by Lew Wallace
CHAPTER III
THE YELLOW AIR [Footnote: The plague is known amongst Arabs as "theYellow Air."]
One evening the reputed Indian sat by the door of his tent alone. Thered afterglow of the day hung in the western sky. Overhead the starswere venturing timidly out. The camels were at rest, some chewing theircuds, others asleep, their necks stretched full length upon the warmearth. The watchmen in a group talked in low voices. Presently the cryof a muezzin, calling to prayer, flew in long, quavering, swellingnotes through the hushed air. Others took up the call, clearer orfainter according to the distance; and so was it attuned to the feelinginvoked by the conditions of the moment that no effort was required ofa listener to think it a refrain from the sky. The watchmen ceaseddebating, drew a little apart from each other, spread their _abbas_ onthe ground, and stepping upon them barefooted, their faces turned towhere Mecca lay, began the old unchangeable prayer of Islam--_God isGod, and Mahomet is His Prophet_.
The pilgrim at the tent door arose, and when his rude employes wereabsorbed in their devotions, like them, he too prayed, but verydifferently.
"God of Israel--my God!" he said, in a tone hardly more than speakingto himself. "These about me, my fellow creatures, pray thee in the hopeof 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 ofit. Or if I must live, Lord, give me the happiness there is in servingthee. Thou hast need of instruments of good; let me henceforth be oneof them, that by working for thy honor, I may at last enjoy the peaceof 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 theearth in the _rik'raths_ so essential by the Mohammedan code, he didthe same. When they were through the service, he went on with it thatthey might see him. A careful adherence to this conduct gained him in ashort time great repute for sanctity, making the pilgrimage enjoyableas well as possible to him.
The evening afterglow faded out, giving the world to night and thequiet it affects; still the melancholy Indian walked before his tent,his hands clasped behind him, his chin in the beard on his breast. Letus presume to follow his reflections.
"Fifty years! A lifetime to all but me. Lord, how heavy is thy handwhen thou art in anger!"
He drew a long breath, and groaned.
"Fifty years! That they are gone, let those mourn to whom time ismeasured in scanty dole."
He became retrospective.
"The going to Cipango was like leaving the world. War had yielded tocontentions about religion. I wearied of them also. My curse is toweary of everything. I wonder if the happiness found in the affectionof 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 themother of my Lael, though I did not understand the measure of thehappiness 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 religionbut faith refined of doubt?"
The question was succeeded by a wordless lapse in his mind, the betterapparently to prolong the pleasure he found in the idea.
"God help me," he presently resumed, "to bring about an agreement inthat definition of religion! There can be no reform or refinement offaith except God be its exclusive subject; and so certainly it leads tolopping off all parasitical worships such as are given to Christ andMahomet.... Fifty years ago the sects would have tortured me had Imentioned God as a principle broad and holy enough for them to standupon in compromise of their disputes; they may not be better disposednow, yet I will try them. If I succeed I will not be a vulgar monumentbuilder like Alexander; neither will I divide a doubtful fame withCaesar. My glory will be unique. I will have restored mankind to theirtrue relations with God. I will be their Arbiter in Religion. Thensurely"--he lifted his face appealingly as to a person enthroned amidstthe stars--"surely thou wilt release me from this too long life.... IfI fail"--he clinched his hands--"if I fail, they may exile me, they mayimprison 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 hestopped it was to say to himself uncertainly:
"I feel weak at heart. Misgivings beset me. Lord, Lord, how long am Ito go on thus cheating myself? If thou wilt not pardon me, how can Ihope 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 awaythey were debating, Was Mahomet a Prophet? Was Christ the Messiah? Andthey are debating yet. What miseries I have seen come of the dispute!"
From this to the end, the monologue was an incoherent discursivemedley, now plaintive, now passionate, at times prayerful, thenexultant. As he proceeded, he seemed to lose sight of his present aimat doing good in the hope of release from termless life, and become theJew he was born.
