Then Small Crisp Twigs, Little Bigger Than
Bodkins, Were Laid Athwart The Glowing Fire.
The swelling cheeks
of the muleteer, laid level with the earth, blew tenderly at first
and then more boldly upon the young flame, which was daintily
nursed and fed, and fed more plentifully when it gained good
strength.
At last a whole armful of dry bushes was piled up over
the fire, and presently, with a loud cheery crackling and
crackling, a royal tall blaze shot up from the earth and showed me
once more the shapes and faces of my men, and the dim outlines of
the horses and mules that stood grazing hard by.
My servants busied themselves in unpacking the baggage as though we
had arrived at an hotel - Shereef and his helpers unsaddled their
cattle. We had left Tiberias without the slightest idea that we
were to make our way to Jerusalem along the desolate side of the
Jordan, and my servants (generally provident in those matters) had
brought with them only, I think, some unleavened bread and a rocky
fragment of goat's milk cheese. These treasures were produced.
Tea and the contrivances for making it were always a standing part
of my baggage. My men gathered in circle round the fire. The
Nazarene was in a false position from having misled us so
strangely, and he would have shrunk back, poor devil, into the cold
and outer darkness, but I made him draw near and share the luxuries
of the night. 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.
The love of tea is a glad source of fellow-feeling between the
Englishman and the Asiatic. In Persia it is drunk by all, and
although it is a luxury that is rarely within the reach of the
Osmanlees, there are few of them who do not know and love the
blessed tchai. Our camp-kettle, filled from the brook, hummed
doubtfully for a while, then busily bubbled under the sidelong
glare of the flames; cups clinked and rattled; the fragrant steam
ascended, and soon this little circlet in the wilderness grew warm
and genial as my lady's drawing-room.
And after this there came the tchibouque - great comforter of those
that are hungry and wayworn. And it has this virtue - it helps to
destroy the gene and awkwardness which one sometimes feels at being
in company with one's dependents; for whilst the amber is at your
lips, there is nothing ungracious in your remaining silent, or
speaking pithily in short inter-whiff sentences. And for us that
night there was pleasant and plentiful matter of talk; for the
where we should be on the morrow, and the wherewithal we should be
fed, whether by some ford we should regain the western bank of
Jordan, or find bread and salt under the tents of a wandering
tribe, or whether we should fall into the hands of the Philistines,
and so come to see death - the last and greatest of all "the fine
sights" that there be - these were questionings not dull nor
wearisome to us, for we were all concerned in the answers. And it
was not an all-imagined morrow that we probed with our sharp
guesses, for the lights of those low Philistines, the men of the
caves, still hung over our heads, and we knew by their yells that
the fire of our bivouac had shown us.
At length we thought it well to seek for sleep. Our plans were
laid for keeping up a good watch through the night. My quilt and
my pelisse and my cloak were spread out so that I might lie
spokewise, with my feet towards the central fire. I wrapped my
limbs daintily round, and gave myself positive orders to sleep like
a veteran soldier. But I found that my attempt to sleep upon the
earth that God gave me was more new and strange than I had fancied
it. I had grown used to the scene which was before me whilst I was
sitting or reclining by the side of the fire, but now that I laid
myself down at length it was the deep black mystery of the heavens
that hung over my eyes - not an earthly thing in the way from my own
very forehead right up to the end of all space. I grew proud of my
boundless bedchamber. I might have "found sermons" in all this
greatness (if I had I should surely have slept), but such was not
then my way.
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