CHAPTER XXIX.
THROUGH THE HOLY LAND.
The drumming of a pheasant in a near-by thicket was the first sound of the dawn to the first of the four sleepers who emerged from dreamland—no other than Billy, whose slumber had been haunted by old impressions of war.
Half awake, the boy looked dazedly for the appearance in the clearing of rank upon rank of marching soldiers, moving to the measure of the drum-beat. When, however, he had rubbed his eyes and realized where he was, his ringing laugh not only dissolved the fantasy, but brought Henri to his elbows like a jumping-jack.
“Plague take it,” cried the startled lad; “what do you mean by scaring a fellow out of his boots?”
“That’s just what a jolly old bird over there in the bushes did to me,” said Billy; “I thought he was sounding a ‘Charge of the Light Brigade,’ with no less terrible result than when Bill Williams used to recite it on exhibition days at Brixton school.”
“What are you fellows chattering about?” This from Canby, rising from his mossy bed.
“Another county heard from,” announced the Bangor boy; “we were discussing, sir,” he went on, “whether the clothes you are occupying were tailored just before or just after the Byzantine period.”
“Hold hard there,” put in Macauley; “‘spare that tree, woodman,’ it’s a fine old oak, no matter how rough its coat.”
Canby, beginning to fear that “Mustapha” was going to be late with the breakfast, broke away from the wordy exchange to take a look through the orchard, in the hope of meeting the incoming provider.
He soon returned in triumph, drilling the grinning black in drum-major style, waving an olive branch for a baton.
“Most illustrious purveyor, thou art most doubly welcome,” declared Macauley, as “Mustapha” shifted the load from his head to the ground.
The disappearance of the breakfast marked the appearance of the patriarch, who was accompanied by a husky pair of natives, each with a balancing pole across the shoulders, double-ended with buckets of brass.
“Of that for which you most wished I have it here in gallons,” stated the graybeard, “and with blessing on its use.”
Billy constituted himself a smelling committee of one to analyze the product in the swinging metal vessels.
“By the nearest approach,” decided the young aviator, “it is either the real thing or first cousin to it; a little closer to tan-yard aroma than is usual, perhaps, but the kind that will make the wheels go ’round.”
“Sorrow is with me if this last gift should hasten the passing of the flying men, for whom I hold a never-dying welcome.”
Touched by the words of the patriarch, and profoundly grateful for all that he had done for them, every head among the four was bared, as Macauley, in his deep voice, and with scarcely concealed emotion, returned the heartfelt thanks of the aviation party for the benefactions so freely and so generously bestowed upon them.
“That we must soon depart,” he exclaimed, “is inevitable, but no day to come will be empty of a thought of our treatment by you. Out in the hurly-burly we cannot expect to match it, yet out in the hurly-burly we belong. Peace be with you, sir.”
On ordinary occasions nothing could have restrained Canby from crying, “Hear, hear,” at such eloquence on the part of his usually blunt-spoken comrade. But Canby had a fine edge under his rough and ready manner, and he merely nodded his head in approval of the sentiment expressed.
“You are a soldier?” The aged man had evident intent of changing the subject.
“Two of us are in the service, sir,” replied Macauley, “and would answer the bugle call did we but know where it was sounding hereabouts.”
The patriarch raised his dimming eyes to the blue canopy above, a prayer on his lips.
“That all could say, ‘peace be with you,’” he muttered. Then, drawing himself up in the full measure of his tall figure, the old man, with a sweeping gesture to the south, quietly directed:
“That way does the carnage rage.”
He gave more minutely, however, details of distance, territory to be traversed and other facts of value to the travelers.
“We will start in the morning, sir,” advised Billy.
“And so it is written,” solemnly returned the patriarch. “Farewell and fare thee well.” To the boy he handed a scroll, with Arabic characters thereon. “To any Jew,” he said.
Gathering his robe about him, the speaker turned into the shady walk of the orchard, followed by his dusky retainers.
More of his bounty came during the day, but never another sign of his presence in the hours that completed the stay of the flyers on the border of the city that its people call “a pearl set in emeralds.”
Following the southerly course, as directed, the aviators began to note a change in the fleeting landscape below, nature in less luxuriant form, foliage sparse and more and more of the stony gray of arid country with wide wastes of desert sand.
Macauley’s loud cry—“the sea, the sea!” found an echo in the other war-plane, Canby also shouting his discovery of the great expanse of water to the west.
Henri, remembering the advices of the patriarch at Damascus, proclaimed it the Mediterranean. The war-planes were sailing over the deep valley of the Jordan, and in Palestine, or the Holy Land.
With so much mountainous country about them, the pilots concluded to descend to the valley for rest and council.
Landing was made near a spring of boiling hot water, something not before of record in Henri’s notebook.
“If the janitor of my uncle’s apartment house in Boston had this to tap for the kicking tenants, I believe the hump in his shoulders would lose its curve in a week.”
Billy had tested the product of the boiling spring with a finger tip, and promptly poked the scalded member into his mouth for cooling.
“It wouldn’t be a marker to the way my Aunt Melissa would go on,” remarked Canby, “if she knew her wayward nephew was really in the ‘land flowing in milk and honey.’ Even if the ‘flow’ isn’t showing much yet to me, that good old soul has it fixed in her mind. It wasn’t so far from here, I guess, that King David looked one way at Philistine enemies and the other at Moabite foes.”
