In The
Shortest Possible Time All Made Ready; And, Hurriedly Crossing The
Sandy Flat, We Found Ourselves In Company With
Three or four Caravans,
forming one large body for better defence against the dreaded
Hawamid.[FN#8] By dint of
Much manoeuvring, arms in hand,-Shaykh Hamid
and the "Demon" took the prominent parts,-we, though the last comers,
managed to secure places about the middle of the line. On such
occasions all push forward recklessly, as an English mob in the strife
of sight-seeing; the rear, being left unguarded, is the place of
danger, and none seeks the honour of occupying it.
We travelled that night up the Fiumara in an Easterly direction, and at
early dawn (July 24th) found ourselves in an ill-famed gorge called
Shuab al-Hajj,[FN#9] the "Pilgrimage Pass." The loudest talkers became
silent as we neared it, and their countenances showed apprehension
written in legible characters. Presently from the high precipitous
[p.273] cliff on our left, thin blue curls of smoke-somehow or other
they caught every eye-rose in the air; and instantly afterwards rang
the sharp cracks of the hillmen's matchlocks, echoed by the rocks on
the right. My Shugduf had been broken by the camel's falling during the
night, so I called out to Mansur that we had better splice the
framework with a bit of rope: he looked up, saw me laughing, and with
an ejaculation of disgust disappeared. A number of Badawin were to be
seen swarming like hornets over the crests of the hills, boys as well
as men carrying huge weapons, and climbing with the agility of cats.
They took up comfortable places on the cut-throat eminence, and began
firing upon us with perfect convenience to themselves. The height of
the hills and the glare of the rising sun prevented my seeing objects
very distinctly, but my companions pointed out to me places where the
rock had been scarped, and where a kind of rough stone breastwork-the
Sangah of Afghanistan-had been piled up as a defence, and a rest for
the long barrel of the matchlock. It was useless to challenge the
Badawin to come down and fight us like men upon the plain; they will do
this on the Eastern coast of Arabia, but rarely, if ever, in Al-Hijaz.
And it was equally unprofitable for our escort to fire upon a foe
ensconced behind stones. Besides which, had a robber been killed, the
whole country would have risen to a man; with a force of 3,000 or
4,000, they might have gained courage to overpower a Caravan, and in
such a case not a soul would have escaped. As it was, the Badawin
directed their fire principally against the Albanians. Some of these
called for assistance to the party of Shaykhs that accompanied us from
Bir Abbas; but the dignified old men, dismounting and squatting in
council round their pipes, came to the conclusion that, as the robbers
would probably turn a deaf ear to their words, they had better spare
themselves the trouble of speaking.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 189 of 302
Words from 98622 to 99141
of 157964
