As the day broke, Kásim volunteered to carry a message of capitulation to the savage army; and reposing full confidence in the white cloth waving in the hand of the veteran, each anxious eye was strained in the direction of his footsteps. Received in moody silence by the Mudaïto band, a ferocious savage was about to drive a spear-blade through his unflinching breast, when the son of the Sheikh bounded suddenly to his side, and warding off the descending shaft, seized the hand of the old man, kissed it with every reverence, and addressed a few words to the tribe. In days gone by the youth Boorhán had been saved under the creese by the son of Yemen, and gratitude, rarely found in the savage, now paid her outstanding debt.
The veteran’s overtures of surrender having been received, he turned again towards his comrades, but a fearful sight fell on his sickening gaze. Two large bodies of the enemy had in the interim stolen round the hill, and clustering upon the very edge, were already swarming unseen to the last attack. Vain were his frantic gestures to direct the attention of his doomed comrades to the coming storm; he was seized and pinioned in the iron grasp of a multitude, and the succeeding rush was as the burst of the overcharged thunder-cloud.
And feeble was the defence made by men weary, and thirsty, and unprepared. With an appalling whoop, the triumphant savages soon joined the ranks of their sheïkh, and not one turbaned head remained visible above the wide plain. All had found a gory pillow in a far distant land. Creese and matchlock, mingled together, plentifully strewed the ground; and clutched in the cold hand of each grim warrior, lay the long Arab sword, dripping to the hilt in the blood of the assailant.
The acacia still throws her scanty shade over the bones that whiten on the scene of this conflict. Although of the same persuasion as the invaders, the men of Aussa could neither forgive their most unprovoked attack, nor consign to a quiet resting-place the remains of the true believers. The severe loss they too had sustained, still keeps the wound festering, for well indeed in that fatal night had been upheld the character of the sturdy children of Yemen. Taken by surprise and at every disadvantage, each had fought on fiercely to the last; and although broken matchlocks and rent shields dangle in the mosques as trophies of their defeat, many a Mudaïto mother long bewailed the loss of a beloved son, and many a bereaved widow mourned the absence of her liege lord, who returned not from the valley of the deep waters of Aussa.
Volume One—Chapter Twenty Five.
Fiálu, a Den of Thieves in the Wóema territories. Barurúdda and Killúlloo.
After a march of three miles on the 22nd, over a stony table-land thickly strewed with the never-ending basaltic boulders, the caravan entered the territory of the Danákil tribe Wóema, under the uncle and father of Mohammad Ali. A desolate hollow passed on the way, which appeared in the rainy season to form an extensive pond, was enlivened by four bee-hive-shaped wigwams, placed as usual on the site where large hot stones were most abundant, and tenanted by goat-herds, whose numerous flocks were being driven forth to graze by the Bedouin females. Their supply of water is derived from a sequestered pool, occupying a deep narrow precipitous ravine, which abounds in the Hyrax, and boasts of a few trees not dissimilar from the Casuarina. Bearing the euphonous title of Korandúdda, this gully wound at the foot of the high terrace selected for the encampment—another right dreary plain, covered with volcanic pebbles, among which the dry yellow grass peeped out in scanty tufts.
No traveller through the bleak barren country of the Adaïel can fail to appreciate the simile of “the shadow of a rock in a weary land;” for a tree is indeed a rare phenomenon—and when a few leafless branches do greet the eye, they are studiously shunned, upon the same principle that induces the savage to eschew the immediate vicinity of water. A few straggling acacias occupied the valley of Fiáloo, half a mile to the southward, which is the usual encamping ground, and here were large herds of cattle, eccentrically marked and brindled, and glorying in superb horns raking gracefully from the brow. A fat ox was purchased without difficulty, together with a supply of fresh milk, which, if not improved by confinement in a greasy skin bag, proved nevertheless an extraordinary luxury.