And on yet stronger wing the wild free spirit of the desert rose in his breast who lay in ward at Mecca, and he sang of love and death with a voice that will not be silenced:
"My longing climbs up the steep with the riders of El Yemen, by their side, while my body lies in Mecca a prisoner. I marvelled as she came darkling to me and entered free, while the prison door before me was bolted and surely barred. She drew near and greeted me, then she rose and bade farewell, and when she turned my life well-nigh went forth with her. Nay, think not that I am bowed with fear away from you, or that I tremble before death that stands so nigh. Or that my soul quakes at all before your threatening, or that my spirit is broken by walking in these chains. But a longing has smitten my heart born of love for thee, as it was in the days aforetime when that I was free."[6]
The agony of the captive, the imagined vision of the heart's desire which no prison bars could exclude, then the fine protest lest his foes should dream that his spirit faltered, and the strong man's fearless memory of the passion that had shaken his life and left his soul still ready to vanquish death--there are few such epitomes of noble emotion. Born and bred on the soil of the desert, the singers of the Age of Ignorance have left behind them a record of their race that richer and wiser nations will find hard to equal.
[Footnote 2: Since the events above recorded, Ibn Sa'oud has, I believe, come to terms with the Sultan after a vain appeal to a stronger ally, and Ibn er Rashīd is reported to be struggling to turn out the Turkish garrisons which were appointed nominally to aid him. Quite recently there has been a rumour that Ibn er Rashīd is dead.]
[Footnote 3: El Muwaḳḳar it is written, but the Bedouin change the hard k into a hard g. The site has been described in "Die Provincia Arabia," vol II.]
[Footnote 4: Several of these ruins were visited by Musil, but his took is not yet published.]
[Footnote 5: The present unrest in Egypt may seem to throw a doubt upon the truth of these observations, but I do not believe this to be the case. The Egyptians have forgotten the miseries from which our administration rescued them, the Syrians and the people of the desert are still labouring under them, and in their eyes the position of their neighbours is one of unalloyed and enviable ease. But when once the wolf is driven from the door, the restraints imposed by an immutable law eat into the temper of a restless, unstable population accustomed to reckon with misrule and to profit by the frequent laxity and the occasional opportunities of undeserved advancement which characterise it. Justice is a capital thing when it guards your legal rights, but most damnable when you wish to usurp the rights of others. Fellāḥ ul 'Isa and his kind would not be slow to discover its defects.]