"The orators called in the sword, and they plied each other with itthrough two hundred years and more. There were highways across Europeblazoned with corpses.... But they were great days. I remember them.remember Manuel's appeal to Gregory. I was present at the Council ofClermont. I heard Urban's speech. I saw Walter, the beggar of Burgundy,a fugitive in Constantinople; but his followers, those who went outwith him--where were they? I saw Peter, the eremite and coward, draggedback, a deserter, to the plague-smitten camps of Antioch. I helped voteGodfrey King of Jerusalem, and carried a candle at his coronation. Isaw the hosts of Louis VII and Conrad, a million and more, swallowed upin Iconia and the Pisidian mountains. Then, that the persecutors of myrace might not have rest, I marched with Saladin to the re-conquest ofthe Holy City, and heard Philip and Richard answer his challenge. Thebrave Kurd, pitying the sorrows of men, at last agreed to tolerateChristians in Jerusalem as pilgrims; and there the strife might haveended, but I played upon the ambition of Baldwin, and set Europe inmotion again. No fault of mine that the knight stopped atConstantinople as King of the East. Then the second Frederick presumedto make a Christian city of Jerusalem. I resorted to the Turks, andthey burned and pillaged it, and captured St. Louis, the purest andbest of the crusaders. He died in my arms. Never before had I a tearfor man or woman of his faith! Then came Edward I., and with him thestruggle as a contest of armies terminated. By decision of the sword,Mahomet _was_ the Prophet of God, and Christ but the carpenter'sson.... By permission of the Kaliphs, the Christians might visitJerusalem as pilgrims. A palmer's staff in place of a sword! Forshield, a beggar's scrip! But the bishops accepted, and then ushered inan age of fraud, Christian against Christian.... The knoll on which theByzantine 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 monkishdeceit.... Fools and blasphemers! The Via Dolorosa led out of theDamascus gate on the north. The skull-shaped hill beyond that gate isthe Golgotha. Who should know it better than I? The Centurion asked fora guide; I walked with him. Hyssop was the only green thing growingupon the mount; nothing but hyssop has grown there since. At the baseon the west was a garden, and the Sepulchre was in the garden. From thefoot of the cross I looked toward the city, and there was a sea of menextending down to the gate.... I know!--I know!--I and misery know!...When I went out fifty years ago there was an agreement between theancient combatants; each vied with the other in hating and persecutingthe Jew, and there was no limit to the afflictions he endured fromthem.... Speak thou, O Hebron, city of the patriarchs! By him who sitsafar, and by him near unto thee, by the stars this peaceful night, andby the Everlasting who is above the stars, be thou heard a witnesstestifying! There was a day when thou didst stand open to the childrenof Israel; for the cave and the dead within it belonged to them. ThenHerod built over it, and shut it up, though without excluding thetribes. The Christian followed Herod; yet the Hebrew might pay his wayi
n. After the Christian, the Moslem; and now nor David the King, norson of his, though they alighted at the doors from chariots, and beatupon them with their crowns and sceptres, could pass in and live....Kings have come and gone, and generations, and there is a new map fromwhich old names have been dropped. As respects religion, alas! thedivisions remain--here a Mohammedan, there a Christian, yonder aJudean.... From my door I study these men, the children of those inlife at my going into exile. Their ardor is not diminished. To kiss astone in which tradition has planted a saying of God, they will defythe terrors of the Desert, heat, thirst, famine, disease, death. Ibring them an old idea in a new relation--God, giver of life and powerto Son and Prophet--God, alone entitled to worship--God, a principle ofSupreme Holiness to which believers can bring their creeds anddoctrines for mergence in a treaty of universal brotherhood. Will theyaccept it? ... Yesterday I saw a Schiah and a Sunite meet, and the oldhate darkened their faces as they looked at each other. Between themthere is only a feud of Islamites; how much greater is their feud withChristians? How immeasurably greater the feud between Christian andJew? ... My heart misgives me! Lord! Can it be I am but cherishing adream?"
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 ofthe Prophet. Tell me what thou hast?"
The Shaykh saluted him, and returned, "The caravan will departto-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 ahorde of beggars."
"Bismillah! It was well I hired of thee a herd of camels, and loadedthem 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 hiscreatures. The jackals are his, and must be fed. For this perhaps theunfortunates 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 withus 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 themsafe through, though they are dying. Tell them as much."
The Shaykh was departing when the Prince, shrewdly suspecting it was hewho 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 withthee shalt see the Khatib on his dromedary, and hear him again. Onlypromise 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 threethousand souls, defiled confusedly out of the town. The Prince, whomight have been first, of choice fell in behind the rest.
"Why dost thou take this place, O Prince?" asked the Shaykh, who wasproud of his company, and their comparative good order.
He received for answer, "The blessings of Allah are with the dying whomthe 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.
