On resuming our journey, the threatening storm-clouds overhead dissolved in a shower of rain which drenched us to the skin. More impatient than ever to find Seyyid ’Alí and my Persian friends, I bade the Malay and Indian wayfarers a hasty farewell, then, urging my mule into a quick ambling pace, was soon far in advance of their caravan. The road is very narrow at Alemeyn, but it widens considerably, as, taking a sudden bend from the east to the north-north-east, it approaches the central broadway of the encampment. This thoroughfare was turned into a bustling open-air bazaar. Coffee-booths were erected at intervals of every twenty or thirty yards, and at these places the crowd was thickest, and blazing torches impregnated the air with smoke and the stench of noisome oil. It is customary to keep awake throughout the hours of this night, praying and reading the Kurán; and maybe the practice was honoured in the observance by many a pious pilgrim within the seclusion of his tent; but, in this gadabout centre of uproar and confusion, the vigil was passed in no such devotional mood. Eating and drinking took the place of religious exercises. Stories were told to the bubbling of the water-pipe; love songs were intoned under the journeying moon; and pilgrims, whose minds were sharpened with long brooding over metaphysical conundrums, could yet find the keenest zest in bartering noisily over the purchase of a melon. It passed through my mind that here, if anywhere, I should be likely to happen upon Seyyid ’Alí, for his pleasure-loving disposition, as I shrewdly guessed, would be irresistibly attracted to where it could be best satisfied and displayed. And in this expectation I gave my mule in charge of a beggar, and, having ordered a cup of coffee at a refreshment stall, sat down on a stool to keep watch. I had not been waiting more than a quarter of an hour when I saw Sheykh Eissa come riding towards me. The “rose of my heart bloomed,” and I leaped to my feet with joy, calling him by his name. At last his eyes met mine, and in another moment he was at my side. “Sir,” he said, with a deep salaam; “Seyyid ’Alí is looking for you _dar-beh-dar_--from door to door. He has just gone down the road with our _moghavem_, and one of our servants, and a Bedouin driver, to see if he can find you. If you had bought one of my talismans, you would not have lost yourself in the crowd.” “My friend,” I replied, “you will remember the story of the Slave in Sa’adi’s book of the _Rose Garden_. When he was on board ship he cried night and day from fear of the sea. Then Fate threw him overboard that he might appreciate the safety of the ship, and be thankful to be rescued and set on board again. I have learned the same lesson on the journey from Mina to Arafat. There is no condition in life so miserable but it may be rendered almost pleasant, in retrospect, by a more wretched one still.”