“And why not?” replied Hassan. “It is true that fools have made the horse foolish and unruly, but Allah made him to carry a rider. If the Hadji will give me leave, Inshallah! I will ride him now.”
“You have my leave,” said the merchant, “but run no risk of your life and limbs, my son.”
Hassan smiled, and going quietly forward, took the end of the halter from the nearest sàis, desiring the other at the same time to let go and leave him alone. He then approached the colt, looking steadfastly into its eye, and muttering some of the low guttural sounds with which the Bedouin Arabs coax and caress a refractory horse.
They seemed, however, to have no effect in this instance, for the colt continued to back, occasionally striking at Hassan with its forefeet. Never losing his temper, nor for an instant taking his eye off that of the colt, he followed its retrograde movement, gradually shortening the halter, and narrowly escaped, once or twice, the blows aimed at him by its forefeet.
At length the opportunity for which he had long been watching occurred. As the horse tried to turn its flanks and lash at him with its hind-feet, in a second, and with a single bound, he was on its back. It was in vain that the infuriated animal reared, plunged, and threw itself into every contortion to unhorse its rider. The more it bounded and snorted under him, the more proudly did his eye and his breast dilate. In the midst of all these bricks and houses he was again at home.
Shaking his right hand on high, as if he held a lance, and shouting aloud to give utterance to the boisterous joy within him, he dashed his heels into the ribs of the horse, and having taken it at full speed twice round the Meidàn, brought it back trembling in every joint from fear, surprise, and excitement. “Mashallah!” “Aferin!” (Bravo! bravo!) burst from every lip in the group. “A Rustum,” cried old Mohammed Aga, delighted at his young friend’s triumph.
Hassan seemed, however, of opinion that the lesson was not complete—the horse was mastered, but not yet quieted. So he turned it round, and once more took it at full speed to the farthest end of the Meidàn; then leaning forward, patted its neck, played with its ears, and spoke to it kind and gentle words, as if it could understand him. The subdued animal appeared indeed to do so, for its violence had disappeared as if by magic, and when he took it back to the side of the merchant, it stood there seemingly as pleased as any one of the party.
“I would give that imp of Satan twenty purses a-year to be my partner,” muttered the dellâl inaudibly to himself, as he turned away and withdrew with the two rejected greys.
The merchant returned to his house in high spirits, and willingly acceded to Hassan’s request that he should have sole charge of the new purchase. Hassan led the horse into the stable, fed and groomed it with his own hands, and in the course of a few days they were the best friends imaginable.
These events created no little sensation in Alexandria, and Hassan’s skill, courage, and his remarkable beauty of form and feature were the general subject of conversation among those who had witnessed the merchant’s purchase of the restive horse. All manner of speculations were afloat as to who or whence he was, for those who had most nearly observed him declared that, although his dress and language proclaimed the Bedouin Arab, his features seemed to be those of a Georgian or some northern race.