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_ "For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows
and Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin Pipe,
procured at the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have
once belonged to the justly-renowned Witch of Endor. Parties
desiring to examine this singular relic with a view to purchasing,
can do so by calling upon Daniel S.. 119 and 121 William street, New
York"
As per advertisement in the "Herald." A curious old relic indeed, as I
had a good personal right to know. In a single instant of time, a long
drawn panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my
memory--town and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each
other and disappearing, leaping me with a little of the surprised and
dizzy feeling which I have experienced at sundry times when a long
express train has overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car
by car, around the corner and out of sight. In that prolific instant I
saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to
Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of
Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean. Leaving out unimportant stretches of
country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following-
described matters and things. Immediately three years fell away from my
age, and a vanished time was restored to me September, 1867. It was a
flaming Oriental day--this one that had come up out of the past and
brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects--and
our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which
still holds the ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the
rear on my grave four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose
himself for his usual noon nap. My! only fifteen minutes before how the
black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted,
besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling,
wailing, begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had
swarmed out of the caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the
earth, and blocked our horses' way, besieged us, threw themselves in the
animals' path, clung to their manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking,
beseeching, demanding "bucksheesh! bucksheesh! BUCKSHEESH!" We had
rained small copper Turkish coins among them, as fugitives fling coats
and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had spurred our way through as they
stopped to scramble for the largess. I was fervently thankful when we
had gotten well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them and left
them jawing and gesticulating in the rear. What a tempest had seemingly
gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull thunders pulsing in my
ears!
I was in the rear, as I was saying. Our pack-mules and Arabs were far
ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these names
will do as well as any to represent the boys) were following close after
them. As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me,
and turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me
--a true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch--a
galvanised scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with
ophthalmia and leprous scars--an airy creature with an invisible shirt-
front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other clothing to
speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and a venerable
gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came within
shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article of dress.
I thought to myself, "Now this disease with a human heart in it is going
to shoot me." I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to
touch off his great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown
off for his pains. But then it occurred to me, in simple school-boy
language, "Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off' and fetch
me with the butt-end of it?" There was wisdom in that view of it, and I
stopped to parley. I found he was only a friendly villain who wanted a
trifle of bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in that way,
was perfectly willing to trade off everything he had for more. I believe
he would have parted with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he had had
one. He was smoking the "humbliest" pipe I ever saw--a dingy, funnel-
shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and tears of
tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty
per cent. of them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition. And
rank? I never smelt anything like it. It withered a cactus that stood
lifting its prickly hands aloft beside the trail. It even woke up my
horse. I said I would take that. It cost me a franc, a Russian kopek,
a brass button, and a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so won
upon the son of the desert that he passed over his pouch of most
unspeakably villainous tobacco to me as a free gift. What a pipe it was,
to be sure! It had a rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse
iron chain suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to
loosen up the tobacco and pick your teeth with. The stem looked like the
half of a slender walking-stick with the bark on.
I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of Endor as soon
as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it. Moreover, I asked the
Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic
that it was. I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking. And presently
I said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that could make a
man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected
whiff from this pipe would do it." I smoked along till I found I was
beginning to lie, and project murder, and steal my own things out of one
pocket and hide them in another; and then I put up my treasure, took off
my spurs and put them under my horse's tail, and shortly came tearing
through our caravan like a hurricane.
From that time forward, going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan,
Bethany, Bethlehem, and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and
enjoyed my infamous pipe and revelled in imaginary villany. But at the
end of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over
the Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that
Samson knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just at
night, and trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon. It was
perfectly jolly for three hours, and we whites crowded along together,
close after the chief Arab muleteer (all the pack-animals and the other
Arabs were miles in the rear), and we laughed, and chatted, and argued
hotly about Samson, and whether suicide was a sin or not, since Paul
speaks of Samson distinctly as being saved and in heaven. But by and by
the night air, and the duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in the
saddle, began to tell, and conversation flagged and finally died out
utterly. The squeak-squeaking of the saddles grew very distinct;
occasionally somebody sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it up;
now and then a horse sneezed. These things only emphasised the solemnity
and the stillness. Everybody got so listless that for once I and my
dreamer found ourselves in the lead. It was a glad, new sensation, and
I longed to keep the place forevermore. Every little stir in the dingy
cavalcade behind made me nervous. Davis and I were riding side by side,
right after the Arab. About 11 o'clock it had become really chilly, and
the dozing boys roused up and began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah
yet, and to demand that the Arab hurry along faster. I gave it up then,
and my heart sank within me, because of course they would come up to
scold the Arab. I knew I had to take the rear again. In my sorrow I
unconsciously took to my pipe, my only comfort. As I touched the match
to it the whole company came lumbering up and crowding my horse's rump
and flanks. A whiff of smoke drifted back over my shoulder, and--
"The suffering Moses!"
"Whew!"
"By George, who opened that graveyard?"
"Boys, that Arab's been swallowing something dead!"
Right away there was a gap behind us. Whiff after whiff sailed airily
back, and each one widened the breach. Within fifteen seconds the
barking, and gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their
angry abuse of the Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I
were alone with the leader. Davis did not know what the matter was, and
don't to this day. Occasionally he caught a faint film of the smoke and
fell to scolding at the Arab and wondering how long he had been decaying
in that way. Our boys kept on dropping back further and further, till at
last they were only in hearing, not in sight. And every time they
started gingerly forward to reconnoitre or shoot the Arab, as they
proposed to do--I let them get within good fair range of my relic (she
would carry seventy yards with wonderful precision), and then wafted a
whiff among them that sent them gasping and strangling to the rear again.
I kept my gun well charged and ready, and twice within the hour I decoyed
the boys right up to my horse's tail, and then with one malarious blast
emptied the saddles, almost. I never heard an Arab abused so in my life.
He really owed his preservation to me, because for one entire hour I
stood between him and certain death. The boys would have killed him if
they could have got by me.
By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away my pipe--
I was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather blown
with good diligent work--and spurred my animated trance up alongside the
Arab and stopped him and asked for water. He unslung his little gourd-
shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under my moustache and took a long,
glorious, satisfying draught. I was going to scour the mouth of the jug
a little, but I saw that I had brought the whole train together once more
by my delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too--and would have
been long ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out of water.
So I hastened to pass the vessel to Davis. He took a mouthful, and never
said a word, but climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in the road.
I felt sorry for Davis. It was too late now, though, and Dan was
drinking. Dan got down too, and hunted for a soft place. I thought I
heard Dan say, "That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or else
take him out and bury him somewhere." All the boys took a drink and
climbed down. It is not well to go into further particulars. Let us
draw the curtain upon this act.
..............................
Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should hear from
that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for the
benefit of a benevolent object. Dan is not treating that present right.
I gave that pipe to him for a keepsake. However, he probably finds that
it keeps away custom and interferes with business. It is the most
convincing inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps. Dan
and I were roommates in all that long "Quaker City" voyage, and whenever
I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up on that
pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change his
clothes, either. In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters of a
minute, he would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck and
cursing. I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell? _
Read next: A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS
Read previous: THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A.D. 1870
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