More shots followed in quick succession: everybody in the booth made a rush for the door, except the booth-keeper and myself: and we stood staring at each other for some moments without uttering a single word. But my companion did not long remain silent under the questioning look I turned upon him. “The sons of dogs!” he cried: “they have not paid me!” and, before I could even smile at the humour of the situation, he was gone.

Accordingly, I made haste to overtake him, laughing quietly to myself as I observed, on reaching the open air, that the artful rogues had made good their escape under cover of the general panic, thus gaining for themselves, in the estimation of their indignant dupe, a reputation of cunning aforethought, which nothing I could say succeeded in shaking. When I assured him that they had merely turned the blood-feud to their own advantage, seizing the occasion as a source of profit to themselves, he informed me that there are a thousand and one ways of levying bakhshísh by night, every one of which is practised during the Hájj season, by the freebooters of Hejaz. “By Allah!” he cried, “I say, the shots were fired by the Bedouins as a signal to those customers of mine. They are in league with one another, and the money that should be in my possession will soon be divided among those lawless tribesmen.”

Whilst I was arguing with him, however, about fifty clansmen rode swiftly by on dromedaries, and disappeared in the direction of Arafat. Hardly had they passed out of sight than we heard the reports of their rifles, and after a little while the more distant battle-cries of their opponents. “You only heard the pursued,” said I, “but the pursuers you have seen. You would not believe your ears; do you believe your eyes?”

“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted, with surly reluctance. “But is my loss any the less? Take care lest you yourself become the argument of your present attitude towards me in my trouble. Those men belonged to the tribe of Hozail, and they are famous marksmen. To travel alone to-night might mean death. The wisest thing that you could do, therefore, would be to await the arrival of the next caravan.—Tell me, are you rich?”

I untied the little bag I wore around my neck (the sacred habit having no pockets), and emptied its contents into the palm of my hand. “That is all the money I have about me,” I replied; “but my present poverty should be my best protector on the road.”

“No, no!” he cried: “the people believe you to be rich, and therein lies the danger of your riding by yourself.... Ah, here comes a band of pilgrims; thank God,” he added, as he pocketed the bakhshísh I gave him: “Allah be with you!”

The caravan to which I now attached myself was composed of eighteen lean camels laden with the effects of some eighty Malay wayfarers, and of three half-starved asses belonging to the moghavem, on one of which was strapped the corpse of an old man. A torch-bearer led the way on foot. He was a man with such an infamous past that even his fellow-pilgrims, disreputable as they appeared, held aloof from him, in terror of their lives. Still, when I came to scrutinise his appearance at close quarters, I could not find it in my heart to withhold the compassion that his feeble condition aroused in me. As his weakness grew more evident at every step, so the strength of will, which alone kept him from sinking, seemed to point to some concentrated purpose that he was determined to accomplish. Whilst I was wondering what this fixed idea of his might be, his companions whispered among themselves, and then came to me and said that he had run amuck in Penang, doing to death his wife and family; and they entreated me earnestly not to enter into conversation with him, lest he should be seized with another fit of homicidal madness and do me some serious hurt. But this story, terrible as it was, merely increased the interest I took in the man. I pitied him the more, because, whatever insane impulses might have ruled his past life, there could be no doubt of his being now possessed with a passion to reach the goal that should redeem him from the consequences of his misdeeds. That goal was the Mountain of Mercy, as the Muslims love to call the Hill of Arafat, and thus the pilgrimage was to him an act of penance, a penitential journey: every breath he drew was a token of his remorse and his every step, a proof of his yearning to gain salvation. The Malays, if I may judge from my observations of these specimens of the race, are lacking in the gift of self-restraint on the spur of their emotions. They never attempt to assume the virtues which they do not possess. If they are afraid, they lay bare their souls, and are not ashamed of their cowardice. Their natures are in keeping with the jungles of their native country—crude, chaotic, rank as the undergrowth, and as responsive to their tameless instincts as are the tiger, the bison, and the crocodile. The more closely I studied the torch-bearer’s demeanour, the more convinced I became of its sincerity. He bore his sufferings with a stoical endurance, to which his companions were blind, or at least indifferent, leaving him to gather what encouragement he might from a word of sympathy that I gave him. Raising his cadaverous eyes to mine, he thanked me with a smile more eloquent than words, more moving than tears. It seemed to say: “Brother, thy loving-kindness has revealed me to myself, and, behold, I am afraid.” A lump rose in my throat so that I could scarcely speak. “Be of good courage,” I whispered: “take refuge in God from thyself, and all will be forgiven thee.” The words renewed his purpose, and, knitting his brow in a frown of lithe resolution, he staggered on over the rugged pathway.

