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Giaffar, who knew from experience the quarter likely to prove most fertile in adventure, led the caliph past the mosque of Zobeide, and crossing the Bridge of Boats over the Tigris, continued his way to that part of the city on the Mesopotamian side of the river, which was inhabited by the wine-sellers and others, who administered to the irregularities, as well as to the wants, of the good people of Bagdad.
During our visit, it was most touching to see the tenderness and anxious care of his companion, a young man called Fred, a labourer in the large wine vaults at the docks, who, though smelling of wine, and his clothes saturated with the fumes of spirits, was a staunch teetotaller; and judging from the intelligent way in which he answered our questions, would be a valuable witness before any commission of inquiry into the practices which wine-sellers term 'mixing, but which he vulgarly called 'adulteration. Every night during the many weeks of illness Fred had paid his friend a visit, and watched over him with all the love of a Jonathan to a David.
An hour later the launch from the yacht took him aboard at the ancient stone jetty, where the fruit-venders and wine-sellers shouted their jargon, and the seaweed clung to the landing stage. When Karyl had returned to the Palace after the inspection of the Fortress do Freres, he had sent word at once to that part of the Palace where Cara had her suite.
Giaffar, who knew from experience the quarter likely to prove most fertile in adventure, led the caliph past the mosque of Zobeide, and crossing the Bridge of Boats over the Tigris, continued his way to that part of the city on the Mesopotamian side of the river which was inhabited by the wine-sellers and others, who administered to the irregularities, as well as to the wants of the good people of Bagdad.
Bernardine rose slowly to her feet, and looked back at the lights of the great city that she was leaving. There would be no one to miss her; no one to weep over her untimely fate; no one to grieve that she had taken the fatal step to eternity. Her father would be glad that there was no one to follow his step by night and by day, and plead with the wine-sellers to give him no more drink.
Cooks perambulated with their shops on their backs; rival slave-merchants shouted petitions for patronage; wine-sellers taught Bacchanalian philosophy from the tops of their casks; poets recited compositions for sale; sophisters held arguments destined to convert the wavering and perplex the ignorant.
Catalonian wine-sellers, their queer-shaped kegs upon their backs, bartered their liquor for the copper coin of the thirsty soldiers; pedlars displayed their wares, and sardineras vaunted their fish; ballad-singers hawked about copies of patriotic songs; mahogany-coloured gitanas executed outlandish, and not very decent, dances; whilst here and there, in a quiet nook, an itinerant gaming-table keeper had erected his board, and proved that he, of all others, best knew how to seduce the scanty and hard-earned maravedis from the pockets of the pleasure-seeking soldiery.
With them also went the townsfolk, men and women, together with wine-sellers, provisions merchants, armorers, grooms and heralds, with surgeons to tend the wounded and priests to shrive the dying. The path was blocked by this throng, but all over the face of the country horsemen and footmen, gentle and simple, men and women, could be seen speeding their way to the scene of the encounter.
From the tea-houses comes the sound of the guitar, and the opium-smokers with their white smiling faces look out at the passers-by. 'Of a truth thou shouldst have been with me. The wine-sellers elbow their way through the crowd with great black skins on their shoulders. Most of them sell the wine of Schiraz, which is as sweet as honey.
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