Instantly the universal listlessness changed to bustle and excitement. The sleepers woke up, the lunch party forsook their dates and corn, the story-teller and his hearers started to their feet together, and all alike hurried forward to meet their strange visitor.
But to their unbounded amazement the strange visitor took no notice of them whatever beyond a slight bow and the usual "Peace be with you!" spoken in good Arabic, though with an unmistakably French accent. Stepping into the shade of the palms, he bent down to the stream, took a long draught of the cool clear water, and then seating himself upon the bank, took off his turban, and began to fan his hot face with a fallen palm leaf, as if wishing to show his coolness in a double sense.
The Arabs were completely taken aback. They had seen men look pale, and try to run away from them; and they had seen men look fierce, and rush at them pistol in hand; but a man who paid no attention to them at all, and who hardly seemed to know whether they were there or not, was a thing which they had never seen before, and they did not know what to make of it. In fact, like most men of their class, the moment they encountered a man whom they could not frighten, they at once began to be frightened themselves.
At length the chief, seeming to think himself bound to set an example of courage to his followers, walked right up to the stranger, while the rest approached more cautiously, very much as a man approaches a strange dog which may spring up and bite him at any moment.
"Peace be with thee, my brother!" said the chief, in a voice not quite so steady as it might have been.
"With thee be peace, oh, sheik [chief] of the children of the desert!" replied the unknown.
"What seeks the Frank [European] chief among the warriors of the tribe of Ben-Asyr?"
"I am a magician," answered the stranger, quietly.
The Arabs looked at each other with undisguised trepidation. A magician among them, and a Frank magician at that! Who could tell what he might do to them? For every Arab had heard the fame of the mighty sorcerers who could make wagons run without horses, ships go without sails, messages fly along a wire through the air swifter than an arrow, little scraps of paper serve as money, and other scraps of paper, no bigger than a true believer's turban, show the whereabouts of all the wells, rivers, hills, and caravan tracks, over an area of thousands of miles. Evidently this unknown gentleman was not a man to be trifled with.
"I am a magician," repeated the mysterious guest, before any one could speak in reply, "and I have come to see if in the tribe of Ben-Asyr there be another magician like myself, and to try my power against his."