For a moment he sat motionless, unable to believe his ears. Then suddenly he swooped and kissed my hand, exclaiming: 'Praise be to Allah!'
'Praise be to Allah!' echoed Suleymân, with vast relief. 'The tiger in thee has not triumphed. We shall still know joy.'
'I resign myself to be the pigeon of the mosque,' I answered, laughing happily.
Five minutes later we were riding towards the dawn, beginning to grow red behind the heights of Moab.
CHAPTER XI[ToC]
THE KNIGHT ERRANT
We had left Damascus after noon the day before, and had spent the night at a great fortress-khan—the first of many on the pilgrims' road. We had been on our way an hour before Rashîd discovered that he had left a pair of saddle-bags behind him at the khan; and as those saddle-bags contained belongings of Suleymân, the latter went back with him to retrieve them. I rode on slowly, looking for a patch of shade. Except the khan, a square black object in the distance, there was nothing in my range of vision to project a shadow larger than a good-sized thistle. Between a faint blue wave of mountains on the one hand and a more imposing but far distant range upon the other, the vast plain rolled to the horizon in smooth waves.