Before Long There Was A Particle Of Dry Fibre Or
Leaf That Kindled To A Tiny Flame; Then Another Was Lit From That,
And Then Another.
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.
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