XIII

It was not long ere Saïd regretted the step he had so blindly taken and wished himself back on board the steamer, let it bear him to Lifferbûl or to the world’s end. Skipper and crew of his new transport were altogether of a coarser type. Though the men grinned as they passed him in their work, the laugh was at him, not to him, and it filled him with distrust.

Day by day the ship leapt or glided with full sails on an endless waste of waters. To Saïd, as he squatted on the deck smoking cigarettes bought from the captain at what seemed to him a ruinous price, it occurred sometimes that the vessel was not moving at all, but was still with the waves racing past her. The fancy amused him and he would indulge it for minutes at a time until he was almost persuaded that it was so; it needed a glance at the strained canvas overhead, and another at the passing water, to dispel the illusion. He thought if Allah would grant a man wings like the birds he saw, how pleasant it would be to make long voyages, swooping down when weary to close wings and rest, letting the sea rock him for a little space. He considered the fishes of the deep, how they swim ever under water, yet, by the great mercy of Allah, are not drowned. “Allah is great!” was the outcome of all his musings.

But, as the days wore on, he grew very tired of sitting alone. He would keep near the sailors and try to ingratiate himself with them; even their unfailing rudeness and the horse-tricks they played him seemed better than sheer loneliness. The shifts he was forced to make in order to say his prayers undisturbed were a heavy burden on his conscience. Very earnestly he besought Allah to pardon any omissions in a place where clean water was hard to come by, where there was no sand and but little dust to serve for a substitute. Allah was merciful, he reflected, and would forgive his shortcomings, taking the circumstances into account.

Day by day the world grew sadder and less familiar. Skies lost their lustre, the sea darkened and waxed fierce, the very sun shone pale. Coasts, when sighted, were black and low-lying on the edge of leaden waters heaving in eternal unrest. It turned cold⁠—more bleak than any winter. Saïd rubbed his eyes, supposing that there was a film on them which made the world seem dim. He realised that the land of the English was near, the land of cloud of which the dragoman had spoken; but the knowledge brought no gladness. He grew homesick, longing for a known face, for the sight of a palm-tree, for a train of camels passing in the blinding sunshine with sweet jangle of bells, for a word in his native tongue.

The very welkin lowered unfriendly, like a menace. The wind howled as a hungry beast of prey; the waves ravened as they leapt against the ship. All things, animate and inanimate, were hostile, and he saw their fury personal to himself. To make matters worse, a gale arose, and he became helpless through sickness. Utter despair got hold of him; he prayed ever that Allah might take his life ere he should retch again. He could take no food, but a little drink. The sailors came and mocked his wretchedness; but he was too prostrate to care for their jeers, only begging them to kill him where he lay.

After the illness he was feeble and shaky for a day or two, and felt the cold more keenly than before, though every garment he possessed was upon him, and a tarpaulin, which a sailor in savage pity flung to him, wrapped over all like a great shawl. The queer figure he cut as he tottered about shivering was the butt and derision of the whole crew.

The wind abated and the sea calmed. The sun, a mere ghost, looked down through worn places of the cloud-rack, like a pale face pressed to a rain-smeared pane. A long, wavy line of cliffs, dirty-white, blurred and indistinct in a perpetual mist, was pointed out to him as the land of the English. He saw it vaguely as one sees whose sight is dim with tears. All his hope centred in the little moneybag at his chest; there was comfort in thinking that he had enough to pay the price of a return voyage to the land of sunlight. Not for a day would he sojourn in this region of eternal gloaming, but would seek out a ship at once and take passage in her. There was sure to be some good Muslim at the landing-place who would direct him for the love of Allah and the Faith that saves.

The cliffs were gone and the ship moved along by a low, marshy coast. Here and there a group of dwellings, a lighthouse, a lonely hut broke the sullen monotony of the shoreline blackly. There was land on both sides now⁠—flat and dreary, shadowed, grim and inhuman as Jehennum itself. Saïd wondered what kind of men could dwell in that wilderness meant for the damned. The waterway was dotted with ships great and small. The sun was shining, but so faintly that he hardly knew it. A few wan snakes at play upon the ripples were all the brightness it gave.

