Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/312

Rh below. I asked the kawass if he had any means of judging where we were. He said he knew we must be somewhere between Er-Ram — the ancient Ramah — and Tel-el Fûl, which is by many Biblical topographists believed to be the ancient Gibeah. He proposed to alight and to look for some signs by which he might recover the lost track and a practicable path leading to it. So he tethered his horse to a tree, and Simeon and Mohammed did the same, but I remained mounted. Mohammed handed a hookah to me, and I sat still, smoking, while the three men went in different directions to see if they could recognize any rock, tree, or streamlet, fountain or ruin which might give them a clew. I told them not to go out of sight of the light of my hookah, or out of each other's hearing.

It was with strange emotion that I rested there, in the darkness and alone.

I should have suffered, perhaps, more from fear, if the strangeness and peculiarity of my position had not excited my interest and wonder so completely as to rouse within me the spirit of love of adventure. The silence of night was broken at intervals by the crying and snarling voices of jackals, and the barking and yelling of wild dogs and hyenas.

Now and then I heard the men calling to each other, and the tethered animals would sometimes neigh and shake themselves, as if answering the voices of their respective masters; but my horse stood perfectly still, while I smoked, and thought, and looked up into the night-sky, where the stars appeared infinite in number, and now shone close down to the darkened horizon. I was almost overwhelmed with the multitude of new ideas and vivid scenes which passed