CHAPTER XXI
SHIRAZ THE RUG-MERCHANT
The wayfarers came to a halt before the Wanderers' Gate. The wall of the city stood before them, and stretched away to a great distance on either hand. People were going in and out at the gate; some on foot, driving donkeys before them, some on horseback, some in wagons, and all brisk and talkative. The Third Vice-President received a respectful greeting from several of those on horseback. He turned to his companions with a wave of the hand, and said:
"The Wanderers' Bazaar!"
On each side of the open gate, at the foot of the high thick wall, was what appeared to be a fair. As far as the eye could see, the base of the wall was lined with booths, each with an awning over it from the wall behind, gaily striped in orange and blue and yellow and brown. In these booths was spread out in disorderly profusion a mass of merchandise of all kinds; gold and silver ornaments, brass and copper vessels, rugs and carpets, spectacles and clocks, toys and games, herbs and ointments, fish-nets and sailors' instruments, canes and crutches, ribbons and laces, perfumery, precious stones—things innumerable; even parrots and monkeys, in cages; in one booth was a potter, twirling his potter's wheel; in another a fortune-teller, laying little sticks down in curious patterns on his table; in another a man pasting on cards bits of coloured feathers, in the form of tiny birds and fowls, most life-like;
in another a glass-blower, delicately twining a thread of spun glass for the rigging of a ship; in another a man sitting on a rug with a snake before him, whose flat head stood stiffly up from his coil, and waved a little to the motion of his master's finger; in another, a man was bending over a flower-pot with a wand in his hand, and as he moved the wand a stalk grew from the pot and at its end a bud appeared and unfolded into a flower before the very eyes of his audience; in another a great ape was marking down figures with chalk as his master called them; in another a shuttle was weaving back and forth in a loom; there seemed to be no end to the curious and diverting things to be seen in those booths. The people in them were apparently of all the nations of the earth; there were brown men and yellow men and black men, as well as white; men with slant eyes, with round eyes, with flat noses, with beak-noses, with wooly hair, with straight hair; there were turbans, and fezzes, and hoods, and white gowns, and coloured robes, and velvet jackets, and cotton blouses; and from all the venders rose such a hubbub as Freddie had never in his life heard before, except once in the Gaunt Street Theatre at home. A lively crowd chaffered with the venders and walked in the paved street before their booths. It was a scene full of life and colour, and Freddie was transported with delight.
"Oh!" he said, "can't we get down here and see all those sights? I should like to spend the whole day here!"
"We've got other fish to fry just now, Freddie," said Toby. "We'll have to see this some other time."
"It is a precious thought," said the Sly Old Fox, "that we have here with us on our mules enough treasure to buy this whole bazaar, if we wished to do it. It is a beautiful thought."