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When they were all gone, Saleh, to our unbounded amazement, said that Seid and Talib had confided to him 114 rupees, on account of his having the locked box; so he brought them to us, and amid shouts of laughter they were engulfed in our bag. By the bye, we actually had two of the Al Madi people with us, so we ought to have been safe; or what is the good of siyara?
The following evening we were thrown into some excitement by the arrival of the sultan in our room with seven letters, the general tenor of which was that eight of the Tamimi had come, with the siyara of four Amri only, and no siyara of Kattiri, as far as Siwoun, and asked to be passed on, but that the Kattiri refused them safe conduct; they asked the sultan of Shibahm to go to Shibahm and arrange for them to reach us.
It was in the country of no one then present, so we could have no siyara, and the old Hamoumi chief said it would be bad for his sons, the hostages; so this plan had to be abandoned.
I felt too weak to stir till luncheon was brought me at twelve, there having been some little difficulty as regarded breakfast. The horse, donkeys, camels, siyara people, and soldiers all came in by land next day. A period of waiting and hoping for a ship to take us to Aden now set in.
We could not make out what it was all about. There were so many different suggestions made as to the cause; some said the people of the village wanted to come with us as siyara, and some that they wanted to fight the Hamoumi, who had lately taken their camels. Our men shouted, 'Siyara!
Next we heard that there was no village at Al Madi where we could buy forage; we had but little left, though plenty of dried bread. Then three Jabberi came and said they were getting lame, and wanted eight dollars to buy a donkey out of their food-money, but my husband said he had paid so much for siyara that he had not enough to pay that till we reached Sheher.
We longed 'to dance on Tom Tiddler's ground' and make a dash for it, but the forfeits we might incur deterred us, being our lives. The wazir said he would try to arrange for this, but that, even if the seyyids consented, we must take forty soldiers, well armed, pay them as well as siyar to the Kattiri, pay the expenses of the siyara, and take as short a time about the business as possible.
There was no news of the Tamimi and many told us they would not come, but we still kept up our vain hopes, as they had promised to come and wait a day or two for us, bringing with them a siyara of the Minhali and of the Hamoumi. However, we were never allowed to get to the trysting-place, as we afterwards thought, because the Jabberi wanted to keep the fleecing of us in their own hands.
Talib had not been absent from us an hour when he again arrived, saying he wanted four dollars to pay a debt he owed in Bir bin Aboudan; 'it was to come out of the thirty dollars still owing for the siyara, and to be paid at Sheher, he said. He was, of course, told that the money for the siyara had been fully paid up, seventy dollars before the sultan of Shibahm, and forty at Sa'ah.
Siyara! and the men on the tower, 'Come no nearer! 'By my God you shall not come on! 'We are fighting and we will slay him who dares to stir a step! Talib said, 'Now we can go neither backward nor forward, and amazed us by asking for no money.
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