The dinner was now wound up with coffee and cigarettes—not the least pleasing part to me—and a hubbub of chatting. But as the evening shadows were already creeping amongst the palms outside, and El Wasta—my harbor of refuge for the night—was yet some distance off, I begged my kind host's permission to continue my way. His Arab courtesy, however, was not to be hindered even here, and he insisted upon accompanying me to the confines of his village fields, where with many pretty excuses for his years and duties he at last consented to bid me farewell.
He left me to the care of "two of his young men," as he called them, charging them to take me safely to El Wasta, the palms of which we could see far down the river standing out against the evening sky.
Of the many pleasant mental photographs which I have of travel, that simple dinner with my kind shaykh of the unknown village holds a prominent tablet to itself. I had asked him for his ancient and time-worn tobacco-pouch when bidding farewell, that I might have the excuse of giving him mine in exchange, which at least had the advantage to an Eastern eye of plenty of color and bright metal. A fellow traveller whose wanderings have since led him by my steps of that day, tells me he found the old shaykh still owning that poor gift of mine, and that he keeps strange talismans and Koranic-script in its recesses as an infallible preventive against the dangers of ophthalmia, and to guard against his pigeon homes blowing down.
VIII.
A BIRTHDAY PARTY IN THE WEST INDIES.
WE were Americans and lived on one of the West India islands. Which one I shall not say; you may guess from the hints I give you.
It belonged to Denmark, and was inhabited by people of almost every nation, for the city was a busy trading place and famous sea-port.
This variety of nationalities is an advantage, or a disadvantage, just as you choose to think. To us children it was the most delightful thing in the world—why, we saw a Malay sailor once; but an English novelist, who wrote many books, visited our island, and said in a contemptuous way that it was "a Dano-Hispano-Yankee Doodle-niggery place." This was in the book he published about the West Indies and the Spanish Main. We children never forgave that remark.