In the excitement of the moment I jumped aside so hastily that I fell off the highway. The rattling of stones under my feet told them my whereabouts, and they charged upon me again. A dozen times, in the game of hide-and-seek that followed, I felt the breath of one of the flea-bitten rascals in my face.
The Arabic rules of the game, fortunately, made the players keep up a continual howling, while I moved silently, after the fashion of the West. Helped in this unfair way, I managed to escape them until they stopped to whisper together. Then, creeping noiselessly on hands and knees, I lay hold on the highway and sped silently away, by no means certain whether I was headed toward Damascus or the coast.
An hour later the howling of dogs told me that I was near a village. Once I halted to listen for sounds of human voices. Everybody, it seemed, was asleep, for what Syrian could be awake and silent? The lights that shone from every hovel proved nothing, for Arabs are afraid of the evil spirits that lurk in the darkness and leave their lamps burning all night. I beat off the snapping curs and started on again.
Suddenly sounds of laughter and excited voices sounded from a building before me. I hurried toward it and knocked loudly on the door. The merriment ceased. For several moments there was not a sound. Then there came the slapping of slippered feet along the passageway inside, and a woman’s voice called out to me. I called back in the few Arabic words I knew: “M’abarafshee arabee! Faranchee! Fee wahed locanda? Bnam!” (“I don’t speak Arabic! Foreigner! Is there an inn? Sleep!”)
Without a word, the unknown lady slapped back along the hall. A good five minutes passed. I knocked once more, and again there came the patter of feet. This time a man’s gruff voice greeted me. I repeated what I had said before. Then I heard the sliding of many bolts and bars, the heavy door opened ever so slightly, and the muzzle of a gun was thrust out into my face. The eyes above the musket peered cautiously out into the darkness.
A moment later the door was flung wide open, and a very giant of a native, with a mustache that would have made the Kaiser jealous, stepped out, holding his clumsy gun ready for instant use. I had to laugh at his frightened look. He smiled shamefacedly, and, going back into the house, returned in a moment without his gun, and carrying a lamp and a rush mat. At one end of the building he pushed open a door that hung by one hinge, and lighted me into a room with earth floor and one window from which five of the six panes were missing. A heap of dried branches at one end showed it to be a wood-shed.
A starved-looking cur wandered in at our heels. The native drove him off, spread the mat on the ground, and brought from the house a pan of live coals. I called for food. When he returned with several bread-sheets, I drew out my handkerchief containing the coins, and began to untie it. My host shook his head fiercely and pointed several times at the ceiling to show that the missionaries had made a Christian of him and that he would not accept pay.
Barely had the native disappeared when the dog poked his ugly head through the half-open door and snarled viciously at me. He was a wolfish animal, the yellow cur so common in Syria, and in his eye gleamed a wickedness that gave him a startling likeness to the thieving nomads that rove over that drear land. I drove him off and made the door fast, built a roaring fire of twigs, and rolling up in the mat, lay down beside the blaze.
I woke from a doze to find that cur sniffing at me and showing his ugly fangs within six inches of my face. A dozen times I fastened the door against him—in vain. Had he merely bayed the moon all night it would have mattered little, for with a fire to tend I had small chance to sleep, but his silent skulking and his muffled snarls kept me wide-eyed with uneasiness until the gray of dawn peeped in at the ragged window.
The village was named Hemeh. I left it and continued my journey. The dreary hills of the day before fell quickly away. The highway sloped down a narrow, fertile valley in close company with a small river. On the banks of the river grew willows and poplars in great masses.