A dark line stretches thwart before us: you might take
it for a ledge, a trench, a precipice - what you will.
it for a ledge, a trench, a precipice - what you will.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v19 - Oli to Phi
"You
tax me for a wizard," said he to the magistrates: "you may as
well tax me for a buzzard; I have done no harm. " They tried
him with repeating the Lord's Prayer, which it was thought
impossible for a witch to do. According to Parris's record, "he
missed in several parts of it. " His accusers persisted. "Well,
burn me or hang me," said he, "I will stand in the truth of
Christ; I know nothing of the matter, any more than the child
that was born to-night. " Among others, John Willard was now
## p. 10995 (#207) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10995
apprehended. As a constable he had served in the arrest and
custody of some of the reputed witches. But he came to see the
absurdity of the thing, and was said to have uttered something
to the effect that it was the magistrates that were bewitched,
and those who cheered them on. Willard was forthwith cried
out against as a wizard, and committed for trial [May 18th].
Affairs were in this condition when the King's Governor
arrived [May 14th]. About a hundred alleged witches were now
in jail, awaiting trial. Their case was one of the first matters
to which his attention was called. Without authority for so.
doing,- for by the charter which he represented, the establish-
ment of judicial courts was a function of the General Court,— he
proceeded to institute a special commission of Oyer and Ter-
miner, consisting of seven magistrates, first of whom was the
hard, obstinate, narrow-minded Stoughton. The commissioners
applied themselves to their office without delay. Their first act
[June 2d] was to try Bridget Bishop, against whom an accusation.
twenty years old, and retracted by its author on his death-bed,
had been revived. The court sentenced her to die by hanging,
and she was accordingly hanged at the end of eight days. Cot-
ton Mather, in his account of the proceedings, relates that as
she passed along the street under guard, Bishop "had given a
look towards the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and
immediately a dæmon, invisibly entering the house, tore down
a part of it. " It may be guessed that a plank or a partition had
given way under the pressure of the crowd of lookers-on col-
lected for so extraordinary a spectacle.
At the end of another four weeks the court sat again [June
30th], and sentenced five women, two of Salem, and one each of
Amesbury, Ipswich, and Topsfield, all of whom were executed,
protesting their innocence [July 19th]. In respect to one of them,
Rebecca Nourse, a matron eminent for piety and goodness, a ver-
dict of acquittal was first rendered. But Stoughton sent the jury
out again, reminding them that in her examination, in reference
to certain witnesses against her who had confessed their own guilt,
she had used the expression, "they came among us. " Nourse
was deaf, and did not catch what had been going on. When
it was afterwards repeated to her, she said that by the coming
among us she meant that they had been in prison together. But
the jury adopted the court's interpretation of the words as sig-
nifying an acknowledgment that they had met at a witch orgy.
## p. 10996 (#208) ##########################################
10996
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
The Governor was disposed to grant her a pardon. But Parris,
who had an ancient grudge against her, interfered and prevailed.
On the last communion day before her execution, she was taken
into church, and formally excommunicated by Noyes, her min-
ister.
Of six persons tried at the next session of the court [August
5th], the Reverend George Burroughs, a graduate of Harvard
College, was one. At a certain point of the proceedings the
young people pretending to have suffered from him stood mute.
Stoughton asked who hindered them from telling their story.
"The Devil, I suppose," said Burroughs. "Why should the Devil
be so careful to suppress evidence against you? " retorted the
judge, and with the jury this encounter of wits told hardly
against the prisoner [August 19th]. His behavior at his execu-
tion strongly impressed the spectators in his favor. "When he
was upon the ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his
innocency, with such solemn and serious expressions as were to
the admiration of all present. His prayer (which he concluded
by repeating the Lord's Prayer) was so well worded, and uttered.
with such composedness, and such (at least, seeming) fervency of
spirit as was very affecting, and drew tears from many, so that
it seemed to many the spectators would hinder the execution.
Cotton Mather, who was present on horseback, made them a
quieting harangue. The accusers said the Black Man stood and
dictated to him. "
In the course of the next month, in which the Governor left
Boston for a short tour of inspection in the Eastern country,
fifteen persons-six women in one day, and on another eight
women and one man were tried, convicted, and sentenced.