Anon the gloom deepened in spite of the feeble sun and became of a dull, yellowish brown. The shore drew nearer on either hand. They entered a great river, populous with all manner of craft⁠—by far the greatest Saïd had ever seen. After noon, as they still glided on, the face of the sun took on a reddish hue, and the water glinted cold and coppery to its lifeless rays. The world seemed dead, and the stir of human life upon it loathsome as the foul brood of corruption. The river wound between two banks of fog, on which strange shapes of roof and chimney, tower and steeple, and the masts of ships appeared carven or painted by a tremulous hand. From all sides clouds of smoke arose, feeding the gloom and blending with it perpetually. It was as if the whole land smouldered. Ships were moored along the wharves, at the foot of huge buildings frowning like precipices. Here and there a large steamer, lying out towards midstream, had a swarm of small craft⁠—lighters, wherries and row boats⁠—about her, clinging to her, trailing from her like driftwood: a floating island, long and black upon the burnished water.

A mighty clamour filled all the gloom and seemed a part of it. The beat of hammers rang out so thunderous that Saïd trembled to guess what made it. There was a constant hiss of escaping steam, the throbbing of huge engines, the creak and rattle of cranes culminating now and then in a long roar, the whistle and hoot of steamers, sounds of puffing and the swish of paddle-wheels, shouts and cries of human kind. Smells found their way out on to the river and dwelt there, in spite of a light breeze blowing up from the sea⁠—smells of the furnace and the tan-yard, of pitch and resin, and the prevailing pungent smoke. The taste in Saïd’s mouth was a mixture of smoke and brine. He was choked, deafened, wholly bewildered.

One of the sailors, the most villainous-looking of all, who had of late made friendly overtures to him in the shape of devilish grins and murderous digs in the ribs, drew near and smote the tarpaulin.

“Lûndra!” he said, leering into Saïd’s face.

“Lûndra!” echoed the passenger with a series of nods and a bright display of teeth, explaining that he understood. At that the mariner laughed hoarsely and began a lively pantomime, twitching Saïd’s robe, pointing to the shore, slapping his own chest, and then making as if he would embrace the fisherman. Saïd was slow to see the drift of all this; the whole show had to be repeated a second time. But at last he gathered that this sailor of the evil countenance was his sincere well-wisher and would take charge of him when the time came to disembark.

The sun, swathed in smoke-wreaths, was already setting in crimson when, amid hoarse shouts of greeting and command, the frenzied blowing of a whistle and much flinging about of ropes and chains, the ship drew up to a wharf-side. The river flowed as turbid blood, parting a dark wilderness of masts and rigging, of endless, shapeless buildings. Here and there a pane of glass or other polished surface caught a beam and sprang to lurid flame. Westward, over against the sun, a great black dome brooded over the misty roofs. The din of the city had a note of weariness, like the sighing of a great multitude.

He shrank from landing. At least the ship was known to him, familiar in its every part; whereas this boundless, black city, whose sweat was filthy smoke, frightened him as a living monster lying in wait to devour. Surely it was the realm of Eblis, the abode of evil spirits and of souls in torment. For a long while he watched the business of the wharf, his brain ahum with doubt and bewilderment, so that he could not read or unravel his thoughts.

The skipper came and spoke gruffly to him, pointing to the gangway. He dragged the tarpaulin from Saïd’s shoulders and flung it aside upon a heap of cordage. The Arab saw plainly that there was no choice left for him. Trembling and shrinking, in his flowing Eastern dress of many colours, he hurried across the plank, looking back to the ship, the scene of so much anguish for him, with longing as to a well-loved home.

The quay on which he found himself was a narrow one, oppressed and shadowed by a great warehouse. It reminded him faintly of a strip of beach at the foot of a steep cliff. He could see no way from it except through the great doors which yawned like caverns, showing bales of merchandise piled within. He felt quite helpless, imprisoned, cut off from everywhere yet within sound of a multitude. Yellow light streamed from every aperture of the building before him, making shapes of men fiendish as they moved in black outline across it. The lapping of the ripples against the piles, which is the same song all the world over, sounded more friendly than the voices of his kind speaking sternly and abruptly in a foreign tongue. Worst of all, no one heeded him. A chance look, a grin, a shrug of the shoulders, and he was passed by, dismissed from the minds of those busy workers. There was something very sinister in such absorption. Feeling dazed, he stood still, not knowing which way to look, the voice of the city in his ears⁠—the sullen roar of a vast, unfriendly throng.

