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Saleh came in to our tent and said, 'The man who shot at us says, "You cannot go on to-morrow. To-day we only shot our bullets in the air, but to-morrow we shall shoot at you." We thought of going back to Sufeila, and sending to the sultan of Sheher for help, but where could we find a messenger?
We had told the sultans how Saleh had behaved and asked them to keep him under their eyes till our return, and this is how we managed without him as interpreter. We talked English to Imam Sharif, he talked Hindustani to his Afghan servant Majid, Majid talked his own tongue to an Afghan whom we annexed at Sheher, and he could speak Arabic.
We ourselves were not at the appointed place, for we were kept pent into the little wadi. We were told that two men had been murdered on the way to Sheher, but we never made out who they were; also that a seyyid and a lot of the Amri tribe had come, so the Relation took my horse and went off to investigate them.
If we fired a gun, or if they fired, hundreds of people would come, and they would kill us. They never either raised their weapons or their tongues in our defence. They said the sultan of Sheher would not be able to go himself or send soldiers into these parts, and that the Al Madi people wished to decoy us to Al Madi and kill us.
Seid-bin-Iselem and three soldiers witnessed this, but Talib would not allow the Hamoumi to be present. Instead of taking Talib's gun as a deposit, the soldiers were to keep the money in their hands. We were still to be at Sheher within the seven days, and not now to wait two or three days for the five tribes.
I also am an Arab and a Moslem, and I swear by my Koran and my religion, that we will give you forty dollars, and spend two days in Ghail Babwazir, during which you will have your eleven dollars a day; and we will engage you on to Sheher, and give you good bakshish, and a good character to the sultan and two nice turbans. We gasped in amazement at this.
Our only pleasures were walks at sunset along the sand, picking up lovely shells and watching the crabs, and we used to sneak out as quietly as we could for fear of being pursued by soldiers. Our little walks were very much shortened when we had an armed escort dogging our steps. Once we got a mile away but were fetched back for fear of the Hamoumi, Sheher being quite on the frontier.
On the 29th we set out for Sheher, or Shaher Bander as it is called, a most cheerful set of people, at least as far as our own immediate party was concerned; some of the others had little cause for pleasant anticipations. We were in advance of the baggage camels, riding our horses and donkey, and accompanied by Talib, without his dagger, on his camel.
Before we went to bed that night, Haidar Aboul, the second interpreter, came and swore on the Koran that the Relation had promised the camel-men two rupees each; still we lay down happy in the assurance that we should be at Sheher in seven days, but after a night much disturbed by guns for a wedding, the first news that greeted us was that those camel-men wished to leave us.
Here we went into a house to eat our luncheon and obtain some coffee, which had to be prepaid. We reached Sheher about four o'clock. The last three miles, going eastward, were close along the shore at low tide. It was quite delightful, and we were very much amused at all the crabs we put to flight.
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