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Meanwhile my time and my head are so full, that in the few hours of the night I put aside for sleep, I dream queerer dreams than the visits of ghostly sheikhs. Apropos of dreams, do you know by chance a man who answers this description: elderly, stoutish, red face, gray hair, black moustache, pale eyes with sharp look in them. Sounds commonplace, doesn't it?
So then this is the great bravado of Khanouhen, that he could not soil his fingers by taking presents! I expect I shall soon be stripped. There are, unfortunately, so many Sheikhs, that to give handsome presents to them all, would amount to a large sum. A burning jealousy rankles in their breasts about these Souk presents.
"There is no town called Stuka; it is a district; none that I can find called Talent; there is Tilin. The Mesah flows through Stuka, in which district are twenty settlements, or rather towns, some of which are large. They are known in general by the names of the Sheikhs who inhabit them. I stopped at Sheikh Hamed's.
That Lella Mabrouka and Sanda would be there was a matter of course; and, besides them, there were the wives and daughters of two or three sheikhs and caids, all of whom Sanda already knew by sight, as they had paid ceremonious visits to the great man's harem since her arrival at Djazerta.
He houses in a little dirty cabin. In looks he is a hard strong-featured man, and large of limb. I asked his Excellency what he got by his Sheikhdom, to plague him. I continued. "I can't; all my ancestors, from the time of Sidi Ibraim, and our lord Mahomet, were Sheikhs. We're one blood. I shall dishonour them:" he returned.
Exchanging between themselves glances of contempt at the lords of Lebanon, who were ignorant of what everybody knows, they exhibited the arms without the slightest interest or anxiety to make the Sheikhs comprehend them; till Tancred, mortified at their brutality, himself interfered, and, having already no inconsiderable knowledge of the language of the country, though, from his reserve, Fakredeen little suspected the extent of his acquirements, explained felicitously to his companions the process of the arms; and then taking his rifle, and stepping out upon the terrace, he levelled his piece at a heron which was soaring at a distance of upwards of one hundred yards, and brought the bird down amid the applause both of Maronite and Druse.
The great court of the castle was crowded with men and horses, and fifty mouths at once were drinking at the central basin; the arcades were full of Sheikhs, smoking and squatted on their carpets, which in general they had spread in this locality in preference to the more formal saloons, whose splendid divans rather embarrassed them; though even these chambers were well attended, the guests principally seated on the marble floors covered with their small bright carpets.
On my former visit I had not, on the whole, reason to complain of the Sheikhs of the Tuaricks, whose chief place this is. I remembered the venerable Shafou, the dashing Khanouhen, with Jabour, and all the others, from whom I had received what might be called kindness.
Halim Bey was killed last night by order of the sheikhs, I'm told; but the sheikhs won't give it away.
It sounded to us partly like an echo of ancient legends kept alive by dragomans and officials for purposes of revenue, and partly like an outcrop of the hysterical habit in people who travel in flocks and do nothing without much palaver. In our quiet camp, George the Bethlehemite assured us that the sheikhs were "humbugs," and an escort of soldiers a nuisance.
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