My Quilt And My Pelisse Were Spread, And The Rest Of
My Party Had All Their Capotes Or Pelisses, Or Robes Of Some Sort,
Which Furnished Their Couches.
The men gathered in circle, some
kneeling, some sitting, some lying reclined around our common
hearth.
Sometimes on one, sometimes on another, the flickering
light would glare more fiercely. Sometimes it was the good Shereef
that seemed the foremost, as he sat with venerable beard the image
of manly piety - unknowing of all geography, unknowing where he was
or whither he might go, but trusting in the goodness of God and the
clinching power of fate and the good star of the Englishman.
Sometimes, like marble, the classic face of the Greek Mysseri would
catch the sudden light, and then again by turns the ever-perturbed
Dthemetri, with his old Chinaman's eye and bristling, terrier-like
moustache, shone forth illustrious.
I always liked the men who attended me on these Eastern travels,
for they were all of them brave, cheery-hearted fellows; and
although their following my career brought upon them a pretty large
share of those toils and hardships which are so much more amusing
to gentlemen than to servants, yet not one of them ever uttered or
hinted a syllable of complaint, or even affected to put on an air
of resignation. I always liked them, but never perhaps so much as
when they were thus grouped together under the light of the bivouac
fire. I felt towards them as my comrades rather than as my
servants, and took delight in breaking bread with them, and merrily
passing the cup.
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