Accordingly, when we at length set out from Mazarib, Suleymân, with many compliments, informed the knight of a dilemma which distressed us greatly. I had been summoned to the bedside of a friend of mine, a great Druze sheykh, now lying very ill, whose one wish was to gaze on me before he died. Rashîd chimed in to say how tenderly that Druze chief loved me, and how depressed I was by sorrow for his grievous illness. In short, it was imperative that we should go at once to the Druze mountain. What were our feelings when we suddenly bethought us that there was danger in that region for an Arab knight! Must we then part from our beloved, from our souls' companion? Suleymân declared that we had wept like babes at such a prospect. No, that must never be; our grief would kill us. We had been obliged to think of some contrivance by which our hearts' delight might bear us company without much risk, and with the help of Allah we had hit upon a splendid plan, yet simple: That he should lay aside his lance and armour, dress as a Christian, and become our cook.
'Why need he seem a Christian?' asked Rashîd.
'Because all cooks who go with English travellers are Christians,' was the earnest answer, 'and because no man would ever think to find a Bedawi beneath a Christian's cloak.'
'A person of my master's standing ought to have a cook,' murmured Rashîd, as one who thought aloud.
Never have I seen such horror in the face of man as then convulsed the features of the desert knight. He, a cook! He, the descendant of I know not whom, to wear the semblance of a heathen and degraded townsman! Rather than that he would encounter twenty spear-points. If we were going to the mountain of the Druzes, we might go alone!
We all were eager to express regret. He listened with a sneer, and answered nothing. After a while he beckoned me to speak apart with him, and, when we were beyond the hearing of the others, said:
'I leave thee now, O Faranji, and journey towards Nejd to seek adventures. Thou lovest me I am aware, and so I grieve to part from thee; but thy adherents are low people and devoured by envy. If ever we should meet again I will destroy them. If thou shouldst travel south and eastward through the Belka, remember me, I beg, and seek our tents. There thou shalt find a welcome far more hospitable than the Druze will give thee. I shall never cease to pray for thee. My grief will be extreme until we meet again. I pray thee give me that revolver as a souvenir.'