield, a beggar's scrip! But the bishops accepted, and then ushered in

an age of fraud, Christian against Christian.... The knoll on which the

Byzantine built his church of the Holy Sepulchre is not the Calvary.

That the cowled liars call the Sepulchre never held the body of Christ.

The tears of the millions of penitents have but watered a monkish

deceit.... Fools and blasphemers! The Via Dolorosa led out of the

Damascus gate on the north. The skull-shaped hill beyond that gate is

the Golgotha. Who should know it better than I? The Centurion asked for

a guide; I walked with him. Hyssop was the only green thing growing

upon the mount; nothing but hyssop has grown there since. At the base

on the west was a garden, and the Sepulchre was in the garden. From the

foot of the cross I looked toward the city, and there was a sea of men

extending down to the gate.... I know!--I know!--I and misery know!...

When I went out fifty years ago there was an agreement between the

ancient combatants; each vied with the other in hating and persecuting

the Jew, and there was no limit to the afflictions he endured from

them.... Speak thou, O Hebron, city of the patriarchs! By him who sits

afar, and by him near unto thee, by the stars this peaceful night, and

by the Everlasting who is above the stars, be thou heard a witness

testifying! There was a day when thou didst stand open to the children

of Israel; for the cave and the dead within it belonged to them. Then

Herod built over it, and shut it up, though without excluding the

tribes. The Christian followed Herod; yet the Hebrew might pay his way

in. After the Christian, the Moslem; and now nor David the King, nor

son of his, though they alighted at the doors from chariots, and beat

upon them with their crowns and sceptres, could pass in and live....

Kings have come and gone, and generations, and there is a new map from

which old names have been dropped. As respects religion, alas! the

divisions remain--here a Mohammedan, there a Christian, yonder a

Judean.... From my door I study these men, the children of those in

life at my going into exile. Their ardor is not diminished. To kiss a

stone in which tradition has planted a saying of God, they will defy

the terrors of the Desert, heat, thirst, famine, disease, death. I

bring them an old idea in a new relation--God, giver of life and power

to Son and Prophet--God, alone entitled to worship--God, a principle of

Supreme Holiness to which believers can bring their creeds and

doctrines for mergence in a treaty of universal brotherhood. Will they

accept it? ... Yesterday I saw a Schiah and a Sunite meet, and the old

hate darkened their faces as they looked at each other. Between them

there is only a feud of Islamites; how much greater is their feud with

Christians? How immeasurably greater the feud between Christian and

Jew? ... My heart misgives me! Lord! Can it be I am but cherishing a

dream?"

At sight of a man approaching through the dusk, he calmed himself.

"Peace to thee, Hadji," said the visitor, halting.

"Is it thou, Shaykh?"

"It is I, my father's son. I have a report to make."

"I was thinking of certain holy things of priceless worth, sayings of

the Prophet. Tell me what thou hast?"

The Shaykh saluted him, and returned, "The caravan will depart

to-morrow at sunrise."

"Be it so. We are ready. I will designate our place in the movement.

Thou art dismissed."

"O Prince! I have more to report."

"More?"

"A vessel came in to-day from Hormuz on the eastern shore, bringing a

horde of beggars."

"Bismillah! It was well I hired of thee a herd of camels, and loaded

them with food. I shall pay my fine to the poor early."

The Shaykh shook his head.

"That they are beggars is nothing," he said. "Allah is good to all his

creatures. The jackals are his, and must be fed. For this perhaps the

unfortunates were blown here by the angel that rides the yellow air.

Four corpses were landed, and their clothes sold in the camp."

"Thou wouldst say," the Prince rejoined, "that the plague will go with

us to the Kaaba. Content thee, Shaykh. Allah will have his way."

"But my men are afraid."

"I will place a drop of sweetened water on their lips, and bring them

safe through, though they are dying. Tell them as much."

The Shaykh was departing when the Prince, shrewdly suspecting it was he

who feared, called him back.

"How call ye the afternoon prayer, O Shaykh?"

"El Asr."

"What didst thou when it was called?"

"Am I not a believer? I prayed."

"And thou hast heard the Arafat sermon?"

"Even so, O Prince."

"Then, as thou art a believer, and a hadji, O Shaykh, thou and all with

thee shalt see the Khatib on his dromedary, and hear him again. Only

promise me to stay till his last _Amin_."

"I promise," said the Shaykh, solemnly.

"Go--but remember prayer is the bread of faith."

The Shaykh was comforted, and withdrew.

With the rising of the sun next day the caravan, numbering about three

thousand souls, defiled confusedly out of the town. The Prince, who

might have been first, of choice fell in behind the rest.

"Why dost thou take this place, O Prince?" asked the Shaykh, who was

proud of his company, and their comparative good order.

He received for answer, "The blessings of Allah are with the dying whom

the well-to-do and selfish in front have passed unnoticed."

The Shaykh repeated the saying to his men, and they replied:

"Ebn-Hanife was a Dervish: so is this Prince--exalted be his name!"

Eulogy could go no further.

CHAPTER IV

EL ZARIBAH

"I will be their Arbiter in Religion," said the Indian Mystic in his

monologue.

This is to be accepted as the motive of the scheme the singular man was

pursuing in the wastes of Arabia.

It must be taken of course with his other declaration--"There can be no

reform or refinement of faith except God be its exclusive subject; and

so certainly it leads to lopping off all parasitical worships such as

are given to Christ and Mahomet."

Fifty years prior, disgusted with the endless and inconsequential

debates and wars between Islam and Christianity, he had betaken himself

to Cipango, [Footnote: Supposably Japan.] wherever that might be.

There, in a repentant hour, he had conceived the idea of a Universal

Religious Brotherhood, with God for its accordant principle; and he was

now returned to present and urge the compromise. In more distinct

statement, he was making the pilgrimage to ascertain from personal

observation if the Mohammedan portion of the world was in a consenting

mood. It was not his first visit to Mecca; but the purpose in mind gave

the journey a new zest; and, as can be imagined, nothing in the least

indicative of the prevalent spirit of the Hajj escaped him. Readers

following the narrative should keep this explanation before them.

From El Derayah the noble pilgrim had taken the longer route by way of

Medina, where he scrupulously performed the observances decreed for the

faithful at the Mosque of the Prophet. Thence he descended with the

caravan from Damascus.

Dawn of the sixth of September broke over the rolling plain known as

the Valley of El Zaribah, disclosing four tents pitched on an eminence

to the right of a road running thence south-west. These tents,

connected by ropes, helped perfect an enclosure occupied by horses,

donkeys, camels and dromedaries, and their cumbrous equipments. Several

armed men kept watch over the camp.

The Valley out to the pink granite hills rimming it round wore a fresh

green tint in charming contrast with the tawny-black complexion of the

region through which the day's journey had stretched. Water at a

shallow depth nourished camel grass in patches, and Theban palms, the

latter much scattered and too small to be termed trees. The water, and

the nearness of the Holy City--only one day distant--had, in a time

long gone, won for El Zaribah its double appointment of meeting place

for the caravans and place of the final ceremony of assumption of the

costume and vows _El Ihram_.

The Prophet himself had prescribed the ceremony; so the pilgrims in the

camp on the eminence, the better to observe it and at the same time get

a needful rest, had come up during the night in advance of the

caravans. In other words, the Prince of India--the title by which he

was now generally known--might, at the opening hour of the day, have

been found asleep in the larger of the four tents; the one with the

minaret in miniature so handsomely gilded and of such happy effect over

the centre pole.

Along the roadsides and on the high grounds of the Valley other tints

were visible, while faint columns of smoke arising out of the hollows

told of preparations for breakfast. These signified the presence of

hucksters, barbers, costume dealers, and traders generally, who, in

anticipation of the arrival of the caravans, had come from the city to

exercise their callings. Amongst them, worthy of special attention, was

a multitude of professional guides, [Footnote: _Mutawif_.] ready for a

trifling hire to take charge of uninitiated pilgrims, and lead them

regardfully through the numerous ceremonies to which they were going.

Shortly after noon the Prince called in a guide, and several barbers,

men with long gowns, green turbans, brass basins, sharp knives, and

bright bladed scissors. The assumption of the real pilgrimage by his

people was then begun. Each man submitted his head, mustaches, and

nails to the experts, and bathed and perfumed himself, and was dusted

with musk. Next the whole party put off their old garments, and attired

themselves in the two white vestments _El Ihram_.[Footnote: A mantle

and skirt of white cloth unsewn.] The change of apparel was for the

better. Finally the votaries put on sandals peculiar in that nothing

pertaining to them might cover the instep; then they stood up in a row

faced toward Mecca, and repeated the ancient formula of dedication of

the _Ihram_ to the Almighty slowly intoned for them by the guide.

The solemn demeanor of the men during the ceremony, which was tedious

and interspersed with prayers and curious recitals, deeply impressed

the Prince, who at the end of the scene retired into his tent, with his

three mute attendants, and there performed the vows for himself and

them. There also they all assumed the indispensable costume. Then, as

he well might do, the law permitting him to seek the shade of a house

or a tent, he had a rug spread before his door, where, in the fresh

white attire, he seated himself, and with a jar of expressed juice of

pomegranates at his side made ready to witness the passing of the

caravans, the dust of which was reported visible in the east.

Afterwhile the cloud of dust momentarily deepening over in that

direction was enlivened by a clash of cymbals and drums, blent with

peals of horns, the fine, high music yet cherished by warriors of the

Orient. Presently a body of horsemen appeared, their spear points

glistening in the sunlight. A glance at them, then his gaze fixed upon

a chief in leading.

The sun had been hot all day; the profiles of the low hills were dim

with tremulous haze lying scorchingly upon them; the furred hulks of

the camels in the enclosure looked as if they were smoking; the sky

held nothing living except two kites which sailed the upper air slowly,

their broad wings at widest extension; yet the chief persisted in

wearing his arms and armor, like the soldiers behind him. Ere long he

rode up and halted in front of the Prince, and near by.

His head was covered with a visorless casque, slightly conical, from

the edge of which, beginning about the temples, a cape of fine steel

rings, buckled under the chin, enveloped the neck and throat, and fell

loosely over the neck and shoulders, and part way down the back. A

shirt of linked mail, pliable as wool, defended the body and the arms

to the elbows; overalls of like material, save that the parts next the

saddle were leather, clothed the thighs and legs. As the casque and

every other link of the mail were plated with gold, the general effect

at a distance was as if the whole suit were gold. A surcoat of light

green cloth hung at the back half hiding a small round shield of

burnished brass; at the left side there was a cimeter, and in the right

hand a lance. The saddle was of the high-seated style yet affected by

horsemen of Circassia; at the pommel a bow and well-filled quiver were

suspended, and as the stirrups were in fact steel slippers the feet

were amply protected by them.

At sight of the martial figure, the Indian, in admiration, arose to a

sitting posture. Such, he thought, were the warriors who followed

Saladin! And when the stranger, reaching the summit of the eminence,

turned out of the road coming apparently to the door of the tent, he

involuntarily sprang to his feet ready to do him honor.

The face, then plainly seen, though strong of feature, and thoroughly

bronzed, was that of a young man not more than twenty-two or three,

dark-eyed, mustached and bearded, and of a serious though pleasant

expression. He kept his seat with ease and grace; if he and the

broad-chested dark-bay horse were not really one, they were one in

spirit; together they wrought the impression which was the origin of

_majesty_, a title for kings.

While the Prince was turning this in his mind, the soldier pulled rein,

and stopped long enough to glance at him and at the camp; then, turning

the horse, he looked the other way, making it apparent he had taken

position on the rise to overlook the plain, and observe the coming and

dispersion of the caravans.

Another mounted man ascended the hill, armed and armored like the first

one, though not so richly, and bearing a standard of dulled yellow silk

hanging from a gilded staff. The ground of the standard was filled with

inscriptions in red lettering, leaving the golden crescent and star on

the point of the staff to speak of nationality. The bearer of the flag

dismounted, and at a sign planted it in the ground.

Seeing his Shaykh, the Prince called him:

"Who is the warrior yonder?--He in the golden armor?"

"The Emir El Hajj, [Footnote: Chief officer of the Pilgrimage. The

appointment was considered the highest favor in the Sultan's gift.] O

Prince."

"He the Emir El Hajj!--And so young?--Oh! a hero of the Serail. The

Kislar Aga extolled him one day."

