At last the caravan appeared. It was a train of four mules and three drivers. The snarls of the servant and the keeper were friendly greetings compared with the vicious language and looks cast toward me by the newcomers when they were told I would go on with them. It looked to me as if they were more to be feared than capture by sand-stuffing Bedouins.
One of the four mules was saddled with the mail-sacks, and, at a signal from the leader, the drivers sprang astride the others. The caravansary door opened, letting in a cutting draught of January air. I followed the party outside, fully expecting to be offered a mount on one of the mules. The train, however, kept steadily on. The hindmost Arab signed to me to grasp a strap on the back of his mule; then he suddenly cut the animal across the flanks dangerously near my fingers, and they started off, while I trotted behind like a Damascus donkey-boy. I fancied I heard several chuckles of delight, half smothered in loud curses.
The night was as black as a Port Said coaling negro. In the first few rods I lost my footing more than once, and barked my shins on a dozen large rocks. The joke the drivers played upon me, however, was not ended. Once, far enough from the caravansary to make return difficult, the leader shouted an order, the three struck viciously at the animals, and, with a rattle of small stones against the boulders, away went the party at full gallop. I lost my grip on the strap, broke into a run in an attempt to keep up, slipped and slid on the stones, struck up a slope that I had not seen in the darkness, and, stumbling half way up it on my hands and knees sprawled at full length over a boulder.
I sat up and listened until the tinkle of the pack-mule’s bell died away on the night air; then I rose to feel my way back to the caravansary. It was closed and locked. Luckily, I managed to find my way to the street in which the Christian lived, and pushed open the door of the hovel. No one was in the room, although the lighted wick of a tallow lamp showed that the servant had returned. I spread out three of the four blankets folded on the divan, and lay down. A moment later the walking skeleton entered, leaped sidewise as if he saw a ghost, and, spreading the remaining blanket in the most distant corner, curled up with all his flowing garments upon him. I rose to blow out the light; but the Arab set up a howl of cowardly terror that might have been heard in Nazareth, so I left it lighted.
The next day I went on toward Nablous. The route was rocky and wild. I crossed range after range of rocky peaks covered with tangled forests of oak and turpentine trees. Here and there, against a mountainside, clung a black-hide tent village of roving Bedouins. These were the tribes that were believed to catch lone Christians and scatter their remains along the wooded valleys. To-day, however, they were doing nothing more terrible than tending a few flocks of fat-tailed sheep.
Late in the morning I came in sight of the mud village of Dothan. It was a crowded collection of hovels—made of mud and shaped like those of the Esquimaux—perched on several shelves of rock that rose one above another. The well marked path that I had been following for some time led boldly up to the first hut, ran close along its wall, swung round the building, and ended. There was no other path in sight.
A score of giant dogs, coming down upon me from the hill above, gave me little time to think. Luckily, there lay within reach a long-handled kettle, which I grabbed for self-protection; and the unwashed population that came tumbling down the slope after the dogs, to gaze upon the strange sight of a lone faranchee in their midst, saw him laying about right merrily. Not one of the villagers made any attempt to call off the curs. It was the usual case of every man’s dog no man’s dog.
I went on up the slopes and shelves of rock. I could not find the path. Wherever a narrow passage-way looked like the trail, I scrambled up the jagged faces of the rock, only to find, after I had walked a long time, that each passage brought me into back yards where several huts choked the air with their smoke.
At last I caught sight of a peasant astride an ass moving back and forth across the slope, but mounting steadily higher. I followed him, and came out upon a broad platform of rock. Beyond this was a path so steep that it seemed almost straight up and down. But that path merely showed me what the day’s journey would be like. I overtook the peasant in a narrow valley; and not far beyond, a second horseman burst out of another cut in the earth, and joined us.
The peasant carried a club and a long blunt knife. He seemed quite anxious to keep both in plain sight. The second horseman, who wore the garb of a soldier, carried two pistols and a dagger in his belt, a sword at his side, and a long slim gun across his shoulders. The countryman offered to let me ride his beast; but, as the animal was too small, I continued to trudge at its heels.