The road, winding through several declivities of the valley, dips at length into the basin-plain of the surrounding mountains. There it takes a sharp turn to the east, which direction it keeps until on the limits of Arafat a place called Alemeyn is reached. When we were midway between the mosque of Khaif and the Hill of Arafat four of the camels died from exhaustion, and the loads they bore had to be divided among the freshest of the animals that were left. Whilst this was being done by the moghavem, our torch-bearer, in a state of wild excitement at the interruption, flung down the guiding light, and then fell to pacing restlessly to and fro, reeling in his gait like a drunken man, and muttering incoherently to himself; nor would he consent to pick up the torch, despite the moghavem’s repeated orders, until the caravan resumed its march.

Shortly after, another delay was occasioned by the death of a pilgrim who had walked all the way from Mecca supported on his brother’s arm. The moghavem refused to set the corpse on one of his asses (that it might be buried, as the brother wished, on the holier ground of Arafat), declaring that an additional burden would break the back of his stoutest donkey. On this the brother burst into a storm of grief, and my heart so ached for him in his disappointment that I volunteered to bear the body beside me on my mule. A straggler, overhearing this offer, cried out in broken Arabic: “If you do not lend me your assistance, I too shall assuredly fall down and die.” Seeing that the poor wretch was indeed worn out with sickness and fatigue, I made a virtue of necessity and dismounted, telling him that the price of his taking my place was that he should take care of the corpse. His readiness to comply with this condition, which would carry with it the necessity of religious purification, proved him to be no malingerer, and a second glance at him was enough to assure me that he had not many more hours to live.

All being ready, I laid hold of the mule by the bridle, and led the dying and the dead to the front of the caravan. To my surprise, I saw that the torch-bearer, in his anxiety to make the best use of his remaining strength, was some distance away, and so determined was I to keep in touch with him, and, if necessary, force him to accept my help, that I broke into a run, as fast as I could lay my tender bare feet to the ground. When I came up to him it was to hear a volley of musketry which seemed to proceed from a distance of not more than two hundred yards ahead of us; and, not long after, there came, from the rear, the ever-nearing tramp of a troop of horsemen riding at full speed.

The terror of the Malays, wholly undisguised, drove them into one another’s arms. Not knowing which way to turn, they all huddled together like a flock of sheep, while the torch-bearer, whose one idea was proof against any danger that might beset him, broke silence for the first time, and derided them unmercifully because of their cowardice.

Then out stepped the Arab moghavem, as shepherd of the cowering rabble, and cried: “Be not afraid, but keep close to me!” And on this, he rushed quickly to the fore, shouting out at the top of his voice, in the Bedouin dialect of Hejaz: “Yá-Aghadin-ul-ghoum-Nahn-Meskinna-al-Zowarin!”

This sentence, “O tribal chieftains, we are only the poor of the pilgrims,” he kept on repeating as he strode boldly forward: every now and then he turned round in order to hearten the cowering wretches that came trembling after him; but, before he had advanced a hundred paces, the galloping in the rear grew so loud that he ordered the caravan to halt and take whatever cover it could devise.

With a swiftness of decision, born of a common fear that the horsemen were Bedouins on the warpath, the terrified pilgrims made the camels kneel down at the sides of the road, and entrenched themselves behind them, scarcely daring to breathe, lest their whereabouts should be revealed. And no sooner had they flung themselves on the ground than the troop came rushing past, proving itself to be a squadron of Sherífian cavalry in pursuit of the freebooters. Much to the joy of the pilgrims, the firing ceased almost immediately after, and the skirmishers in front of us were heard to beat a rapid retreat on Arafat.

On the silence that ensued, came the tinkle of an approaching caravan, to which, on the principle that there is safety in numbers, we resolved to attach ourselves. The new-comers, forty in number, were Indian settlers of Mecca, passive-eyed and wheedling of tongue, and with us they were only too willing to make common cause, bearing themselves towards us with that spirit of brotherhood which is perhaps the most humanising characteristic of the Islamic faith. Within half an hour’s march of Alemeyn, our united party was overtaken by a band of professional men and women—musicians, singers, and dancers—who, mounted on gaily-caparisoned camels, presented a vivid contrast to our poverty-stricken pilgrims on foot. As each one went by, he or she was greeted by our greybeards with loud derisive cries of “Astaghferallah! Astaghferallah!” This demonstration on the part of our old men was meant to imply that theirs was the garb of virtue, however naked might be their wretchedness. In the same belief, I utter seventy Astaghferallahs before I venture to describe this entertaining company.