"Thy remark and common report, O excellent Prince, could not journey

together on the same camel," said the Shaykh. "In the Khan at Medina I

heard his story. There is a famous enemy of the Turks, Iskander Bey, in

strength a Jinn, whose sword two men can scarcely lift. He appeared

before the army of the Sultan one day with a challenge. He whom thou

seest yonder alone dared go forth to meet him. The fought from morning

till noon; then they rested. 'Who art thou?' asked Iskander. 'I am a

slave of Amurath, the Commander of the Faithful, who hath commissioned

me to take thee to him dead or alive.' Iskander laughed, and said, 'I

know by thy tongue now thou art not a Turk; and to see if the Commander

of the Faithful, as thou callest him, hath it in soul to make much of

thy merit as a warrior, I will leave thee the honors of the combat, and

to go thy way.' Whereat they say he lifted his ponderous blade as not

heavier than the leaf of a dead palm, and strode from the field."

The Prince listened, and at the end said, like a man in haste:

"Thou knowest Nilo, my black man. Bring him hither."

The Shaykh saluted gravely, and hurried away, leaving his patron with

eyes fixed on the Emir, and muttering:

"So young!--and in such favor with the old Amurath! I will know him. If

I fail, he may be useful to me. Who knows? Who knows?"

He looked upward as if speaking to some one there.

Meantime the Emir was questioning the ensign.

"This pilgrim," he said, "appears well provided."

And the ensign answered:

"He is the Indian Prince of whom I have been hearing since we left

Medina."

"What hast thou heard?"

"That being rich, he is open-handed, making free with his aspers as

sowers with their seed."

"What more?"

"He 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 thou 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 the _Hadis_, 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_." [Footnote: Holier than a Dervish.]

"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 Nabawi [Footnote: Tomb of the Prophet.] 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 in the house rich,

and come 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, central 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 _Fatihah_ 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."

"I am grateful for the offer, most excellent Hadji--if the address be

lower than thy true entitlement, thou shouldst bring the Shaykh yonder

to account for misleading a stranger--but the sun and I have become

unmindful of each other, and duty is always the same in its demands at

least. Here, because the valley is the _micath_, [Footnote: Meeting

place.] the caravans are apt to run wild, and need a restraining hand.

I plead the circumstance in excuse for presuming to request that thou

wilt allow me to amend thy offer of courtesy."

The Emir paused, waiting for the permission.

"So thou dost accept the offer, amend it as thou wilt," and the Prince

smiled.

Then the other returned, with evident satisfaction: "When our brethren

of the caravans are settled, and the plain is quiet, and I too have

taken the required vows, I will return to thee. My quarters are so

close to thine it would please me to be allowed to come alone."

"Granted, O Emir, granted--if, on thy side, thou wilt consent to permit

me to give thee of the fare I may yet have at disposal. I can promise

thou shalt not go away hungry."

"Be it so."

Thereupon the Emir remounted, and went back to his stand overlooking

the plain, and the coming of the multitude.

CHAPTER V

THE PASSING OF THE CARAVANS

From his position the Wanderer could see the advancing caravans; but as

the spectacle would consume the afternoon, he called his three

attendants, and issued directions for the entertainment of the Emir in

the evening; this done, he cast himself upon the rug, and gave rein to

his curiosity, thinking, not unreasonably, to find in what would pass

before him something bearing on the subject ever present in his mind.

The sky could not be called blue of any tint; it seemed rather to be

filled with common dust mixed with powder of crushed brick. The effect

was of a semi-transparent ceiling flushed with heat from the direct

down-beating action of the sun, itself a disk of flame. Low mountains,

purplish black in hue, made a horizon on which the ceiling appeared

set, like the crystal in the upper valve of a watch. Thus shut in, but

still fair to view east and south of the position the spectator

occupied, lay El Zaribah, whither, as the appointed meeting place, so

many pilgrims had for days and weeks ever wearier growing been "walking

with their eyes." In their thought the Valley was not so much a garden

or landscape of beauty as an ante-chamber of the House of Allah. As

they neared it now, journeying since the break of day, impatience

seized them; so when the cry sped down the irregular column--"It is

here! It is here!" they answered with a universal _labbayaki_,

signifying, "Thou hast called us--here we are, here we are!" Then

breaking into a rabble, they rushed multitudinously forward. To give

the reader an idea of the pageant advancing to possess itself of the

Valley, it will be well to refresh his memory with a few details. He

should remember, in the first place, that it was not merely the caravan

which left El Katif over on the western shore of the Green Sea, but two

great caravans merged into one--_El Shemi_, from Damascus, and _Misri_,

from Cairo. To comprehend these, the region they drained of pilgrims

should be next considered. For example, at Cairo there was a

concentration from the two Egypts, Upper and Lower, from the mysterious

deserts of Africa, and from the cities and countries along the southern

shore of the Mediterranean far as Gibraltar; while the whole East,

using the term in its most comprehensive sense, emptied contingents of

the devout into Damascus. In forwarding the myriads thus poured down

upon them the Arabs were common carriers, like the Venetians to the

hordes of western Europe in some of the later crusades; so to their

thousands of votaries proper, the other thousands of them engaged in

the business are also to be computed. El Medina was the great secondary

rendezvous. Hardly could he be accounted of the Faithful who in making

the pilgrimage would turn his back upon the bones of the Prophet; of

such merit was the saying, "One prayer in this thy mosque is of more

virtue than a thousand in other places, save only the Masjid El Haram."

Once at Medina, how could the pilgrim refuse his presence, if not his

tears, at El Kuba, forever sacred to the Mohammedan heart as the first

place of public prayer in Islam? Finally, it should not be forgotten

that the year we write of belonged to a cycle when readers of the Koran

and worshippers at Mecca were more numerous than now, if not more

zealous and believing. And it was to witness the passing of this

procession, so numerous, so motley, so strangely furnished, so

uncontrolled except as it pleased, the Prince of India was seated at

the door of his tent upon the hill. Long before the spectacle was

sighted in the distance, its approach was announced by an overhanging

pillar of cloud, not unlike that which went before the Israelites in

their exodus through similar wastes. Shortly after the interview with

the Emir, the Prince, looking under the pillar, saw a darkening line

appear, not more at first than a thread stretched across a section of

the east.

The apparition was without a break; nor might he have said it was in

motion or of any depth. A sound came from the direction not unlike that

of a sibilant wind. Presently out of the perspective, which reduced the

many to one and all sizes to a level, the line developed into unequal

divisions, with intervals between them; about the same time the noise

became recognizable as the voices fiercely strained and inarticulate of

an innumerable host of men. Then the divisions broke into groups, some

larger than others; a little later individuals became discernible;

finally what had appeared a line resolved itself into a convulsing

mass, without front, without wings, but of a depth immeasurable.

The pilgrims did not attempt to keep the road; having converted their

march into a race, they spread right and left over the country, each

seeking a near way; sometimes the object was attained, sometimes not;

the end was a confusion beyond description. The very inequalities of

the ground helped the confusion. A group was one moment visible on a

height; then it vanished in a hollow. Now there were thousands on a

level; then, as if sinking, they went down, down, and presently where

they were there was only dust or a single individual.

Afterwhile, so wide was the inrolling tide, the field of vision

overflowed, and the eye was driven to ranging from point to point,

object to object. Then it was discernible that the mass was mixed of

animals and men--here horses, there camels--some with riders, some

without--all, the burdened as well as unburdened, straining forward

under urgency of shriek and stick--forward for life--forward as if of

the two "comforts," Success beckoned them in front, and Despair behind

plied them with spears. [Footnote: In the philosophy of the Arabs

Success and Despair are treated as comforts.]

At length the eastern boundary of the Valley was reached. There one

would suppose the foremost of the racers, the happy victors, would rest

or, at their leisure, take of the many sites those they preferred; but

no--the penalty attaching to the triumph was the danger of being run

down by the thousands behind. In going on there was safety--and on they

went.

To this time the spectacle had been a kind of panoramic generality; now

the details came to view, and accustomed as he was to marvels of

pageantry, the Prince exclaimed: "These are not men, but devils fleeing

from the wrath of God!" and involuntarily he went nearer, down to the

brink of the height. It seemed the land was being inundated with

camels; not the patient brutes we are used to thinking of by that name,

with which domestication means ill-treatment and suffering--the

slow-going burden-bearers, always appealing to our sympathy because

always apparently tired, hungry, sleepy, worn-out--always reeling on as

if looking for quiet places in which to slip their loads of whatever

kind, and lie down and die; but the camel aroused, enraged, frightened,

panic-struck, rebellious, sending forth strange cries, and running with

all its might--an army of camels hurling their gigantic hulks along at

a rate little less than blind impetus. And they went, singly, and in

strings, and yonder a mass. The slower, and those turned to the right

or left of the direct course, and all such as had hesitated upon coming

to a descent, were speedily distanced or lost to sight; so the ensemble

was constantly shifting. And then the rolling and tossing of the

cargoes and packages on the backs of the animals, and the streaming out

of curtains, scarfs, shawls, and loose draperies of every shape and

color, lent touches of drollery and bright contrasts to the scene. One

instant the spectator on the hill was disposed to laugh, then to

admire, then to shiver at the immensity of a danger; over and over

again amidst his quick variation of feeling, he repeated the

exclamation: "These are not men, but devils fleeing from the wrath of

God!"

Such was the spectacle in what may be called the second act; presently

it reached a third; and then the fury of the movement, so inconsistent

with the habits and patient nature of the camel, was explained. In the

midst of the hurly-burly, governing and directing it, were horsemen, an

army of themselves. Some rode in front, and the leading straps on which

they pulled with the combined strength of man and horse identified them

as drivers; others rode as assistants of the drivers, and they were

armed with goads which they used skilfully and without mercy. There

were many collisions, upsets, and entanglements; yet the danger did not

deter the riders from sharing the excitement, and helping it forward to

their utmost. They too used knotted ropes, and stabbed with sharpened

sticks; they also contributed to the unearthly tumult of sounds which

travelled with the mob, a compound of prayers, imprecations, and

senseless screams--the medley that may be occasionally heard from a

modern mad-house.

In the height of the rush the Shaykh came up.

"How long," said the Prince--"in the Prophet's name, how long will this

endure?"

"Till night, O most excellent Hadji--if the caravans be so long in

coming."

"Is it usual?"

"It has been so from the beginning."

Thereupon the curiosity of the Prince took another turn. A band of

horsemen galloped into view--free riders, with long lances carried

upright, their caftans flying, and altogether noble looking.

"These are Arabs. I know by their horses and their bearing," said he,

with admiration; "but possibly thou canst give me the name of their

tribe."

The Shaykh answered with pride: "Their horses are gray, and by the

sign, O lover of the Prophet, they are the Beni-Yarb. Every other one

of them is a poet; in the face of an enemy, they are all warriors."

The camps on the hill, with the yellow flag giving notice of the Emir's

station, had effect upon others besides the Yarbis; all who wished to

draw out of the _melange_ turned towards them, bringing the spectacle

in part to the very feet of the Wanderer; whereas he thought with a

quicker beating of the heart, "The followers of the Prophet are coming

to show me of what they are this day composed." Then he said to the

Shaykh, "Stand thou here, and tell me as I shall ask."

The conversation between them may be thus summarized:

The current which poured past then, its details in perfect view,

carried along with it all the conditions and nationalities of the

pilgrimage. Natives of the desert on bare-backed camels, clinging to

the humps with one hand, while they pounded with the other--natives on

beautiful horses, not needing whip or spur--natives on dromedaries so

swift, sure-footed, and strong there was no occasion for fear. Men, and

often women and children, on ragged saddle-cloths, others in

pretentious boxes, and now and then a person whose wealth and rank were

published by the magnificence of the litter in which he was borne,

swinging luxuriously between long-stepping dromedaries from El Sbark.

"By Allah!" the Prince exclaimed. "Here hath barbarism its limit!

Behold!"

They of whom he spoke came up in irregular array mounted on dromedaries

without housing. At their head rode one with a white lettered green

flag, and beating an immense drum. They were armed with long spears of

Indian bamboo, garnished below the slender points with swinging tufts

of ostrich feathers. Each carried a woman behind him disdainful of a

veil. The feminine screams of exultation rose high above the yells of

the men, helping not a little to the recklessness with which the latter

bore onward.