Eight of them were hanged [September 9th, September 17th,
September 22d, September 19th]. The brave Giles Corey, eighty
years of age, being arraigned, refused to plead. He said that the
whole thing was an imposture, and that it was of no use to put
himself on his trial, for every trial had ended in a conviction,—
which was the fact. It is shocking to relate that, suffering the
penalty of the English common law for a contumacious refusal
to answer, the peine forte et dure,-he was pressed to death.
with heavy weights laid on his body. By not pleading he in-
tended to protect the inheritance of his children, which, as he
had been informed, would by a conviction of felony have been
forfeit to the crown.
-
—
## p. 10997 (#209) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10997
In the following month [October] the malady broke out in
another neighborhood. One Ballard, of the town of Andover,
whose wife was ill in a way that perplexed their medical friend,
sent to Salem to see what light could be obtained from the witch-
detectors there. A party of them came to his help, and went
to work with vigor. More than fifty persons at Andover fell
under accusation, some of the weaker minded of whom were
brought to confess themselves guilty not only of afflicting their
neighbors, but of practicing such exercises as riding on animals
and on sticks through the air.
There were no executions, however, after those which have
been mentioned as occurring on one day of each of four suc
cessive months. There had been twenty human victims, Corey
included; besides two dogs, their accomplices in the mysterious
crime. Fifty persons had obtained a pardon by confessing; a
hundred and fifty were in prison awaiting trial; and charges had
been made against two hundred more. The accusers were now
flying at high quarries. Hezekiah Usher, known to the reader as
an ancient magistrate of fair consideration, was complained of;
and Mrs. Thacher, mother-in-law of Corwin, the justice who had
taken the earliest examinations. Zeal in pushing forward the
prosecutions began to seem dangerous; for what was to prevent
an accused person from securing himself by confession, and then
revenging himself on the accuser by arraigning him as a former
ally?
Mrs. Hale, wife of the minister of Beverly who had been
active in the prosecutions, and Dudley Bradstreet of Andover,
the old Governor's son, who had granted warrants for the com-
mitment of some thirty or forty alleged witches, were now
accused. The famous name of John Allyn, Secretary of Con-
necticut, was uttered in whispers. There had even begun to
be a muttering about Lady Phips, the Governor's wife; and Mr.
Willard, then minister of the Old South Church in Boston, and
afterwards head of the College, who, after yielding to the infat-
uation in its earliest stage, had made himself obnoxious and
suspected by partially retracing his steps. People began now to
be almost as wild with the fear of being charged with witchcraft,
or having the charge made against their friends, as they had
been with the fear of suffering from its spells. The visitation,
shocking as it had been, had been local. It had been almost
confined to some towns of Essex County. In other parts of the
## p. 10998 (#210) ##########################################
10998
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
province the public mind was calmer, or was turned in the dif-
ferent direction of disgust at the insane tragedies, and dread of
their repetition. A person in Boston, whose name had begun to
be used dangerously by the informers at Andover, instituted an
action for defamation, laying his damages at a thousand pounds;
a measure which, while it would probably have been ruinous to
him had he made a mistake in choosing his time, was now found,
at the turning of the tide, to have a wholesome effect.
After the convictions which were last mentioned, the Com-
mission Court which had conducted the trials adjourned for two
months. Thanks to the good sense of the people, it never met
again. Before the time designated for its next session, the Gen-
eral Court of the Province assembled, and the cry of the op-
pressed and miserable came to their ear. The General Court
superseded the Court of Special Commission, the agent of all the
cruelty, by constituting a regular tribunal of supreme jurisdiction
[November 25th]. When that court met at the appointed time,
reason had begun to resume her sway; and the grand jury at
once threw out more than half of the presentments [1693, Janu-
ary 3d]. They found true bills against twenty-six persons. The
evidence against these was as good as any that had proved fatal
in former trials; but only three of the arraigned were found
guilty, and all these were pardoned. One of them may have
owed her conviction to a sort of rude justice: she had before con-
fessed herself a witch, and charged her husband, who was hanged
on her information. Stoughton, who had been made Chief Just-
ice, showed his disapprobation of the pardons by withdrawing
from the bench with passionate anger [February 21st]. Phips
wrote to the Lords of Trade a disingenuous letter, in which he
attempted to divert from himself, chiefly at Stoughton's expense,
whatever blame might be attached to the recent transactions; it
even appeared to imply, what was contrary to the fact, that the
executions did not begin till after his departure from Boston to
the Eastern country.
