Part 39 (1/2)
”Zeyn al-Din, we have chosen for head man Abu al-Salam.”
”Allah with you! I should say you had chosen well. I have twelve camels,” said Zeyn al-Din. ”I make another caravan! Mansur, Omar, and Melec, draw you forth my camels and mules!”
With a weaker man there might have been interference, stoppage. But Zeyn's ma.s.s and force acquired clear s.p.a.ce for his own movements. He made his caravan. He had with him so many men. Three of these stood by him; the others cowered into the great caravan, into the shadow of Abu al-Salam.
Zeyn threw a withering look. ”Oh, precious is the skin!”
The big infidel came to him. ”Zeyn al-Din, I do not want all this peril for me. I have ridden away alone before to-day. Now I shall go in that direction, and I shall find a garden.”
”Perhaps we shall find it,” said Zeyn. ”Does any other go with my caravan?”
It seemed that Ali the Wanderer went, and the dervish Abdallah....
There was more ado, but at last the caravan parted.... The great one, the long string of beads, drew with slow toil across the waste, along the old track. The very small one, the tiny string of beads, departed at right angles. s.p.a.ce grew between them. The dervish Abdallah turned upon his camel.
”It seems that we part. But, O Allah! around 'We part' is drawn 'We are together!'”
Zeyn al-Din made a gesture of a.s.sent. ”O I shall meet in bazaars Abu al-Salam! 'Ha! Zeyn al-Din!'--'Ha! Abu al-Salam!'”
The sun sank lower. The vastly larger caravan drew away, drew away, over the desert rim. Between the two was now a sea of desert waves.
Where the great string of camels, the a.s.ses, the riders, the men could be seen, all were like little figures cut from dark paper, drawn by some invisible finger, slowly, slowly across a wide floor. Before long there were only dots, far in the distance. Around Zeyn al-Din's caravan swept a great solitude.
”Halt!” said Zeyn. ”Now they observe us no longer, and this is what we do!”
All the merchant lading was taken from the camels. The bales of wealth strewed the sand. ”Wealth is a comfortable garment,” said Zeyn, ”but life is a richer yet! That which gathers wealth is wealth. Now we shall go thrice as fast as Abu al-Salam!”
”Far over there,” said Ali the Wanderer, and nodded his head toward the quarter, ”is the small oasis called the Garland.”
”I have heard of it, though I have not been there,” answered Zeyn.
”Well, we shall not rest to-night; we shall ride!”
They rode in the desert beneath the stars, going fast, camels and horses, unenc.u.mbered by bales and packs unwieldy and heavy. But there were guarded, as though they were a train of the costliest merchandise, the shrunken water-skins....
The laird of Glenfernie, riding in silence by Zeyn al-Din, whom he had thanked once with emphasis, and then had accepted as he himself was accepted, looked now at the desert and now at the stars and now at past things. A year and more--he had been a year and more in the East.
If you had it in you to grow, the East was good growing-ground.... He looked toward the stars beneath which lay Scotland.
The night pa.s.sed. The yellow dawn came up, the sun and the heat of day. And they must still press on.... At last the horses could not do that. At eve they shot the horses, having no water for them. They went on upon camels. Great suffering came upon them. They went stoically, the Arabs and the Scot. The eternal waste, the sand, the arrows of the sun.... The most of the camels died. Day and night and morn, and, almost dead themselves, the men saw upon the verge the palms of the desert oasis called the Garland.
Seven men dwelt seven days in the Garland. Uninhabited it stood, a spring, date-palms, lesser verdure, a few birds and small beasts and winged insects. It was an emerald set in ashy gold.
The dervish Abdallah sat in contemplation under a palm. Ali the Wanderer lay and dreamed. Zeyn al-Din and his men, Mansur, Omar, and Melec, were as active as time and place admitted. The camels tasted rich repose. Day went by in dry light, in a pleasant rustling and waving of palm fronds. Night sprang in stars.h.i.+ne, wonderful soft lamps...o...b..d in a blue vault. Presently was born and grew a white moon.
Alexander Jardine, standing at the edge of the emerald, watched it. He could not sleep. The first nights in the Garland he with the others had slept profoundly. But now there was recuperation, strength again.
Around swept the circle of the desert. Above him he saw Canopus.
He ceased to look directly at the moon, or the desert, or Canopus. He stretched himself upon the clear sand and was back in the inner vast that searched for the upper vast. Since the gra.s.ses of the Campagna there had been a long search, and his bark had encountered many a wind, head winds and favoring winds, and had beaten from coast to coast.
”O G.o.d, for the open, divine sea and Wisdom the compa.s.s--”