Woe to such in their way as were poorly mounted. In a twinkling they

were ridden down. Nor did those fare better who were overtaken

struggling with a string of camels. The crash of bursting boxes, the

sharp report of rending ropes, the warning cry, the maddening cheer; a

battle of men, another of beasts--and when the collision had passed,

the earth was strewn with its wreck.

"They are Wahabbas, O Hadji," said the Shaykh. "Thou seest the tufts on

their spears. Under them they carry _Jehannum_."

"And these now coming?" asked the Prince. "Their long white hats remind

me of Persia."

"Persians they are," replied the Shaykh, his lip curling, his eyes

gleaming. "They will tear their clothes, and cut their shaven crowns,

and wail, 'Woe's me, O Ali!' then kiss the Kaaba with defilement on

their beards. The curse of the _Shaykaim_ is on them--may it stay

there!"

Then the Prince knew it was a Sunite speaking of Schiahs.

Yet others of the Cafila of Bagdad passed with the despised sons of

Iran; notably Deccanese, Hindoos, Afghans, and people from the

Himalayas, and beyond them far as Kathay, and China, and Siam, all

better known to the Prince than to his Shaykh, who spoke of them,

saying, "Thou shouldst know thine own, O Hadji! Thou art their father!"

Next, in a blending that permitted no choice of associates, along swept

the chief constituents of the caravans--Moors and Blackamoors,

Egyptians, Syrians, Turks, Kurds, Caucasians, and Arabs of every tribe,

each a multitude of themselves, and their passing filled up the

afternoon.

Towards sundown the hurry and rush of the movement perceptibly

slackened. Over in the west there were signs of a halt; tents were

rising, and the smoke of multiplying fires began to deepen the blue of

the distance. It actually appeared as if settlement for the night would

creep back upon the east, whence the irruption had burst.

At a moment when the Prince's interest in the scene was commencing to

flag, and he was thinking of returning to his tent, the rearmost

divisions of the pilgrims entered the Valley. They were composed of

footmen and donkey-riders, for whom the speed of the advance bodies had

been too great. High-capped Persians, and Turks whose turbans were

reduced to faded fezes, marched in the van, followed closely by a

rabble of Takruris, ragged, moneyless, living upon meat of abandoned

animals. Last of all were the sick and dying, who yet persisted in

dragging their fainting limbs along as best they could. Might they but

reach the Holy City! Then if they died it would be as martyrs for whom

the doors of Paradise are always open. With them, expectants of easy

prey, like the _rakham_ [Footnote: Vultures.] sailing in slow circles

overhead, flocked the beggars, thieves, outcasts and assassins; but

night came quickly, and covered them, and all the things they did, for

evil and night have been partners from the beginning.

At last the Prince returned to his tent. He had seen the sun set over

El Zaribah; he had seen the passing of the caravans. Out there in the

Valley they lay. They--to him, and for his purposes, the Mohammedan

world unchanged--the same in composition, in practice, in creed--only

he felt now a consciousness of understanding them as never before.

Mahomet, in his re-introduction of God to man, had imposed himself upon

their faith, its master idea, its central figure, the superior in

sanctity, the essential condition--the ONE! Knowingly or unknowingly,

he left a standard of religious excellence behind him--Himself. And by

that standard the thief in the wake of the mighty caravans robbing the

dead, the Thug strangling a victim because he was too slow in dying,

were worthy Paradise, and would attain it, for they believed in him.

Faith in the Prophet of God was more essential than faith in God. Such

was the inspiration of Islam. A sinking of spirit fell upon the unhappy

man. He felt a twinge of the bitterness always waiting on failure,

where the undertaking, whatever it be, has enlisted the whole heart. At

such times instinctively we turn here and there for help, and in its

absence, for comfort and consolation; what should he do now but advert

to Christianity? What would Christians say of his idea? Was God lost in

Christ as he was here in Mahomet?

CHAPTER VI

THE PRINCE AND THE EMIR

In the reception room of the Prince's tent the lamps are lighted; one

fastened to the stout centre pole, and five others on as many palings

planted in the ground, all burning brightly. The illumination is

enriched by the admirable blending of colors in the canopy of shawls.

Within the space defined by the five lamps, on a tufted rug, the Mystic

and the Emir are seated, both in _Ihram_, and looking cool and

comfortable, though the night outside still testifies to the heat of

the day.

A wooden trencher, scoured white as ivory, separates the friends,

leaving them face to face. In supping they have reached what we call

the dessert.

On the trencher are slender baskets containing grapes, figs, and dates,

the choicest of the gardens of Medina. A jar of honey, an assortment of

dry biscuits, and two jugs, one of water, the other of juice of

pomegranates, with drinking cups, complete the board.

At this age, Orientals lingering at table have the cheer of coffee and

tobacco; unhappily for the two of whom we are writing, neither of the

great narcotics was discovered. Nevertheless it should not be supposed

the fruits, the honey, and the waters failed to content them. Behind

the host is the negro we already know as Nilo. He is very watchful of

his master's every motion.

As guest and host appear now the formalism of acquaintanceship just

made has somewhat disappeared, and they are talking easily and with

freedom. Occasionally a movement of one or the other brings his head to

a favorable angle, whereat the light, dropping on the freshly shaven

crown, is sharply glinted back.

The Emir has been speaking of the plague.

"At Medina I was told it had run its course," the host remarked.

"True, O Hadji, but it has returned, and with greater violence. The

stragglers were its victims; now it attacks indiscriminately. Yesterday

the guard I keep in the rear came to a pilgrim of rank. His litter was

deserted, and he was lying in it dead."

"The man may have been murdered."

"Nay," said the Emir, "gold in large amount was found on his person."

"But he had other property doubtless?"

"Of great value."

"What disposition was made of it?"

"It was brought to me, and is now with other stores in my tent; a law

of ancient institution vesting it in the Emir El Hajj."

The countenance of the Jew became serious.

"The ownership was not in my thought," he said, waving his hand. "I

knew the law; but this scourge of Allah has its laws also, and by one

of them we are enjoined to burn or bury whatever is found with the

body."

The Emir, seeing the kindly concern of his host, smiled as he answered:

"But there is a higher law, O Hadji."

"I spoke without thinking danger of any kind could disturb thee."

The host drew forward the date basket, and the Emir, fancying he

discerned something on his mind besides the fruit, waited his further

speech.

"I am reminded of another matter, O brave Emir; but as it also is

personal I hesitate. Indeed I will not speak of it except with

permission."

"As you will," the other replied, "I will answer--May the Prophet help

me!"

"Blessed be the Prophet!" said the Prince, reverently. "Thy confidence

doeth me honor, and I thank thee; at the same time I would not presume

upon it if thy tongue were less suggestive of a land whose name is

music--Italy. It is in my knowledge, O Emir, that the Sultan, thy

master--may Allah keep him in countenance!--hath in his service many

excellent soldiers by birth of other countries than his own, broad as

it is--Christians, who are none the less of the true faith. Wherefore,

wilt thou tell me of thyself?"

The question did not embarrass the Emir.

"The answer must be brief," he answered, without hesitation, "because

there is little to tell. I do not know my native country. The

peculiarity of accent you have mentioned has been observed by others;

and as they agreed with you in assigning it to Italy, I am nothing

loath to account myself an Italian. The few shreds of circumstance

which came to me in course of time confirmed the opinion, and I availed

myself of a favorable opportunity to acquire the tongue. In our further

speech, O Hadji, you may prefer its use."

"At thy pleasure," the host replied; "though there is no danger of our

being overheard. Nilo, the slave behind me, has been a mute from birth."

Then, without the slightest interruption, the Emir changed his speech

from Greek to Italian.

"My earliest remembrance is of being borne in a woman's arms out of

doors, under a blue sky, along a margin of white sand, an orchard on

one hand, the sea on the other. The report of the waves breaking upon

the shore lives distinctly in my memory; so does the color of the trees

in the orchard which has since become familiar to me as the green of

olives. Equally clear is the recollection that, returning in-doors, I

was carried into a house of stone so large it must have been a castle.

I speak of it, as of the orchard, and the sea, and the roar of the

breakers, quite as much by reference to what I have subsequently seen

as from trust in my memory."

Here the host interrupted him to remark:

"Though an Eastern, I have been a traveller in the west, and the

description reminds me of the eastern shore of Italy in the region of

Brindisi."

"My next recollection," the Emir resumed, "is a child's fright,

occasioned by furious flames, and thick smoke, and noises familiar now

as of battle. There was then a voyage on the sea during which I saw

none but bearded men. The period of perfect knowledge so far as my

history is concerned began when I found myself an object of the love

and care of the wife of a renowned Pacha, governor of the city of

Brousa. She called me _Mirza_. My childhood was spent in a harem, and I

passed from it into a school to enter upon my training as a soldier. In

good time I became a Janissary. An opportunity presented itself one

day, and I distinguished myself. My master, the Sultan, rewarded me by

promotion and transfer to the _Silihdars_, [Footnote: D'Oheson.] the

most ancient and favored corps of the Imperial army, it being the

body-guard of the Padisha, and garrison of his palace. The yellow flag

my ensign carries belongs to that corps. As a further token of his

confidence, the Sultan appointed me Emir El Hajj. In these few words, O

Hadji, you have my history."

The listener was impressed with the simplicity of the narrative, and

the speaker's freedom from regret, sorrow, or passion of any kind.

"It is a sad story, O Emir," he said, sympathetically, "and I cannot

think it ended. Knowest thou not more?"

"Nothing of incident," was the reply. "All that remains is inferential.

The castle was attacked at night by Turks landed from their galleys."

"And thy father and mother?"

"I never knew them."

"There is another inference," said the Prince, suggestively--"they were

Christians."

"Yes, but unbelievers."

The suppression of natural affection betrayed by the remark still more

astonished the host.

"But they believed in God," he said.

"They should have believed Mahomet was his Prophet."

"I fear I am giving you pain, O Emir."

"Dismiss the fear, O Hadji."

Again the Jew sought the choicest date in the basket. The indifference

of his guest was quick fuel to the misgivings which we have already

noticed as taking form about his purpose, and sapping and weakening it.

To be arbiter in the religious disputes of men, the unique consummation

called for by his scheme, the disputants must concede him room and

hearing. Were all Mohammedans, from whom he hoped most, like this one

born of Christians, then the two conditions would be sternly refused

him. By the testimony of this witness, there was nothing in the

heredity of faith; and it went to his soul incisively that, in

stimulating the passions which made the crusades a recurrence of the

centuries, he himself had contributed to the defeat now threatening his

latest ambition. The sting went to his soul; yet, by force of will,

always at command in the presence of strangers, he repressed his

feeling, and said:

"Everything is as Allah wills. Let us rejoice that he is our keeper.

The determination of our fate, in the sense of what shall happen to us,

and what we shall be, and when and where the end shall overtake us, is

no more to him than deciding the tint of the rose before the bud is

formed. O Emir, I congratulate you on the resignation with which you

accept his judgment. I congratulate you upon the age in which he has

cast your life. He who in a moment of uncertainty would inform himself

of his future should not heed his intentions and hopes; by studying his

present conditions, he will find himself an oracle unto himself. He

should address his best mind to the question, 'I am now in a road; if I

keep it, where will I arrive?' And wisdom will answer, 'What are thy

desires? For what art thou fitted? What are the opportunities of the

time?' Most fortunate, O Emir, if there be correspondence between the

desire, the fitness, and the opportunity!"

The Emir did not comprehend, and seeing it, the host added with a

directness approaching the abrupt:

"And now to make the reason of my congratulations clear, it is

necessary that thou consent to my putting a seal upon your lips. What

sayest thou?"

"If I engage my silence, O Hadji, it is because I believe you are a

good man."

The dignity of the Emir's answer did not entirely hide the effect of

the Prince's manner.

"Know thou then," the latter continued, with a steady, penetrating

gaze--"know thou then, there is a Brahman of my acquaintance who is a

Magus. I use the word to distinguish him from the necromancers whom the

Koran has set in everlasting prohibition. He keeps school in a chapel

hid away in the heart of jungles overgrowing a bank of the Bermapootra,

not far from the mountain gates of the river. He has many scholars, and

his intelligence has compassed all knowledge. He is familiar with the

supernatural as with the natural. On my way, I visited him.... Know

thou next, O Emir, I too have had occasion to make inquiries of the

future. The vulgar would call me an astrologer--not a professional

practising for profit, but an adept seeking information because it

lifts me so much nearer Allah and his sublimest mysteries. Very lately

I found a celestial horoscope announcing a change in the status of the

world. The masterful waves, as you may know, have for many ages flowed

from the West; but now, the old Roman impetus having at last spent

itself, a refluence is to set in, and the East in its turn pour a

dominating flood upon the West. The determining stars have slipped

their influences. They are in motion. _Constantinople is doomed!_"

The guest drew a quick breath. Understanding was flooding him with

light.

