The Highlands of Ethiopia Part 12

Overwhelmed by violent subterranean convulsion and commotion, which, reversing the order of things, has again and again altered the former appearance, the face of the country for miles around the base of the larger volcanoes, presents one sheet of lava. Activity would not appear to have extended much beyond the immediate neighbourhood of each; but there is a connection between the whole cl.u.s.ter visible in small lava streams and a vast quant.i.ty of volcanic debris, converted into humus, in the adjacent valleys. Yet it is by no means apparent that these alone have contributed to form the present surface, the south-eastern side of the field terminating in much older formation of wacke. Neither would any one of the craters appear to have very lately poured out the fiery stream. Ibrahim Shehem Abli indeed deposed with an oath to having seen Father Abida in flames about twelve years previously; but, on further investigation, there seemed reason to believe that the conflagration he witnessed must have been confined to the long gra.s.s with which portions of the steep sides are clothed.

The well-timed deluge of rain which fell during the night had been so eagerly drunk by the thirsty desert, that when the morning dawned the only traces of the storm were presented in numberless channels left by the torrent, with here and there a muddy pool, around which the guinea-fowl were still rallying in clamorous troops. Every portion of the road having been saturated, and rendered far too heavy for the jaded camels, advance was of necessity delayed until noon, by which time they had become sufficiently dry to admit of the resumption of the journey.

A bare alluvial plain, skirting the base of the Koomi range, led to a few acacia trees of larger growth than had heretofore been seen. They occupied a hollow styled Ras Mittur, which is the point of union of the two roads from Killulloo, and hence the caravan struck off across a gra.s.sy plain, abounding in herds of graceful _mhorr_. The course followed the eastern border of the field of truncated cones; and in the fresh green hue of the bushes with which the cindery tract is studded, was afforded abundant proof of the fertility of its decomposed lava.

Pa.s.sing a cl.u.s.ter of Bedouin huts, whose inmates were watching their grazing herds of milch camels, the road next threaded a narrow belt of verdant jungle. This suddenly opened into the wide plain of Moolu, studded in every direction with flocks of sheep and goats, a.s.sembled from all parts of the country round; and in a deep hollow in the very centre lay the attraction--the oasis of Yoor Erain Maroo, a n.o.ble sheet of water surrounded by a belt of hillocks, and measuring during even this season of drought, a full mile in diameter. It was indeed a sight most refres.h.i.+ng to the eye. Troops of waterfowl of various plumage sailed over its gla.s.sy surface. Birds chattered amongst the autumnal branches of the numerous trees, whose tall stems, half immersed, rose thickly in the centre, and the cool waters of the basin afforded to the weary and travel-stained pilgrims the first unlimited supply of pure liquid that had been revelled in since bidding adieu to the sh.o.r.es of India.

In so sultry a land, where, throughout the desert and forbidding plain.

Nature has dispensed the first necessary of life with a most n.i.g.g.ard hand, those pools which have not a constant supply of running water soon become adulterated by various decompositions of organic and inorganic matter. Wacke cannot resist any long exposure, and hence fluid in contact with it imbibes oxide of iron and muriate of soda; whilst flocks and herds, corrupting the element in a still more offensive manner, not only impart a fetid taste and smell, but stir up the deposited mud, which emits a volume of sulphuretted hydrogen. Yoor Erain Maroo was free from all these impurities, and its reservoir affords a never-failing supply; but the surrounding country is said during the wet season to be extremely unhealthy, violent storms and incessant rain compelling the shepherds to abandon the plains and wadies, and retreat with their flocks to the neighbouring mountains.

From Waramilli to Moolu, the country is chiefly occupied by the sub-tribes of Debeni, under the chiefs Beedur and Boo Bekr Sumbhool, the latter of whom usually resides at Hamoosa, and the former at Doomi or Sultelli. Although not always to be trusted, these wanderers appear under a friendly garb; but the lion-hearted guides and escort, with Izhak at their head, had, from the first moment of leaving Killulloo, been doing their utmost to impress upon the minds of their audience the extreme danger to be apprehended on this portion of the road, from the various wild hordes now adjacent, whom they painted as perfect dare-devils.

