_ BOOK II. THE PRINCE OF INDIA
CHAPTER III. THE YELLOW AIR
[Footnote: The plague is known amongst Arabs as "the Yellow Air."]
One evening the reputed Indian sat by the door of his tent alone. The red afterglow of the day hung in the western sky. Overhead the stars were venturing timidly out. The camels were at rest, some chewing their cuds, others asleep, their necks stretched full length upon the warm earth. The watchmen in a group talked in low voices. Presently the cry of a muezzin, calling to prayer, flew in long, quavering, swelling notes through the hushed air. Others took up the call, clearer or fainter according to the distance; and so was it attuned to the feeling invoked by the conditions of the moment that no effort was required of a listener to think it a refrain from the sky. The watchmen ceased debating, drew a little apart from each other, spread their
abbas on the ground, and stepping upon them barefooted, their faces turned to where Mecca lay, began the old unchangeable prayer of Islam--
God is God, and Mahomet is His Prophet.
The pilgrim at the tent door arose, and when his rude employes were absorbed in their devotions, like them, he too prayed, but very differently.
"God of Israel--my God!" he said, in a tone hardly more than speaking to himself. "These about me, my fellow creatures, pray thee in the hope of life, I pray thee in the hope of death. I have come up from the sea, and the end was not there; now I will go into the Desert in search of it. Or if I must live, Lord, give me the happiness there is in serving thee. Thou hast need of instruments of good; let me henceforth be one of them, that by working for thy honor, I may at last enjoy the peace of the blessed--Amen."
Timing his movements with those of the watchmen, he sank to his knees, and repeated the prayer; when they fell forward, their faces to the earth in the
rik'raths so essential by the Mohammedan code, he did the same. When they were through the service, he went on with it that they might see him. A careful adherence to this conduct gained him in a short time great repute for sanctity, making the pilgrimage enjoyable as well as possible to him.
The evening afterglow faded out, giving the world to night and the quiet it affects; still the melancholy Indian walked before his tent, his hands clasped behind him, his chin in the beard on his breast. Let us presume to follow his reflections.
"Fifty years! A lifetime to all but me. Lord, how heavy is thy hand when thou art in anger!"
He drew a long breath, and groaned.
"Fifty years! That they are gone, let those mourn to whom time is measured in scanty dole."
He became retrospective.
"The going to Cipango was like leaving the world. War had yielded to contentions about religion. I wearied of them also. My curse is to weary of everything. I wonder if the happiness found in the affection of women is more lasting?"
He pursued the thought awhile, finishing with a resolution.
"If the opportunity comes my way, I will try it. I remember yet the mother of my Lael, though I did not understand the measure of the happiness she brought me until she died."
He returned then to the first subject.
"When will men learn that faith is a natural impulse, and pure religion but faith refined of doubt?"
The question was succeeded by a wordless lapse in his mind, the better apparently to prolong the pleasure he found in the idea.
"God help me," he presently resumed, "to bring about an agreement in that definition of religion! There can be no reform or refinement of faith except God be its exclusive subject; and so certainly it leads to lopping off all parasitical worships such as are given to Christ and Mahomet.... Fifty years ago the sects would have tortured me had I mentioned God as a principle broad and holy enough for them to stand upon in compromise of their disputes; they may not be better disposed now, yet I will try them. If I succeed I will not be a vulgar monument builder like Alexander; neither will I divide a doubtful fame with Caesar. My glory will be unique. I will have restored mankind to their true relations with God. I will be their Arbiter in Religion. Then surely"--he lifted his face appealingly as to a person enthroned amidst the stars--"surely thou wilt release me from this too long life.... If I fail"--he clinched his hands--"if I fail, they may exile me, they may imprison me, they may stretch me on the rack, but they cannot kill me."
Then he walked rapidly, his head down, like a man driven. When he stopped it was to say to himself uncertainly:
"I feel weak at heart. Misgivings beset me. Lord, Lord, how long am I to go on thus cheating myself? If thou wilt not pardon me, how can I hope honor from my fellow men? Why should I struggle to serve them?"
Again he clinched his hands.
"Oh, the fools, the fools! Will they never be done? When I went away they were debating, Was Mahomet a Prophet? Was Christ the Messiah? And they are debating yet. What miseries I have seen come of the dispute!"
From this to the end, the monologue was an incoherent discursive medley, now plaintive, now passionate, at times prayerful, then exultant. As he proceeded, he seemed to lose sight of his present aim at doing good in the hope of release from termless life, and become the Jew he was born.
