The earthenware pot was almost full when I took my seat again on the stool. I turned to my new acquaintance.
“What special taxes is the sheik gathering this morning?” I demanded.
“Eh! What?” cried the former New Englander, following the direction of my finger. “The pot? Why, don’t you know what that’s for?”
“No,” I answered.
“Why, that is a collection the sheik is taking up to buy you a ticket to Damascus on the railroad.”
I picked up my knapsack from the floor, and stepped into the highway. The sheik and several bystanders threw themselves upon me to hold me back. It was no use trying to escape from a dozen horny hands. I permitted myself to be led back to the stool, and sat down with the knapsack across my knees. The sheik addressed me in soothing tones, as if he were trying to coax me to wait, pointing to the pot with every third word. The others went back to their seats on the floor, rolled new cigarettes, and became quiet once more. With one leap I sprang from the stool into the street, and set off at top speed down the highway, a screaming, howling, ever-increasing, but ever more distant crowd at my heels.
Half an hour later I reached the top of a neighboring range of mountains, and slid down the opposite slope on to the highway to Damascus.
CHAPTER IX
A LONELY JOURNEY
For miles the road climbed sharply upward, or crawled along the face of a mountain at the edge of a yawning pit. The villages were far apart, and as they were low and flat, and built of the same rock as the mountains, I did not notice them until I was almost upon them. In every such place one or more of the householders marched back and forth on the top of his dwelling, dragging after him a great stone roller and chanting a mournful tune that seemed to cheer him on in his labor.
At first sight these flat roofs seemed to be of heavy blocks of stone. But they were really made of branches and bushes, plastered over with mud. If the rolling had been neglected for a fortnight in this rainy season, the roofs would soon have sagged and fallen in of their own weight.