"The Galla are pagans," quoth Ibrahim Shehem Abli with a bigoted sneer, "and, uncirc.u.mcised knaves that they are, never heard either of Allah or the Holy Prophet; and as for the Mudaito, although nominally Moslems, they have little more religion than their infidel neighbours. But wait until I get an opportunity," he added, with a caper and a sardonic grin, as he unsheathed his creese for the purpose of going through the figure of disembowelment, "only wait until I find an opportunity, and, _Inshallah_, we shall square accounts."

Many were the harrowing tales that had been called to mind by the first loom of the Abyssinian mountains, touching the toil-worn traveller, who, having surmounted all the perils and privations of the road, and arrived within sight of the promised land, had been cut off at the very last step towards the goal. Perpetual strife is waged betwixt the Galla and Mudaito, and the plain of Moolu forming a sort of neutral ground between the countries inhabited by the rival clans, it proves one continual scene of foray and bloodshed. The heathen, watching like hawks from the tops of trees and eminences, pounce, whenever opportunity offers, upon the flocks and herds of the true believers: retaliation is not slow to follow, and thus the feud is well and incessantly sustained.

During the latter part of the march, the Ras el Kafilah was nearly thrown into hysterics by the sudden desertion of one of his charge, who, in defiance of the thraldom, which rendered all more like prisoners than freemen, had made up his mind to dine that night upon venison, and had accordingly taken up arms against the alluring herds of sleek and timid antelope that, with white discs on their cruppers, bounded in all directions before the advancing string of camels. Repeated interrogatories of "_Fein toro_?" "whither are you going?" were launched in a commanding tone of voice after the truant, without eliciting the smallest attention or reply. A shot was fired--a fat buck fell--and the successful Nimrod, dismounting, proceeded to secure the spoils; an operation which brought from their occupation in the adjacent pasture, two ancient Bedouin crones in wrinkles and leathern ap.r.o.ns, to be spectators of the dissection.

Izhak was old and captious, and not seeing very clearly, the apparition was too much for his shattered nerves. "Allah, Allah!" he peevishly exclaimed, seizing his broad-headed spear from the hand of his henchman, and violently kicking the flanks of his jaded mule towards the spot; "merciful Providence, what childish folly is this? Is the commander a babe that he thus trifles with the safety of the caravan? I did fancy that he possessed some sense, but this is positively the act of a madman. Look at those Buddoos, they will cut his throat immediately, and then we shall have a pretty blood feud, involving the lives of half a dozen Danakil."

Despite of all the twaddling old blockhead could do to prevent it, the haunch was nevertheless brought in, and its appearance hailed with considerable delight. But it might almost as well have been abandoned to the vultures of the air, since the Persian cook, who had taken alarm at the menace extended to Quilp in the prosecution of his kennel duties, peremptorily refused to convert the venison into _kababs_, upon the grounds that the knife of the true believer had not pa.s.sed across the throat of the victim.

"Whose dog is Hajji Abdallah Kurmani?" he exclaimed in tones that might have been believed to issue from a dilapidated bagpipe; "whose dog is he, I repeat," throwing the haunch upon the ground, "that he should be invited to deal with any such abomination? Allah and his Prophet defend us, but the Hajji would as soon think of polluting himself with the touch of the unclean beast."

This spirited public declaration was by the Moslem audience received with the rapturous applause it claimed; and the worthy pilgrim, fairly carried away by the over-boiling of his virtuous indignation, was actually proceeding to wreak his last vengeance upon the venison, when arbitrary measures were adopted, which resulted in the imposition of twenty-four hours' fast in excess of the many inflicted by the apostle whose shrine he had visited at the holy city.

Now the Hajji bore a striking personal resemblance to Hudibras, and like that hero, regarded discretion as being the better part of valour.

Since the melancholy disaster at Goongoonteh, he had enc.u.mbered himself with a musket and a modic.u.m of cartridges; but even by his warmest admirers it must be confessed that there had never in his demeanour been observed the slightest indication of a design to throw himself away by rash exposure. Entertaining the highest respect for himself, the prudent son of Iran was rarely heard to speak of Hajji Abdallah save in the respectful third person singular. The words of Ibrahim Shehem had sunk deep into his soul, and after the affair of the venison, it was not a little diverting to hear him, in his wonted croaking accents, apostrophise the folly and the infatuation which had prompted him to brave the wilds of unexplored Africa.

