“Your pardon, effendi, but it will be bad if the night overtakes us and we have not found our baggage. Perhaps we may have to sleep at a khan where there is no food.”
“When we have plenty with the baggage. To be sure. But must I mount that animal again? I am shaken to pieces. There, hold his head.”
The old gentleman uttered a sigh, but he placed his foot in the stirrup and mounted slowly, not easily, for the horse was nervous now, and seemed as if it half suspected his rider of being the cause of that startling noise.
Chapter Nineteen.
Adventures in the Hills.
“All the result of coming among savages,” grumbled Mr Burne. “Anyone would think that the Turks had never learned the use of the pocket-handkerchief.”
“I do not suppose many of them have arrived at your pitch of accomplishment,” said the professor, laughing, as they rode on along the faint track in and out of the loveliest valleys, where nature was constantly tempting them to stop and gaze at some fresh beauty. But there was every prospect of darkness overtaking them before they reached the little mountain village where they were to rest for the night; and as the time went on the beauties of nature were forgotten in the all-powerful desire to overtake the driver with the two baggage-horses, laden with that which was extremely precious to so many hungry travellers, and at every turn their eyes were strained in front to look upon the welcome sight.
“Not so much as a tail,” muttered Mr Burne. “I say,” he said aloud, “what’s become of that baggage?”