"Go and Ask the Kites, then, At Dat Rasi"
So far everything worked out strictly according to plan. We had
hardly finished a hurried meal when the lady Ayisha and her men
arrived on mean baggage camels provided by old Rafiki; and they
were not in the least pleased with their mounts, for a baggage
camel is as different from a beast trained to carry a rider as an
up-to-date limousine is from a Chinese one-wheel barrow. Perched
on top of the lady Ayisha's beast was a thing they call a
_shibrayah_--a sort of tent with a top like an umbrella, resting
on the loads slung to the camel's flanks. From inside that she
was busy abusing everybody.
There was only one good camel with her outfit--a small, blooded
looking Bishareen, a shade or two lighter in color than the
rest, ridden by a wiry, mean rascal with a very black face.
He seemed anxious not to assert himself, for he kept his
mount well away in the shadows, and moved off when any one
approached him.
It was growing pitch-dark. Grim counted noses and gave the order
to be off. Two or three men mounted, and that brought all the
kneeling camels to their feet. One of Ali Baba's sons caught the
beast assigned to me, brought him round to the gate, and began
_nakhing_ him to make him kneel again. But I know one or two
things about Arabs and their ways of assessing humanity.
Knowledge is for use.
"Do you mistake me for a cripple?" I asked, and instead of
continuing to _nakh_ in the camel language he pulled the beast's
head down.
The trick is simple enough. You put your foot on the hollow of
the camel's neck and swing into the saddle as he raises his head
again. Men used to the desert despise you if you have to make
your mount kneel in order to get on his back, pretty much as
horsemen of other lands despise the tender foot who can't rope
and saddle his own pony. There's no excuse for that, of course;
it stands to reason that lots of first-class men can't mount a
camel standing, never having done it; but, according to desert
lore, whoever has to make his camel kneel is a person of
no account.
So I started off with at least one minus mark not notched against
me. There was also an enormous feeling of relief, because I heard
those two brats blubbering at being left behind.
And oh, what a start that was before the moon-rise, with the
great soft-footed beasts like shadows stringing one behind
another into line through the streets of a city as old as
Abraham! Utter silence, except for three camel bells with
different notes. Instant, utter severance from all the new world,
with its wheels that get you nowhere and conventions that have no
meaning except organized whimsy.
Peace under the stars, wholly aloof and apart from the problem
that had sent us forth. And the feel under you of league-welcoming
resilience, whatever the camels might say by way of objection.
And they said a very great deal gutturally, as camels always do,
yielding their prodigious power to our use with an incomprehensible
mixture of grouchiness and inability to do less than their best.
Grim rode in advance. His was the first camel bell that jangled
with a mellow note somewhere in the darkness around the turn of a
narrow street, or in a tunnel, where house joined house overhead.
The lady Ayisha's was the second bell, three beasts ahead of me;
she being the guest of honor as it were, or, rather, the prize
passenger, it was important to know her whereabouts at any given
moment. And last of all came old Ali Baba with the third bell
announcing that all were present and correct. He and his men sat
their camels with a stately pride more than half due to the
rifles and bandoliers that had been served out.
That black-faced fellow on the little Bishareen did not trouble
himself about position in the line as long as we wound through
the city streets. He was next in front of me, and I saw him
exchange signals with a fat man in a house door, who may have
been Rafiki the wool-merchant. Narayan Singh was next behind me,
and I looked back to make sure that he had seen the signal too.
But when we passed out of the city at the south end and began to
swing along a white road at a clip that was plenty fast enough
for the baggage beasts, the man in front of me urged his beast
forward, thrusting others out of the way and getting thoroughly
well cursed for it, until he rode next behind Grim.
Seeing that, Narayan Singh rode after him, flogging furiously,
and got well cursed too. But nothing else in particular happened
for several miles until we began to descend between huge hills of
limestone and, just as the moon rose, came on the reserve camels
waiting for us in the charge of two policemen in a hollow.
Then there began to be happenings. First there was shrill delight
from Ayisha and a chorus of approval from her four men at the prospect
of changing to reasonably decent mounts. Then a tumult of indignation
from the wool-merchant's crowd--blunt refusal by them to consent
to any change at all--threats--abuse--arguments--the roaring of
camels who object on principle to everything, whatever it is,
even to a chance to rest, because it hurts their backs to stand
still loaded and over it all presently Grim's voice issuing
orders in a tone he had when things go wrong.