The drunken fever-fit was now over, and with returning so-
briety came profound contrition and disgust. A few still held
out against the return of reason.
There are some men who
never own that they have been in the
who are forever incapable of seeing it.
dog stubbornness, that might in other times have made him a
St. Dominic, continued to insist that the business had been all
wrong, and a few men
Stoughton, with his bull-
## p. 10999 (#211) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10999
right, and that the only mistake was in putting a stop to it.
Cotton Mather was always infallible in his own eyes. In the
year after the executions he had the satisfaction of studying an-
other remarkable case of possession in Boston; but when it and
the treatise which he wrote upon it failed to excite much atten-
tion, and it was plain that the tide had set the other way, he
soon got his consent to let it run at its own pleasure, and turned
his excursive activity to other objects. Saltonstall, horrified by
the rigor of his colleagues, had resigned his place in the com-
mission at an early period of the operations. When reason re-
turned, Parris, the Salem minister, was driven from his place by
the calm and decent, but irreconcilable, indignation of his parish-
ioners. Noyes, his well-intentioned but infatuated neighbor in
the First Parish, devoting the remainder of his life to peaceful
and Christian service, caused his church to cancel by a formal
and public act [1712] their excommunication of the blameless
Mrs. Nourse, who had died his peculiar victim.
Members of some of the juries, in a written public declara-
tion, acknowledged the fault of their wrongful verdicts, entreated
forgiveness, and protested that, "according to their present minds,
they would none of them do such things again, on such grounds,
for the whole world; praying that this act of theirs might be
accepted in way of satisfaction for their offense. " A day of Gen-
eral Fasting was proclaimed by authority, to be observed through.
out the jurisdiction, in which the people were invited to pray
that "whatever mistakes on either hand had been fallen into,
either by the body of this people, or by any orders of men,
referring to the late tragedy raised among us by Satan and his
instruments, through the awful judgment of God, he would hum-
ble them therefor, and pardon all the errors of his servants and
people. " On that day [1696, January 14th] Judge Sewall rose in
his pew in the Old South Church in Boston, handed to the desk
a paper acknowledging and bewailing his great offense, and ask-
ing the prayers of the congregation "that the Divine displeasure
thereof might be stayed against the country, his family, and him-
self," and remained standing while it was read by the minister.
To the end of his long life, the penitent and much-respected
man kept every year a private day of humiliation and prayer
on the same account. Twenty-eight years after, he prays in
an entry in his diary in reference to the transaction, "The good
and gracious God be pleased to save New England, and me and
## p. 11000 (#212) ##########################################
1. 000
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
my family! " Ann Putnam, one of the three beginners of the mis-
chief, after thirteen years, came out of the long conflict between
her conscience and her shame, with a most affecting declaration
of her remorse and grief, now on record in the books of the
Danvers church. Twenty years after, the General Court made
grants to the heirs of the sufferers, in acknowledgment of their
pecuniary losses. "Some of them [the witch accusers] proved
profligate persons," says Governor Hutchinson, "abandoned to all
vice; others passed their days in obscurity and contempt. "
## p. 11001 (#213) ##########################################
I1001
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
(1826-1888)
STRANGE personality, inviting a strange life, a career of curi-
ous and indeed of highly romantic interest, yet of imperfect
fruitfulness. such is the summary of Palgrave's individu-
ality, and of his sixty-two busy years of work and wandering. An
assortment of mysteries, intangible and confused, hung about him
while he lived. His death did not answer many significant and open
personal questions. Scholar, poet, soldier, missionary-priest, traveler,
lecturer, learned Orientalist and linguist, Arabian explorer, doctor, spy,
secret agent, diplomatist,-Palgrave was all these; and in them all
the real Palgrave appeared, to friend or
to foe, chiefly in fragmentary and uncertain
aspects.