“Suppose we may as well camp here for the night,” said Henri, “though it strikes me that I’d rather be where the sea would sing me to sleep.”
“No dark night flying for me this trip. I don’t want to smash any mountains by running into them.”
Billy had concluded that the sand was soft enough for a good bed, and there was another spring near, in decided contrast to the hot one.
“We can be in Jerusalem in almost no time now, and a little further on the fighting game begins again. Why hurry? There’ll be plenty of powder left when we get to Egypt.”
“You ought to have said that before we shook the pleasant berth up at Damascus, Billy,” insisted Henri.
“But, you know, Macauley and Canby wouldn’t have consented to keeping that far away from the cannon’s mouth. They know now that the jumping-off place is close enough to reach in a day or two, and, maybe, they’ll stand hitched for a little while.”
Billy spoke loud enough for the soldiers to hear, as he intended.
“Don’t worry yourself, my kiddy,” laughed Canby; “we are not going to run away from you.”
“There’s a big bunch of sheep and goats, I see, feeding around these hills, but strange to say, we haven’t glimpsed a single human since we came down.”
This observation by Macauley conveyed a fact at which the others, too, had wondered.
“Well,” asserted Billy, “there’s one thing sure, we had more of an air escort flying in here than I’ve seen in many a long ride. The eagles, vultures and hawks must think the war-planes are a new brand of bird come to crowd them out of business.”
“Maybe they thought the planes were geese, seeing Canby’s head sticking out of the rigging.”
“Mac’s jealous,” parried Canby; “he has to keep his ears folded up when we’re flying, and can only bray on the ground.”
“Why don’t you fellows put on the gloves?” suggested Billy.
“I guess they don’t irrigate this country like they used to do in the old days,” observed Henri, who had been taking a little jaunt of inspection toward the overhanging hills; “it’s as dry as a bone, and if you show me a tree I’ll eat it.”
“You’d better save your appetite for the spread we are going to have before we turn in,” said Billy; “our old friend at Damascus sure gave us a load of fig-pasty fixings that we’ll have to get away with before they spoil. And, besides, Buddy, this is a tiny little country, they say, and we may see a better side of it when we go a bit further.”
“That will be at daylight, I hope,” put in Macauley.
When next the sun rose above the plateaux, the war-planes had lifted for flight to the great maritime plain at the west of the Jordan, a wonderful journey, over a country of stones, caves, tombs, ruins, battlefields, sites hallowed by traditions—all bathed in an atmosphere of legend and marvel.
Drawing near now to Jerusalem, “The Holy,” one of the most ancient and interesting cities in the world, the aviators from afar could see its walls outlined three thousand feet above the sea.
Approaching this center of pilgrimage in an aeroplane! Dashing toward the “wall of David” in a buzz-boat of the air! “Something to remember,” thought Billy, steering for one of the five city gates now in use.
When the war-planes skidded in the train of a procession of mules and camels, there was considerable of a scare along the line, and the aviators were soon surrounded by a curious bunch of Bedouins. It was just a babel to the airmen, until there stepped from the press of strange humanity one of authoritative manner, a Hebrew of advanced age and apparent consequence.
It struck the travelers all in a heap, the marked similarity of type between the Jew of Damascus and the man who stood before them.
The latter intently surveyed both the flying machines and flyers before he spoke, and in English, for he saw that the four were but poor imitations of Turks.
“Came you this way or that?” he questioned, pointing in turn to the flanking valleys at all points of the compass.
“From the north,” promptly replied Billy.
It just then occurred to the boy to produce the scroll given to him by the Damascus patriarch. “To any Jew,” the latter had said, and here was a goodly specimen of the race within easy reach.
So Billy stepped forward with the parchment roll in extended hand. A brief glance at the Arabic communication by the man accepting it had magic effect.
He clapped his hands in signal to someone in the confusedly murmuring crowd, and two Arabs, mere boys, responded, leading a pair of heavily laden donkeys.
A few words of command and the loads on the donkeys’ backs were transferred to the humps of two camels, the last named animals making protest by savage teeth snaps at the nimble servitors doing the work.
Rope attachments made, the war-planes were hauled through the city gate, the first and only time these machines ever worked under donkey power!
Turning out of the traffic of the main road into a narrow, ill-paved street, down-sloping into the interior of the city, the four flyers, walking alongside of the machines to steady them, and their self-declared host marching ahead of the donkey drivers, passed through long double lines of dead walls, for though the houses were substantially built of stone they presented no windows to the streets.
However, the air travelers had a glimpse or two of the modern Jerusalem here and there; new hotels, for instance, that had the appearance of being up-to-date.
“No look-in there for us,” sighed Billy; “we’re just plain broke; but let me say, Buddy, it seems that we are somehow always provided for, no matter what has happened on this side of the ocean.”
“Giving the glad hand seems a specialty with the Damascus man and his twin in Jerusalem; they’re all to the good in that line,” declared Henri.
Canby would have strayed from the line of march when he caught sight in the distance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but the leader kept straight ahead, and the Arab boys were constantly whanging the donkeys to keep up with him.
Pausing finally in front of a flat-roofed stone dwelling, with courtyard enclosure, the war-planes were sheltered within the walls of the latter, while the host guided his guests into and through the house to an extensive garden at the rear, rich with flowering plants.
“Probably our last day of peaceful avocation,” mused Canby, as he applied a lighted taper to the bowl of a long-stemmed pipe, which had been served to him by an Arab attendant.