Strange that they don't choose leaders more often for their
voices! It's the most obvious thing in the world that a man with
a silver tongue, as they call it, can swing and sway any crowd.
If that man knows his own mind and has a plan worth spending
effort on he can trumpet cohesion out of tumult and win against
men with twenty times his brains. I don't doubt Peter the Hermit
had a voice like a bellbuoy in a tide-rip. Grim pitched his above
the babel so that every word fell sharp, clear, and manly. They
began to obey him there and then.
But he could not attend to everything at once, and while he
oversaw the changing of pack-saddles, and gave orders to the
policemen to ride back on the camels behind Rafiki's men and see
them safely into the city, that black-faced fellow on the
Bishareen edged away, and in a moment was off at full gallop
headed southwards. Narayan Singh was the first to see him go, but
it was half a minute before he could get near Grim and call his
attention to it.
Grim ordered three of Ali Baba's men in pursuit at once.
"Shall we shoot? Shall we slay?" asked one of them.
"No, no. He hasn't committed any crime yet. Catch him and bring
him back."
"Crime? What is crime out here? We can kill him. But overtake him
on that beast? _Wallah!"_
They wasted another minute arguing for leave to shoot, and by the
time they were off the deserter had a long start; but they rode
with a will when they did go.
If anything on earth looks more absurd than a ridden camel
galloping away in the moonlight, with his neck stretched out in
front of him and his four ungainly legs in the air all together,
it is three more camels doing the same thing. They looked like a
giant's washing blown off the line flapping before a high wind,
and made hardly more noise. The whack-whack-whack of sticks on
the beasts' rumps was as distinct as pistol-shots, but you hardly
heard the galloping footfall.
Grim went on about his business, for changing loads in the dark
is a job that needs attention, unless you choose to have a good
beast lose heart before morning and lie down in the middle of the
road. A camel in pain from a badly cinched girth will endure it
without argument for just so long; after which he quits, and
not all the whacking or persuading in the world will get him
up again.
At the end of twenty minutes we were under way once more. Peace
closed down on us, and we swayed along under the stars in
majestic silence. There have been better nights since, I
think; but until then that was the most glorious experience
of a lifetime.
It is my peculiar delight to read and relive ancient history, and
of all history books the Old Testament is vastly the most
absorbing--far and away the most accurate. There is a school of
fools who set themselves up to scoff at its facts, but every new
discovery only confirms the old record; and here were we
sauntering through the night on camels over hills where the
fathers of history fought for the first beginnings of each man's
right to do his own thinking in his own way.
After a while Ali Baba gave his camel bell to his oldest son
Mujrim, and forced his beast up beside mine, seeming to think
silence might ruin the nerve of such a raw hand as myself. Or
perhaps it was pride of race and country that impelled him. Even
the meanest Arab thrills with emotion when he contemplates his
ancient heritage, just as he rages at the prospect of seeing the
Jews return to it, and Ali Baba, though a prince of thieves, was
surely not a man without a heart.
But the trouble with Arab as distinguished from Jewish history is
that too little of it was written down, and too much of it
invented to prove a theory--much like the stuff they put between
the covers of school history books--so Ali Baba's lecture,
although gorgeous fiction in its way, hardly enriched knowledge.
Not that he was free from the latterday craving for accuracy
whenever it might serve to bolster up the rest of the fabric.
"Yonder," he said, for instance, pointing toward the sky-line
with a dramatic sweep of his arm, "they say that Adam and Eve are
buried. But they lie!"
And having denounced that lie, he expected me to believe
everything else he told me.
According to him every rock we passed had its history of jinn and
spirits as well as battles, and he knew where the tomb was of
every national saint and hero, every one of whom had apparently
died within a radius of twenty miles. Some of them had died in
two or three different places as far as I could make out from his
account of them.
And what Abraham had not done on those hillsides in the way of
miracles and war would not be worth writing in a book; whatever
cannot be otherwise explained is set down to the Ancestor, the
Arabs ranking Abraham next after Mohammed, because the patriarch
built the Kaaba, or Mosque, at Mecca, that Mohammed centuries
later on adopted for his new religion.
