We Spent Our _Soiree_ Alternately Bepreaching The Gallas, "Chaffing" Mad
Said, Who, Despite His Seventy Years, Was A Hale Old Bedouin, With A Salt
And Sullen Repartee, And Quarrelling With The Slave-Girls.
Berille the
loud-lunged, or Aminah the pert, would insist upon extinguishing the fat-
fed lamp long ere bed-
Time, or would enter the room singing, laughing,
dancing, and clapping a measure with their palms, when, stoutly aided by
old Sultan, who shrieked like a hyaena on these occasions, we ejected her
in extreme indignation. All then was silence without: not so--alas!--
within. Mad Said snored fearfully, and Abtidon chatted half the night with
some Bedouin friend, who had dropped in to supper. On our hard couches we
did not enjoy either the _noctes_ or the _coenoe deorum_.
The even tenor of such days was varied by a perpetual reference to the
rosary, consulting soothsayers, and listening to reports and rumours
brought to us by the Somal in such profusion that we all sighed for a
discontinuance. The Gerad Mohammed, excited by the Habr Awal, was curious
in his inquiries concerning me: the astute Senior had heard of our leaving
the End of Time with the Gerad Adan, and his mind fell into the fancy that
we were transacting some business for the Hajj Sharmarkay, the popular
bugbear of Harar. Our fate was probably decided by the arrival of a youth
of the Ayyal Gedid clan, who reported that three brothers had landed in
the Somali country, that two of them were anxiously awaiting at Berberah
the return of the third from Harar, and that, though dressed like Moslems,
they were really Englishmen in government employ.
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