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Wearied by delay at Harar, I employed myself in meditating flight; they drily declared that after-wit serves no good purpose: whilst I considered the possibility of escape, they looked only at the prospect of being dragged back with pinioned arms by the Amir's guard. Such is generally the effect of the vulgar Moslems' blind fatalism.
The Amir's dinner when it is ready, is not placed on the royal table, but locked up in a box, and taken to the Vizier to be tasted, before it is served up in the palace. But it is not the Amir only who is afraid of poison. No one will accept fruit from another, unless that other tastes it first. It must be very terrible to live in the midst of such murderers as the people of Bokhara seem to be.
The principal caravan, conveying slaves, mules, and other valuable articles, enters Berberah a few days before the close of the season: it numbers about 3000 souls, and is commanded by one of the Amir's principal officers, who enjoys the title of Ebi or leader.
For several days he was prostrated by fever, and some Harar men who looked in tried to obtain him as a prisoner. The Jirad acted honourably, but he declined to escort Burton to Harar. "No one," he said, "is safe in the Amir's clutches, and I would as soon walk into a crocodile's mouth as set foot in the city."
Macgregor," said the Dewan, confidently, "We are co-ordinating all the organisations in the Punjaub, Bombay, and Bengal, and we shall strike simultaneously. Afghan help has been promised, and the Pathan tribesmen will follow the Amir's regiments into India. As I told you, the Chinese and Bhutanese invasion is certain, and there are neither troops nor fortifications along this frontier to stop it."
I then arose, recited a short prayer, the gist of which was that the Amir's days and reign might be long in the land, and that the faces of his foes might be blackened here and hereafter, bent over his hand and retired.
Between the lot of 'em they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that come out of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir's Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.
One, the Haji Mukhtar, was a Maghrebi from Fez: an expatriation of forty years had changed his hissing Arabic as little as his "rocky face." This worthy had a coffee-garden assigned to him, as commander of the Amir's body-guard: he introduced himself to us, however, as a merchant, which led us to look upon him as a spy.
Twelve English, a hundred thousand Sniders run through the Amir's country in dribblets I'd be content with twenty thousand in one year and we'd be an Empire. When everything was shipshape, I'd hand over the crown this crown I'm wearing now to Queen Victoria on my knees, and she'd say: "Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot." Oh, it's big! It's big, I tell you!
Between the lot of 'em they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that come out of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir's Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.
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