CHAPTER X ARAFAT DAY: DAYBREAK Pop, pop, pop! I lay between sleeping and waking, and wondered what the noise could be. Bang, bang, bang! And again, bang, bang! I awoke with a start--surprised to find myself wide awake; but an hour’s sleep is not long enough to stupify a man. The reports grew louder, and the dogs began to bark from every corner of the encampment. “Come hither to prayers,” sang out the muezzins; “devotion is better than sleep.” By that time every pilgrim was up and stirring. Wheuf! the air of the false dawn, how chill it was! I summoned a servant, telling him to light a fire outside the tent; other pilgrims followed my example; and soon the hissing samovar gave promise of a cup of tea. The eastern horizon, in the meantime, was growing redder and still more red; and the pilgrims, having performed their ablutions and said their prayers, began to intone the Talbiyah and the Tahlil, pouring out their supplications to God and their belief in His unity, in a wailing lilt of entreaty and contrition. Others stood in circles, beating their breasts and singing the Labbaik. It was a scene of enthusiasm impossible to describe. Rap-tap-tap, tap-rap-rap, floated on the air: it was the sentinels beating their drums to salute the break of day. Guns fired incessantly on the hills and in the valley and on the plain. And now the hawkers and the worshippers, the water-carriers and the paupers, the hungry and the ascetic, all began to shout together. “Sweet water refreshes the soul,” cried the water-carriers; “drink of the sacred water of Ainé-Zobeideh.” “Give in the name of Allah,” whined the beggars; “my living is in the gift of Allah. Are ye not the creatures of Allah? Yá-Allah, yá-Allah!” “Light the fire and fill the cup,” said a Persian officer, in his eagerness to break his fast. “And don’t forget to ‘fatten’ the water-pipe,” added his companion. “And you shall ‘dig up its grandfather’ [that is, be the last to smoke it as it passes from mouth to mouth], my friend,” said the officer, smiling. When the sun came up on us, I saw Sheykh Eissa for the first time that morning; he was standing at a distance of some yards, talking to Seyyid ’Alí, whose handsome face shone with its usual expression of light-hearted amusement. The two men bowed to me reverentially, their hands folded on their breasts. “Look, yá-Moulai,” said Seyyid ’Alí, “the top of the Mountain of Mercy is so full of tents and animals and men, that the poor jinns, to say nothing of the angels,----” “Now, don’t talk blasphemy, my friend,” interrupted a priest called Mullá Ahmad. “Do you think there is no room left for the angels?” “God forbid!” cried Seyyid ’Alí, raising his eyes aloft. “They can perch on the tent-poles, or on the camel-saddles.” “Kofre-negueíd (don’t blaspheme)!” yelled the Mullá. “Don’t you know that the angels are transparent? But for that the sun would be eclipsed, so dense is the choir of angels in the circumambient air.”