Altogether they numbered thirteen persons, the musicians being men, and the singers and dancers being the Flowers of Delight of Mecca. First came a drummer, beating intermittently, but at regular intervals, on a curiously shaped double drum, not unlike a huge orange cut in two, and so joined that each part came under each hand. It is called nagghareh by the Persians, and gave forth a shrill, discordant noise, that not even the big egg-shaped drum (Tabl), which was beaten energetically with two long drum-sticks by the man that followed, could drown or materially modify. Behind these drummers rode two women singers, whose voices were as the tinkling of the heavy bangles with which their arms and ankles were laden. Next in the line of march was a young man with a withered face, blowing incessantly on an instrument called surná, that bears a resemblance, in form and also in tone, to a Scotch bagpipe. After him, a couple of dancing girls, with streaming ringlets, and clad in silk dresses of many colours, burst into rippling laughter at every second, partly because it was their business to be merry-hearted, and partly because they found food for mirth in the members of our caravan. But when they saw the number of our dead—and our Indian contingent had added not less than seven to our funeral train—their lively amusement was stilled, and one of them said to me, on passing by: “Were I in your place, O Haji, I should bury the corpse, and offer the seat it occupies to yonder torch-bearer, who seems to stand in sore need of succour.” “The wishes of the dead must be respected, O Compassionate Heart,” I replied; “and as for the torch-bearer, nothing would persuade him to renounce his task of self-sacrifice. He has taken a vow to perform the pilgrimage on foot, and he comes from a far distant country.” The answer she returned was lost in the ear-piercing squeak of a kerná—a woeful wind instrument at least four feet in length—and in the scarcely less strident din of a third tom-tom. The rear was brought up by two men—the one thumbed a stringed rubáb, a Bedouin instrument admirably adapted to the music of the wastes; while the other, the jester of the band, had powdered his face with barley flour, and wore a tall head-gear of white lambskin, and a long cloak of vari-coloured silk. Casting a quizzical eye on our effects, and one look in particular on my mule with its dual burden of the dead and the dying, he remarked, in an audible tone, imitating the Indian accent: “Wah, wah, wah! Ahlul-Jehannum! Bah, what a hell party!”—an expression that, in face of the open self-sufficiency of the majority among us, made me roar with laughter. My companions, refraining from retaliation in kind, contented themselves with repeating the word Astaghferallah until their tormentor had passed out of hearing.

The reader will understand that these musicians and dancers were not proceeding to Arafat that they might be present at the forthcoming sermon on the mount. Their aim was to collect as much money as they could wring from the pilgrims, and then be the first to lead the procession back to Mina. For there, after the Lenten hardships of the Hájj are ended, several days are spent in holding revels and in merry-making.

An uninterrupted march of half-an-hour, under a stormy sky, brought us to where two walls define the boundary of Arafat. There the moghavem halted, and cried out, in a joyful voice, “O blessed pilgrims, here we are on the exalted soil of Alemeyn! May peace be with Muhammad and with his family!”

Forthwith there arose on all sides such an outburst of religious enthusiasm as I had not witnessed even in the Harem of the Ka’bah. Cries of “Labbaik allahhomá labbaik!” passed from lip to lip. The torch-bearer fell on his face to the earth, and shed tears of delirious joy. The dying man on my mule sank to the ground, dragging the corpse with him, and sang praises to Allah with his last breath. A native dervish, beside himself with hashshish-bibbing, danced furiously round and round, beating on his bare breast, and tearing his unkempt locks, and shrieking excitedly, “Yá-Hú! Hú-yá!” Then, with one accord, we all prostrated ourselves five times in prayer, rending the air with a chorus of “Here I am, O Allah, here am I!”

After the excitement had subsided, the Sahebin-ul-Maiet, or owners of the dead, met in conference together, and decided that it would be best to bury the corpses of their friends before we entered the encampment on the plain of Arafat. To that end the help of the Bedouin drivers was solicited. A grave was dug, measuring about ten feet by twelve, and having a depth of some two-and-a-half feet and into this the bodies were lowered and placed side by side, some wrapt in their white kefans, and the rest wearing the habits they died in. The pit was then filled up, and large stones were piled a-top, serving the double purpose of preventing the corpses from being snatched by beasts of prey, and of marking the place where they lay buried. This done, an Indian mullá, putting his thumbs behind the lobes of his ears, the fingers extended, exclaimed with indescribable fervour, “One only is great—one Allah!” while the pilgrims, taking their stand behind him, bowed themselves to the ground in prayer.

