Accordingly, I made haste to overtake him, laughing quietly to myself as I observed, on reaching the open air, that the artful rogues had made good their escape under cover of the general panic, thus gaining for themselves, in the estimation of their indignant dupe, a reputation of cunning aforethought, which nothing I could say succeeded in shaking. When I assured him that they had merely turned the blood-feud to their own advantage, seizing the occasion as a source of profit to themselves, he informed me that there are a thousand and one ways of levying bakhshísh by night, every one of which is practised during the Hájj season, by the freebooters of Hejaz. “By Allah!” he cried, “I say, the shots were fired by the Bedouins as a signal to those customers of mine. They are in league with one another, and the money that should be in my possession will soon be divided among those lawless tribesmen.”
Whilst I was arguing with him, however, about fifty clansmen rode swiftly by on dromedaries, and disappeared in the direction of Arafat. Hardly had they passed out of sight than we heard the reports of their rifles, and after a little while the more distant battle-cries of their opponents. “You only heard the pursued,” said I, “but the pursuers you have seen. You would not believe your ears; do you believe your eyes?”
“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted, with surly reluctance. “But is my loss any the less? Take care lest you yourself become the argument of your present attitude towards me in my trouble. Those men belonged to the tribe of Hozail, and they are famous marksmen. To travel alone to-night might mean death. The wisest thing that you could do, therefore, would be to await the arrival of the next caravan.—Tell me, are you rich?”
I untied the little bag I wore around my neck (the sacred habit having no pockets), and emptied its contents into the palm of my hand. “That is all the money I have about me,” I replied; “but my present poverty should be my best protector on the road.”
“No, no!” he cried: “the people believe you to be rich, and therein lies the danger of your riding by yourself.... Ah, here comes a band of pilgrims; thank God,” he added, as he pocketed the bakhshísh I gave him: “Allah be with you!”
The caravan to which I now attached myself was composed of eighteen lean camels laden with the effects of some eighty Malay wayfarers, and of three half-starved asses belonging to the moghavem, on one of which was strapped the corpse of an old man. A torch-bearer led the way on foot. He was a man with such an infamous past that even his fellow-pilgrims, disreputable as they appeared, held aloof from him, in terror of their lives. Still, when I came to scrutinise his appearance at close quarters, I could not find it in my heart to withhold the compassion that his feeble condition aroused in me. As his weakness grew more evident at every step, so the strength of will, which alone kept him from sinking, seemed to point to some concentrated purpose that he was determined to accomplish. Whilst I was wondering what this fixed idea of his might be, his companions whispered among themselves, and then came to me and said that he had run amuck in Penang, doing to death his wife and family; and they entreated me earnestly not to enter into conversation with him, lest he should be seized with another fit of homicidal madness and do me some serious hurt. But this story, terrible as it was, merely increased the interest I took in the man. I pitied him the more, because, whatever insane impulses might have ruled his past life, there could be no doubt of his being now possessed with a passion to reach the goal that should redeem him from the consequences of his misdeeds. That goal was the Mountain of Mercy, as the Muslims love to call the Hill of Arafat, and thus the pilgrimage was to him an act of penance, a penitential journey: every breath he drew was a token of his remorse and his every step, a proof of his yearning to gain salvation. The Malays, if I may judge from my observations of these specimens of the race, are lacking in the gift of self-restraint on the spur of their emotions. They never attempt to assume the virtues which they do not possess. If they are afraid, they lay bare their souls, and are not ashamed of their cowardice. Their natures are in keeping with the jungles of their native country—crude, chaotic, rank as the undergrowth, and as responsive to their tameless instincts as are the tiger, the bison, and the crocodile. The more closely I studied the torch-bearer’s demeanour, the more convinced I became of its sincerity. He bore his sufferings with a stoical endurance, to which his companions were blind, or at least indifferent, leaving him to gather what encouragement he might from a word of sympathy that I gave him. Raising his cadaverous eyes to mine, he thanked me with a smile more eloquent than words, more moving than tears. It seemed to say: “Brother, thy loving-kindness has revealed me to myself, and, behold, I am afraid.” A lump rose in my throat so that I could scarcely speak. “Be of good courage,” I whispered: “take refuge in God from thyself, and all will be forgiven thee.” The words renewed his purpose, and, knitting his brow in a frown of lithe resolution, he staggered on over the rugged pathway.
The road, winding through several declivities of the valley, dips at length into the basin-plain of the surrounding mountains. There it takes a sharp turn to the east, which direction it keeps until on the limits of Arafat a place called Alemeyn is reached. When we were midway between the mosque of Khaif and the Hill of Arafat four of the camels died from exhaustion, and the loads they bore had to be divided among the freshest of the animals that were left. Whilst this was being done by the moghavem, our torch-bearer, in a state of wild excitement at the interruption, flung down the guiding light, and then fell to pacing restlessly to and fro, reeling in his gait like a drunken man, and muttering incoherently to himself; nor would he consent to pick up the torch, despite the moghavem’s repeated orders, until the caravan resumed its march.
Shortly after, another delay was occasioned by the death of a pilgrim who had walked all the way from Mecca supported on his brother’s arm. The moghavem refused to set the corpse on one of his asses (that it might be buried, as the brother wished, on the holier ground of Arafat), declaring that an additional burden would break the back of his stoutest donkey. On this the brother burst into a storm of grief, and my heart so ached for him in his disappointment that I volunteered to bear the body beside me on my mule. A straggler, overhearing this offer, cried out in broken Arabic: “If you do not lend me your assistance, I too shall assuredly fall down and die.” Seeing that the poor wretch was indeed worn out with sickness and fatigue, I made a virtue of necessity and dismounted, telling him that the price of his taking my place was that he should take care of the corpse. His readiness to comply with this condition, which would carry with it the necessity of religious purification, proved him to be no malingerer, and a second glance at him was enough to assure me that he had not many more hours to live.
All being ready, I laid hold of the mule by the bridle, and led the dying and the dead to the front of the caravan. To my surprise, I saw that the torch-bearer, in his anxiety to make the best use of his remaining strength, was some distance away, and so determined was I to keep in touch with him, and, if necessary, force him to accept my help, that I broke into a run, as fast as I could lay my tender bare feet to the ground. When I came up to him it was to hear a volley of musketry which seemed to proceed from a distance of not more than two hundred yards ahead of us; and, not long after, there came, from the rear, the ever-nearing tramp of a troop of horsemen riding at full speed.
The terror of the Malays, wholly undisguised, drove them into one another’s arms. Not knowing which way to turn, they all huddled together like a flock of sheep, while the torch-bearer, whose one idea was proof against any danger that might beset him, broke silence for the first time, and derided them unmercifully because of their cowardice.