But even Ali Baba grew tired of acting historian at last, and
once more silence settled down, broken only by the bells and the
camels' gurgling, until about midnight we overhauled the three
men who had been sent in chase of the fellow on the Bishareen.
They had lost him, and were angry; for what should a man do
except be angry in such a circumstance, unless he is willing to
accept blame?
"You should have let us shoot, Jimgrim! Once I got close enough
to have cut his beast's legs with my sword! You think this is
like the city, where a policeman holds up a hand and men halt?
Hah! Wallah! It was he who drew sword, and behold my camel's nose
where he slashed at it! One finger's breadth closer and I would
have had a sick beast on my hands--but he proved a blundering pig
with his weapon and only made that scratch after all.
"However, it is your fault, Jimgrim! You have made us to be
laughed at by that father of dunghills! His beast was the faster,
and he got away, and vanished in the shadows."
So there we halted and held a conference, letting the camels
kneel and rest for half an hour, while each man said his say
in turn.
"That man is Rafiki's messenger," said Grim. "He is on his way to
Abbas Mahommed, Sheikh of the Beni Yussuf, who owes Rafiki money.
I think Rafiki is offering to forgo the debt if Abbas Mahommed
will lie in wait for us and carry off this woman."
He did not ask for suggestions. There was no need. Every one of
those cloaked and muffled rascals had a notion of his own on the
spur of the moment, and was eager to get it adopted.
"Allah!" said Ali Baba. "Let us fight, then, with Abbas Mahommed,
and plunder his harem instead! It is simple. We come on his
village before dawn when those sons of Egyptian mothers* are
asleep. We set fire to the thatch, and thereafter act as seems
fit, slaying some and letting others escape!"
-----------
* To call any one an Egyptian is an Arab's notion of a perfect insult.
-----------
_"Wallah!_ Let us ride straight through the village, set a light
to it, and run," suggested Mujrim. "There isn't a woman in that
place I would burden a camel with."
"Nevertheless, we should take some women to keep as hostages
against the time when a blood-feud begins."
"And surely we shall carry off some camels."
"Aye! They have a horse or two as well. Abbas Mahommed trades
with El-Kerak, and only last month acquired a fine brown mare
that caught my eye."
"What are fifty men! We can fight twice fifty of such spawn as
the Beni Yussuf."
_"Wallah!_ They ran when the police paid them a visit. Ran from
the police!"
"Yes, and were afraid to kill the Jew who sued Abbas Mahommed in
the court for arrears of interest. They are cowards who dare not
take their sheikh's part in a dispute."
"Better wait until dawn, and then ride by their village and
defy them."
But the lady Ayisha had the most astonishing suggestion. She came
out from under the curtains of the _shibrayah_ and sat against
her camel's rump to face the circle of armed men and instruct them.
_"Taib!"_ she said scornfully. "Let this Abbas Mahommed come and
take me. I have a knife for his belly in any event. You go on to
Ali Higg and say his wife is in the hands of that scum. Ali Higg
can cross the desert in three days, and by the evening of the
fourth day there will be no village left, nor a man to call Abbas
Mahommed by his name. If I haven't killed him already Abbas
Mahommed will be carried off to Petra with the women, who shall
watch what is done to him before they are apportioned with the
other loot. That is simplest. Let Abbas Mahommed lift me if
he dares!"
She was clearly a young woman not averse to experiences, as well
as confident of her lord's good will. But Grim had the peace of
the border in mind; and the gang were not at all disposed to
stand by meekly while Abbas Mahommed paid a debt so easily to a
mere wool-merchant.
"I am an old man," said Ali Baba, "and must die soon. May He Who
never sleeps* slay me before I see my sons afraid to fight Abbas
Mahommed and all his host!" [* A synonym for Allah]
"Let's talk like wise men and not fools," proposed Grim at last,
and since he had let them have their say first they heard him in
silence now. "The difficulty is that Abbas Mahommed's village
lies at the corner of the Dead Sea. We must turn that corner. If
we pass between him and the sea he has us between land and water.
If we journey too far south to avoid him we lose at least a day
and tire our camels out. A forced march now would mean that we
must feed the camels corn, and we have none too much of it with
us; whereas tomorrow the grazing will be passable, and farther
on, where the grazing is poor, we shall need the corn."
_"Wallah!_ The man knows."
