_The Adventure into the Desert_
Two pack-horses were stamping their hoofs impatiently outside a house in Jerusalem in the early morning a week or two before Christmas.[65]
Inside the house a man was saying good-bye to his wife and his three children. He was dressed as an Arab, with a long scarf wrapped about his head and on the top the black rope of twisted goats" hair that the Arab puts on when he becomes a man.
"Will you be long, Father?" asked his little four-year-old boy.
The father could not answer, for he was going out from Jerusalem for hundreds of miles into the sun and the thirst of the desert, to the land of the fiercest Arabs--Moslems whose religion tells them that they must kill the infidel Christians. It was difficult to tear himself from his wife and his children and go out to face death in the desert. But he had come out here to carry to the Arab the story of Jesus Christ, who Himself had died on a Cross outside this very city.
So he kissed his little boy "good-bye," wrenched himself away, climbed on top of the load on one of the pack horses and rode out through the gate into the unknown. He thought as his horses picked their way down the road from Jerusalem toward Jericho of how Jesus Christ had been put to death in this very land. Over his left shoulder he saw the slopes of the Mount of Olives; down below across the ravine on his right was the Garden of Gethsemane. In a short time he was pa.s.sing through Bethany where Mary and Martha lived. Down the steep winding road amongst the rocks he went, and took a cup of cold water at the inn of the Good Samaritan.
Then with the Wilderness of Desolation stretching its tawny tumbled desert hills away to the left, he moved onward, down and down until the road came out a thousand feet below sea-level among the huts and sheepfolds of Jericho, where he slept that night.
With his face toward the dawn that came up over the hills of Moab in the distance, he was off again over the plain with the Dead Sea on his right, across the swiftly flowing Jordan, and climbing the ravines that lead into the mountains of Gilead.
That night he stayed with a Circa.s.sian family in a little house of only one room into which were crowded his two horses, a mule, two donkeys, a yoke of oxen, some sheep and goats, a crowd of c.o.c.ks and hens, four small dirty children and their father and mother; and a great mult.i.tude of fleas.
The mother fried him a supper of eggs with bread, and after it he showed them something that they had never seen before. He took out of his pack a copy of the New Testament translated into Arabic.[66] He read bits out of it and talked to them about the Love of G.o.d.
Early next morning, his saddle-bag stuffed with a batch of loaves which the woman had baked first thing in the morning specially for him, he set out again.
How could a whole batch of loaves be stuffed in one saddle-bag? The loaves are flat and circular like a pancake. The dough is spread on a kind of cushion, the woman takes up the cushion with the dough on it, pushes it through the opening and slaps the dough on the inner wall of a big mud oven (out of doors) that has been heated with a fire of twigs, and in a minute or two pushes the cushion in again and the cooked bread falls on to it.
So Forder climbed up the mountain track till he came out on the high plain. He saw the desert in front of him--like a vast rolling ocean of glowing gold it stretched away and away for close on a thousand miles eastward to the Persian Gulf. Forder knew that only here and there in all those blazing, sandy wastes were oases where men could build their houses round some well or little stream that soon lost itself in the sand. All the rest was desert across which man and beast must hurry or die of thirst. He must follow the camel-tracks from oasis to oasis, where they could find a well of water, therefore drink for man and camel, and date-palms.
So turning north he pressed on[67] till on the sixth day out from Jerusalem the clouds came up with the dawn, and hail and rain, carried by a biting east wind, beat down upon him. Lifting his eyes to the horizon he saw ahead the st.u.r.dy castle and thick walls of the ancient city of Bosra. Stumbling through the storm, along the narrow winding streets, he met, to his disgust, a man whose dress showed that he was a Turkish Government official. He knew that the Turkish Government would be against a Christian and a foreigner going into their land.
"Who are you?" asked the official, stopping him. "Where are you from?
Where are you going?"