"And now, O Emir, say, if the revelation had stopped there--stopped, I

mean, with the overthrow of the Christian capital--wouldst thou have

been satisfied with it?"

"No, by Allah, no!"

"Further, Emir. The stars being communicable yet, what wouldst thou

have asked them next?"

"I would not have rested until I had from them the name of him who is

to be leader in the movement."

The Mystic smiled at the young man's fervor.

"Thou hast saved me telling what I did, and affirmed the logic of our

human nature," he said. "Thy imperial master is old, and much worn by

wars and cares of government, is he not?"

"Old in greatness," answered the Emir, diplomatically.

"Hath he not a son?"

"A son with all the royal qualities of the father."

"But young--not more than eighteen."

"Not more."

"And the Prophet hath lent him his name?"

"Even so."

The host released the eager face of the Emir from his gaze, while he

sought a date in the basket.

"Another horoscope--the second"--he then said, quietly, "revealed

everything but the hero's name. He is to be of kingly birth, and a

Turk. Though a lad, he is already used to arms and armor."

"Oh! by Allah, Hadji," cried the guest, his face flushed, his words

quick, his voice mandatory. "Release me from my pledge of silence. Tell

me who thou art, that I may report thee, and the things thou sayest.

There was never such news to warm a heroic heart."

The Prince pursued his explanation without apparently noticing the

interruption noticing the interruption.

"To verify the confidences of the stars, I sought the Magus in his

chapel by the sacred river. Together we consulted them, and made the

calculations. He embraced me; but it was agreed between us that

absolute verity of the finding could only be had by re-casting the

horoscopes at Constantinople. Thou must know, O Emir, there is an

astral alphabet which has its origin in the inter-relations of the

heavenly bodies, represented by lines impalpable to the common eye;

know also that the most favored adept cannot read the mystic letters

with the assurance best comporting with verity, except he be at the

place of the destined event or revolution. To possess myself of the

advantage, I shall ere long visit the ancient capital. More plainly, I

am on the way thither now."

Instead of allaying the eagerness of the Emir, the words excited it the

more.

"Release me from my pledge," he repeated, entreatingly, "and tell me

who thou art. Mahommed is my pupil; he rides, carries shield, lays

lance, draws arrow, and strikes with sword and axe as I have taught

him. Thou canst not name a quality characteristic of heroes he does not

possess. Doth Allah permit me safe return from the Hajj, he will be

first to meet me at his father's gate. Think what happiness I should

have in saluting him there with the title--Hail Mahommed, Conqueror of

Constantinople!"

The Jew answered:

"I would gladly help thee, O Emir, to happiness and promotion; for I

see what afterwhile, if not presently, they would follow such a

salutation of thy pupil, if coupled with a sufficient explanation; but

his interests are paramount; at the same time it becomes me to be

allegiant to the divinatory stars. What rivalries the story might

awaken! It is not uncommon in history, as thou mayst know, that sons of

promise have been cut off by jealous fathers. I am not accusing the

great Amurath; nevertheless precautions are always proper."

The speaker then became dramatic.

"Nay, brave Emir, the will to help thee has been already seconded by

the deed. I spoke but now of lines of correspondence between the

shining lights that are the life of the sky at night. Let me illustrate

my meaning. Observe the lamps about us. The five on the uprights.

Between them, in the air, two stars of interwoven form are drawn. Take

the lamps as determining points, and use thy fancy a moment."

The Emir turned to the lamps; and the host, swift to understand the

impulse, gave him time to gratify it; then he resumed:

"So the fields of Heaven between the stars, where the vulgar see only

darkness, are filled with traceries infinite in form yet separable as

the letters of the alphabet. They are the ciphers in which Allah writes

his reasons for every creation, and his will concerning it. There the

sands are numbered, and the plants and trees, and their leaves, and the

birds, and everything animate; there is thy history, and mine, and all

of little and great and good and bad that shall befall us in this life.

Death does not blot out the records. Everlastingly writ, they shall be

everlastingly read--for the shame of some, for the delight of others."

"Allah is good," said the Emir, bending his head.

"And now," the Mystic continued, "thou hast eaten and drunk with me in

the Pentagram of the Magii. Such is the astral drawing between the five

lamps. Henceforth in conflicts of interest, fortune against fortune,

influences undreamt of will come to thy assistance. So much have I

already done for thee."

The Emir bowed lower than before.

"Nor that alone," the Jew continued. "Henceforth our lives will run

together on lines never divergent, never crossing. Be not astonished,

if, within a week, I furnish, to thy full satisfaction, proof of what I

am saying."

The expression could not be viewed except as of more than friendly

interest.

"Should it so happen," the Emir said, with warmth, "consider how

unfortunate my situation would be, not knowing the name or country of

my benefactor."

The host answered simply, though evasively:

"There are reasons of state, O Emir, requiring me to make this

pilgrimage unknown to any one."

The Emir apologized.

"It is enough," the host added, "that thou remember me as the Prince of

India, whose greatest happiness is to believe in Allah and Mahomet his

Prophet; at the same time I concede we should have the means of

certainly knowing each other should communication become desirable

hereafter."

He made a sign with his right hand which the negro in waiting responded

to by passing around in front of him.

"Nilo," the master said in Greek, "bring me the two malachite

rings--those with the turquoise eyes."

The slave disappeared.

"Touching the request to be released from the promise of secrecy,

pardon me, O Emir, if I decline to grant it. The verification to be

made in Constantinople should advise thee that the revolution to which

I referred is not ripe for publication to the world. A son might be

excused for dishonoring his parents; but the Magus who would subject

the divine science to danger of ridicule or contempt by premature

disclosure is fallen past hope--he would betray Allah himself."

The Emir bowed, but with evident discontent. At length the slave

returned with the rings.

"Observe, O Emir," the Jew said, passing them both to his guest, "they

are rare, curious, and exactly alike."

The circlets were of gold, with raised settings of deep green stone,

cut so as to leave a drop of pure turquoise on the top of each,

suggestive of birds' eyes.

"They are exactly the same, O Prince," said the Emir, tendering them

back.

The Jew waved his hand.

"Select one of them," he said, "and I will retain the other. Borne by

messengers, they will always identify us each to the other."

The two grew more cordial, and there was much further conversation

across the board, interspersed with attentions to the fruit basket and

pomegranate water. About midnight the Emir took his departure. When he

was gone, the host walked to and fro a long time; once he halted, and

said aloud--"I hear his salute, 'Hail Mahommed, Conqueror of

Constantinople!' It is always well to have a store of strings for one's

bow."

And to himself he laughed heartily.

Next day at dawn the great caravan was afoot, every man, woman, and

child clad in _Ihram_, and whitening the pale green Valley.

CHAPTER VII

AT THE KAABA

The day before the pilgrimage.

A cloud had hung over the valley where Mecca lies like drift in the bed

of a winding gorge. About ten o'clock in the morning the cloud

disappeared over the summit of Abu Kubays in the east. The promise of

rain was followed by a simoom so stifling that it plunged every

breathing thing into a struggle for air. The dogs burrowed in the shade

of old walls; birds flew about with open beaks; the herbage wilted, and

the leaves on the stunted shrubs ruffled, then rolled up, like drying

cinnamon. If the denizens of the city found no comfort in their houses

of stone and mud, what suffering was there for the multitude not yet

fully settled in the blistering plain beyond the bluffs of Arafat?

The zealous pilgrim, obedient to the law, always makes haste to

celebrate his arrival at the Holy City by an immediate visit to the

Haram. If perchance he is to see the enclosure for the first time, his

curiosity, in itself pardonable, derives a tinge of piety from duty.

The Prince of India but illustrated the rule. He left his tents pitched

close to those of the Emir El Hajj and the Scherif of Mecca, under the

Mountain of Mercy, as Arafat was practically translated by the very

faithful. Having thus assured the safety of his property, for

conveniency and greater personal comfort he took a house with windows

looking into the Mosque. By so doing, he maintained the dignity of his

character as a Prince of India. The beggars thronging his door

furnished lively evidence of the expectations his title and greatness

had already excited.

With a guide, his suite, and Nilo shading his head with an umbrella of

light green paper, the Prince appeared in front of the chief entrance

to the sacred square from the north. [Footnote: The Bab el Vzyadeh.]

The heads of the party were bare; their countenances becomingly solemn;

their _Ihram_ fresh and spotlessly white. Passing slowly on, they were

conducted under several outside arches, and down a stairway into a

hall, where they left the umbrella and their shoes.

The visitor found himself then in a cloister of the Mosque with which

the area around the Kaaba is completely enclosed. There was a pavement

of undressed flags, and to the right and left a wilderness of tall

pillars tied together by arches, which in turn supported domes. Numbers

of people, bareheaded and barefooted, to whom the heat outside was

insupportable, were in refuge there; some, seated upon the stones,

revolved their rosaries; others walked slowly about. None spoke. The

silence was a tribute to the ineffable sanctity of the place. The

refreshing shade, the solemn hush, the whiteness of the garments were

suggestive of sepulchres and their spectral tenantry.

In the square whither the Prince next passed, the first object to

challenge his attention was the Kaaba itself. At sight of it he

involuntarily stopped.

The cloisters, seen from the square, were open colonnades. Seven

minarets, belted in red, blue and yellow, arose in columnar relief

against the sky and the mountains in the south. A gravelled plot

received from the cloisters; next that, toward the centre, was a narrow

pavement of rough stone in transverse extension down a shallow step to

another gravelled plot; then another pavement wider than the first, and

ending, like it, in a downward step; after which there was a third

sanded plot, and then a third pavement defined by gilded posts

upholding a continuous row of lamps, ready for lighting at the going

down of the sun. The last pavement was of gray granite polished

mirror-like by the friction of millions of bare feet; and upon it, like

the pedestal of a monument upon a plinth, rested the base of the Holy

House, a structure of glassy white marble about two feet in height,

with a bench of sharp inclination from the top. At intervals it was

studded with massive brass rings. Upon the base the Kaaba rose, an

oblong cube forty feet tall, eighteen paces lengthwise, and fourteen in

breadth, shrouded all in black silk wholly unrelieved, except by one

broad band of the appearance of gold, and inscriptions from the Koran,

of a like appearance, wrought in boldest lettering. The freshness of

the great gloomy curtain told how quickly the gift of the Sultan had

been made available, and that whatever else might betide him, the young

Emir was already happily discharged of his trust.

Of the details, the only one the Jew actually coupled with a thought

was the Kaaba. A hundred millions of human beings pray five times every

day, their faces turned to this funereal object! The idea, though

commonplace, called up that other always in waiting with him. In a

space too brief for the formulation of words, he felt the Arbitership

of his dreams blow away. The work of the founder of Islam was too well

done and now too far gone to be disturbed, except with the sanction of

God. Had he the sanction? A writhing of the soul, accompanied with a

glare, like lightning, and followed, like lightning, by an engulfing

darkness, wrung his features, and instinctively he covered them with

his hands. The guide saw the action, and misjudged it.

"Let us not be in haste," he said. "Others before you have found the

House at first sight blinding. Blessed be Allah!"

The commiseration affected the Prince strangely. The darkness, under

pressure of his hands upon the eyeballs, gave place to an atmosphere of

roseate light, in the fulness of which he saw the House of God

projected by Solomon and rebuilt by Herod. The realism of the

apparition was absolute, and comparison unavoidable. That he, familiar

with the glory of the conception of the Israelite, should be thought

blinded by this _Beit Allah_ of the Arab, so without grace of form or

lines, so primitive and expressionless, so palpably uninspired by

taste, or genius, or the Deity it was designed to honor, restored him

at once: indeed, in the succeeding reaction, he found it difficult to

keep down resentment. Dropping his hands, he took another survey of the

shrouded pile, and swept all the square under eye.

He beheld a crowd of devotees at the northeast corner of the House, and

over their heads two small open structures which, from descriptions

often heard, he recognized as praying places. A stream of worshippers

was circling around the marble base of the Most Holy, some walking,

others trotting; these, arriving at the northeast corner, halted--the

Black Stone was there! A babel of voices kept the echoes of the

enclosure in unremitting exercise. The view taken, the Jew said, calmly:

"Blessed be Allah! I will go forward."