"The orators called in the sword, and they plied each other with it through two hundred years and more. There were highways across Europe blazoned with corpses.... But they were great days. I remember them. remember Manuel's appeal to Gregory. I was present at the Council of Clermont. I heard Urban's speech. I saw Walter, the beggar of Burgundy, a fugitive in Constantinople; but his followers, those who went out with him--where were they? I saw Peter, the eremite and coward, dragged back, a deserter, to the plague-smitten camps of Antioch. I helped vote Godfrey King of Jerusalem, and carried a candle at his coronation. I saw the hosts of Louis VII and Conrad, a million and more, swallowed up in Iconia and the Pisidian mountains. Then, that the persecutors of my race might not have rest, I marched with Saladin to the re-conquest of the Holy City, and heard Philip and Richard answer his challenge. The brave Kurd, pitying the sorrows of men, at last agreed to tolerate Christians in Jerusalem as pilgrims; and there the strife might have ended, but I played upon the ambition of Baldwin, and set Europe in motion again. No fault of mine that the knight stopped at Constantinople as King of the East. Then the second Frederick presumed to make a Christian city of Jerusalem. I resorted to the Turks, and they burned and pillaged it, and captured St. Louis, the purest and best of the crusaders. He died in my arms. Never before had I a tear for man or woman of his faith! Then came Edward I., and with him the struggle as a contest of armies terminated. By decision of the sword, Mahomet
was the Prophet of God, and Christ but the carpenter's son.... By permission of the Kaliphs, the Christians might visit Jerusalem as pilgrims. A palmer's staff in place of a sword! For shield, a beggar's scrip! But the bishops accepted, and then ushered in an age of fraud, Christian against Christian.... The knoll on which the Byzantine built his church of the Holy Sepulchre is not the Calvary. That the cowled liars call the Sepulchre never held the body of Christ. The tears of the millions of penitents have but watered a monkish deceit.... Fools and blasphemers! The Via Dolorosa led out of the Damascus gate on the north. The skull-shaped hill beyond that gate is the Golgotha. Who should know it better than I? The Centurion asked for a guide; I walked with him. Hyssop was the only green thing growing upon the mount; nothing but hyssop has grown there since. At the base on the west was a garden, and the Sepulchre was in the garden. From the foot of the cross I looked toward the city, and there was a sea of men extending down to the gate.... I know!--I know!--I and misery know!... When I went out fifty years ago there was an agreement between the ancient combatants; each vied with the other in hating and persecuting the Jew, and there was no limit to the afflictions he endured from them.... Speak thou, O Hebron, city of the patriarchs! By him who sits afar, and by him near unto thee, by the stars this peaceful night, and by the Everlasting who is above the stars, be thou heard a witness testifying! There was a day when thou didst stand open to the children of Israel; for the cave and the dead within it belonged to them. Then Herod built over it, and shut it up, though without excluding the tribes. The Christian followed Herod; yet the Hebrew might pay his way in. After the Christian, the Moslem; and now nor David the King, nor son of his, though they alighted at the doors from chariots, and beat upon them with their crowns and sceptres, could pass in and live.... Kings have come and gone, and generations, and there is a new map from which old names have been dropped. As respects religion, alas! the divisions remain--here a Mohammedan, there a Christian, yonder a Judean.... From my door I study these men, the children of those in life at my going into exile. Their ardor is not diminished. To kiss a stone in which tradition has planted a saying of God, they will defy the terrors of the Desert, heat, thirst, famine, disease, death. I bring them an old idea in a new relation--God, giver of life and power to Son and Prophet--God, alone entitled to worship--God, a principle of Supreme Holiness to which believers can bring their creeds and doctrines for mergence in a treaty of universal brotherhood. Will they accept it? ... Yesterday I saw a Schiah and a Sunite meet, and the old hate darkened their faces as they looked at each other. Between them there is only a feud of Islamites; how much greater is their feud with Christians? How immeasurably greater the feud between Christian and Jew? ... My heart misgives me! Lord! Can it be I am but cherishing a dream?"
At sight of a man approaching through the dusk, he calmed himself.
"Peace to thee, Hadji," said the visitor, halting.
"Is it thou, Shaykh?"
"It is I, my father's son. I have a report to make."
"I was thinking of certain holy things of priceless worth, sayings of the Prophet. Tell me what thou hast?"
The Shaykh saluted him, and returned, "The caravan will depart to-morrow at sunrise."
"Be it so. We are ready. I will designate our place in the movement. Thou art dismissed."
"O Prince! I have more to report."
"More?"
"A vessel came in to-day from Hormuz on the eastern shore, bringing a horde of beggars."
"Bismillah! It was well I hired of thee a herd of camels, and loaded them with food. I shall pay my fine to the poor early."
The Shaykh shook his head.
"That they are beggars is nothing," he said. "Allah is good to all his creatures. The jackals are his, and must be fed. For this perhaps the unfortunates were blown here by the angel that rides the yellow air. Four corpses were landed, and their clothes sold in the camp."
"Thou wouldst say," the Prince rejoined, "that the plague will go with us to the Kaaba. Content thee, Shaykh. Allah will have his way."
"But my men are afraid."
"I will place a drop of sweetened water on their lips, and bring them safe through, though they are dying. Tell them as much."
The Shaykh was departing when the Prince, shrewdly suspecting it was he who feared, called him back.
"How call ye the afternoon prayer, O Shaykh?"
"El Asr."
"What didst thou when it was called?"
"Am I not a believer? I prayed."
"And thou hast heard the Arafat sermon?"
"Even so, O Prince."
"Then, as thou art a believer, and a hadji, O Shaykh, thou and all with thee shalt see the Khatib on his dromedary, and hear him again. Only promise me to stay till his last
Amin."
"I promise," said the Shaykh, solemnly.
"Go--but remember prayer is the bread of faith."
The Shaykh was comforted, and withdrew.
With the rising of the sun next day the caravan, numbering about three thousand souls, defiled confusedly out of the town. The Prince, who might have been first, of choice fell in behind the rest.
"Why dost thou take this place, O Prince?" asked the Shaykh, who was proud of his company, and their comparative good order.
He received for answer, "The blessings of Allah are with the dying whom the well-to-do and selfish in front have passed unnoticed."
The Shaykh repeated the saying to his men, and they replied: "Ebn-Hanife was a Dervish: so is this Prince--exalted be his name!"
Eulogy could go no further. _