The funeral rites over, the mullá declared the dead to be “martyrs in the Faith,” on which the moghavems of our respective caravans, having made all necessary preparations, ordered us to press forward in the direction of the city of tents.

I looked round in search of the torch-bearer, but he was nowhere to be seen, nor could anyone whom I questioned tell me what was become of him. I never saw him again.

On resuming our journey, the threatening storm-clouds overhead dissolved in a shower of rain which drenched us to the skin. More impatient than ever to find Seyyid ’Alí and my Persian friends, I bade the Malay and Indian wayfarers a hasty farewell, then, urging my mule into a quick ambling pace, was soon far in advance of their caravan.

The road is very narrow at Alemeyn, but it widens considerably, as, taking a sudden bend from the east to the north-north-east, it approaches the central broadway of the encampment. This thoroughfare was turned into a bustling open-air bazaar. Coffee-booths were erected at intervals of every twenty or thirty yards, and at these places the crowd was thickest, and blazing torches impregnated the air with smoke and the stench of noisome oil. It is customary to keep awake throughout the hours of this night, praying and reading the Kurán; and maybe the practice was honoured in the observance by many a pious pilgrim within the seclusion of his tent; but, in this gadabout centre of uproar and confusion, the vigil was passed in no such devotional mood. Eating and drinking took the place of religious exercises. Stories were told to the bubbling of the water-pipe; love songs were intoned under the journeying moon; and pilgrims, whose minds were sharpened with long brooding over metaphysical conundrums, could yet find the keenest zest in bartering noisily over the purchase of a melon.

It passed through my mind that here, if anywhere, I should be likely to happen upon Seyyid ’Alí, for his pleasure-loving disposition, as I shrewdly guessed, would be irresistibly attracted to where it could be best satisfied and displayed. And in this expectation I gave my mule in charge of a beggar, and, having ordered a cup of coffee at a refreshment stall, sat down on a stool to keep watch.

I had not been waiting more than a quarter of an hour when I saw Sheykh Eissa come riding towards me. The “rose of my heart bloomed,” and I leaped to my feet with joy, calling him by his name. At last his eyes met mine, and in another moment he was at my side.

“Sir,” he said, with a deep salaam; “Seyyid ’Alí is looking for you dar-beh-dar—from door to door. He has just gone down the road with our moghavem, and one of our servants, and a Bedouin driver, to see if he can find you. If you had bought one of my talismans, you would not have lost yourself in the crowd.”

“My friend,” I replied, “you will remember the story of the Slave in Sa’adi’s book of the Rose Garden. When he was on board ship he cried night and day from fear of the sea. Then Fate threw him overboard that he might appreciate the safety of the ship, and be thankful to be rescued and set on board again. I have learned the same lesson on the journey from Mina to Arafat. There is no condition in life so miserable but it may be rendered almost pleasant, in retrospect, by a more wretched one still.”

Meanwhile, Seyyid ’Alí hastening up with his companions, had overheard my remarks, and now interrupted me, saying with some heat: “Yá-Moulai, I am grateful for this—that the company of vagabonds should have had the effect of making my society less tedious to you now than it was before you deprived me of the brightness of your presence! Verily, I have good reason to rejoice that you fell among thieves and rogues!”

“You misinterpret his Excellency’s words,” cried Sheykh Eissa. “Your vanity lies so close to the skin that——”

“Why should you make it bleed, then?” I broke in. “A truce to your quarrelling. Show me the way to our camp. My eyes are heavy with sleep. It is as much as I can do to keep them open. Come, Seyyid ’Alí, unknit your sullen brow. I have missed you grievously. Let that assurance suffice to heal your wounds.”

As I spoke a bugle sounded the hour of midnight. Seyyid ’Alí, still somewhat glum, started off at once, carrying a thick Bedouin club. After him came the servant, bearing a lighted fánús in his hand, while Sheykh Eissa and myself followed close at his heels, leaving the moghavem in the rear to look after our mules.