"Hajji Abdallah was never taxed with lack of common sense," he exclaimed musingly in self-reproach. "Allah knows there be many greater blockheads in this sublunary world than his servant the Hajji. Is it not wonderful that the chief cook to Khwajah Mohammad Rahim Khan s.h.i.+razi, and master, too, of recipes for no fewer than nine-and-thirty pilaos, should have proven himself such an a.s.s, such a son of a burnt father, as voluntarily to get in the way of abuse for refusing to _kabab_ unhallowed meat which died without the knife or the Bismillah; and, worse still, in the way of having his own throat divided every minute of each day and night by these bloodthirsty infidels? `_La houl willah koowut illah billah ali ul-azeem_,' `there is no power nor virtue save in G.o.d.' What true believer in the fair province of Kurman would ever have suspected Hajji Abdallah of bringing his beard to so vile a market?"

Volume One, Chapter x.x.xI.

MENACE OF THE DAR MUDAITO. MOOLU ZUGHIR, AND BURDUDDA.

Boo Bekr Sumbhool and Datah Mohammad, co-chiefs of that section of the Debeni styled Sidi Habroo, shortly sneaked into the camp at the head of an appropriate retinue of ruffians, and having been duly propitiated with tobacco and blue calico, deputed a son of the latter to represent the tribe, as an earnest of the black mail having been levied. Mohammad Ali proposed under these circ.u.mstances to halt a day, both in order to profit by the first opportunity enjoyed of purifying raiment, and, which was of still higher importance, to refresh the way-worn beasts. But the Ras was in such dire alarm of the Bedouins and Galla, that he had been with the utmost difficulty prevailed upon to encamp near the water, and no persuasion could now elicit his consent to tarry. Columns of smoke which arose high and dense from the country in advance, did not tend to diminish his apprehensions. A shadowy human figure stealing along the summit of the gloomy cliffs which overhung the camp, redoubled his mental perturbation; and anathematising Moolu as the most dangerous nest of thieves and cut-throats along the entire road, he would that minute have resumed the march in the dead of night, had not heavy rain compelled him to bite his nails until a late hour the following forenoon, by which time the camel furniture had become dry.

But the event proved that there were on this occasion some grounds for uneasiness. During the process of loading, three mounted Mudaito scouts, wild-looking beings, rode into camp in a suspicious manner; and immediately after moving out of the bed of the hollow, whence the road led over an extensive plain covered with low shrubby undergrowth, the Ras el Kafilah, who momentarily waxed more fidgety and excited, called a general halt, and a.s.sumed his s.h.i.+eld and bra.s.s-mounted spear.

"Look well to your weapons," he observed with a truly commander-in-chief-like delivery, "and let all the proprietors of fire-arms lead the van with myself. Two thousand of the Dar Mudaito are out on a foray against the Galla of the neighbouring hills, and I have received certain intelligence that they purpose this day to fall upon the caravan. May Allah protect his servants in the coming strife!"

Suitable defensive preparations were made without delay, and the camels formed ten deep to admit of the whole line being enfiladed by rifle b.a.l.l.s; whilst the Danakil and Hy Somauli escort, with loins girded for the fight, brought up the rear. Scarcely had these arrangements been completed, when a band of fifty warriors were descried advancing in a compact body over the brow of an adjacent eminence. Carrying their round bucklers on the left arm, and bristling their bright spears, they pressed rapidly towards the front of the line, "on hostile deeds intent." Out to meet them sprang the fiery little champion Ibrahim Shehem, who panted to flesh his creese in the body of another Mudaito, and twenty stout warriors, casting off their upper garments to give freedom to their limbs, were not far behind him. The caravan remained motionless to watch the event, and the formidable line of rifles fronted the foe, who no sooner perceived the muzzles bearing directly on their phalanx, than they lowered their spears to demand a parley, and described themselves to be _en route_ from Jebel Abida to join their clansmen, who were gathering at the waters of Maroo, preparatory to a "_goom_" or onslaught, upon their hereditary enemies, the Alla and Ittoo Galla.

