Two of the Arab boys who had walked by the baggage camels came in with rugs and mats, and the hamper packed by Hassan.
Jakoub gave them directions in their own language, and all these people busied themselves about providing for my comfort.
I asked myself why I hated Jakoub, and how I knew that he despised me. I did not know these Arab boys at all. If among them they had decided to put me to death, they would have an easy task. They might have done it before I could even have pointed my revolver at them.
Jakoub skilfully made a kind of couch for me with the rugs, and opened the hamper. Hassan had packed enough to keep me for a week, so there was no need to economise. I did not know what provisions Jakoub or the Arabs might have. After all he had so far served me well. I offered him some meat and bread, which he gratefully accepted.
“I suppose,” I said, “you do not drink wine, Jakoub?”
“I keep the fast of Ramadan, Excellency,” he said, “but for the rest of the year——” He ended with a shrug and a smile which seemed to suggest his belief in the tenderness of Allah towards human nature which could not always live up to the exacting standard of the Prophet.
“The wind has burned the roots of my tongue and the sand grates in the gateway of my lungs,” he added apologetically, as he drank off the tumbler of Burgundy I handed him.
The wine revived him and I realised that he too had been suffering from the exhaustion of our terrible ride, but had waited on me before refreshing himself.
I finished my strange picnic alone in this dim vault of some old forgotten worship; then lying down on the outspread rug, I slept profoundly in the sand.
When I awoke a faint daylight was trickling in through a kind of irregular hole or tunnel in the titanic masonry that surrounded me. A distant humming of the wind recalled to my mind the horrors of the storm outside, and I knew it had not abated. During the night, sand had drifted even into this chamber of mine. I was covered with it as I lay, and I noticed it piled up like snow against the farther wall.