‘Only too many, alas.’
‘Apes?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Scorpions?’
‘Under every flat stone.’
‘Where is the gentleman’s home?’ asked the indignant guide.
‘Spain.’
‘Ah, Spain! My fourth great grandfather came from Spain, from a little village just outside Cordova. He had nearly sixteen acres of watered land and several date-palms: a second paradise.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Stephen, ‘and in Cordova itself the mosque of Abd-ar-Rahman still stands, the glory of the western world.’
‘Tomorrow, sir,’ said the guide, leaning forward and speaking across Jacob, ‘I hope to show you a lion or a leopard - perhaps with God’s blessing both: or at least their tracks by the stream Arpad that flows into the Shatt, where the Dey is sure to have his quarters.’
‘We must be getting along,’ said Jacob. ‘The sun is very near the mountain-tops.’
They rejoined their company and, when the camels’ reluctance to get up could be overcome, they moved on, following the now quite well beaten track up and over a cold pass and down to Khadna and its fields, the last village before the oasis, then the Shatt and the wilderness. Dusk was falling before they reached it and they hardly noticed the blue-clad figure of a little girl waiting outside the thorn-hedge; but clearly she could see them, and as they came out on to the straight she called out, ‘Sara!’
At this a tall, gaunt camel, a particularly ugly, awkward and ill-tempered creature that had carried Stephen over a broad stretch of shale and sand, broke into a lumbering run and on reaching the child lowered its great head to be embraced. These were camels that belonged to the village and they moved off to their usual place even before their trifling return-loads were unstrapped, while the guards and attendants set up tents. Stephen and Jacob were taken to the chief man’s house, where they were regaled with coffee and biscuits sopped in warm honey, extremely difficult to keep from dripping on to the beautiful rugs upon which they sat.
Jacob was perfectly at home; he spoke for the right length of time, drank the proper number of minute cups, and distributed the customary little presents, blessing the house as he left it, followed by Stephen. As they crossed the dark enclosure to their tent they heard a hyena, not without satisfaction. ‘I used to imitate them when I was a boy,’ said Jacob. ‘And sometimes they would answer.’
The next day was hard going, up and down, but very much more of the up, more and more stony and barren: quite often they had to lead their horses. Now there were more unfamiliar plants, a wheatear that Stephen could not certainly identify, some tortoises, and a surprising number of birds of prey, shrikes and the smaller falcons, almost one to every moderate bush or tree in an exceptionally desolate region.
At the top of this barren rise, while the Turks made a fire for their coffee, Stephen watched a brown-necked African raven fly right across the vast pure expanse of sky, talking in its harsh deep voice all the way, addressing his mate at least a mile ahead. ‘That is a bird I have always wished to see,’ he said to the guide, ‘a bird that does not exist in Spain.’ This pleased the guide more than Stephen had expected, and he led his charges fifty yards or so along the track to a point where the rock tell precipitously and the path wound down and down to a dry valley with one green spot in it - an oasis with a solitary spring that never spread beyond those limits. Beyond the dry valley the ground rose again, yet beyond it and to the left there shone a fine great sheet of water, the Shatt el Khadna, fed by a stream that could just be made out on the right, before the mountain hid it.
‘Right down at the bottom, before the flat, do you see a horseman?’ asked Stephen, reaching for his little telescope. ‘Is he not riding for a fall?’
‘It is Hafiz, on his sure-footed mare,’ said Jacob. ‘I sent him forward to give the Vizier word of our coming, while you were gazing at your raven. It is a usual civility in these parts.’
‘Well, God speed him,’ said Stephen. ‘I would not go down that slope at such a pace, unless I were riding Pegasus.’
‘I have been thinking,’ said Jacob, about a furlong later, when the going was not quite so anxious and the oasis was perceptibly nearer, ‘I have been thinking...’
‘...that we are on limestone now, with a change in vegetation - the thyme, the entirely different cistus?’
‘Certainly. But it also occurred to me that it might be better if I appeared as a mere dragoman. Since the Vizier is perfectly fluent in French, there is no need for my presence; and you would
