I Really Never Met With Such Hard-Hearted,
Unfeeling Wretches; They Unanimously Declared That They Did Not Know The
Man, And Were Not Bound To Incur Any Expense On His Account.
The camels
were loaded; they had all mounted, and the leader was on the point of
starting, when the miserable object of the dispute broke out in loud
lamentations.
I had waited for this moment. Relying on the respect I
enjoyed in the caravan from being supposed a hadjy in some measure
attached to Mohammed Aly's army, and the good-will of our guides, which
I had cultivated by distributing victuals liberally amongst them ever
since we left Mekka, I seized the leader's camel, made it couch down,
and exclaimed, that the
[p.303] caravan should not proceed till the man was released. I then
went from load to load, and partly by imprecating curses on the Malays
and their women, and partly by collaring some of them, I took from every
one of their camels twenty paras, (about three pence,) and, after a long
contest, made up the twenty piastres. This sum I carried to the Bedouins
who had remained at a distance with their prisoner, and representing to
them his forlorn state, and appealing to the honour of their tribe,
induced them to take ten piastres. According to true Turkish maxims, I
should have pocketed the other ten, as a compensation for my trouble; I,
however, gave them to the poor Malay, to the infinite mortification of
his countrymen.
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Page 425 of 669
Words from 115945 to 116196
of 182297
