"Oblivioni detur dextera mea,—let my right hand forget her cunning—
"Adhaereat lingua mea faucibus meis, si non meminero tui,—if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth—
"Si non proposuero Jerusalem, in principis laetitiae meae,—If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
"I shall now send a prayer to Heaven," he said, "to keep you safe in the strange foreign ways, to protect you against wind and tempest, against pestilence and sudden death, against the powers of darkness, and Him who goes up and down the world for the ruin of souls."
And he turned to the high altar again, and now you'd hear his voice loud and powerful, and now low and secret, and the bell struck, and the acolyte intoned the responses, and all of a sudden he turned and spread forth his hands.
"Ite! Let you go now. Missa est."
CHAPTER VIII
And so they set forth with their great train of red, snarling camels and little patient donkeys and slender, nervous horses toward the rising sun. Behind them the green hills of Palestine died out as a rainbow dies out, and now there was sand before them and now bleak mountains, and by day the wind was swift and hot and by night it was black and cold. And moons were born and died...
And they passed through the land of the King of Armenia, and they passed Ararat, the mountain where Noah brought his ark to anchor, and where it still is, and where it can be seen still, but cannot be reached, so cold and high and terrible is that mountain.