Oriental Encounters Part 7

'If he does that, he is the best of men!' exclaimed my servant.

An hour later one of the hotel men, much excited, came to tell me that some soldiers were approaching, who had caught the thief. The host and all his family ran out into the hall. Rashid and all the servants came from kitchen purlieus. Four soldiers entered with triumphant exclamations, dragging and pushing forward--Suleyman!

The prisoner's demeanour had its usual calm.

'I have regained the belt,' he called to me. 'These men were watching near the house, and found it on me. They would not hear reason. The man who stole the belt--a Greek--has left the city. He gave the Sheykh the belt, but kept the money.'

The soldiers, disappointed, let him go.

'How dost thou know all that?' inquired their leader.

'The Headman of the Thieves informed me of it.'

'Ah, then, it is the truth,' the soldier nodded. 'He is a man of honour. He would not deceive thee.'

I do not claim to understand these things. I but relate them.

CHAPTER IX

MY COUNTRYMAN

One summer, in the south of Syria, amid that tumbled wilderness of cliff and chasm, shale and boulder, which surges all around the Sea of Lot, we had been riding since the dawn without encountering a human being, and with relief at last espied a village, having some trace of cultivated land about it, and a tree.

Rashid was on ahead. Suleyman had been beside me, but had dropped behind in order to perform some operation on his horse's hoof. As I came down the last incline on to the village level I heard angry shouts, and saw a crowd of fellahin on foot mobbing Rashid. Urging my horse, I shouted to him to know what was happening. At once a number of the villagers forsook him and surrounded me, waving their arms about and talking volubly.

I had gathered, from their iteration of the one word 'moyeh,' that water was the matter in dispute, even before Rashid succeeded in rejoining me.

He said: 'I rode up to the spring which flows beneath that arch, and was letting my horse drink from the stone trough of water, when these maniacs rushed up and dragged my horse away, and made this noise. They say the water in the spring is theirs, and no one else has any right to touch it. I offered to make payment, but they would not hear me. I threatened them with vengeance, but they showed no fear. Is it your Honour's will that I should beat a few of them?'

Seeing their numbers, I considered it the wiser plan for us to let them be till their excitement had cooled down, and till Suleyman arrived to help us with advice. Accordingly, I smiled and nodded to the villagers, and rode back up the path a little way, Rashid obeying my example with reluctance, muttering curses on their faith and ancestry. Then we dismounted and lay down in the shadow of some rocks.

It wanted still two hours before the sun would set.

Suleyman came on us, and dismounted at a call from me.

'What is the noise down there?' he questioned, looking at the village with that coolness, like indifference, habitual to his face when meeting problems of importance.

'They will not let us touch the water--curse their fathers!' growled Rashid. 'Heard anyone the like of such inhospitality? It would but serve them right if we destroyed their houses.'

Suleyman screwed up his eyes, the better to survey the crowd of villagers below, who now sat guard around the spring, and murmured carelessly:

'It is evident that thou hast angered them, O son of rashness. We shall do well to wait before approaching them again with our polite request.'

Therewith he stretched his length upon the ground, with a luxurious sigh, and would, I think, have gone to sleep, had not Rashid, conceiving himself blamed, thought necessary to relate in full the whole adventure.

'What else could man have done?' he asked defiantly. 'Say in what respect, however trifling, did I act unwisely?'

'By Allah, thou didst nothing wrong, and yet thou mightest have done better, since thy efforts led to failure,' said the sage, benignly.

'Thou art a soldier yet in thought, and thy one method is to threaten.

If that avails not, thou art helpless. There are other ways.'

'I offered money,' cried Rashid indignantly. 'Could man do more?'

'What are those other ways? Instruct us, O beloved!' I put in, to save Rashid from feeling lonely under blame for ignorance.

'No truly great one ever argues with a crowd. He chooses out one man, and speaks to him, him only,' said Suleyman; and he was going to tell us more, but just then something in the wadi down below the village caught his eye, and he sat up, forgetting our dilemma.

'A marvel!' he exclaimed after a moment spent in gazing. 'Never, I suppose, since first this village was created, have two Franks approached it in a single day before. Thou art as one of us in outward seeming,' he remarked to me; 'but yonder comes a perfect Frank with two attendants.'

We looked in the direction which his finger pointed, and beheld a man on horseback clad in white from head to foot, with a pith helmet and a puggaree, followed by two native servants leading sumpter-mules.

'Our horses are in need of water,' growled Rashid, uninterested in the sight. 'It is a sin for those low people to refuse it to us.'

'Let us first wait and see how this newcomer fares, what method he adopts,' replied Suleyman, reclining once more at his ease.

The Frank and his attendants reached the outskirts of the village, and headed naturally for the spring. The fellahin, already put upon their guard by Rashid's venture, opposed them in a solid ma.s.s. The Frank expostulated. We could hear his voice of high command.

'Aha, he knows some Arabic. He is a missionary, not a traveller,' said Suleyman, who now sat up and showed keen interest. 'I might have known it, for the touring season is long past.'

He rose with dignified deliberation and remounted. We followed him as he rode slowly down towards the scene of strife. When we arrived, the Frank, after laying about him vainly with his riding-whip, had drawn out a revolver. He was being stoned. His muleteers had fled to a safe distance. In another minute, as it seemed, he would have shot some person, when nothing under Allah could have saved his life.

Suleyman cried out in English: 'Don't you be a fool, sir! Don't you fire!'

The Frank looked round in our direction, with an angry face; but Suleyman bestowed no further thought on him. He rode up to the nearest group of fellahin, crying aloud:

'O true believers! O a.s.serters of the Unity! Bless the Prophet, and inform me straightway what has happened!'

Having captured their attention by this solemn adjuration, he inquired:

'Who is the chief among you? Let him speak, him only!'

Although the crowd had seemed till then to be without a leader, an old white-bearded man was thrust before him, with the cry:

'Behold our Sheykh, O lord of judgment. Question him!'

Rashid and I heard nothing of the conversation which ensued, except the tone of the two voices, which appeared quite friendly, and some mighty bursts of laughter from the crowd. No more stones were thrown, although some persons still kept guard over the spring.

At length Suleyman returned to us, exclaiming:

'All is well. They grant us leave to take what water we require. The spring has been a trouble to these people through the ages because the wandering tribes with all their herds come here in time of drought and drink it dry. But now they are our friends, and make us welcome.'

He called out to the Frank, who all this while had sat his horse with an indignant air, more angry, as it seemed, to be forgotten than to be a.s.sailed:

'It is all right. You take the water and you pay them five piastres.'

'It is extortion!' cried the Frank. 'What right have they to charge me money for the water of this natural spring, which is the gift of G.o.d?