The wazir joined us as usual on our return from Kabr Saleh, as we sat outside our tent in the moonlight with Imam Sharif and the Indian interpreters, and we had a pleasant evening. We were perfectly charmed to see great preparations for sleep going on among the Bedouin. We thought they really must be tired after dancing the whole night and walking the whole day. They were busy putting themselves to bed in graves which they dug in the loose dust, not sand; turbans, girdles, and so forth being turned into bedclothes. Just as they were still Iselem began capering about and they all got up shouting and screaming, but the wazir, seeing my distress, with the greatest difficulty quieted them, as he did when they broke out again at three o'clock in the morning.
It took us six hours the following day to ride back to Al Koton, where, not being expected, we could not get a meal of even bread, honey, and dates for about an hour and a half, and then had to wait till we were very sleepy indeed for supper. We endured great hunger that day.
Salim-bin-Ali, the other wazir, had not come with us because he was not well. The day of our reception, in curvetting about, he fell from his horse and had suffered various pains ever since.
The sultan had had another stone brought for us from Al Gran; we did not care to take this away as it had very little writing on it, only [Symbol: See page image] (al amin, to the protection). It is circular, 1 foot 4½ inches in diameter, 2½ inches high, made of coarse marble. We saw a similar circular stone at Raidoun.
The wildest reports were going about as to the water-stone we already had. It was almost the cause of an insurrection against the sultan of Shibahm. They said 'It was very wrong to give that stone to a "gavir"'—as they call us (for all the k's are pronounced g)—'only think of our carelessly letting him have it. The Englishman has taken fifteen jewels of gold and gems out of it,' and named a high value.
'You are sure of this?' said the sultan to the ringleader.
'Oh, yes! quite certain!' he said.
So the sultan led him to our room, where the stone was, and said:
'Do you know the stone again? Look closely at it. Has anything happened to it but a washing?'
The man looked extremely small. They said my husband's only business was to extract gold from stones. It is extraordinary how widespread this belief is. It is firmly rooted in Greece. Many a statue and inscription has been shivered to atoms because of it, and our interest in inscriptions was constantly attributed to a wish to find out treasure. We once saw two men in Asia Minor industriously boring away into a column—to find gold they told us. They already had made a hole about 8 inches deep and 4 or 5 inches wide. They think that the ancients had a way of softening marble with acid.