_"Inshalla,_ let there be a fight then!"
"Wait!" counseled Ali Baba. "I know this Jimgrim. There will be a
deception and a ruse, but no fight. Listen to him. Wait and see!"
"I think we will travel to the southward," said Grim, "and halt
at dawn out of sight of Abbas Mahommed's village. There let the
camels graze. But I, and a few of us, will take the lady Ayisha's
camel with the _shibriyah,_ and draw near to the village. That
black-faced rogue of Rafiki's will point us out to them, for he
will recognize the _shibriyah._
"Then when they come to seize the lady Ayisha they will find no
woman in the litter. So they will believe that Rafiki's messenger
has told lies that are blacker than his face, and will beat him
and let us go."
"But if they do not let you go? They are ruffians, you know, Jimgrim."
"Then I shall find another way."
"And how will you account for being so few men, when Rafiki's
messenger will have said we are at least a score?"
"Will that not be further proof that the man is a liar?"
"If I did not know you of old I would say that is a fool's plan,"
remarked Ali Baba, and his sons grunted agreement. "But you have
a devil of resourcefulness. _Taib!_ Let us try this plan and see
what comes of it."
So we started off again to a running comment of contemptuous
disapproval from the lady Ayisha, who seemed to think that no
plan could be a good one unless it entailed murder. The farther
we headed eastward, the nearer we came to the pale beyond which
her lord and master's word was summary law, the more openly she
advocated drastic remedies for everything, and the less she was
inclined to take no for an answer.
However, her monologue was wasted on the moon, for no one argued
with her. Grim led the way-off the highroad now, and down dark
defiles that set the camels moaning, while their riders yelled
alternately to Allah and apostrophized their beasts in the
monosyllabic camel language. Camels hate downhill work, especially
when loaded, and fall unless told not to in a speech they
understand, in that respect strangely like children.
You had to look out in the dark, too, for the teeth of the camel
behind, because they don't love the folk who drive them headlong
into gorges full of ghosts, and one man's thigh or elbow makes as
easy biting as the next.
Camels are no man's pets, and there is no explaining them. The
fools will graze contentedly with shrapnel and high explosives
bursting all about them, but go into a panic at the sight of a
piece of paper in broad daylight. And when they think they see
ghosts in the dark they act like the Gadarene swine, only making
more noise about it.
I wouldn't have been the lady Ayisha going down some of those
dark places for all the wealth of ancient Bagdad. Her _shibrayah_
pitched and rolled like a small boat in a big sea, and whenever a
rock leaned out over the narrow trail, or a scraggy old thorn
branch swung, it was by a combination of luck and good carpentry
that she was saved from being pitched down under the following
camel's feet. Whoever made that _shibrayah_ could have built
the Ark.
But we came down through one last terrific gorge on to a level
plain, where the camel-thorn grew in clumps and the heat
radiating from the hills was like the breath from an oven door
behind us. There the animals went best foot forward, as if they
smelled the dawn and hoped to meet it sooner by hurrying. We had
quite a job to keep back for the loaded beasts, and three or four
men, instead of one, brought up the rear to prevent straggling.
Then, about an hour before dawn, in a hollow between sparsely
vegetated sand-dunes, Grim ordered camp pitched, and in very few
minutes there was a row of little cotton tents erected, with a
small fire in front of each.
Most of the camels were turned out at once to graze off the
unappetizing-looking thorns, sparse and dusty, that peppered the
field of view like scabs on a yellow skin. There was no fear of
their wandering too far, for if the camel ever was wild, as many
maintain that he never was, that was so long ago that the whole
species has forgotten it, and he wouldn't know what to do without
his owner somewhere near.
He has to be used at night, because he will not eat at night; on
the other hand, he refuses to sleep in the daytime; so there is a
limit to what you can do with a camel, in spite of his endurance,
and once in so many days he has to be given a twenty-four hour
rest so that he may catch up on both food and sleep.
But on the dry plains such as where we were then they give less
trouble than anywhere. For though they soon go sick on good corn,
which a horse must have, they thrive and grow fat on desert
gleanings; and whereas sweet water will make their bellies ache
oftener than not, the brackish, dirty stuff from wells by the
Dead Sea shore is nectar to them.
