"If you only knew—it is frightful—to die at his age—I must leave you—
I am going at once with Madame de Guéran to the French Consulate."
CHAPTER XXIII.
The fears of Miss Poles were only too well founded; if M. de Morin still lived, and there were grave reasons for doubting it, he was in very great danger.
What had happened was, briefly, as follows. As soon as the steamer had cast anchor in the port of Djiddah, the travellers, attended by Joseph, went on shore, and after a tolerably long promenade through the bazaars, described by Miss Poles in her letter to her friend Emily, Madame de Guéran and her English companion expressed a desire to return to the ship, MM. Delange and Périères at once offering to escort them. M. de Morin, wishing to make a more minute inspection of the town, remained behind with Joseph, who followed him at a respectful distance, got up in a new bûrnus, purchased in Cairo to replace the one stolen together with the rest of his baggage.
M. de Morin, on leaving the bazaars, turned his steps towards the road to Mecca, and in a short time found himself before a large painted gate, ornamented with horizontal stripes of green and red. He was just passing underneath the archway leading to this gate, when one of the attendants, hired at Cairo and employed as an interpreter, came up to him, and said—
"Master, do not go beyond this archway. It leads to the passage used by the Mussulman pilgrims, and the inhabitants of Djiddah do not like a Christian to go along it. On the wall you can see the iron hooks used in olden times to hang such infidels as might be foolhardy enough to venture this way. Under the rule of Mehemet-Ali, such barbarity, of course, is unknown, but the road to Mecca is dangerous, and you might be roughly handled by some more than usually fanatical band of pilgrims."
The trusty Mohammed-Abd-el-Gazal, in spite of the bûrnus, which ought to have given him courage, turned on his heel on hearing this news, and M. de Morin, after a momentary hesitation, followed his example. The latter recollected that he had engaged to accompany Madame de Guéran to Africa, that his excursion on the Arabian shore was a digression, and that it would be very bad taste in him to expose himself to personal danger from sheer curiosity.
However, his walk was not at an end yet. From the gateway on the Mecca road, the young Frenchman, still followed by Joseph, but this time also by the interpreter, Ali, went towards a second gateway, the one leading to Medina, and, after having left the walls of Djiddah behind him, found himself in front of a mosque.
"It is the tomb of our common mother," said Ali, in answer to a questioning look from de Morin. "According to the Koran, Eve, driven forth from the terrestrial Paradise, took refuge on the site where Mecca now stands, died there and was buried here."
M. de Morin, after casting a profane and contemptuous glance at this tomb, which did not strike him as being very authentic, continued his walk, now across a vast and arid plain bounded by a chain of mountains. In the distance could be seen Djiddah, with its houses surmounted by terraces, thus imparting to it an Italian character, its minarets, its line of walls, and its mosques.