The second son of Sir Francis Palgrave,
the English historical writer and antiqua-
rian, William Gifford Palgrave was born in
Westminster, January 24th, 1826. He dis-
tinguished himself in belles-lettres as a
Charterhouse schoolboy, and graduated from
Trinity College, Oxford, when only twenty,
after an exceptionally short University resi-
dence. The East had already much at-
tracted him. Rejecting high opportunities WILLIAM G. PALGRAVE
of distinction opening to him in England
through his father's powerful influences, he entered the Indian serv-
ice as a lieutenant in the Eighth Bombay Regiment. His superior
education, his firmness of mind, and his temperamental adaptation
for Eastern military life, insured his advance in the service; but
here again Palgrave's tendency to turn from anything like commit-
ting himself in a given direction, and working out his material wel-
fare in commonplace method, seem to have affected his future. His
head was already full of Oriental literature; and it is said that not
a little merely through his study of such a work as 'Antar,' he felt
he must meet the less familiar life and less accessible peoples of the
East on another than military footing,- one far more intimate. He
had, too, at this time strong religious convictions and aspirations.
He entered the Roman Catholic Church, became a Jesuit in Madras,
and was ordained a priest.
## p. 11002 (#214) ##########################################
I 1002
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
For the next fifteen years Palgrave was an extremely hard-worked
Jesuit missioner in Southern India. In June 1853 he went to Rome.
There he met with distinguished attention, though in an unobtrusive
- in fact, almost a clandestine way. It may be said that he was
early a complete master of half a dozen European tongues, in addi-
tion to as many of the languages or dialects of the East. He learned
a language with something like preternatural quickness; though he
forgot one quite as suddenly, as soon as not needed in his affairs.
In the autumn of the year that had found him in Rome, he was sent
to Syria, and conducted most successfully some valuable missionary
undertakings at Zahleh. He was a born proselytist. Syria and the
Syrians, Arabia and the Arabians, became an open book to him.
With the persecution of the Maronite Christians from the Druses, the
Maronites were anxious that he should be their actual leader in the
war. This, however, he declined to do, although he bestirred him-
self actively, quite as far as any priest could becomingly go, in the
task of the practical military instruction of the dismayed Maronites.
The massacre of June 1861 nearly cost him his life; in fact, he just
escaped. His Syrian mission now interrupted, he became an Occi-
dental again. He revisited Europe; lectured in Great Britain on the
Syrian massacres, and was requested by Napoleon III. of France to
furnish authoritative data as to them. This he did with much suc-
cess, meeting with a most cordial personal interest on the Emperor's
part.
―
So perfectly could Palgrave assume the Oriental,—especially the
Arab, Syrian, or Levantine,—so complete had become his knowledge
of the races of the East and of shades of Eastern character and reli-
gion, that in 1862, after his return to Syria, he undertook one of the
most dangerous and adventurous tests of his genius for acting in
character. Mohammedanism he had by heart. He was able to be
a Mussulman among Mussulmans. He knew every shade of Islamic
orthodoxy and Islamic heterodoxy; and he could quote the higgling
commentators on the Koran as literally as he could cite the Most
Perspicuous Book itself. The French government felt special interest
at this time in learning definite particulars of the attitude toward
France of Central Arabia proper, with its group of little known cen-
tral tribes, and isolated towns and peoples; and France also wished
to ascertain how far the finer Arabian blood stock could be procured
for bettering the breed of French horses. At the same time Palgrave
himself was desirous of determining whether Central Arabia offered
a real and safe field for Catholic mission work. The district he was
asked to traverse and to study on these errands included that por-
tion of Arabia most out of touch with all European sounding; and
more of a difficulty than that, it was one savagely fanatical in its
## p. 11003 (#215) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11003
Mohammedan orthodoxy. It was a territory in which no European
traveler would be tolerated. To visit it invited death. Palgrave
accordingly began and completed his tour in disguise. He penetrated
to Hofhuf, Raïd, and to other centres of Mohammedan and Wahabee
religiosity, as a traveling Syrian physician. He nearly came to grief
two or three times; but by his assurance and his perfect familiarity
with his surroundings, he escaped more than some troublesome and
passing suspicions. He even gained the actual favor of the most
exclusive authorities of the Peninsula; and pursuing his explorations,
drew his various conclusions with complete success, and returned with
his head on his shoulders, to write one of the most fascinating rec-
ords of Arabian wanderings ever penned - his 'Narrative of a Year's
Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia' (1865).
