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"O Emir," asked Talib, "shall we leave our damsel with what is upon her, things which have no equal and whose like is not to be found and more perfect than aught else thou takest; nor couldst thou find a goodlier offering wherewithal to propitiate the favour of the Commander of the Faithful?" But Musa answered, "O man, heardest thou not what the Lady saith on this tablet?
"I would willingly help you to find your son," said Hermas, "and if you wish I will go to Raithu and Klysma, and enquire among the fishermen. Had the centurion " and as he spoke the young soldier looked down in some embarrassment, "had the centurion found his fugitive wife of whom he was in pursuit with Talib, the Amalekite, before he died?"
The soldiers came and shouted at us a good deal, saying, 'Why do you hire Bedouin to protect you? Are we not here? Do you not trust us? We soothed them with flattering words, and then Talib came and extorted nine more dollars. In the morning we had to pay three dollars to three men who said they had seen four men, which four men ran away.
Talib then asked my husband which he wished to do, for so it should be; but as he knew it was a case of 'You may do as you like, but you must, answered to that effect, 'Whichever Talib liked, we were in his hands and could not choose. After great hesitation we encamped in a windy, dusty, but rather pleasant place near Bir Baokban. There were many tombs on the way.
We passed a water-place two hours after we left Naïda, though Talib had made us stop there because, he said, there was no water within a day's journey, and we found ourselves stopped at Rahba, two hours at least before Ghaida, where we expected to be, Talib still sticking to it that we should be at Sheher in three more days.
Talib had not been absent from us an hour when he again arrived, saying he wanted four dollars to pay a debt he owed in Bir bin Aboudan; 'it was to come out of the thirty dollars still owing for the siyara, and to be paid at Sheher, he said. He was, of course, told that the money for the siyara had been fully paid up, seventy dollars before the sultan of Shibahm, and forty at Sa'ah.
The Jabberi said the same, and Talib again wished us to ride off with him. The Hamoumi said it was all Talib's fault, for he owed a great deal of money at Al Madi, and was afraid of going thither. The Hamoumi then said they would take us to Ghail Barbwazir or Barbazir or Babwazir, but we must keep it a secret from the Jabberi and the soldiers.
Talib did not wish to stay there, for the water is brackish, and he wanted us to go on before the camel-men came up, but we waited, and they and the Jabberi had a loud and angry quarrel, and we were told there was no water nearer than Al Madi, and some of them wanted to stop at a place half-way to Al Madi and send for water. We could make neither head nor tail of it.
The offices at Mecca were seized by the Omeyya, and to the descendants of Abd al Muttalib there remained but the privilege of caring for the well Zemzem, and of giving its water for the refreshment of pilgrims. Only two of his sons, except Abu Talib, who earns renown chiefly as the guardian of Mahomet, attain anything like prominence.
When at last the food, by a superhuman effort, had been forced down his shrunken gullet, his enfeebled stomach refused to receive it, and violent spasms and vomiting followed, which seemed to rend his stricken frame, as a fierce wind rips through the palm-leaf sail of a native fishing-smack. In a day or two he became wildly delirious, and Talib then witnessed a terrible sight.
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