The march was resumed immediately upon this banditti pa.s.sing quietly to the rear, and Ibrahim Shehem Abli relapsed into his wonted composure; but the foot-prints of several other parties being shortly afterwards discovered, the beaten track was abandoned altogether, in order, if possible, to avoid meeting the marauders in number, when the plunder of so rich a caravan would doubtless have been essayed. An advance guard reconnoitred the country round from the summits of trees and termite cones, which alone admitted of an uninterrupted view over the thick verdant bushes that clothed the entire face of the plain. These were interspersed with rich yellow gra.s.s, swarming with antelope, hares, bustard, and florikin; whilst fine cedar-like camel-thorns stretched their long arms over troops of pintadoes, coveys of partridges, and spur-fowl. Not a trigger was suffered to be drawn, lest the report should attract to the spot the much-dreaded Mudaito; but although hundreds of warriors might have been ambushed in the dense covert unperceived, it was safely traversed without further hostile demonstration; and the country becoming gradually more and more open, the view extended to the fine peaked range near Afrubba, inhabited by the Ittoo Galla--war-hawks of the mountains, who are distinguished for their sanguinary ferocity.

A cloud of dust in the extreme distance being believed to prognosticate a rush of these wild hors.e.m.e.n, the caravan was again halted ere it had proceeded far over the open plain; but the magnifying powers of a pocket telescope converting the objects of alarm into a troop of scudding ostriches, Izhak's confidence once more returned. The residue of the march lay over cracked and blackened soil, from which the vegetation had been burnt the preceding day, the embers still smouldering in various directions, although the columns of smoke had ceased to ascend.

Neither fuel nor water could be discovered at the ground selected for the bivouac, but a small supply of the latter requisite was obtained on the way, from a muddy brook trickling over the charred surface of the soil, and filling the gaping cracks and crevices on its progress towards the lower ground. This strange phenomenon arose from the wady at Moolu Zughir, near Afrubba, some miles to the southward, having been filled to overflowing by the recent heavy rain. Moolu Tani, or "the other Moolu,"

afforded a most alluring spot of bright green vegetation just sprouting from the rich soil which here abounds, and among it the cattle luxuriated until dark. Sundry invocations were now performed with horrid yells, to enable one of the savages to divine the coming of rain; but a night pa.s.sed in vigilance by sentinels posted on ant-hills, which afforded an uninterrupted view over the surrounding plain, gave place to dawn without any molestation from thunder-storm, Galla, or Mudaito.

Betimes in the morning the march was resumed across an alluvial plain, which a few days later in the season would probably have presented a swamp impa.s.sable to camels; but no difficulties were now experienced, and the caravan pa.s.sed merrily on towards a conspicuous barn-shaped hill, which had been visible for many miles. At its base, among sundry other cairns, stood a mound of loose stones encircled by a thorn fence, and almost concealed under the forest of withered boughs that decked every part. Beneath this grotto reposed the sainted bones of Othman, a celebrated Tukhaiel sheikh of days long gone. Amidst prayers and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns in honour of the departed, according to the custom still prevalent in the southern parts of continental Europe, each warrior of the Bedouin escort first in order, and then the drivers as they pa.s.sed, having previously plucked from some adjacent tree a branch of verdant mistletoe, adorned the venerated pile; and long ere the arrival of the last camel, it had exchanged its sober autumnal garb for the bright green mantle of spring.

Picturesque clumps of magnificent camel-thorns of ancient growth here studded the face of the landscape, and, covered with golden blossoms, perfumed the entire atmosphere. The myrrh tree flourished on the hill-side, and the "_ga.r.s.ee_" was first found under a load of fruit resembling the "_leechee_." The bright crimson pulp possesses an agreeable acidity, and the kernel that it envelopes pleases the Danakil in a mess of sheep's-tail fat. No wood had hitherto been seen sufficiently dense to invite the elephant; but in this covert the giant evidently existed; and the oryx, appropriately styled "_Aboo el kuroon_," "the father of horns," ranged in considerable numbers; the half-devoured carcase of one which had been slain the preceding night, attesting the presence also of the "king of beasts."

The agility of the Adaiel in reclaiming a refractory camel, although often witnessed with admiration, had never been more prominently exhibited than during this march. One of the most skittish and unmanageable animals of the whole hundred and seventy, had very judiciously been selected by Izhak for a large chest containing medical stores, and the halter was usually held by a gentle slave girl, whom it was the delight of the Sahib el Bayzah to cuff and maltreat. Taking a sudden whim into its head, the restive beast, after the performance of sundry preliminary plunges to ascertain if the load were firm, dashed off the road, galloped over the feeble maid, and, smas.h.i.+ng her water-gourd into a thousand fragments, roaring and bellowing, pursued its headlong career across the stony plain. Phials and bottles were undergoing a most destructive discipline, when a fleet-footed savage, who was in hot pursuit, and had already twice turned the fugitive, darting across its...o...b..t, abruptly terminated these gratuitous and uncouth gambols by a sudden twitch of the nose-rope, which brought owner, dromedary, and medicine-chest simultaneously to the earth, with a crash that sounded ominously enough, although not the slightest injury was sustained by either.