In his heart he longed to be in Constantinople--Islam, it was clear,

would lend him no ear; Christendom might be more amenable.

He was carried next through the Gate of the Sons of the Old Woman;

thence to the space in front of the well Zem-Zem; mindful of the

prayers and prostrations required at each place, and of the dumb

servants who went with him.

The famous well was surrounded by a throng apparently impassable.

"Room for the Royal Hadji--for the Prince of India!" the guide yelled.

"There are no poor where he is--make way!"

A thousand eyes sought the noble pilgrim; and as a path opened for him,

a score of _Zem-Zemis_ refilled their earthen cups with the bitter

water afresh. A Prince of Hind did not come to them every day.

He tasted from a cup--his followers drank--and when the party turned

away there were jars paid for to help all the blind in the caravan back

to healthful vision.

"There is no God but Allah! Be merciful to him, O Allah," the crowd

shouted, in approval of the charity.

The press of pilgrims around the northeastern corner of the Kaaba, to

which the guide would have conducted the Prince next, was greater than

at the well. Each was waiting his turn to kiss the Black Stone before

beginning the seven circuits of the House.

Never had the new-comer seen a concourse so wrought upon by fanaticism;

never had he seen a concourse so peculiarly constituted. All

complexions, even that of the interior African, were a reddish desert

tan. Eyes fiercely bright appeared unnaturally swollen from the

colirium with which they were generally stained. The diversities the

penitential costume would have masked were effectually exposed whenever

mouths opened for utterance. Many sang, regardless of time or melody,

the _tilbiye_ they had hideously vocalized in their advance toward the

city. For the most part, however, the effort at expression spent itself

in a long cry, literally rendered--"Thou hast called me--I am here! I

am here!" The deliverance was in the vernacular of the devotee, and low

or loud, shrill or hoarse, according to the intensity of the passion

possessing him.

To realize the discordancy, the reader must recall the multiplicity of

the tribes and nations represented; then will he fancy the agitation of

the mass, the swaying of the white-clad bodies, the tossing of bare

arms and distended hands, the working of tearful faces turned up to the

black-curtained pile regardless of the smiting of the sun--here men on

their knees, there men grovelling on the pavement--yonder one beating

his breast till it resounds like an empty cask--some comprehension of

the living obstruction in front of the Jew can be had.

Then the guide, calling him, tried the throng.

"The Prince of India!" he shouted, at the top of his voice. "Room for

the beloved of the Prophet! Stand not in his way--Room, room!"

After much persistence the object was achieved. A pilgrim, the last one

in front of the Prince, with arms extended along the two sides of the

angle of the wall where the curtain was looped up, seemed struggling to

embrace the House; suddenly, as in despair he beat his head frantically

against the sharp corner--a second thrust more desperate than the

first--then a groan, and he dropped blindly to the pavement. The guide

rejoicing made haste to push the Prince into the vacant place.

Without the enthusiasm of a traveller, calmly as a philosopher, the

Jew, himself again, looked at the Stone which more nearly than any

other material thing commanded idolatrous regard from the Mohammedan

world. He had known personally most of the great men of that world--its

poets, lawmakers, warriors, ascetics, kings--even the Prophet. And now

they came one by one, as one by one they had come in their several

days, and kissed the insensate thing; and between the coming and going

time was scarcely perceptible. The mind has the faculty of compressing,

by one mighty effort, the incidents of a life, even of centuries, into

a flash-like reenactment.

As all the way from the first view of the sanctuary to arrival at the

gate, and thence to this point, the Jew had promptly followed his

guide, especially in recitation of the prescribed prayers, he was about

to do so now; already his hands were raised.

"Great God! O my God! I believe in Thee--I Believe in thy Book--I

believe in thy Word--I believe in thy Promise," the zealous prompter

said, and waited.

For the first time the votary was slow to respond. How could he, at

such a juncture, refuse a thought to the Innumerables whose ghosts had

been rendered up in vain struggles to obey the law which required them

to come and make proof of faith before this Stone! The Innumerables,

lost at sea, lost in the desert--lost body and soul, as in their dying

they themselves had imagined! Symbolism! An invention of men--a

necessity of necromancers! God had his ministers and priests, the

living media of his will, but of symbols--nothing!

"Great God! O my God!" the guide began again. A paroxysm of disgust

seized the votary. The Phariseeism in which he was born and bred, and

which he could no more outlive than he could outlive his body asserted

itself.

In the crisis of the effort at self-control, he heard a groan, and,

looking down, saw the mad devotee at his feet. In sliding from the

shelf of the base, the man had been turned upon his back, so that he

was lying face upward. On the forehead there were two cruel wounds; and

the blood, yet flowing, had partially filled the hollows of the eyes,

making the countenance unrecognizable.

"The wretch is dying," the Prince exclaimed.

"Allah is merciful--let us attend to the prayers," the guide returned,

intent on business.

"But he will die, if not helped."

"When we have finished, the porters will come for him."

The sufferer stirred, then raised a hand.

"O Hadji--O Prince of India!" he said faintly, in Italian.

The Wanderer bent down to get a nearer view.

"It is the Yellow Air--save me!"

Though hardly articulate, the words were full of light to the listener.

"The virtues of the Pentagram endure," he said, with absolute

self-possession. "The week is not ended, and, lo!--I save him."

Rising to his full stature, he glanced here and there over the throng,

as if commanding attention, and proclaimed:

"A mercy of the Most Merciful! It is the Emir El Hajj."

There was a general silence. Every man had seen the martial figure of

the young chief in his arms and armor, and on horseback; many of them

had spoken to him.

"The Emir El Hajj--dying," passed rapidly from mouth to mouth.

"O Allah!" burst forth in general refrain; after which the ejaculations

were all excerpted from prayers.

"'O Allah! This is the place of him who flies to thee from

fire!--Shadow him, O Allah, in thy shadow!--Give him drink from the cup

of thy Prophet!'"

A Bedouin, tall, almost black, and with a tremendous mouth open until

the red lining was exposed between the white teeth down to the larynx,

shouted shrilly the inscription on the marble over the breast of the

Prophet--"In the name of Allah! Allah have mercy upon him!"--and every

man repeated the words, but not one so much as reached a hand in help.

The Prince waited--still the _Amins_, and prayerful ejaculations. Then

his wonder ceased. Not a pilgrim but envied the Emir--that he should

die so young was a pity--that he should die at the base of the

sanctuary, in the crowning act of the Hajj, was a grace of God. Each

felt Paradise stooping low to receive a martyr, and that its beatitude

was near. They trembled with ecstasy at hearing the gates opening on

their crystal hinges, and seeing light as from the robe of the Prophet

glimmering through them. O happy Emir!

The Jew drew within himself. Compromise with such fanaticism was

impossible. Then, with crushing distinctness, he saw what had not

before occurred to him. In the estimation of the Mohammedan world, the

role of Arbiter was already filled; that which he thought of being,

Mahomet was. Too late, too late! In bitterness of soul he flung his

arms up and shouted:

"The Emir is dying of the plague!"

He would have found satisfaction in seeing the blatant crowd take to

its heels, and hie away into the cloisters and the world outside; not

one moved!

"By Allah!" he shouted, more vehemently than before. "The Yellow Air

hath blown upon the Emir--is blowing upon you--Fly!"

"_Amin! Amin!_--Peace be with thee, O Prince of Martyrs! O Prince of

the Happy! Peace be with thee, O Lion of Allah! O Lion of the Prophet!"

Such the answers returned him.

The general voice became a howl. Surely here was something more than

fanaticism. Then it entered his understanding. What he beheld was Faith

exulting above the horrors of disease, above the fear of death--Faith

bidding Death welcome! His arms fell down. The crowd, the sanctuary,

the hopes he had built on Islam, were no more to him. He signed to his

three attendants, and they advanced and raised the Emir from the

pavement.

"To-morrow I will return with thee, and complete my vows;" he said to

his guide. "For the present, lead out of the square to my house."

The exit was effected without opposition.

Next day the Emir, under treatment of the Prince, was strong enough to

tell his story. The plague had struck him about noon of the day

following the interview in the tent at El Zaribah. Determined to

deliver the gifts he had in keeping, and discharge his trust to the

satisfaction of his sovereign, he struggled resolutely with the

disease. After securing the Scherif's receipt he bore up long enough to

superintend the pitching his camp. Believing death inevitable, he was

carried into his tent, where he issued his final orders and bade his

attendants farewell. In the morning, though weak, half-delirious, his

faith the strongest surviving impulse, he called for his horse, and

being lifted into the saddle, rode to the city, resolved to assure

himself of the blessings of Allah by dying in the shadow of the

sanctuary.

The Prince, listening to the explanation, was more than ever impressed

with the futility of attempting a compromise with people so devoted to

their religion. There was nothing for him but to make haste to

Constantinople, the centre of Christian sentiment and movement. There

he might meet encouragement and ultimate success.

In the ensuing week, having performed the two pilgrimages, and seen the

Emir convalescent, he took the road again, and in good time reached

Jedda, where he found his ship waiting to convey him across the Red Sea

to the African coast. The embarkation was without incident, and he

departed, leaving a reputation odorous for sanctity, with numberless

witnesses to carry it into every quarter of Islam.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ARRIVAL IN CONSTANTINOPLE

Uel, the son of Jahdai, was in the habit of carrying the letter

received from the mysterious stranger about with him in a breast

pocket. How many times a day he took it out for reexamination would be

difficult to say. Observing the appearance of signs of usage, he at

length wrapped it in an envelope of yellow silk. If he had thought less

of it, he would have resorted to plain linen.

There were certain points in the missive which seemed of greater

interest to him than others. For example, the place whence it had been

addressed was an ever recurring puzzle; he also dwelt long upon the

sentence which referred so delicately to a paternal relationship. The

most exigent passages, however, were those relative to the time he

might look for the man's coming. As specially directed, he had taken

note of the day of the delivery of the letter, and was greatly

surprised to find the messenger had arrived the last day of the year

permitted him. The punctuality of the servant might be in imitation of

a like virtue of the master. If so, at the uttermost, the latter might

be expected six months after receipt of the letter. Or he might appear

within the six months. The journeys laid out were of vast distances,

and through wild and dangerous countries, and by sea as well. Only a

good traveller could survive them at all; to execute them in such brief

space seemed something superhuman.

So it befell that the son of Jahdai was at first but little concerned.

The months--three, four, five--rolled away, and the sixth was close at

hand; then every day brought him an increase of interest. In fact, he

found himself looking for the arrival each morning, and at noon

promising it an event of the evening.

November was the sixth and last month of the time fixed. The first of

that month passed without the stranger. Uel became anxious. The

fifteenth he turned the keeping of his shop over to a friend; and

knowing the passage from Alexandria must be by sea, he betook himself,

with Syama, to the port on the Golden Horn known as the Gate of St.

Peter, at the time most frequented by Egyptian sailing masters. In

waiting there, he saw the sun rise over the heights of Scutari, and it

was the morning of the very last day. Syama, meantime, occupied himself

in final preparation of the house for the reception. He was not

excited, like Uel, because he had no doubt of the arrival within the

period set. He was also positively certain of finding his master, when

at length he did appear, exactly as when he separated from him in

Cipango. He was used to seeing Time waste itself upon the changeless

man; he had even caught from him a kind of contempt for what other men

shrank from as dangers and difficulties.

The site of the house has been described; it remains to give the reader

an idea of its interior. There were four rooms on the ground floor

furnished comfortably for servants, of whom the arrangement indicated

three besides Syama. The first floor was of three apartments

communicable by doorways with portieres of camel's hair. The furniture

was Roman, Greek, and Egyptian mixed. Of the three the middle chamber

was largest, and as its fittings were in a style of luxury supposed to

be peculiar to princes, the conclusion was fair that it was designed

for the proprietor's occupancy during his waking hours. A dark blue rug

clothed the floor. In the centre, upon a shield of clear copper, arose

a silver brazier. The arms and legs of the stools here and there on the

rug were carven in grotesque imitation of reptiles and animals of the

ultra dragonish mode. The divans against the walls were of striped

silk. In each corner stood a tall post of silvered bronze, holding at

the end of a graceful crook several lamps of Pompeiian model. A wide

window in the east end, filled with plants in bloom, admitted ample

light, which, glancing through the flowers, fell on a table dressed in

elegant cloth, and bearing a lacquered waiter garnished with cups of

metal and glass, and one hand-painted porcelain decanter for drinking

water. An enormous tiger-skin, the head intact and finished with

extraordinary realism, was spread on the floor in front of the table.

