British -- Palestine -- Fiction; Disguise -- Fiction; Short stories; Travel -- Fiction
I cannot describe at length the whole of our journey from thence to our
tents at Jericho, nor back to Jerusalem, nor even from Jerusalem to
Jaffa. At Jericho we did sleep in tents, paying so much per night,
according to the tariff. We wandered out at night, and drank coffee with
a family of Arabs in the desert, sitting in a ring round their
coffee-kettle. And we saw a Turkish soldier punished with the
bastinado,—a sight which did not do me any good, and which made Smith
very sick. Indeed after the first blow he walked away. Jericho is a
remarkable spot in that pilgrim week, and I wish I had space to describe
it. But I have not, for I must hurry on, back to Jerusalem and thence to
Jaffa. I had much to tell also of those Bedouins; how they were
essentially true to us, but teased us almost to frenzy by their continual
begging. They begged for our food and our drink, for our cigars and our
gunpowder, for the clothes off our backs, and the handkerchiefs out of
our pockets. As to gunpowder I had none to give them, for my charges
were all made up in cartridges; and I learned that the guns behind their
backs were a mere pretence, for they had not a grain of powder among
them.
We slept one night in Jerusalem, and started early on the following
morning. Smith came to my hotel so that we might be ready together for
the move. We still carried with us Joseph and the mucherry-boy; but for
our Bedouins, who had duly received their forty shillings a piece, we had
no further use. On our road down to Jerusalem we had much chat together,
but only one adventure. Those pilgrims, of whom I have spoken, journey
to Jerusalem in the greatest number by the route which we were now taking
from it, and they come in long droves, reaching Jaffa in crowds by the
French and Austrian steamers from Smyrna, Damascus, and Constantinople.
As their number confers security in that somewhat insecure country, many
travellers from the west of Europe make arrangements to travel with them.
On our way down we met the last of these caravans for the year, and we
were passing it for more than two hours. On this occasion I rode first,
and Smith was immediately behind me; but of a sudden I observed him to
wheel his horse round, and to clamber downwards among bushes and stones
towards a river that ran below us. “Hallo, Smith,” I cried, “you will
destroy your horse, and yourself too.” But he would not answer me, and
all I could do was to draw up in the path and wait. My confusion was
made the worse, as at that moment a long string of pilgrims was passing
by. “Good morning, sir,” said an old man to me in good English. I
looked up as I answered him, and saw a grey-haired gentleman, of very
solemn and sad aspect. He might be seventy years of age, and I could see
that he was attended by three or four servants. I shall never forget the
severe and sorrowful expression of his eyes, over which his heavy
eyebrows hung low. “Are there many English in Jerusalem?” he asked. “A
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