Mâs, with the ready help of Zeyd ebn Abbâs, lifted her out and bore her, duly veiled, to where a jutting rock spread a fan of shadow. Everyone thought her dead.
But Fatmeh, with a snort of contempt, bade them all stand back. She removed the veil from the girl’s face, and began to chafe one of her hands, bidding Shems-ud-dìn do the like with the other; she wetted her fingers in her mouth and laid them to Alia’s forehead; with the result that presently the life returned. Alia drew a gasping breath and her eyelids fluttered.
“Praise to Allah!” cried the onlookers.
“Praise to Allah, in truth!” cried Fatmeh, with a point of scorn. “Small praise to anyone else here present! It is the fatigue, of course, O my poor one, O my dove! How should it be otherwise when she has been jarred so many hours in yonder box, which would kill even a jinni, I think, with its lurch and the creak of the poles. Let her lie in peace to-day, and she may live to see El Cûds. Hurry on, and she will die on the way! Allah knows that, for truth.”
There could be no further question as to where they should halt for the night. Alia was carried back to the litter, and they resumed their march down into El Ghûr.
They reached the plain a little before noon, and dismounted near a village of seeming ant hills at the foot of a thicket, on this side the ford. Here food was procured for the sick girl—curds and fruit, and rice boiled with the daintiest parts of a fowl—of which she took but a mouthful ere resigning the dish to Fatmeh. But she drank deep from a pitcher of cold pure water, and lay back, seeming refreshed. The women abode in the litter set down in the shade of some trees, the hovels of the village appearing to Shems-ud-dìn far too wretched to receive them.
The repast ended, Hassan and the rest crossed the river and strolled off in various directions. Only Shems-ud-dìn and Zeyd ebn Abbâs stayed with Mâs beside the litter. The last named busied himself in constructing a rough booth with boughs and reeds and grass, and garments borrowed from one and another. Shems-ud-dìn sat in a state between prayer and meditation, observed with reverence by his new disciple. The soothing voice of Fatmeh, the voice of a nursing mother lulling her babe to sleep, blent with the coo of doves among the trees. A knot of villagers watched from a distance, impressed by the stillness of the strange men.
At length, when shades grew long to eastward, and Mâs, having finished his work, had gone to bathe in the river, Zeyd ventured to say:
“Deign to teach me somewhat, O my master.”