Have you ever seen twenty camels rolling all at once with their
legs in the air, preparatory to making breakfast off dry thorns
that you wouldn't dare handle with gloves on? If so, you'll
understand that they're the perfect opposite of every other
useful beast that lives.
But not all the camels were turned out. Grim chose Mujrim--Ali
Baba's eldest son--a black-bearded, forty-year-old giant--two of
the younger men, Narayan Singh and me; and with the lady Ayisha's
beast in tow with the empty _shibrayah_ set off directly the sun
was a span high over the nearest dune.
We rode almost straight toward the sun, and in five minutes it
appeared how close we were to the village whence danger might be
expected. It was a straggling, thatched, squalid-looking cluster
of huts, surrounded by a mud wall with high, arched gates. Only
one minaret like a candle topped with an extinguisher pretended
to anything like architecture, and even from where we were you
could see the rubbish-heaps piled outside the wall to reek and
fester. There was a vulture on top of the minaret, and kites and
crows--those inevitable harbingers of man--were already busy with
the day's work.
The village Arabs are perfunctory about prayer, unless unctuous
strangers are in sight, who might criticize. So, although we
approached at prayer-time, it was hardly a minute after we rose
in view over a low dune before a good number of men were on the
wall gazing in our direction. And before we had come within a
mile of the place the west gate opened and a string of camel-men
rode out.
The man at their head was the sheikh by the look of him, for we
could see his striped silk head-dress even at that distance, and
he seemed to have a modern rifle as against the spears and
long-barreled muskets of the others. There were about two-score
of them, and they rode like the wind in a half circle, with the
obvious intention of surrounding us. Grim led straight on.
They rode around and around us once or twice before the man in
the striped head-gear called a halt. He seemed disturbed by
Grim's nonchalance, and asked our business with not more than
half a challenge in his voice.
"Water," Grim answered. "Did Allah make no wells in these parts?"
It doesn't pay to do as much as even to suggest your real reason
for visiting an Arab village, for they won't believe you in
any case.
"What have you in the _shibriyah?"_
"Come and see."
The Sheikh Mahommed Abbas drew near alone, suspiciously, with his
cocked rifle laid across his lap. His men began moving again,
circling around us slowly--I suppose with the idea of annoying
us; for that is an old trick, to irritate your intended victim
until some ill-considered word or gesture gives excuse for an
attack. But we all sat our camels stock-still, and, following
Grim's example, kept our rifles slung behind us.
The sheikh was a rather fine-looking fellow, except for smallpox
marks. He had a hard eye, and a nose like an eagle's beak; and
that sort of face is always wonderfully offset by a pointed black
beard such as he wore. But there was something about the way he
sat his camel that suggested laziness, and his lips were not thin
and resolute enough to my mind, to match that beard and nose. I
would have bet on three of a kind against him sky-high, even if
he had passed the draw.
He drew aside the curtain of the _shibrayah_ gingerly, as if he
expected a trick mechanism that might explode a bomb in his face.
_"Mashallah!_ Where is the woman?" he exclaimed.
I found out then that I was right as to the way to play that
supposititious poker hand. Grim had doped him out too, and
answered promptly without changing a muscle of his face.
_"Wallahi!_ Should I bring my wife to this place?"
"Allah! Thy wife?"
"Whose else?"
"It was Ali Higg's wife according to the tale!"
"Some fools swallow tales as the dogs eat the offal thrown to
them! By the beard of God's Prophet, whom do you take me for?"
_"Kif?_* How should I know?" [* What?]
"Go and ask the kites, then, at Dat Ras!"
"You are he? You are he who slew the--_Shi ajib!_* Now I think of
it they did say he was beardless. Nay! Are you--Speak! Who are
you?" [* This is strange!]
"Does your wife wander abroad while you herd cattle?" Grim
asked him.
"Allah forbid! But--"
"Is my honor likely less than yours?"
"Then you are Ali Higg?"
"Who else?"
"And these?"
"My servants."
"Your honor travels abroad with a scant escort!"
"Let us see, then, whether it is not enough! A tale was told me
of a black-faced liar on a Bishareen dromedary who fled hither
from El-Kalil last night to persuade the dogs of this place to
bark in some hunt of his. There was mention made of a woman. My
men pursued him along the road, but fear gave him wings. Hand
him over!"
"Allah! He is my guest."