Forder told him, and the man said. "Come with me. I will find you and your horses shelter at the Governor"s house." Forder followed him into a large room in the middle of which on the floor a fire was burning.
"I must examine all your cases," said the official. "Get up. Open your boxes."
"Never," said Forder. "This is not a custom-house."
"Your boxes are full of powder for arming the Arabs against the Turkish Government," replied the official.
"I will not open them," said Forder, "unless you bring me written orders from the Turkish Governor in Damascus and from the British Consul."
Off went the official to consult the headman (the equivalent of the Mayor) of the city. The headman came and asked many questions. At last he said:
"Well, my orders are to turn back all Europeans and not to let any stay in these parts. However, as you seem to be almost an Arab, may G.o.d go with you and give you peace."
So Forder and the headman of the ancient city of Bosra got talking together. Forder opened his satchel and drew out an Arabic New Testament, and together they read parts of the story of the life of Jesus Christ and talked about Him till ten o"clock at night. As the headman rose to go to his own rooms Forder offered to him, and he gladly took, the copy of the New Testament in Arabic to read for himself.
_Saved by the Mist_
Next morning early, Forder had his horses loaded and started off with his face to the dawn. The track now led toward the great Castle of Sulkhund, which he saw looming up on the horizon twenty-five miles away, against the dull sky. But mist came down; wind, rain, and hail buffeted him; the horses, to escape the hail in their faces, turned aside, and the trail was lost. Mist hid everything. Forder"s compa.s.s showed that he was going south; so he turned east again; but he could not strike the narrow, broken, stony trail.
Suddenly smoke could be seen, and then a hamlet of thirty houses loomed up. Forder opened a door and a voice came calling, "Welcome!"
He went in and saw some Arabs crouching there out of the rain. A fire of dried manure was made; the smoke made Forder"s eyes smart and the tears run down his cheeks. He changed into another man"s clothes, and hung his own up in the smoke to dry.
"Where are we?" he asked. The men told him that he was about two and a half hours" ride from the castle and two hours off the track that he had left in the mist. The men came in from the other little houses to see the stranger and sip coffee. Forder again brought out an Arabic New Testament and found to his surprise that some of the men could read quite well and were very keen on his books. So they bought some of the Bibles from him. They had no money but paid him in dried figs, flour and eggs. At last they left him to curl up on the hard floor; and in spite of the cold and draughts and the many fleas he soon fell asleep.
As dawn came up he rose and started off: there (as he climbed out of the hollow in which the hamlet lay) he could see the Castle Sulkhund.
He knew that the Turks did not want any foreigner to enter that land of the Arabs, and that if he were seen, he would certainly be ordered back. Yet he could not hide, for the path ran close under the castle, and on the wall strode the sentry. The plain was open; there was no way by which he could creep past.
At last he came to the hill on which the castle stood. At that very moment a dense mist came down; he walked along, lost the track, and found it again. Then there came a challenge from the sentry. He could not see the sentry or the sentry him. So he called back in Arabic that he was a friend, and so pa.s.sed on in the mist. At last he was out on the open ground beyond both the castle and the little town by it.
Five minutes later the mist blew away; the sun shone; the castle was pa.s.sed, and the open plains lay before him. The mist had saved him.
In an hour he came to a large town named Orman on the edge of the desert sandy plains; and here he stayed for some weeks. His horses were sent back to Jerusalem. Instead of towns and villages of huts, he would now find only the tents of wandering Arabs who had to keep moving to find bits of spa.r.s.e growth for their few sheep and camels.
While he was at Orman he managed to make friends with many of the Arabs and with their Chief. He asked the Chief to help him on toward Kaf--an oasis town across the desert.
"Don"t go," the Chief and his people said, "the Arabs there are bad: when we go we never let our rifles out of our hands."
So the old Chief told him of the dangers of the desert; death from thirst or from the fiery Arabs of Kaf.
"I am trusting G.o.d to protect and keep me," said Forder. "I believe He will do so."
