That desert, which did not afford inhabitants for the assistance or relief of travellers, had greatly more than sufficient for destroying them. Large tribes of Arabs, two or three thousand, encamped together, were cantoned, as it were, in different places of this desert, where there was water enough to serve their numerous herds of cattle, and these, as their occasion required, traversed in parties all that wide expanse of solitude, from the mountains near the Red Sea east, to the banks of the Nile on the west, according as their several designs or necessities required. These were Jaheleen Arabs, those cruel, barbarous fanatics, that deliberately shed so much blood during the time they were establishing the Mahometan religion. Their prejudices had never been removed by any mixture of strangers, or softened by society, even with their own nation after they were polished; but buried, as it were, in these wild deserts, if they were not grown more savage, they had at least preserved, in their full vigour, those murdering principles which they had brought with them into that country, under the brutal and inhuman butcher Kaled Ibn el Waalid, impiously called The Sword of God. If it should be our lot to fall among these people, and it was next to a certainty that we were at that very instant surrounded by them, death was certain, and our only comfort was, that we could die but once, and that to die like men was in our own option. Indeed, without considering the bloody character which these wretches naturally bear, there could be no reason for letting us live: We could be of no service to them as slaves; and to have sent us into Egypt, after having first rifled and destroyed our goods, could not be done by them but at a great expence, to which well-inclined people only could have been induced from charity, and of that last virtue they had not even heard the name. Our only chance then remaining was, that their number might be so small, that, by our great superiority in fire-arms and in courage, we might turn the misfortune upon the aggressors, deprive them of their camels and means of carrying water, and leave them scattered in the desert, to that death which either they or we, without alternative, must suffer.
I explained myself to this purpose, briefly to the people, on which a great cry followed, "God is great! let them come!" Our arms were perfectly in order, and our old Turk Ismael seemed to move about and direct with the vigour of a young man. As we had no doubt they would be mounted on camels, so we placed ourselves a little within the edge of the trees. The embers of our two fires were on our front; our tents, baggage, and boxes, on each side of us, between the opening of the trees; our camels and water behind us, the camels being chained together behind the water, and ropes at their heads, which were tied to trees. A skin of water, and two wooden bowls beside it, was left open for those that should need to drink. We had finished our breakfast before day-break, and I had given all the men directions to fire separately, not together, at the same set of people; and those who had the blunderbusses to fire where they saw a number of camels and men together, and especially at any camels they saw with girbas upon them, or where there was the greatest confusion.
The day broke; no Arabs appeared; all was still. The danger which occurred to our minds then was, left, if they were few, by tarrying we should give them time to send off messengers to bring assistance. I then took Ismael and two Barbarins along with me, to see who these neighbours of ours could be. We soon traced in the sand the footsteps of the man who had been at our camels; and, following them behind the point of a rock, which seemed calculated for concealing thieves, we saw two ragged, old, dirty tents, pitched with grass cords.
The two Barbarins entered one of them, and found a naked woman there. Ismael and I ran briskly into the largest, where we saw a man and a woman both perfectly naked, frightful, emaciated figures, not like the inhabitants of this world. The man was partly sitting on his hams; a child, seemingly of the age to suck, was on a rag at the corner, and the woman looked as if she wished to hide herself. I sprung forward upon the man, and, taking him by the hair of the head, pulled him upon his back on the floor, setting my foot upon his breast, and pointing my knife to his throat; I said to him sternly, "If you mean to pray, pray quickly, for you have but this moment to live." The fellow was so frightened, he scarce could beg us to spare his life; but the woman, as it afterwards appeared, the mother of the sucking child, did not seem to copy the passive disposition of her husband; she ran to the corner of the tent, where was an old lance, with which, I doubt not, she would have sufficiently distinguished herself, but it happened to be entangled with the cloth of the tent, and Ismael felled her to the ground with the butt-end of his blunderbuss, and wrested the lance from her. A violent howl was set up by the remaining woman like the cries of those in torment. "Tie them, said I, Ismael; keep them separate, and carry them to the baggage till I settle accounts with this camel-stealer, and then you shall strike their three heads off, where they intended to leave us miserably to perish with hunger; but keep them separate." While the Barbarins were tying the woman, the one that was the nurse of the child turned to her husband, and said, in a most mournful, despairing tone of voice, "Did I not tell you, you would never thrive if you hurt that good man? did not I tell you this would happen for murdering the Aga?"
