We Took With Us
The Stores Necessary, For Though Our Rais Had Promised To Anchor Under
Jabal Hassani That Evening, No One Believed Him.
We sailed among ledges
of rock, golden sands, green weeds, and in some places through yellow
lines of what appeared to me at a distance foam after a storm.
All day
a sailor sat upon the masthead, looking at the water, which was
transparent as blue glass, and shouting out the direction. This
precaution was somewhat stultified by the roar of voices, which never
[p.218] failed to mingle with the warning, but we wore every half hour,
and we did not run aground. About midday we passed by Shaykh Hasan
al-Marabit's tomb. It is the usual domed and whitewashed building,
surrounded by the hovels of its guardians, standing upon a low flat
island of yellow rock, vividly reminding me of certain scenes in Sind.
Its dreary position attracts to it the attention of passing travellers;
the dead saint has a prayer and a Fatihah for the good of his soul, and
the live sinner wends his way with religious refreshment.
Near sunset the wind came on to blow freshly, and we cast anchor
together with the Persian pilgrims upon a rock. This was one of the
celebrated coral reefs of the Red Sea, and the sight justified
Forskal's emphatic description-luxus lususque naturae. It was a huge
ledge or platform rising but little above the level of the deep; the
water-side was perpendicular as the wall of a fort; and, whilst a
frigate might have floated within a yard of it, every ripple dashed
over the reef, replenishing the little basins and hollows in the
surface.
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