The Lion of Petra Part 9

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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 m.u.f.fled 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 sp.a.w.n 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 astonis.h.i.+ng suggestion. She came out from under the curtains of the _s.h.i.+brayah_ 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 sc.u.m. 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sable, 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 _s.h.i.+briyah,_ and draw near to the village. That black-faced rogue of Rafiki's will point us out to them, for he will recognize the _s.h.i.+briyah._

"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 _s.h.i.+brayah_ 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 _s.h.i.+brayah_ 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 spa.r.s.ely 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, spa.r.s.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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.