"Strike me if you dare!" said the girl, her eyes ablaze.
"If you do you will never reach the
Next station." But in the confusion
Gerome had vaulted into his saddle, and, setting spurs to our horses,
we galloped or scrambled off as quick as the deep snow would allow us.
"Crapule va!" shouted the little man, whose cheek and hair still bore
traces of the struggle. "Il n'y a qu'en Perse qu'on fait des chameaus
comme cela!"
Ispahan is about seventy farsakhs distant from Teheran. The journey
has, under favourable conditions, been ridden in under two days, but
this is very unusual, and has seldom been done except for a wager by
Europeans. In our case speed was, of course, out of the question, with
the road in the state it was. The ordinary pace is, on an average, six
to eight miles an hour, unless the horses are very bad. It was nearly
a week, however, before we rode through the gates of Ispahan, and even
this was accounted a fair performance considering the difficulties we
had to contend with.
Towards sunset the wind rose - a sharp north-easter that made face and
ears feel as if they were being flogged with stinging-nettles. It was
not until dusk that we reached Rabat Kerim, a small mud village, with
a filthy windowless post-house. But a pigstye would have been welcome
after such a ride, and the vermin which a flickering oil-lamp revealed
in hundreds, on walls and flooring, did not prevent our sleeping
soundly till morning.
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