Meanwhile the caravan had reached Burdudda, where a large pool of dirty rain-water extended strong inducements to encamp, and again led to a violent altercation between the authorities. Apprehensive of misunderstandings with the Bedouin shepherds in the vicinity, Izhak had sapiently resolved to proceed some miles further to a waterless station, whilst Mohammad Ali, insisting that the kafilah should halt, commenced the work of unloading. The camels of either party were for some time divided; but the Ras, after trying the stratagem of advance without shaking his rival's resolution, finally yielded up the point with a bad grace, and all set up their staff.

The outline of the highlands of Abyssinia, which had been first indistinctly visible from Sultelli, now stood out in bold relief; and to the southward the view was bounded by the lofty hills of the Afrubba, Farsa, and Azboti Galla, where coffee grows wild in abundance. An intermediate extensive prospect is obtained over the thickly-wooded Moolu plain, stretching some thirty miles in the direction of Errur.

This latter is the residence of the old sheikh Hajji Ali Mohammad, and the head-quarters of the Debeni, who take hereditary share in the waters of the valley with their brethren the Woema. It forms, moreover, a place of resort for every wandering vagabond in the surrounding country who possesses a sheep, a goat, or an ox, or has the ability and the inclination to a.s.sert his privilege of erecting a temporary cabin; and thus the recurrence of each season of drought, compelling the abandonment of less favoured pastures, pours in its migratory swarm to swell the more permanent muster upon the sultry plains of Errur, and to create the strife inseparable from a gathering of these lawless hordes.

Volume One, Chapter x.x.xII.

A TALE OF THE PLAINS OF ERRUR.

Aylia was the comeliest of the dark-eyed daughters of the desert.

Sixteen tropical summers had already ripened a form modelled in that exquisite perfection which nature is wont to bestow upon her wildest works, and the native symmetry of the sylph-like maid was yet unblemished by any of those barbarous improvements wherein her nation delight. Her sparkling eye, fringed with long silken lashes, in brilliancy eclipsed the pet gazelle that ever bounded by her side; and the graceful gambols of the sportive fawn would seem to have been inspired by the fairy footstep of its blooming mistress. Luxuriant hair fell in elf-like tresses over her ebon shoulder. Teeth of ivory whiteness were revealed by a radiant smile that ever played over her animated features; and few indeed of her virgin charms were veiled under the folds of the slender drapery that belongs to the Bedouin shepherdess.

[Note 1. The following narrative, recounted by one of the Woema escort, although necessarily enlarged, is as strictly literal as the embodiment of the subject would admit; and it will convey to the English reader a better picture of life in the desert than could be painted in a less connected form.]

The maid tended her father's flocks in the vale of Errur, which forms a constant scene of predatory incursion on the part of the ruthless savages that hover round the border. When least expected, the Galla war-hawks of the adjacent mountains were wont to stoop from their rocky fastnesses, and to sweep away the riches of the Woema. The treacherous Eesah, although ready to extend the hand which should have denoted friends.h.i.+p, was nothing loath to the appropriation of other men's chattels; and throughout all the nomade Adel hordes, whose tents were erected during the more sultry months, the feud and the desultory skirmish favoured the inroads of the foe. Amongst the surrounding clans, even her own tribe was not notorious for its honesty, and by frequent depredations abroad, it invited the foray of reprisal. Thus the brawl and the mortal encounter would follow the stillness of indolent existence with a rapidity not less startling than frequent, and none knew what the next hour might bring forth.

But fear had no place in the breast of the daughter of old Ali. Nursed in the lap of strife, the Bedouin blood of her roving sire coursed through her young veins, and she pursued her Arcadian occupation beneath the spreading boughs of the venerable acacia, chanting to her gazelle the wild ditty that revealed the thraldom of her heart, or listening to the bleat of her black-faced lambs from the Hejaz. Often had the shrill war-whoop rung through the wild valley, and the rush of the gathering warriors who flew to answer the summons, arrested her plaintive song, but only lately had it caused her to spring to her feet with a bosom throbbing audibly; and now she would sigh as she sank again upon the smooth bank that formed her favourite seat, for the swain for whom her soft eyes had been strained across the flickering desert was not among the number of those that had swept past, and she knew not why, nor whither he had gone.

