PART III. The blank horizon mocks my eye And thronging reasons urge, each one Yet still I hope, though reason none "BUT I must hasten with my tale," continued Hermann, looking up as he spoke at the moon, which now rose high and bright above the mast-head, announcing that midnight had passed, while the breeze freshened, and the ship, slightly plunging, drove on; "there is not much more to tell. When, after several days of total unconsciousness, I came to myself, I was in a small low room, or rather house, for the flat earth-roof above it covered only one apart ment. The floor was earth also, and a narrow mattress stretched on it formed my bed; the walls were quite bare; an open, but now unkindled fireplace occupied one end of the oblong space; over my head were the naked rafters, blackened with the smoke of wintertime. By my side, watching me as carefully as though I had been a sick child or brother of his, sat Aman, the negro who had rendered me such useful service at Mardeen. An old woman, bent and grey, in very dirty and tattered clothes, and generally with a housebroom, a pitcher, a copper-tray, or some suchlike article of domestic usage in her hand, kept coming in and going out every halfhour she was the mistress of the cottage, and, her guests excepted, its sole occupant. Such, on my first waking, were the objects around me. "It was some time before I understood, or even cared to understand, where I was, or how. Excessive weakness had deprived me not only of the power to ask many questions, but even of the wish to ask them. The very name of Ras'-el-'Eyn surprised me at first; I recollected no reason for my being there. But the fever had left me; hour by hour mind and body regained strength, and Aman, who had no notion that silence could be conducive to convalescence, was always ready enough to talk. "Medicine of course there was and had been none; a village hakeem1 who occasionally officiated in the smearing of pitch or yellowarsenic on mangy camels, shaved heads, and besides a much-worn razor of excessive sharpness, had about him a small pointed clasp-knife for surgical uses, had twice bled me copiously 1 Barber-surgeon. the very day of my arrival; but, fortunately for me, had not come near me since: the blackness of the blood having convinced him that even his skill could not avail. So Aman had summoned a poor, lean, old sheykh, the Imam,1 of the hamlet, who from time to time came and read, with many errors of grammar and some of pronunciation, the Kura'n over me. The old man continued his visits after I had entered on the recovery of which he gave the main credit, next after God, to the efficacy of his readings; and I found him simplehearted, conversable, and kind. 2 "More beneficial however than any directly curative measures of hakeem or Karee,'' had been the nursing given me by Aman, who, like most of his complexion, was a first 1 Prayer-reader or precentor; sometimes very erroneously rendered "priest." 2 Koran-reader. rate hand in that respect. Nothing had been left undone; indeed what fault there might be, had been more in excess than defect: as, for instance, his reiterated invitations to me to eat, on the very first symptom of my being able to do so. And if my diet (mostly barghol,1 and butter, for milk was strictly forbidden) had not been very choice, the absence of all appetite, and consequently of feeding, during the height of the fever, and its redoubled vigour and keenness when it at last returned, rendered it at the one period harmless, and at the other healthful. "But the best remedy of all was the lifegiving briskness of the air, the air of the desert-border, scarcely inferior in purity to that of the desert itself. Uncontaminated even by the dirt of the village, it penetrated, 1 Half-roasted corn, coarsely ground, and boiled with grease, a favourite peasant dish in these parts. |