A mighty stroke on the back roused him from torpor. The sailor, who some two hours before had accosted him on the deck, stood at his side, speaking rapidly in a scolding tone. Then he laughed, and smote him once more between the shoulders. Linking arms, he led him away by a little passage Saïd had not perceived at the extreme end of the quay.

The streets were broad and open to the sky; they were lighted by lanterns set on high poles. The houses were tiny compared with the big warehouses of the riverbank, and were separated by spaces of blank wall, over which the masts and spars of ships rose ghostly. The sailor led Saïd to a house which stood, a blaze of light, at a place where three roads met. Pushing open a swing-door, he dragged him into a room full of men.

The brightness almost blinded Saïd, coming, as he did, out of the dark, and the noise deafened him. A number of red-faced Franks, seated on benches at wooden tables, were laughing and talking at the top of their voices. In his dazed condition he saw them vaguely as a multitude of strangers hostile to him. The atmosphere of the room, charged with the fumes of tobacco and strong drink, was hard to breathe; only the warmth and the light pleased him. Full of distrust of that noisy company, he would fain have drawn back, but his friend restrained him, forcing him to a seat at one of the tables.

He was aware of a crowd of faces close to his, of hands tweaking his raiment, of a buzz of curiosity ending in a mighty burst of laughter. Then a glass was set before him, full of some amber fluid. It had an evil smell and he loathed it. Remembering the potion given him by Ferideh, he had no doubt but that this was in the same nature. At best it was wine, a forbidden thing. They made instant signs to him to drink, but he pushed it from him, shaking his head vehemently and calling out that it was a sin. At that they laughed the more, and he began to fear, reading mischief in their eyes. A man of giant build caught hold of him and kept his hands, while another flung his head back and forced open his mouth. Saïd kicked with all his might, but his feet were powerless between the legs of the table. While he was yet struggling, the liquor was poured down his throat, and one held his mouth shut until he had swallowed every drop, although he came nigh to choking. Then he was released amid a roar of merriment.

A second glass was presently set before him and, sooner than submit to further violence, he made shift to empty it with a wry face. The stuff, though nasty in the mouth, had a pleasant effect, diffusing unhoped-for warmth through all his body. Soon he was joining in the general laugh against himself. Just as he finished one glass there was another full to his hand.

Instead of enemies he found himself among friends. He could have wept for the joy he had in beholding them. In a broken voice he told them all his troubles, about Ferideh and his love for her, about her elopement and the evil days he had known in Damashc-ush-Shâm, where he had been a great merchant, none like him in all that city⁠—no, by Allah, nor in any city of the earth! It was the bald truth he was telling them⁠—by the beard of the Prophet, he was an honest man, a man of consequence, and no liar! Whatever he said, they laughed madly; he thought it so kind of them to laugh. His eyes filled with tears as he thought on all their kindness.

His head swam queerly, and his eyes grew somewhat dim. He fancied he saw a woman somewhere in the room and, with a hazy remembrance of his purpose in coming to Lûndra, held out his arms to her enticingly. The laughter grew ever more boisterous. It was very rude of them to laugh, he considered. The Franks were fools, every one of them⁠—accursed unbelievers having no knowledge of Allah or of Muhammed His apostle. He stood up, balancing himself with difficulty, and rated them soundly, cursing them for a lot of pigs and adjuring Allah Most High to destroy their houses and slay their parents. The next minute, he knew not how, he was sprawling face downwards on the floor, and his hands and clothing were coated with sawdust. They crowded about him, slapping their thighs and hallooing with glee. He cursed them again, declaring that they were bad men full of strong drink, and thereupon endeavoured to recite to them a passage of the Quran. But one caught hold of his leg and proceeded to drag him round the room, while another sat on him, using him as a sort of carriage. He had no breath to resent the horseplay, but could only pant beneath the weight of the man on his back, emitting from time to time a feeble chuckle.

By-and-by they lifted him to a sitting posture and gave him more of the burning fluid to drink. He sat for a little while swaying to and fro, an insane grin on his swarthy face. Seeing his cap and turban lie at some distance upon the floor, he conceived an indistinct notion of trying to reach them upon his hands and knees; but they were so far off he fell asleep on the way.