The slave-girls silently departed. Others came with huge, silver trays graven with Koran verses. These trays contained meat-pilafs, swimming in melted butter; vine leaves filled with chopped mutton; kababs, or bits of roast meat spitted on wooden splinters; crisp cucumbers; a kind of tasteless bread; a dish that looked like vermicelli sweetened with honey; thin jelly, and sweetmeats that tasted strongly of rosewater. Dates, pomegranates, and areca nuts cut up and mixed with sugar-paste pinned with cloves into a betel leaf—these constituted the dessert.
The Arabs ate with strict decorum, according to their custom, beginning the banquet with a Bismillah of thanks and ending with an Al Hamd that signified repletion. Knives and forks there were none; each man dipped his hand into whatever dish pleased him, as the trays were passed along. The Legionaries did the same.
"Rather messy, eh?" commented the major; but no one answered him. More serious thoughts than these possessed the others.
After ablution, once more—this time the white men shared it—tobacco, pomegranate syrup, sherbet, water perfumed with mastich-smoke, and thick, black coffee ended the meal.
The Master requested khat leaves, which were presently brought him—deliciously green and fresh—in a copper bowl. Then, while the slave-girls removed all traces of the feast, all relaxed for a few minutes' kayf, or utter peace.
Utter peace, indeed, it seemed. Nothing more soothing could have been imagined than the soft wooing of repletion and of silken cushions, the dim sunlight through the smoke of incense and tobacco, the gentle bubbling of the water-pipes, the half-heard courting of pigeons somewhere aloft in the embrasures of the clerestory windows.
All possibility of warfare seemed to have vanished. Under the magic spell of this enchanted, golden hall, even the grim Maghrabis, black and motionless along the tapestried walls, seemed to have sunk to the role of mere spectators.
The Arabs' glances, though subtly curious, appeared to hold little animosity. Now that they had broken bread together, cementing the Oath of the Salt, might not hospitality have become inviolable? True, some looks of veiled hostility were directed against "Captain Alden's" strangely masked face, as the woman sat there cross-legged like the rest, indifferently smoking cigarettes. For what the Arab cannot understand is always antipathetic to him. But this hostility was not marked. The spirits of the Legion, including those of the Master himself, rose with a sense of greater security.
Even Bohannan, chronic complainer, forgot to cavil and began to bask in contentment.
"Faith, but this is a good imitation of Lotus-land, after all," he murmured to Janina, at his side. "I wouldn't mind boarding at this hotel for an indefinite period. Meals excellent; waitresses beat anything on Broadway; atmosphere very restful to wandering gentlemen. Now if I could only get acquainted with one of these lovely Fatimas, and find out where the bar is—the bar of El Barr! Very good! Faith, very good indeed!"