No sooner was one task of travel ended than Palgrave was ready
for a new one. An Abyssinian journey occupied the summer of
1865, when he was commissioned to obtain the release of Mr. Cam-
eron, the consul, and of other English captives, from the clutches of
King Theodore. He remained in Egypt, under government instruc-
tions, till 1866; and then after a short visit to England he became
the British consular representative at Soukhoum Kalé. Many years
of government service, travel, and exploration followed, including
wanderings (frequently in disguise) through Asia Minor, the Euphrates
country, Anatolia, and Persia. He continued his consular duties by
accepting posts in Manila and Bangkok, and also studied Farther
India assiduously while residing in it. Finally the current of his
interests and official appointments set westerly; and after consular
services in the West Indies and Uruguay, he died at Montevideo in
September 1888. During the latter portion of his life he became
sufficiently interested in Shintoism to lapse from his Christian belief;
but before his death he repudiated what had been but an imperfect
apostasy, and received the last sacraments of the church of his
youth and middle age. His remains were brought with affectionate
care from the Uruguay city where he passed away. He is buried in
Fulham.
So far as Palgrave's mind and work, and especially his exquisite
knowledge of Eastern life and peoples, have a literary representation,
we find it in the 'Narrative' of his risky expedition through Central
Arabia; and not less clearly in one bit of fiction of astonishing brill-
iancy, sincerity, and vividness. This last is 'Hermann Agha. ' It is
to all intents a love story, withal a short and sad one. The material
in this tale, wholly Oriental, and modern-Oriental as well, is slight.
There is little between its covers, when we compare the slender
book with the elaborate romances of less authoritative but more pre-
tentious tale-tellers in Orientalism. But it is a transcript from the
## p. 11004 (#216) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11004
passionate heart and the fatalistic soul of the East. The directness
and emotional intensity of the story hold the reader under an irre-
sistible spell from beginning to end. It has been said, on one or
another authority, that in 'Hermann Agha' Palgrave ventured (dis-
guised to the last) to embody a considerable autobiographic element,
and reminiscences that were quite personal to himself. This can
scarcely be clear to the uninitiated reader of 'Hermann Agha'; but
hardly a character or passage in the tale reads like the creation of a
novelist's mere fancy, however sensitive or robust.
THE NIGHT RIDE IN THE DESERT
From Hermann Agha'
[Hermann Agha, the narrator and hero of Palgrave's dramatic love story of
Arabia, has learned that his affianced wife Zahra is being carried away into
a distant part of the desert country by the Emeer Daghfel, who has the con-
sent of Zahra's parents to a marriage with the young girl. Hermann, his
friends Moharib, Aman, and Modarrib, and others, make up a small troop
and hurry to overtake the bridal train. The following admirable descriptive
episode is part of the chapter setting forth their romantic pursuit. ]
WⓇ
E ALL left the garden together; there was plenty of occupa-
tion for every one in getting himself, his horse, his weap-
ons, and his traveling-gear, ready for the night and the
morrow. Our gathering-place was behind a dense palm grove
that cut us off from the view and observation of the village;
there our comrades arrived, one after another, all fully equipped,
till the whole band of twelve had reassembled. The cry of the
night prayers, proclaimed from the mosque roof, had long died
away into silence; the last doubtful streak of sunset faded from
the west, accompanied by the thin white crescent of the young
moon; night still cloudless, and studded with innumerable stars,
depth over depth, reigned alone. Without a word we set forth
into what seemed the trackless expanse of desert, our faces be-
tween west and south,-the direction across which the Emeer
Daghfel and his caravan were expected to pass.