The walls were brilliant with fresh Byzantine frescoing. The air of the

room was faintly pervaded with a sweet incense of intoxicating effect

upon one just admitted to it. Indeed the whole interior partook of this

sweetness.

The care of the faithful servant had not been confined to the rooms; he

had constructed a summer house upon the roof, knowing that when the

weather permitted his master would pass the nights there in preference

to the chambers below. This structure looked not unlike a modern

belfry, except that the pillars and shallow dome of the top were of

Moorish lightness. Thence, to a familiar, the heavens in the absence of

the sun would be an unrolled map.

When the last touch of the preparation had been given, and Syama said

to himself, "He may come now," one point was especially

noticeable--nowhere in the house was there provision for a woman.

The morning of the last day Syama accompanied Uel to the port

reluctantly. Feeling sure his master had not arrived in the night, he

left his friend on the watch, and returned home early.

The noise and stir of business at the ancient landing were engaging.

With a great outcry, a vessel would be drawn up, and made fast, and the

unloading begun. A drove of donkeys, or a string of camels, or a mob of

porters would issue from the gate, receive the cargo and disappear with

it. Now and then a ship rounded the classic Point, its square sail bent

and all the oars at work: sweeping past Galata on the north side of the

Horn, then past the Fish Market Gate on the south, up it would come

gracefully as a flying bird; if there was place for it at the quay,

well; if not, after hovering around awhile, it would push out to a

berth in the open water. Such incidents were crises to Uel. To this one

and to that he would run with the question:

"Where is she from?"

If from the upper sea, he subsided; but if from the Marmora, he kept

eager lookout upon her, hoping to recognize in every disembarkee the

man he was expecting.

That he had never seen the person was of little consequence. He had

thought of him so much awake, and seen him so repeatedly in dreams, he

was confident of knowing him at sight. Imagining a stranger's

appearance is for the most part a gentle tribute of respect; the

mistakes we make are for the most part ludicrous.

No one answering the preconception came. Noon, and still no one; then,

cast down and disappointed, Uel went home, ate something, held the

usual childish dialogue with his little girl, and about mid afternoon

crossed the street to the new residence. Great was his astonishment at

finding a pyramid of coals glowing in the silver brazier, and the chill

already driven from the sitting-room. Here--there--upstairs,

downstairs--the signs were of present occupancy. For a moment he

thought the master had slipped by him or landed at some other port of

the city.

"Is he here? Has he come?" he asked, excitedly, and Syama answered with

a shake of the head.

"Then why the fire?"

Syama, briefly waving his hand as if following the great Marmorean

lake, turned the finger ends into the other palm, saying plainly and

emphatically:

"He is coming--he will be here directly."

Uel smiled--faith could not be better illustrated--and it was so in

contrast with his own incredulity!

He lingered awhile. Restlessness getting the mastery, he returned home,

reflecting on the folly of counting so implicitly upon the conclusion

to a day of a tour so vast. More likely, he thought, the traveller's

bones were somewhere whitening the desert, or the savages of Kash-Cush

had eaten him. He had heard of their cannibalism.

Want of faith, however, did not prevent the shopkeeper from going to

his friend's house after supper. It was night, and dark, and the

chilling moisture of a winter wind blowing steadily from the Black Sea

charged the world outside with discomfort. The brazier with its heap of

living coals had astonished him before; now the house was all alight!

He hastened upstairs. In the sitting-room the lamps were burning, and

the illumination was brilliant. Syama was there, calm and smiling as

usual.

"What--he is here?" Uel said, looking from door to door.

The servant shook his head, and waved his hand negatively, as to say:

"Not yet--be patient--observe me."

To indulge his wonder, Uel took seat. Later on he tried to get from

Syama an explanation of his amazing confidence, but the latter's

substitute for speech was too limited and uncertain to be satisfactory.

About ten o'clock Syama went below, and presently returned with food

and drink on a large waiter.

"Ah, good Lord!" Uel thought. "He is making a meal ready. What a man!

What a master!"

Then he gave attention to the fare, which was of wheaten wafers, cold

fowl, preserved fruits, and wine in a stoneware bottle. These Syama set

on a circular table not higher than the divan in front of which it was

drawn. A white napkin and a bowl for laving the fingers completed the

preparation, as Uel supposed. But no. Syama went below again, and

reappeared with a metal pot and a small wooden box. The pot he placed

on the coals in the brazier, and soon a delicate volume of steam was

pouring from the spout; after handling the box daintily as if the

contents were vastly precious, he deposited it unopened by the napkin

and bowl. Then, with an expression of content upon his face, he too

took seat, and surrendered himself to expectancy. The lisping of the

steam escaping from the pot on the fire was the only sound in the room.

The assurance of the servant was contagious. Uel began to believe the

master would come. He was congratulating himself upon the precaution he

had taken in leaving a man at the port to conduct him rightly when he

heard a shuffling of feet below stairs. He listened startled. There

were several men in the company. Steps shook the floor. Uel and Syama

arose.

The latter's countenance flushed with pleasure; giving one triumphal

glance at his friend, much as to say, There--did I not tell you so? he

walked forward quickly, and reached the head of the steps just as a

stranger finished their ascent. In a moment Syama was on his knees,

kissing the hand held out to him. Uel needed no prompter--it was the

master!

If only on account of the mutuality of affection shown between the two,

the meeting was a pleasant sight. That feature, however, was lost to

the shopkeeper, who had no thought except of the master's appearance.

He had imagined him modelled after the popular conceptions of kings and

warriors--tall, majestic, awe-inspiring. He saw instead a figure rather

undersized, slightly stoop-shouldered, thin; at least it seemed so

then, hid as it was under a dark brown burnoose of the amplitude

affected by Arab sheiks. The head was covered by a woollen handkerchief

of reddish tint, held by a scarlet cord. The edge of the handkerchief

projected over the forehead enough to cast the entire face in shade,

leaving to view only a mass of white beard overflowing the breast.

The master ended the reception at the head of the stairs by gently

raising Syama to his feet. Then he subjected the room to a swift

inspection, and, in proof of satisfaction, he patted the happy retainer

on the shoulder. Invited by the fire, and the assurance of comfort in

its glow, he advanced to the brazier, and while extending his hands

over it, observed Uel. Without surprise or hesitation he walked to him.

"Son of Jahdai!" he said, offering his hand.

The voice was of exceeding kindness. As an overture to peace and

goodwill, it was reenforced by very large eyes, the intense blackness

of which was softened by a perceptible glow of pleasure. Uel was won on

the instant. A recollection of the one supreme singularity of the new

acquaintance--his immunity from death--recurred to him, and he could

not have escaped its effect had he wished. He was conscious also that

the eyes were impressing him. Without distinct thought, certainly

without the slightest courtierly design, he obeyed the impulse of the

moment, and stooped and touched the extended hand with his lips. And

before rising he heard the beginning of further speech:

"I see the truth of my judgment. The family of my ancient friends has

trodden the ways of righteousness under the commandments of the Lord

until it has become a kind unto itself. I see too my trust has been

verified. O Son of Jahdai, you did assist my servant, as I requested,

and to your kindness, doubtless, I am indebted for this home full of

comforts after a long absence among strangers. I hold you my creditor."

The tendency of the speech was to relieve Uel of embarrassment.

"Do not thank me," he answered. "The business was ordinary, and

strictly within Syama's capacity. Indeed, the good man could have

finished it without my help."

The master, rich in experience, noticed the deferential manner of the

reply, and was agreeably assured on his side.

"Very well. There will be no harm in reserving an opinion," he said.

"The good man, as you call him, is making ready a drink with which he

has preceded me from his country, and which you must stay and share, as

it is something unknown in the West."

"Let me first welcome you here," Uel returned.

"Oh, I saw the welcome in your face. But let us get nearer the fire.

The night is chilling. If I were owner of a garden under whatever hill

along the Bosphorus, verily I should tremble for my roses."

Thus briefly, and in such simple manner, the wise Mystic put the

shopkeeper perfectly at ease.

At the brazier they watched Syama in the operation since become of

universal knowledge under title of "drawing tea." The fragrance of the

decoction presently filled the room to the suppression of the incense,

and they drank, ate, and were sociable. The host outlined his travels.

Uel, in return, gave him information of the city. When the latter

departed, it was with a light heart, and an elastic step; the white

beard and patriarchal manner of the man had laid his fears, and the

future was to him like a cloudless sky.

Afterwhile the master signified a wish to retire; whereupon his

household came, as was their wont, to bid him good-night. Of these

there were two white men. At sight of Syama, they rushed to embrace him

as became brethren of old acquaintance long in the same service. A

third one remained at the door. Syama looked at him, and then at the

master; for the man was a stranger. Then the Jew, with quick intuition

of the requirement of the time, went, and took him by the hand, and led

him to the others. Addressing Syama, he said gravely:

"This is Nilo, son of the Nilo whom you knew. As you held the father in

love, so you shall hold the son."

The man was young, very black, and gigantic in stature. Syama embraced

him as he had the others.

In the great city there was not a more united household under roof than

that of the shopkeeper's friend.

CHAPTER IX

THE PRINCE AT HOME

A wise man wishing to know another always attends him when he is in

narrative. The reader may be familiar with the principle, and a

believer in it; for his better satisfaction, therefore, a portion of

the Prince's conversation with Uel over the tea-table the night of his

arrival in Constantinople shall be reported nearly as possible in his

own words. It will be found helpful to the story as well as an expose

of character.

"I said in my letter, as thou mayst remember, O son of Jahdai"--the

voice of the speaker was low, but earnest, and admirably in harmony

with the sentiment, "that I hoped thou wouldst allow me to relate

myself to thee as father to son. Thou hast not forgotten it, I am sure."

"I recall it distinctly," Uel answered, respectfully.

"Thou wilt remember not less clearly then that I added the words, 'in

all things a help, in nothing a burden.'"

Uel assented.

"The addition I thought of great importance," the Prince continued;

"for it was very desirable that thou shouldst not imagine me coming to

sit down upon thee, and in idleness fatten upon the fruits of thy

industry. As something of even greater importance, thou shouldst know

now, at this earliest moment of our intercourse, that I am abundantly

able from what I have of goods and treasure to keep any condition I may

choose to assume. Indeed thou shouldst not be too much astonished did I

practise the style and manner of the nobles who are privileged in the

palaces of thy Caesar. At home I shall be as thou seest me now, thy

friend of simplest habits, because my tastes really incline to them;

when I go abroad, the officials of the Church and State whom I chance

to encounter shall be challenged to comparison of appearance, and be

piqued to inquire about me. Then when the city observes thou art

intimate with me, the demand for thy wares will increase; thou mayst

even be put to stress to keep apace with it. In speaking thus, I trust

thy natural shrewdness, sharpened as it must have become by much

dealing as a merchant."

He paused here to give his cup to Syama for replenishment; whereupon

Uel said: "I have followed thy discourse with interest, and I hope with

understanding; yet I am conscious of a disadvantage. I do not know thy

name, nor if thou hast a title."

"Yes, and thou mightest have set down in the table of defaults," the

Wanderer began pleasantly in reply, but broke off to receive the cup

smoking hot from the servant, and say--"Thanks, Syama. I see thy hand

hath not lost its deftness; neither has the green leaf suffered from

its long journey over the sea."

Uel noticed with what intentness Syama watched the master's lips while

he was speaking, and the gratification that beamed from his face in

answer to the compliment; and he thought, "Verily this must be a good

man to be so beloved by his dependents."

"I was saying, O son of Jahdai, that thou mightest have set down the

other points of information equally necessary to our

intercourse--Whence I come? And why? And I will not leave thee in the

dark respecting them. Only let me caution thee--It is not required that

the public should be taken into our confidence. I have seen a flower

good to look upon, but viscous, and with a scent irresistible to

insects. That flower represents the world; and what is the folly of its

victims but the madness of men who yield themselves with too easy faith

to the seductions of the world? Nay, my son--observe thou the term--I

use it to begin the relationship I seek--observe also I begin the

relationship by confidences which were unwisely given without the

injunction that they are intended to be put away in thy

inner-conscience. Tell me if I am understood."