"Or let us see whether I cannot fire one shot and summon enough
men to eat this place!"
"That is loud talk. They tell me you travel with but twenty."
"Try me!"
You didn't have to be much of a thought-reader to know what was
passing in that sheikh's mind. Supposing that Grim were really
the notorious Ali Higg, he might easily have left Hebron with
twenty men and have been joined by fifty or a hundred others in
the night. Or there might be others on the way to meet him now.
It was a big risk, for Ali Higg's vengeance was always the same;
he simply turned a horde of men loose to work their will on the
inhabitants of any village that defied him. The sheikh was
not quite sure yet that he really sat face to face with the
redoubtable robber, yet did not dare put that doubt to the test.
"Is that all Your Honor wants?" he asked. "Just that messenger?"
"Him and his camel--and another thing."
"What else, then? We are poor folk in this place. There has been
a bad season. We have neither corn nor money."
"If I needed corn or money I would come and take them," Grim
answered. "I have no present need. I give an order."
"Allah! What then?"
"It pleases me to camp yonder."
He made a lordly motion with his head toward the west.
"This side your village, then, all this day until sundown, none
of your people venture."
"But our camels go to graze that way."
"Not this day. Today yours graze to the eastward."
"There is poor grazing to the eastward."
"Nevertheless, whoever ventures to the westward all this day does
so in despite of me, and the village pays the price!"
"Allah!"
"Let Allah witness!" answered Grim.
And his face was an enigma; but half the puzzle was already
solved because there was no suggestion of weakness there. It was
the best piece of sheer bluffing on a weak hand that I had
ever seen.
"Will Your Honor not visit my town and break bread with me?"
asked Mahommed Abbas.
"If I visit that dung-hill it will be to burn it," Grim answered.
"Send me out that black-faced liar and the Bishareen. I am not
pleased to wait long in the sun."
"If we obey the command do we not merit Your Honor's favor?"
That was a very shrewd question. A weak man with a weak hand
would have walked into that trap by betraying the spirit of
compromise. On the other hand an ordinary bluffer would have
blundered by overdoing the high hand.
"Consider what is known of me," Grim answered. "How many have
disobeyed me and escaped? How many have obeyed and regretted it?
But by the beard of Allah's Prophet," he thundered suddenly, "I
grow weary of words! What son of sixty dogs dares keep me waiting
in the desert while he barks?"
Mahommed Abbas did not like that medicine, especially in front of
all his men. But they had ceased circling long ago and were
waiting stock-still at a respectful distance; for the name of Ali
Higg meant evidently more to them than the honor of their own
sheikh--which at best depends on the sheikh's own generalship. It
was a safe bet that if he had called on them to attack that
minute they would have declined.
So he gave the dignified Arab salute, which Grim deigned to
acknowledge with the slightest possible inclination of the head,
and led his men away.
"What would you have done if he had called your bluff?" I asked
Grim, as soon as they were all out of earshot.
"Dunno," he said, smiling. "I've learned never to try a bluff
unless I'm pretty sure of my man. That guy doesn't own many
chips. As a last resort I'd have to admit I'm a government
officer--if they hadn't killed us all first!"
We sat our camels there for about three quarters of an hour
before half a dozen of Mahommed Abbas' men appeared with Rafiki's
messenger riding the Bishareen between them. His face when they
handed him over was the color of raw liver, and if ever a man was
too scared to try to escape it was he. Ali Baba's two sons got
one on either side of him without making him feel any better, for
he too was a Hebron man and knew them and their reputation. There
was nothing improbable about their throwing in their lot with the
greater robber Ali Higg.
Then the sheikh's men tried to load gifts on Grim--chickens, a
live sheep, melons, vegetables, and camel milk in a gourd. Grim
did not even deign to acknowledge them in person, but made a
gesture to Narayan Singh, who promptly took charge of the
prisoner himself and sent Ali Baba's sons back for the presents.
They had the good grace to find fault with everything, vowing
that the sheep especially was only fit for vultures. However,
with a final sneer or two anent the donor's manners they bore
sheep and all along behind us back to camp.
"Is it well?" called Ali Baba, watching on the ridge of a dune,
and coming to life like a heron as soon as we drew near.
"All's well," said Grim.
"Father of cunning! What now?" the old man answered.