Our way lay to the east of the central broadway. Before entering our own quarters, in the north-eastern corner of the plain, where all the dignitaries of the Hájj had pitched their tents, the Sheykh pointed out to me the high-pinnacled pavilions of the Sheríf of Mecca, of the Amin-us-Surreh, of the Pashavat of Turkey, of the Persian Consul-General, of the High Priest of Teheran, of the military commanders of Hejaz, and of the Amir-ul-Hájj-ul-Shami and the Amir-ul-Hájj-ul-Mesri.

“His Holiness the Sheríf,” said he, “has more tents than one could count at one’s ease. Do you see that high pavilion where the green flag is flying? That is the audience-chamber of his Holiness. Some of the tents serve as dining-rooms, some as withdrawing-rooms, some as bath-rooms. Others, again, as sentinel houses, as stables, as cooking-houses, as servants’ apartments, and so forth.”

Well, the tents of all the grandees, including those of my Persian hosts, were surrounded by tejirs or canvas walls measuring about seven feet in height. The extent of the confined space varied of course with the number of one’s retinue; our enclosure being comparatively small covered a stretch of ground about fifty paces square. A sentinel was on guard at the entrance, above which hung a Persian lantern, and directly in front of us as we passed through was a semi-circular partition of canvas which concealed from sight the series of tents beyond.

These tents of ours, five in number, must not be confounded with the ones we had used at Mecca. They belonged to a Persian moghavem attached to the Syrian caravan, and were made of white canvas lined on the inside with a particular kind of red cloth that goes by the name of shelleh. Supported on nine poles covered with the same material, they were so constructed that any one of the sides could be converted at will into the front entrance, and that doors could be opened wherever and whenever needed. By this means it was possible to keep the interior relatively cool.

The floor of our withdrawing-tent was spread with Persian rugs, and at the further end facing the doorway was a downy mokhata or pillow divan. To this snug abode I returned, after I had washed my hands and feet in a tent close by, to find that the servants, following the hospitable custom of the Bedouins, had already laid the cloth for supper. My hosts were not present; having dined, they were fast asleep in their own tents.

It is not considered seemly in the East for inferiors to sit down in the presence of their superiors, nor do the latter ever so far forget their superiority as to stand up in welcoming a guest of lower rank. The act of rising is a recognition of equality, and not a mere greeting. Thus, when “I fell down to supper” (as the late Shah was fond of saying in the diary of his European tour) I was in etiquette bound to accept the homage of Sheykh Eissa and Seyyid ’Alí’, who were standing up. But their attitude of docile humility so tickled my sense of the ridiculous that I raised my head after a few minutes, and said: “Ah, are you there? Bismillah, sit down ... Yá-Allah!”

The invitation was certainly a breach of social custom on my part, inasmuch as I was the master—a breach, however, for which the exclamation of yá-Allah, which is an acknowledged substitute for rising, made ample amends in my humble opinion. With an equal contempt for formality, or finding the silence oppressive beyond endurance, I then gave them permission to talk. If I refrained from inviting them to partake of the savoury dishes of camel’s flesh prepared for me, it was simply because I knew that they had already broken their fast.

The conversation fell on the subject of the Bedouins. The Sheykh, having told me a story of a blood-feud between two clans, untied a little parcel which he was in the habit of carrying about with him, and took out three steel dice loosely threaded on wire and inscribed with talismanic characters, together with a brass disk divided into squares and covered all over with hieroglyphics. “By means of these two things,” said he (while Seyyid ’Alí tipped me a wink of incredulity), “I can foretell the future.”

With those words, he shook the dice in both his hands, and threw them on the magic disk, and then, after making pretence to read the signs on the face of the dice, as well as those within the squares they occupied, he sat meditating for several minutes in gloomy silence. “Blood,” he muttered at length, biting the thumb of his right hand, “blood, I say, will be shed on this plain before the rising of the sun. A peaceful caravan will be annihilated by a warrior band. Terrible! I see some pilgrims: they belong to my native land; I hear them crying for mercy: but the clansmen—ah, what is this I read?—yes, the clansmen of Hozail, having plundered them, refuse to give quarter. Surely this is a warning to me to keep a sharp look-out that I may use my influence should woe betide my fellow-countrymen! May God protect them through my timely aid!”

By this time I had finished my meal, and, having drunk a cup of coffee and smoked a kalyán, I dismissed the fortune-telling Sheykh, who promised, before he went away, to return at daybreak and accompany me to a sort of gymkhana, where the Bedouins were to show their skill in horsemanship. And then, being dead tired, I said good-night to Seyyid ’Alí and flung myself down to rest. Seyyid ’Alí, on leaving the room, sang a Persian lullaby softly to himself. It ran something like this:—