The question was emphasized by a look whose magnetism thrilled Uel's

every nerve.

"I believe I understand you," he replied.

Then, as if the Prince knew the effect he had wrought, and that it

relieved him from danger of betrayal, he returned to his former easy

manner.

"And yet, as thou shalt see, my son, the confidences are not

crimes--But thy cup is empty, and Syama waiting for it."

"The drink is new to me," Uel replied, yielding to the invitation.

"New? And wilt thou not also say it is better than wine? The world of

which we are talking, will one day take up the admission, and be

happier of it."

Turning then to serious matter:

"Afterwhile," he said, "thou wilt be importuned by the curious to know

who I am, and thou shouldst be able to answer according to the fact--He

is a Prince of India. The vulgar will be satisfied with the reply.

Others will come demanding more. Refer them to me. As to thyself, O son

of Jahdai, call me as I have instructed thee to speak of me--call me

Prince. At the same time I would have thee know that on my eighth day I

was carried into a temple and registered a son of a son of Jerusalem.

The title I give thee for my designation did not ennoble me. The

birthright of a circumcised heritor under the covenant with Israel is

superior to every purely human dignity whatever its derivation."

"In other words, O Prince, thou art"--Uel hesitated.

"A Jew!" the other answered promptly--"A Jew, as thy father was--as

thou art."

The look of pleasure that appeared on the shopkeeper's face was swiftly

interpreted by the Prince, who felt he had indeed evoked a tie of

blood, and bound the man with it.

"So much is despatched," he said, with evident satisfaction; then,

after a draught from the tea-cup, and a re-delivery to Syania for more,

he continued: "Possibly thou wilt also remember my letter mentions a

necessity for my crossing from India to Mecca on the way to Kash-Cush,

and that, despite the stoppage, I hoped to greet thee in person within

six months after Syama reported himself. How stands the time?"

"This is the last day of the six months," Uel answered.

"Yes, there was never man"--the Prince paused, as if the thought were

attended with a painful recollection--"never a man," he presently

resumed, "who kept account of time more exactly than myself."

A copious draught of tea assuaged the passing regret.

"I wrote the letter while in Cipango, an island of the great eastern

sea. Thirty years after I set foot upon its shore, theretofore

unvisited by a white man, a countryman of ours from this city, the sole

survivor of a shipwreck, joined me. From him I heard of thy father's

death. He also gave me thy name.... My life on the island was

comparatively untroubled. Indeed, for thy perfect comprehension, my

son, it is best to make an explanation now; then thou wilt have a key

to many things in my conduct to come as well as conduct gone which

would otherwise keep thee in doubtful reflection. The study of greatest

interest is religion. I have travelled the world over--I mean the

inhabited parts--and in its broad extent there is not a people without

worship of some kind. Wherefore my assertion, that beyond the arts,

above the sciences, above commerce, above any or all other human

concernments, religion is the superlative interest. It alone is divine.

The study of it is worship. Knowledge of it is knowledge of God. Can as

much be said of any other subject?"

Uel did not answer; he was following the speech too intently, and the

Prince, seeing it, drank again, and proceeded:

"The divine study took me to Cipango. Fifty years thou mayst say to

thyself was a long term in such a country. Not so, my son. I found

there two faiths; the one Sin-Siu, which I turned my back upon as

mythologic, without the poetry of the Greek and Roman; the other--well,

a life given to the laws of Buddha were well spent. To say truth, there

is such similitude between them and the teachings of him we are in the

habit of calling the carpenter's son that, if I did not know better, it

were easy to believe the latter spent the years of his disappearance in

some Buddhistic temple.... Leaving explanation to another time, the

same study carried me to Mecca. The binding of men, the putting yokes

about their necks, trampling them in the dust, are the events supposed

most important and therefore most noticeable in history; but they are

as nothing in comparison with winning belief in matters indeterminable

by familiar tests. The process there is so mysterious, the achievement

so miraculous that where the operator is vastly successful one may well

look under them for the permission of God. The day was when Islamism

did but stir contemptuous laughter; now it is the faith acceptable to

more men than any other. Is it not worthy the vigils of a student? And

then it happens, my son, that in the depths of their delusion, people

sometimes presume to make their own gods, and reform them or cast them

out. Deities have been set up or thrown down by their makers in the

changes of a moon. I wanted to see if such calamity had befallen the

Allah of Mahomet.... My going to Kash-Cush was on what thou wouldst

call business, and of it I will also tell thee. At Jedda, whither I

betook myself after making the pilgrimages at Mecca, I regained my

ship, and descended the Red Sea, landing at a village on the extreme

inland shore of the bay of Tajurrah, below the Straits of

Bab-el-Mandel. I was then in Kash-Cush. From the village on the coast,

I passed into the interior, travelling in a litter on the shoulders of

native porters, and, after many days, reached my destination--a

collection of bungalows pitched on the bank of a tributary of the Blue

Nile called the Dedhesa. The journey would have been difficult and

tedious but that one of my attendants--a black man--had been king of

the tribe I sought. His name was Nilo, and his tribe paramount

throughout the uncivilized parts of Kash-Cush. More than fifty years

before,--prior, in fact, to my setting out for Cipango,--I made the

same tour, and found the king. He gave me welcome; and so well did he

please me that I invited him to share my wanderings. He accepted the

proposal upon condition that in his old age he should be returned home,

and exchanged for a younger man of his blood. I agreed, provided one

younger could be found who, besides the requisite physique and the

virtues of intellect and courage, was also deaf and dumb, like himself.

A treaty was thus perfected. I call it a treaty as distinct from a

purchase, for Nilo was my friend and attendant--my ally, if you

please--never my slave. There was a reception for us the like of which

for feasting and merriment was without mention in the traditions of the

tribe. A grandson filled my friend's throne; but he gave it back to

him, and voluntarily took his place with me. Thou shalt see him

to-morrow. I call him Nilo, and spend the morning hours teaching him to

talk; for while he keeps me reminded of a Greek demi-god--so tall,

strong and brave is he--he is yet deaf and dumb, and has to be taught

as Syama was. When thou hast to do with him be gentle and courteous. I

wish it kept in mind he is my friend and ally, bound to me by treaty as

his grandfather was.... The only part of the tour given thee in my

letter which I omitted was the descent of the Nile. Having performed it

before, my curiosity was sated, and I allowed my impatience to be in

thy city here to determine my course. I made way back to the village on

the bay of Tajurrah where, in anticipation of such a change, my vessel

was held in detention. Thence, up the sea and across the Isthmus, I

proceeded to Alexandria, and to-night happily find myself at home, in

hope of rest for my body and renewal of my spirit."

With this, the explanation appeared concluded; for the Prince notified

Syama that he did not desire more tea, and lapsed into a thoughtful

silence. Presently Uel arose, saying: "You must be weary. With

permission I will take my leave now. I confess you have given me much

to think over, and made me happy by taking me into your confidence. If

it be agreeable, I will call at noon to-morrow."

The Prince went with him to the head of the stairs, and there bade him

peace and good-night.

CHAPTER X

THE ROSE OF SPRING

The Prince, as the Jew preferred to be called, kept his house closely

quite a month, resting, not hibernating. He took exercise daily on the

flat roof; and walking to and fro there, found three objects of

attraction: the hill to the southwest with the church upon it, the

Palace of Blacherne off further in the west, and the Tower of Galata.

The latter, across the Golden Horn in the north, arose boldly, like a

light-house on a cliff; yet, for a reason--probably because it had

connection with the subject of his incessant meditations--he paused

oftenest to gaze at the Palace.

He was in his study one day deeply absorbed. The sun, nearing meridian,

poured a stream of white light through the south window, flooding the

table at which he sat. That the reader may know something of the paths

the Mystic most frequented when in meditation, we will make free with

one of the privileges belonging to us as a chronicler.

The volume directly in front of him on the table, done in olive wood

strengthened at the corners with silver, was near two feet in length,

and one and a half in width; when closed, it would be about one foot

thick. Now he had many wonderful rare and rich _antiques_, but none so

the apple of his eye as this; for it was one of the fifty Holy Bibles

of Greek transcription ordered by Constantine the Great.

At his right, held flat by weights, were the _Sacred Books_ of China,

in form a roll of broad-leafed vellum.

At his left, a roll somewhat similar in form and at the moment open,

lay the _Rig-Veda_ of the Aryans in Sanscrit.

The fourth book was the _Avesta_ of Zoroaster--a collection of MSS.

stitched together, and exquisitely rendered by Parse devas into the

Zend language.

A fifth book was the _Koran_.

The arrangement of the volumes around the Judean Bible was silently

expressive of the student's superior respect; and as from time to time,

after reading a paragraph from one of the others, he returned to the

great central treasure, it was apparent he was making a close

comparison of texts with reference to a particular theme, using the

Scriptures as a standard. Most of the time he kept the forefinger of

his left hand on what is now known as the fourteenth verse of the third

chapter of Exodus--"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he

said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent

me unto you." If, as the Prince himself had declared, religion were

indeed the study of most interest to the greatest number of men, he was

logically consistent in comparing the definitions of _God_ in the

Bibles of theistic nations. So had he occupied himself since morning.

The shrewd reader will at once discern the theme of his comparative

study.

At length he grew weary of bending over the books, and of the

persistent fixedness of attention required for the pursuit of fine

shades of meaning in many different languages. He threw his arms up in

aid of a yawn, and turned partly around, his eyes outrunning the

movement of his body. The half-introverted glance brightened with a

gleam, and remained fixed, while the arms dropped down. He could only

look in wonder at what he saw--eyes black and almost large as his own

gazing at him in timid surprise. Beholding nothing but the eyes, he had

the awesome feeling which attends imagining a spirit suddenly risen;

then he saw a forehead low, round, and white, half shaded by fluffs of

dark hair; then a face of cherubic color and regularity, to which the

eyes gave an indefinable innocency of expression.

Every one knows the effect of trifles on the memory. A verse or a word,

the smell of a flower, a lock of hair, a turn in music, will not merely

bring the past back, but invest it with a miraculous recurrency of

events. The Prince's gaze endured. He stretched his hand out as if

fearful lest what he saw might vanish. The gesture was at once an

impulse and an expression. There was a time--tradition says it was the

year in which he provoked the curse--when he had wife and child. To one

of them, possibly both, the eyes then looking into his might have

belonged. The likeness unmanned him. The hand he stretched forth fell

lightly upon the head of the intruder.

"What are you?" he said.

The vagueness of the expression will serve excellently as a definition

of his condition; at the same time it plunged the child addressed into

doubt. Presently she answered:

"I am a little girl."

Accepting the simplicity of the reply as evidence of innocency too

extreme for fear, he took the visitor in his arms, and sat her on his

knee.

"I did not mean to ask what you are, but who?" he said.

"Uel is my father."

"Uel? Well, he is my friend, and I am his; therefore you and I should

be friends. What is your name?"

"He calls me Gul Bahar."

"Oh! That is Turkish, and means Rose of Spring. How came you by it?"

"My mother was from Iconium."

"Yes--where the Sultans used to live."

"And she could speak Turkish."

"I see! Gul Bahar is an endearment, not a real name."

"My real name is Lael."

The Prince paled from cheek to brow; his lips trembled; the arm

encircling her shook; and looking into his eyes, she saw tears dim

them. After a long breath, he said, with inexpressible tenderness, and

as if speaking to one standing just behind her--"Lael!" Then, the tears

full formed, he laid his forehead on her shoulder so his white hair

blent freely with her chestnut locks; and sitting passively, but

wondering, she heard him sob and sob again and again, like another

child. Soon, from pure sympathy, unknowing why, she too began sobbing.

Several minutes passed thus; then, raising his face, and observing her

responsive sorrow, he felt the need of explanation.

"Forgive me," he said, kissing her, "and do not wonder at me. I am

old--very old--older than thy father, and there have been so many

things to distress me which other men know nothing of, and never can. I

had once"--

He stopped, repeated the long breath, and gazed as at a far object.

"I too had once a little girl."

Pausing, he dropped his eyes to hers.

"How old are you?"

"Next spring I shall be fourteen," she answered.

"And she was just your age, and so like you--so small, and with such

hair and eyes and face; and she was named Lael. I wanted to call her

_Rimah_, for she seemed a song to me; but her mother said, as she was a

gift from the Lord, she wanted in the fulness of days to give her back

to him, and that the wish might become a covenant, she insisted on

calling her Lael, which, in Hebrew--thy father's tongue and mine--means

To God."

