Shaykh Hamid el Lamman, of El Medinah, is a perfect specimen of the town Arab--his face a dirty brown, his beard untrimmed, his only garment, an ochre-coloured blouse, exceedingly unclean. He can sing, slaughter a sheep, deliver a grand call to prayer, shave, cook, fight, and vituperate. Salih Shakkar is a Turk on his father's side, an Arab on his mother's; he is as avaricious as an Arab, and as supercilious as a Turk. All these people borrowed money from me. To their number must be added Mohammed, a hot-headed Meccan youth, whom I had met in Cairo, and who appointed himself my companion; and Shaykh Nur, my Indian servant.
Through the activity of Saad the Devil--not disinterested activity, for he wanted to pay nothing himself and to make us pay too much--we were at last able to book passages on the vessel Golden Thread. Amid infinite clamour and excitement on a hot July morning we boarded her, only to be threatened with loss of our places on the poop by a rush of Maghrabi pilgrims, men from Western Africa, desperately poor and desperately violent. Saad the Devil disposed of the intruders by the simple process of throwing them into the hold. There the Maghrabis fell out with a few Turks, and in a few minutes nothing was to be seen but a confused mass of humanity, each item indiscriminately scratching, biting, punching, and butting.
A deputation of us waited upon Ali Murad, the owner, to inform him of the crowded state of the vessel. He told us to be good, and not fight; to trust in Allah, and that Allah would make all things easy for us. His departure was the signal for a second fray. This time the Maghrabis swarmed towards the poop like angry hornets; Saad provided us with a bundle of long ashen staves, and we laid on with might and main. At length it occurred to me to roll an earthen jar full of water--weighing about a hundred pounds--upon the assailants. After this they shrank back and offered peace.
It was twelve days before we reached Yambu. The vessel had no compass, no log, no sounding-line, nor even the suspicion of a chart. Each night we anchored, usually in one of the many inlets of the Arabian coast, and when possible we went ashore. The heat during the day was insufferable, the wind like the blast of a lime-kiln; we lay helpless and half senseless, without appetite and without energy, feeling as if a few more degrees of heat would be death. Nothing, on the other hand, could have been more delicious than the hour of sunrise. The air was mild and balmy as that of an Italian spring; the mountains, grim and bare during full daylight, mingled their summits with the jasper tints of the sky; at their base ran a sea of amethyst. Not less lovely was the sunset, but after a quarter of an hour its beauty faded, and the wilderness of white crags and pinnacles was naked and ghastly under the moon.