We were then led on foot quite to the other side of the town, where there was a 'summer-house' partly constructed and partly furnished, the builders were on one side and we on the other. We had a room with a carpet, a settee, and two little tables, and set up our own beds and chairs. We had rather a good dinner served by an Indian butler who could talk English, so we had hopes of being very comfortable. The summer-house at that time consisted of two very long rooms back to back, and several rooms at each end projecting so as to form a verandah for each of the long rooms. The back one was quite unfinished then, and upstairs there were only rudimentary walls traced out, three or four feet high. There was a great square wall surrounding a piece of desert in process of being transformed into a garden; the sea sand came quite up to the wall. We found the heat intense, so we had our tent somehow fastened up on the roof to sleep. All the sides had to be tied up for coolness, but the defences against mosquitoes and fleas were very stifling. Goats had been kept on the roof, and hence the fleas. We could only stay there till sunrise, and then had to betake ourselves to our suffocating room, to find the flies wide awake. We had to use our mosquito curtains by day on their account. In Shibahm the mosquitoes are awake by day only, and at Aden both by day and night. Imam Sharif found great favour in the eyes of the two sultans, who asked him to supper every day. The conversations he had with them about us, and the letters they had received from their cousin at Shibahm, did us far more good than the letter from the wali of Aden. They said this gave them no idea other than that my husband was 'only a merchant' or a person of that rank. They were very hospitable to us while we were in their town. They examined into our complaints with regard to the treatment we had experienced on our journey. Mohammad, who had shot at us, and Ali, the one who had extorted the money from us, were both imprisoned, and this money was made to pay for our last two days' journey. Talib was forced to repay the thirty dollars and sent to summon the heads of those villages which had fired upon us, his sword being taken from him as a disgrace, and all were to wait in Sheher, till after Ramadan was over, to be judged. This, of course, was pleasing to us; however, no money could repay us for the anxiety of this journey under the protection of the Jabberi, and we considered it as quite the worst experience we had ever undergone in the course of any of our travels. On reflection we could attribute these troubles neither to any indiscretion on our part, nor to neglect of care on the part of the sultan of Shibahm.