Our people had come to see what had passed, and I sent the women away, ordering them to be kept separate, out of the hearing of one another, to judge if in their answers they did not prevaricate. The woman desired to have her child with her, which I granted. The little creature, instead of being frightened, crowed, and held out its little hands as it passed me. We fastened the Arab with the chain of the camels, and so far was well; but still we did not know how near the Bishareen might be, nor who these were, nor whether they had sent off any intelligence in the night. Until we were informed of this, our case was little mended. Upon the man's appearing, all my people declared, with one general voice, that no time was to be lost, but that they should all be put to death as soon as the camels were loaded, before we set out on our journey; and, indeed, at first view of the thing, self-preservation, the first law of nature, seemed strongly to require it. Hagi Ismael was so determined on the execution that he was already seeking a knife sharper than his own. "We will stay, Hagi Ismael, said I, till we see if this thief is a liar also. If he prevaricates in the answers he gives to my questions, you shall then cut his head off, and we will consign him with the lie in his mouth, soul and body to hell, to his master whom he serves." Ismael answered, "The truth is the truth; if he lies, he can deserve no better."
The reader will easily understand the necessity of my speaking at that moment in terms not only unusual for a Christian, but even in any society or conversation; and if the ferocity and brutality of the discourse should shock any, especially my fair readers, they will remember, that these were intended for a good and humane purpose, to produce fear in those upon whom we had no other tie, and thereby extort a confession of the truth; which might answer two purposes, the saving the effusion of their blood, and providing for our own preservation. "You see, said I, placing the man upon his knees, your time is short, the sword is now drawn which is to make an end of you, take time, answer distinctly and deliberately, for the first trip or lie that you make, is the last word that you will utter in this world. Your wife shall have her fair chance likewise, and your child; you and all shall go together, unless you tell me the naked truth. Here, Ismael, stand by him, and take my sword, it is, I believe, the sharpest in the company."
"Now I ask you, at your peril, Who was the good man your wife reproached you with having murdered? where was it, and when, and who were your accomplices?" He answered trembling, and indistinctly, through fear, "It was a black, an Aga from Chendi." "Mahomet Towash, says Ismael; Ullah Kerim! God is merciful!" "The same," says the Bishareen. He then related the particulars of his death in the manner in which I shall have occasion to state afterwards. "Where are the Bishareen? continued I; where is Abou Bertran? how soon will a light camel and messenger arrive where he now is?" "In less than two days; perhaps, says he, in a day and a half, if he is very diligent and the camel good." "Take care, said I, you are in danger. Where did you and your women come from, and when?" "From Abou Bertran, says he; we arrived here at noon on the 5th day[50], but the camels were all she-camels; they are favourite camels of Shekh Seide; we drove them softly; the two you saw at the tents are lame; besides there were some others unsound; there were also women and children." "Where did that party, and their camels, go to from this? and what number of men was there with them?" "There were about three hundred camels of all sorts, and about thirty men, all of them servants; some of them had one lance, and some of them two; they had no shields or other arms." "What did you intend last night to do with my camels?" "I intended to have carried them, with the women and child, to join the party at the Nile." "What must have become of me in that case? we must have died?" He did not answer. "Take care, said I, the thing is now over, and you are in my hands; take care what you say." "Why, certainly, says he, you must have died, you could not live, you could not go anywhere else." "If another party had found us here, in that case would they have slain us?" He hesitated a little, then, as if he recollected himself, said, "Yes, surely, they murdered the Aga, and would murder any body that had not a Bishareen with them." A violent cry of condemnation immediately followed. "Now attend and understand me distinctly, said I, for upon these two questions hangs your life: Do you know of any party of Bishareen who are soon to pass here, or any wells to the north, and in what number? and have you sent any intelligence since last night you saw us here?" He answered, with more readiness than usual, "We have sent nobody anywhere; our camels are lame; we were to follow, as soon as they could be able to travel, to join those at the Nile. The parties of the Bishareen are always passing here, sometimes more, sometimes less; they will not come till they hear from the Nile whether the grass is grown. They have with them two dromedaries, who will carry the news from the Nile in three days, or they will come in small parties like the last, for they have no fear in these parts. The wells to the north belong to the Ababdé. When they pass by them with cattle they are always in great numbers, and a Shekh along with them; but those wells are now so scanty they have not water for any number, and they must therefore all pass this way."
I got up, and called on Ismael. The poor fellow thought he was to die. Life is sweet even to the most miserable. He was still upon his knees, holding his hands clasped round the back of his neck, and already, I suppose, thought he felt the edge of Ismael's knife. He swore that every word he had spoken was truth; and if his wife was brought she could not tell another story.