Many were the ardent suitors who had wooed the hand of the blooming Aylia, and often-times had she been sought from her avaricious father, who viewed the still expanding attractions of his daughter as a certain source of increase to his ill-gotten and idolised wealth. None, however, had yet been able to produce the price set upon the damsel's charms, neither had any possessed an advocate in her eloquence. Her heart had already been tacitly relinquished, but her hand she knew to be in the gift of her sire, and therefore not her own to bestow.

Ambeesa it was who had silently gained this ascendancy over the green affections of the maid. The milch goats of Irripa, his mother, were by her driven daily to pasture, and his wigwam was within spear's throw of her own. The twain had known each other from earliest infancy, for they came upon the world's stage in the self-same hour. They had feasted and they had played together as children; and now that their young hearts had become entwined, it was his wont to accompany the nymph into the vale, where they would hold converse the livelong day. The vapid language of the savage admits of but a limited embodiment of the softer pa.s.sions; but the simple courts.h.i.+p of the uncultivated was ably sustained. Aylia felt the force of her charms when she saw the warrior grasp the spear and the s.h.i.+eld, without which no Bedouin ever crosses the threshold of his cabin--in order that he might chase the fawn that she had coveted; or when he drew water from the well in her gourd, to replenish again and again the ox-hide that formed a drinking trough for her thirsty flock. And Ambeesa felt himself amply rewarded when the slender fingers of the blooming girl decked his hair with the aromatic herbs that she had plucked in the wild meadow, or she counted over the ewes that they were shortly to possess in common.

Ambeesa was ever in the foremost rank when the spear was thrown over the shoulder of the brave; and successful in every foray, he had won wealth as well as fame. None appeared more frequently in the many-tailed leopard spoils which form the garb of victory; and the white feather always floated above his raven locks. But his father having been treacherously murdered by the Eesah, a blood feud clung to the old man's sole descendant; and it formed to him a source of self-reproach, that although he had for years dogged the footsteps of the a.s.sa.s.sin, the opportunity had never yet occurred when he might wash out the stain! A skulker amongst his clansmen at a distant oasis, the cowardly savage had profited of his deep cunning to baffle the creese of the avenger; and he still vaunted his trophy of blood without any account of its acquisition having been required.

But the day of reckoning and of retribution was now nigh at hand. The mother of Ambeesa had counted out the dowry demanded of any who should espouse young Aylia, and had claimed the girl as her daughter-in-law elect. At the sight of the beeves and the fat rams and the trinkets and the trumpery cloths, the sole remaining eye of the old sheikh glistened with a l.u.s.tre that it had not known for years; but his haughty soul could ill brook the thought of his daughter being wedded to one whose father's death thus rested unavenged. "Get thee hence, young man," he exclaimed sternly, shaking his silvered locks, after a short inward conflict with his avarice--"Get thee hence, nor show thy face again within my doors as a suitor until thou hast appeased the spirit of thy murdered sire. The blood of him to whom thou art indebted for existence crieth aloud to thee for vengeance; and _Wullahi_, until the grave of Ha.s.san shall have been soaked by thy hands, thou shalt not talk to Ali of his daughter."

Ambeesa sought not his dark mistress, but s.n.a.t.c.hing the spear and buckler which had been carefully deposited in a corner of the cabin, stalked forth without uttering a syllable. Pa.s.sing his own hut in mental abstraction, he took the road to the brook, and throwing himself upon his face, drew a deep draught to allay the fever that consumed him.

Then whetting his bra.s.s-mounted creese to the keenest edge upon a smooth stone, he muttered a dread oath betwixt his clenched teeth, and strode moodily across the sandy plain.