The child, listening with all her soul, was now not in the least afraid

of him; without waiting, she made the application.

"You loved her, I know," she said

"How much--Oh, how much!"

"Where is she now?"

"At Jerusalem there was a gate called the Golden Gate. It looked to the

east. The sun, rising over the top of Mount Olivet, struck the plates

of gold and Corinthian brass more precious than gold, so it seemed one

rosy flame. The dust at its rocky sill, and the ground about it are

holy. There, deep down, my Lael lies. A stone that tasked many oxen to

move it covers her; yet, in the last day, she will be among the first

to rise--Of such excellence is it to be buried before that Golden Gate."

"Oh! she is dead!" the child exclaimed.

"She is dead;" and seeing her much affected, he hastened to say, "I

shed many tears thinking of her. Ah, how gentle and truthful she was!

And how beautiful! I cannot forget her. I would not if I could; but you

who look so like her will take her place in my heart now, and love me

as she did; and I will love you even as I loved her. I will take you

into my life, believing she has come again. In the morning I will ask

first, Where is my Lael? At noon, I will demand if the day has been

kind to her; and the night shall not be half set in except I know it

has brought her the sweetness of sleep. Will you be my Lael?"

The question perplexed the child, and she was silent.

Again he asked, "Will you be my Lael?"

The earnestness with which he put the question was that of a hunger

less for love than an object to love. The latter is not often accounted

a passion, yet it creates necessities which are peremptory as those of

any passion. One of the incidents of the curse he was suffering was

that he knew the certainty of the coming of a day when he must be a

mourner for whomsoever he should take into his heart, and in this way

expiate whatever happiness the indulgence might bring him. Nevertheless

the craving endured, at times a positive hunger. In other words, his

was still a human nature. The simplicity and beauty of the girl were

enough to win him of themselves; but when she reminded him of the other

asleep under a great rock before the gate of the Holy City, when the

name of the lost one was brought to him so unexpectedly, it seemed

there had been a resurrection, making it possible for him to go about

once more as he was accustomed to in his first household. A third time

he asked, "You will be my Lael?"

"Can I have two fathers?" she returned.

"Oh, yes!" he answered quickly. "One in fact, the other by adoption;

and they can both love you the same."

Immediately her face became a picture of childish trust.

"Then I will be your Lael too."

He clasped her close to his breast, and kissed her, crying:

"My Lael has come back to me! God of my fathers, I thank thee!"

She respected his emotion, but at length, with her hand upon his

shoulder, said:

"You and my father are friends, and thinking he came here, I came too."

"Is he at home?"

"I think so."

"Then we will go to him. You cannot be my Lael without his consent."

Presently, hand in hand, they descended the stairs, crossed the street,

and were in the shopkeeper's presence.

The room was plainly but comfortably furnished as became the

proprietor's fortune and occupation. Closer acquaintance, it is to be

said, had dissipated the latent dread, which, as has been seen, marked

Uel's first thought of intimacy between the stranger and the child.

Seeing him old, and rich, and given to study, not to say careless of

ordinary things, the father was beginning to entertain the idea that it

might in some way be of advantage to the child could she become an

object of interest to him. Wherefore, as they entered now, he received

them with a smile.

Traces of the emotion he had undergone were in the Prince's face, and

when he spoke his voice was tremulous.

"Son of Jahdai," he said, standing, "I had once a wife and child. They

perished-how and when, I cannot trust myself to tell. I have been

faithful to their memory. From the day I lost them, I have gone up and

down the world hunting for many things which I imagined might renew the

happiness I had from them. I have been prodigal of gratitude,

admiration, friendship, and goodwill, and bestowed them singly and

together, and often; but never have I been without consciousness of

something else demanding to be given. Happiness is not all in

receiving. I passed on a long time before it came to me that we are

rich in affections not intended for hoarding, and that no one can be

truly content without at least one object on which to lavish them.

Here"--and he laid his hand on the child's head--"here is mine, found

at last."

"Lael is a good girl," Uel said with pride.

"Yes, and as thou lovest her let me love her," the Prince responded.

Then, seeing Uel become serious, he added, "To help thee to my meaning,

Lael was my child's name, and she was the image of this one; and as she

died when fourteen, thy Lael's age, it is to me as if the tomb had

miraculously rendered its victim back to me."

"Prince," said Uel, "had I thought she would not be agreeable to you, I

should have been sorry."

"Understand, son of Jahdai," the other interposed, "I seek more of thee

than thy permission to love her. I want to do by her as though she were

mine naturally."

"You would not take her from me?"

"No. That would leave thee bereft as I have been. Like me, thou wouldst

then go up and down looking for some one to take her place in thy

heart. Be thou her father still; only let me help thee fashion her

future."

"Her birthrights are humble," the shopkeeper answered, doubtfully; for

while in his secret heart he was flattered, his paternal feeling

started a scruple hard to distinguish from fear.

A light shone brightly in the eyes of the elder Jew, and his head arose.

"Humble!" he said. "She is a daughter of Israel, an inheritor of the

favor of the Lord God, to whom all things are possible. He keeps the

destinies of his people. He--not thou or I--knows to what this little

one may come. As we love her, let us hope the happiest and the highest,

and prepare her for it. To this end it were best you allow her to come

to me as to another father. I who teach the deaf and dumb to

speak--Syama and Nilo the elder--will make her a scholar such as does

not often grace a palace. She shall speak the Mediterranean tongues.

There shall be no mysteries of India unknown to her. Mathematics shall

bring the heavens to her feet. Especially shall she become wise in the

Chronicles of God. At the same time, lest she be educated into

unfitness for the present conditions of life, and be unsexed, thou

shalt find a woman familiar with society, and instal her in thy house

as governess and example. If the woman be also of Israel, so much the

better; for then we may expect faithfulness without jealousy. And

further, son of Jahdai, be niggardly in nothing concerning our Lael.

Clothe her as she were the King's daughter. At going abroad, which she

shall do with me in the street and on the water, I would have her

sparkle with jewels, the observed of everybody, even the Emperor. And

ask not doubtingly, 'Whence the money for all this?' I will find it.

What sayest thou now?"

Uel did not hesitate.

"O Prince, as thou dost these things for her--so far beyond the best I

can dream of--take her for thine, not less than mine."

With a beaming countenance, the elder raised the child, and kissed her

on the forehead.

"Dost hear?" he said to her. "Now art thou my daughter."

She put her arms about his neck, then held them out to Uel, who took

her, and kissed her, saying:

"Oh my Gul Bahar!"

"Good!" cried the Prince. "I accept the name. To distinguish the living

from the dead, I too will call her my Gul Bahar."

Thereupon the men sat, and arranged the new relation, omitting nothing

possible of anticipation.

Next day the Prince's house was opened with every privilege to the

child. A little later on a woman of courtly accomplishment was found

and established under Uel's roof as governess. Thereupon the Mystic

entered upon a season during which he forgot the judgment upon him, and

all else save Gul Bahar, and the scheme he brought from Cipango. He was

for the time as other men. In the lavishment of his love, richer of its

long accumulation, he was faithful to his duty of teacher, and was

amply rewarded by her progress in study.

BOOK III

THE PRINCESS IRENE

CHAPTER I

MORNING ON THE BOSPHORUS

Our narrative proceeds now from a day in the third year after Lael, the

daughter of the son of Jahdai, dropped into the life of the Prince of

India--a day in the vernal freshness of June.

From a low perch above the mountain behind Becos, the sun is delivering

the opposite European shore of the Bosphorus from the lingering shades

of night. Out on the bosom of the classic channel vessels are swinging

lazily at their anchorages. The masthead of each displays a flag

bespeaking the nationality of the owner; here a Venetian, there a

Genoese, yonder a Byzantine. Tremulous flares of mist, rising around

the dark hulls, become entangled in the cordage, and as if there were

no other escape, resolve themselves into air. Fisher boats are bringing

their owners home from night-work over in the shallows of Indjerkeui.

Gulls and cormorants in contentious flocks, drive hither and thither,

turning and tacking as the schools of small fish they are following

turn and tack down in the warm blue-green depths to which they are

native. The many wings, in quick eccentric motion, give sparkling life

to the empurpled distance.

The bay of Therapia, on the same European shore over against Becos, was

not omitted from rescue by the sun. Within its lines this morning the

ships were in greater number than out in the channel--ships of all

grades, from the sea going commercial galley to the pleasure shallop

which, if not the modern _caique_, was at least its ante-type in

lightness and grace.

And as to the town, one had but to look at it to be sure it had

undergone no recent change--that in the day of Constantine Dragases it

was the same summer resort it had been in the day of Medea the

sorceress--the same it yet is under sway of the benignant Abdul-Hamid.

From the lower point northwardly jutting finger-like into the current

of the channel, the beach swept in a graceful curve around to the base

of the promontory on the south. Then as now children amused themselves

gathering the white and black pebbles with which it was strewn, and

danced in and out with the friendly foam-capped waves. Then as now the

houses seemed tied to the face of the hill one above another in

streetless disarrangement; insomuch that the stranger viewing them from

his boat below shuddered thinking of the wild play which would ensue

did an earthquake shake the hill ever so lightly.

And then as now the promontory south served the bay as a partial

land-lock. Then as now it arose boldly a half mountain densely

verdurous, leaving barely space enough for a roadway around its base.

Then as now a descending terrace of easy grade and lined with rock pine

trees of broadest umbrella tops, slashed its whole townward front.

Sometime in the post-Medean period a sharp-eyed Greek discerned the

advantages it offered for aesthetic purposes, and availed himself of

them; so that in the age of our story its summit was tastefully

embellished with water basins, white-roofed pavilions, and tessellated

pavements Roman style. Alas, for the perishability of things human! And

twice alas, that the beautiful should ever be the most perishable!

But it is now to be said we have spoken thus of the Bosphorus, and the

bay and town of Therapia, and the high promontory, as accessories

merely to a plot of ground under the promontory and linked to it by the

descending terrace. There is no word fitly descriptive of the place.

Ravine implies narrowness; gorge signifies depth; valley means width;

dell is too toylike. A summer retreat more delicious could not be

imagined. Except at noon the sun did but barely glance into it.

Extending hundreds of yards back from the bay toward the highlands west

of the town, it was a perfected garden of roses and flowering vines and

shrubs, with avenues of boxwood and acacias leading up to ample

reservoirs hidden away in a grove of beeches. The water flowing thence

became brooks or was diverted to enliven fountains. One pipe carried it

in generous flow to the summit of the promontory. In this leafy Eden

the birds of the climate made their home the year round. There the

migratory nightingale came earliest and lingered longest, singing in

the day as well as in the night. There one went regaled with the breath

of roses commingled with that of the jasmine. There the bloom of the

pomegranate flashed through the ordered thicket like red stars; there

the luscious fig, ripening in its "beggar's jacket," offered itself for

the plucking; there the murmur of the brooks was always in the

listening ear.

Along the whole front of the garden, so perfectly a poet's ideal,

stretched a landing defended from the incessant swash of the bay by a

stone revetment. There was then a pavement of smoothly laid flags, and

then a higher wall of dark rubble-work, coped with bevelled slabs. An

open pavilion, with a bell-fashioned dome on slender pillars, all of

wood red painted, gave admission to the garden. Then a roadway of gray

pebbles and flesh-tinted shells invited a visitor, whether afoot or on

horseback, through clumps of acacias undergrown with carefully tended

rosebushes, to a palace, which was to the garden what the central jewel

is to the cluster of stones on "my lady's" ring.

Standing on a tumulus, a little removed from the foot of the

promontory, the palace could be seen from cornice to base by voyagers

on the bay, a quadrangular pile of dressed marble one story in height,

its front relieved by a portico of many pillars finished in the purest

Corinthian style. A stranger needed only to look at it once, glittering

in the sun, creamy white in the shade, to decide that its owner was of

high rank--possibly a noble--possibly the Emperor himself.

It was the country palace of the Princess Irene, of whom we will now

speak.[Footnote: During the Crimean war a military hospital was built

over the basement vaults and cisterns of the palace here described. The

hospital was destroyed by fire. For years it was then known as the

"Khedive's Garden," being a favorite resort for festive parties from

the capital. At present the promontory and the retreat it shelters

pertain to the German Embassy, a munificent gift from His Majesty,

Sultan Abdul-Hamid.]