A FEW days were passed in journeying through the desert, whose dreariness was occasionally broken by an oasis, where water was found, and where the party could gather the red berries of the samh, while the camels cropped the delicate green twigs of the ghada, which form a graceful feathery tuft. Here the Persian travellers would linger for many hours, smoking, lounging on the scanty grass, eating fruit, telling stories, and reciting poems.
"Can you recite anything?" Ali once asked young Hartley.
"Not in Persian. I know nothing of that or any other Oriental tongue save scraps of Urdu; but I have learned by heart a good deal in English."
"That will serve," said Ali, who prided himself not a little on his knowledge of the European tongue. "Repeat to me and Hassan, who knows something of English, the finest thing which you know in the language."
The Persians, seated on carpets, smoked their narghillahs, as Robin, without hesitation or comment, repeated part of the opening chapter of the First Epistle of St. John.
Ali listened in grave silence, Hassan with undisguised impatience and aversion. "May the bones of his fathers be defiled who utters such heresies!" he exclaimed; then rising angrily, and spitting in token of disgust, the Persian walked away.
Ali pushed his own narghillah aside.
"Do you really believe, O Feringhee," he cried, "that the blood of your Prophet purifieth from sin?"
"The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin—the Word declares it," was Robin's reply.
Ali shook his head sadly. "Not all—it cannot be," he murmured.