So Forder handed the Chief most of his money to take care of, and sewed up the rest into the waistband of his trousers. (It is as safe as a bank to hand your money to an Arab chief who has entertained you in his tent. If you have "eaten his salt" he will not betray or rob you. Absolute loyalty to your guest is the unwritten law that no true Arab ever breaks.)
_The Caravan of Two Thousand Camels_
At last the old Chief very unwillingly called a man, told him to get a camel, load up Forder"s things on it, and pa.s.s him on to the first Arab tent that he found. Two days pa.s.sed before they found a group of Bedouin tents. He was allowed to sleep in a tent: but early in the morning he woke with a jump. The whole of the tent had fallen right on him; he crawled out. He saw the Arab women standing round; they had pulled the tent down.
"Why do you do this so early?" he asked.
"The men," they replied, "have ordered us to move to another place; they fear to give shelter to a Christian--one that is unclean and would cause trouble to come on us."
So the tribesmen with their women and flocks made off, leaving Forder, his guide, and the camel alone in the desert. That afternoon he found a tent and heard that a great caravan was expected to pa.s.s that night on the way to Kaf to get salt. Night fell; it was a full moon. Forder sat with the others in the tent doorway round the fire. A man ran up to them.
"I hear the bells of the camels," he said. Quickly Forder"s goods were loaded on a camel. He jumped on top. He was led off into the open plain. Away across the desert clear in the moonlight came the dark ma.s.s of the caravan with the tinkle of innumerable bells.
Arabs galloped ahead of the caravan. They drew up their horses shouting, "Who are you? What do you want?" Then came fifty hors.e.m.e.n with long spears in their hands, rifles slung from their shoulders, swords hanging from their belts, and revolvers stuck in their robes.
They were guarding the first section made up of four hundred camels.
There were four sections, each guarded by fifty warriors.
As they pa.s.sed, the man with Forder shouted out the names of friends of his who--he thought--would be in the caravan. Sixteen hundred camels pa.s.sed in the moonlight, but still no answer came. Then the last section began to pa.s.s. The cry went up again of the names of the men. At last an answering shout was heard. The men they sought were found. Forder"s guide explained who he was and that he wanted to go to Kaf. His baggage was swiftly shifted onto another camel, and in a few minutes he had mounted, and his camel was swinging along with two thousand others into the east.
For hour after hour the tireless camels swung on and on, tawny beasts on a tawny desert, under a silver moon that swam in a deep indigo sky in which a million stars sparkled. The moon slowly sank behind them; ahead the first flush of pink lighted the sky; but still they pushed on. At last at half-past six in the morning they stopped. Forder flung himself on the sand wrapped in his _abba_ (his Arab cloak) and in a few seconds was asleep. In fifteen minutes, however, they awakened him. Already most of the camels had moved on. From dawn till noon, from noon under the blazing sun till half-past five in the afternoon, the camels moved on and on, "unhasting, unresting." As the camels were kneeling to be unloaded, a shout went up. Forder looking up saw ten robbers on horseback on a mound. Like the wind the caravan warriors galloped after them firing rapidly, and at last captured them and dragged them back to the camp.
"Start again," the command went round, and in fifteen minutes the two thousand camels swung grumbling and groaning out on the endless trail of the desert. The captured Arabs were marched in the centre. All through the night the caravan went on from moonrise to moonset, and through the morning from dawn till ten o"clock--for they dared not rest while the tribe from whom they had captured the prisoners could get near them. Then they released the captives and sent them back, for on the horizon they saw the green palms of Kaf, the city that they sought.
The camels had only rested for thirty minutes in forty hours.[68] With grunts of pleasure they dropped on their knees and were freed from their loads, and began hungrily to eat their food.
Forder leapt down and was so glad to be in Kaf that he ran into some palm gardens close by and sang "Praise G.o.d from Whom all blessings flow," jumped for joy, and then washed all the sweat and sand from himself in a hot spring of sulphur water.