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Here one of the many water-carriers who have crossed our path does so again, tinkling his little bell of European manufacture, and we turn to watch him as he gives a poor lad to drink. Slung across his back is the "bottle" of the East a goat-skin with the legs sewn up.
Pontius met the Emperor's servant and his water-carriers and remarked, loudly enough for Mastor to understand him, to Pollux who was with him: "The architect's servant is getting Christians to wait upon his master to-day. They are regular and sober workmen who do their duty silently and well."
And when presently the voice rang out overhead, and the breathless town broke instantly into bubbles of sounds the tinkling of the bells of the water-carriers, the shouts of the children, and the calls of the men only one man seemed to see him and know him.
He brushed shoulders with shoe-sellers, the pistachio-sellers, and the water-carriers, who assure all who choose to listen that theirs is "Water sweet as honey! Water from the spring!" and in a commanding voice invite you to "Drink, O faithful! The wind is hot, and the way long!" but not without the necessary piastres first.
The Turkish soldiers in dark uniform and red fez; the cheerful, grinning water-carriers with their dripping, bulbous goatskins on their backs; the white-turbaned Druses with their bold, clean-cut faces; the bronzed, impassive sons of the desert, with their flowing mantles and bright head-cloths held on by thick, dark rolls of camel's hair; the rich merchants in their silken robes of many colours; the picturesquely ragged beggars; the Moslem pilgrims washing their heads and feet, with much splashing, at the pools in the marble courtyards of the mosques; the merry children, running on errands or playing with the water that gushes from many a spout at the corner of a street or on the wall of a house; the veiled Mohammedan women slipping silently through the throng, or bending over the trinkets or fabrics in some open-fronted shop, lifting the veil for a moment to show an olive-tinted cheek and a pair of long, liquid brown eyes; the bearded Greek priests in their black robes and cylinder hats; the Christian women wrapped in their long white sheets, but with their pretty faces uncovered, and a red rose or a white jasmine stuck among their smooth, shining black tresses; the seller of lemonade with his gaily decorated glass vessel on his back and his clinking brass cups in his hand, shouting, "A remedy for the heat," "Cheer up your hearts," "Take care of your teeth;" the boy peddling bread, with an immense tray of thin, flat loaves on his head, crying continually to Allah to send him customers; the seller of turnip-pickle with a huge pink globe upon his shoulder looking like the inside of a pale watermelon; the donkeys pattering along between fat burdens of grass or charcoal; a much-bedizened horseman with embroidered saddle-cloth and glittering bridle, riding silent and haughty through the crowd as if it did not exist; a victoria dashing along the street at a trot, with whip cracking like a pack of firecrackers, and shouts of, "O boy!
This was still going on, when Pancrates appeared. He saw how things stood, and turned the water-carriers back into wood; and then he withdrew himself from me, and went away, whither I knew not. 'And you can actually make a man out of a pestle to this day? asked Dinomachus.
There are several grades of water-carriers. First, the "sakka," who carries on his back a goat-skin filled with water; one of the fore-legs forms the spout, which is simply held tight in the hand to prevent the water from escaping. He is the poorest of them all, barefooted and wearing an often ragged blue gelabieh, while a leather apron protects his back from the dripping goat-skin.
Foster observed that he nodded familiarly to many of those who crowded them to Jews, Arabs, water-carriers, and negroes, as well as to the dignified men who kept little stalls and shops, many of which shops were mere niches in the sides of the houses. So close were the fronts of these houses to each other that in many places they almost met overhead and obscured much of the light.
On the ground, by the side of the human cattle pens, the wealthy patrons of the market seat themselves at their ease, arrange their djellabas and selhams in leisurely fashion, and begin to chat, as though the place were the smoking-room of a club. Water-carriers lean, half-naked men from the Sus sprinkle the thirsty ground, that the tramp of slaves and auctioneers may not raise too much dust.
They fortunately had confidence in me and I succeeded in restoring order, and all would have been well, but the managers, no longer alarmed by the fear of rebellion or violence, began a system of retaliation and revenge, by withdrawing cooks, water-carriers, and nurses, from the field, by refusing medicine and admittance to the hospital to the apprentice children, and by compelling old and infirm people, who had been allowed to withdraw from labor, and mothers of six children, who were exempt by the slave law from hard labor, to come out and work in the field.
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