THE BATTLEFIELD
Our road, the merest bridle-path, which sometimes altogether disappeared and had to be retrieved by guesswork, meandered on the side of a ravine, down in the depths of which, in groves of oleander, there flowed a stream of which we caught the murmur. The forest was continuous on our side of the wadi. It consisted of dense olive groves around the villages and a much thinner growth of ilex in the tracts between. The shade was pleasant in the daytime, but as night came on its gloom oppressed our spirits with extreme concern, for we were still a long way off our destination, and uncertain of the way.
The gloom increased. From open places here and there we saw the stars, but gloom filled the ravine, and there was little difference between the darkness underneath the trees and that outside in open spaces of the grove. We trusted to our horses to make out the path, which sometimes ran along the verge of precipices.
I cannot say that I was happy in my mind. Rashîd made matters worse by dwelling on the risks we ran not only from abandoned men but ghouls and jinnis. The lugubrious call of a hyæna in the distance moved him to remark that ghouls assume that shape at night to murder travellers. They come up close and rub against them like a loving cat; which contact robs the victims of their intellect, and causes them to follow the hyæna to its den, where the ghoul kills them and inters their bodies till the flesh is ripe.
He next expressed a fear lest we might come upon some ruin lighted up, and be deceived into supposing it a haunt of men, as had happened to a worthy cousin of his own when on a journey. This individual, whose name was Ali, had been transported in the twinkling of an eye by jinnis, from somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hamá to the wilds of Jebel Câf (Mount Caucasus), and had escaped a hideous and painful death only by recollection of the name of God. He told me, too, how he himself, when stationed at Mersîn, had met a company of demons, one fine evening in returning from an errand; and other tales which caused my flesh to creep.
The groves receded. We were in an open place where only a low kind of brushwood grew, when suddenly my horse shied, gave a fearful snort, and sturdily refused to budge another inch. I let him stand until Rashîd came up. He thought to pass me, but his horse refused as mine had done.
'It is no doubt some jinni in the way,' he whispered in a frightened tone; then, calling out: 'Dastûr, ya mubârak' (Permission, blessed one!), he tried to urge his horse, which still demurred. So there we were, arrested by some unseen hand; and this became the more unpleasant because a pestilential smell was in the place.
'Better return!' muttered Rashîd, with chattering teeth.
'Give me a match!' I said distractedly. 'My box is empty.'
'Better return!' he pleaded.