The great annual fair had already a.s.sembled at the sea-port of Berbera, and tribes from all parts of the country were flocking thither with their motley wares. The curious stalls of the fat Banians from India were thronged from morning until night with barbarians from the adjacent districts, who brought peltries and drags to be exchanged; and the clamour of haggling and barter was hourly increased by the arrival of some new caravan of toil-worn pedlars from the more remote depths of the interior, each laden with an accession of rich merchandise to be converted into baubles and blue calico at a clear net profit to the specious Hindoo of two hundred per cent. Myrrh, ivory, and gum-arabic; civet, frankincense, and ostrich feathers, were piled in every corner of his booth; and the tearing of ells of Nile stuff and Surat cloth, and the counting out of porcelain beads, was incessant so long as the daylight lasted. Withered beldames, with cracked penny-trumpet voices, were meanwhile actively employed in the erection of new edifices; and more and more camels were ever pouring towards the scene of primitive commerce, loaded with the long elastic ribs, and the coa.r.s.e date matting which form the skeleton and sh.e.l.l of the nomade's wigwam.

It was dusk when Ambeesa entered the long centre street of this busy scene. He had journeyed many days alone and on foot, and his mantle and his arms and his lofty brow were alike deeply stained with the disguising dust of the desert. A gang of _Bones_, with a stalking ostrich, driving before them sundry a.s.ses laden with the spoils of the chase, arrived at the same moment from the opposite direction. Rude parchment-covered quivers, well stocked with poisoned shafts, hung negligently by their side, suspended by the tufted tail of a lion, and with their cla.s.sic bows over their wiry shoulders, the gypsey votaries of Diana advanced swearing and blaspheming towards the Eesah quarter of the straggling encampment.

The light which gleamed through the black goat-hair awning of a Gurague slave-merchant, fell upon the features of the wild party as it pa.s.sed; and Ambeesa's heart beat high with exultation when, in the person of one whose matted locks were decorated with a dirty ostrich plume, he fancied he could recognise the very foe of whom he was in search. The archer was in truth a most truculent-looking knave--one who, if his visage did not strangely belie him, might have been the perpetrator of any given atrocity. The tail fat of four Berbera rams encrusted his head in a perfect helmet of tallow, and the putrid entrails of the antelope he had last slain, were slung in noisome coils about his neck, to the pollution of the atmosphere he breathed. His repulsive front displayed through the acc.u.mulated filth of forty years a perfect maze of mystic figures in tattooed relief, on which were imbedded amulets st.i.tched in greasy leather; and the distended lobes of his enormous ears were so loaded with pewter rings, that not another could have been squeezed in. A gap, consequent upon the loss of five front teeth in a recent brawl, made room for a quid of no ordinary dimensions. Two small sunken blear eyes, which appeared to work upon a swivel, squinted alternately, as the inflamed b.a.l.l.s were revealed by turns according to the employment of the wearer's sinister vision; and on his meagre sunken cheek yawned a seam five inches in length, which precisely corresponded with a gash known to have been inflicted by the youth's father during a certain moonless night at Errur, when a stab in the back had aroused the veteran from deep sleep to his mortal struggle.

"Stay you here, Moosa," quoth one of the bowmen, addressing this captivating hero, as they stopped before the doorway of an unfinished cabin at no great distance beyond the rover's pall,--"tarry you here, and _Inshallah_, we'll turn out these lazy wenches to unload the a.s.ses."

The name had not been lost upon Ambeesa, who, like all of his bigot creed, placed the firmest reliance in fate. He had sworn never to return until he should have given the body of Moosa to the wild beasts, where the vultures might pick out his eyes. The object of his weary journey was by the interference of destiny in his favour, already within his clutches. He who murdered his sire was a.s.suredly alone with him in a dark lane, and Aylia was without doubt his own!

"_Wogerri maani, wogerri maani, wogerri maani_" repeated the Woema coldly, as he extended his open hand towards the doomed victim in token of amity. "_Wogerri, wogerri, wogerri_," carelessly returned the savage thus accosted, at the same time pa.s.sing his greasy fingers mechanically over the palm presented. The same triple salutation again reiterated, was thrice returned; and it gradually dwindled away to an a.s.senting "_um hum_," in itself fully as frigid as the wearisome repet.i.tions of inquiry had been deeply treacherous.

Moosa stooped to shake the pebbles from his dilapidated sandal. His bare back was towards the Woema, for his garment had fallen from his brawny shoulder. It was enough. Muttering through his closed teeth an inaudible invocation to Allah, Ambeesa suddenly drew his creese, plunged the razor-edged blade to the very hilt into the yielding spine of his unsuspecting foe, tore the vaunting white feather from his greasy locks, spumed the prostrate carcase with his foot, spat upon the unseemly features now distorted in the agonies of death, and fled into the wilderness.