Altogether they numbered thirteen persons, the musicians being men, and the singers and dancers being the Flowers of Delight of Mecca. First came a drummer, beating intermittently, but at regular intervals, on a curiously shaped double drum, not unlike a huge orange cut in two, and so joined that each part came under each hand. It is called _nagghareh_ by the Persians, and gave forth a shrill, discordant noise, that not even the big egg-shaped drum (Tabl), which was beaten energetically with two long drum-sticks by the man that followed, could drown or materially modify. Behind these drummers rode two women singers, whose voices were as the tinkling of the heavy bangles with which their arms and ankles were laden. Next in the line of march was a young man with a withered face, blowing incessantly on an instrument called _surná_, that bears a resemblance, in form and also in tone, to a Scotch bagpipe. After him, a couple of dancing girls, with streaming ringlets, and clad in silk dresses of many colours, burst into rippling laughter at every second, partly because it was their business to be merry-hearted, and partly because they found food for mirth in the members of our caravan. But when they saw the number of our dead--and our Indian contingent had added not less than seven to our funeral train--their lively amusement was stilled, and one of them said to me, on passing by: “Were I in your place, O Haji, I should bury the corpse, and offer the seat it occupies to yonder torch-bearer, who seems to stand in sore need of succour.” “The wishes of the dead must be respected, O Compassionate Heart,” I replied; “and as for the torch-bearer, nothing would persuade him to renounce his task of self-sacrifice. He has taken a vow to perform the pilgrimage on foot, and he comes from a far distant country.” The answer she returned was lost in the ear-piercing squeak of a _kerná_--a woeful wind instrument at least four feet in length--and in the scarcely less strident din of a third tom-tom. The rear was brought up by two men--the one thumbed a stringed _rubáb_, a Bedouin instrument admirably adapted to the music of the wastes; while the other, the jester of the band, had powdered his face with barley flour, and wore a tall head-gear of white lambskin, and a long cloak of vari-coloured silk. Casting a quizzical eye on our effects, and one look in particular on my mule with its dual burden of the dead and the dying, he remarked, in an audible tone, imitating the Indian accent: “_Wah, wah, wah! Ahlul-Jehannum!_ Bah, what a hell party!”--an expression that, in face of the open self-sufficiency of the majority among us, made me roar with laughter. My companions, refraining from retaliation in kind, contented themselves with repeating the word _Astaghferallah_ until their tormentor had passed out of hearing. [Illustration: THE MUSICIAN CAMEL CAVALCADE.]