More than ever did the caution now manifested by my com-
panions, who were better versed than myself in adventures of the
kind, impress me with a sense, not precisely of the danger, but
of the seriousness of the undertaking. Two of the Benoo-Riah,
Harith and Modarrib, — whom the tacit consent of the rest
designated for that duty, took the advance as scouts, riding far
-
## p. 11005 (#217) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11005
out ahead into the darkness, sometimes on the right, sometimes
on the left, in order that timely notice might be given to the
rest of us should any chance meeting or suspicious obstacle occur
on the way. A third, Ja'ad es-Sabāsib himself, acted, as beseemed.
his name, for guide; he rode immediately in front of our main
body. The rest of us held close together, at a brisk walking
pace, from which we seldom allowed our beasts to vary; indeed,
the horses themselves, trained to the work, seemed to comprehend
the necessity of cautiousness, and stepped on warily and noise-
lessly.
Every man in the band was dressed alike. Though I re-
tained, I had carefully concealed my pistols; the litham disguised
my foreign features, and to any superficial observer, especially
at night, I was merely a Bedouin of the tribe, with my sword at
my side, and my lance couched, Benoo-Riah fashion, alongside of
my horse's right ear. Not a single word was uttered by any one
of the band, as following Ja'ad's guidance—who knew every inch
of the ground, to my eyes utterly unmeaning and undistinguish-
able- we glided over the dry plain. At another time I might
perhaps have been inclined to ask questions; but now the near-
ness of expectation left no room for speech. Besides, I had been
long enough among the men of the desert to have learnt from
them their habit of invariable silence when journeying by night.
Talkative at other times, they then become absolutely mute. Nor
is this silence of theirs merely a precaution due to the insecur-
ity of the road, which renders it unadvisable for the wayfarer to
give any superfluous token of his presence: it is quite as much
the result of a powerful, though it may well be most often an
unconscious, sympathy with the silence of nature around.
Silent overhead, the bright stars, moving on, moving upwards
from the east, constellation after constellation, the Twins and the
Pleiads, Aldebaran and Orion, the Spread and the Perching Eagle,
the Balance, the once worshiped Dog Star, and beautiful Canopus.
I look at them till they waver before my fixed gaze; and look-
ing, calculate by their position how many hours of our long
night march have already gone by, and how many yet remain
before daybreak: till the spaces between them show preternatur-
ally dark; and on the horizon below, a false eye-begotten shim-
mer gives a delusive semblance of dawn, then vanishes.
Silent: not the silence of voices alone, but the silence of
meaning change, dead midnight. The Wolf's Tail has not yet.
## p. 11006 (#218) ##########################################
11006
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
shot up its first slant harbinger of day in the east; the quiet
progress of the black spangled heavens is monotonous as mech-
anism; no life is there. Silence; above, around, no sound, no
speech. The very cry of a jackal, the howl of a wolf, would
come friendly to the ear, but none is heard; as though all life
had disappeared forever from the face of the land. Silent every-
where.
A dark line stretches thwart before us: you might take
it for a ledge, a trench, a precipice - what you will. It is none
of these: it is only a broad streak of brown withered herb, drawn
across the faintly gleaming flat. Far off on the dim right rises
something like a black giant wall. It is not that: it is a thick-
planted grove of palms; silent they also, and motionless in the
night. On the left glimmers a range of white ghost-like shapes:
they are the rapid slopes of sand-hills shelving off into the plain;
no life is there.
Some men are silenced by entering a place of worship, a
grave-yard, a large and lonely hall, a deep forest; and in each.
and all of these there is what brings silence, though from differ-
ent motives, varying in the influence they exert over the mind.
But that man must be strangely destitute of the sympathies
which link the microcosm of our individual existence with the
macrocosm around us, who can find heart for a word more than
needful, were it only a passing word, in the desert at night.
Silent we go on; the eyes and thoughts of the Bedouins are
fixed, now on the tracks,- for there are many, barely distinguish-
able to a few yards before them through the gloom,- now on
the pebble-strewn surface beneath their horses' hoofs; at times
on some bright particular star near the horizon; while occasion-
ally they turn an uneasy glance to right or left, as though half
anticipating some unfriendly figure about to start out of the
gloom. Moharib rode generally alongside of Ja'ad, with whom
he exchanged, but not often, signs or low whispers; Aman kept
close to me. I, who had long before made a separate astral cal-
culation for each successive night of the year (a useful amuse-
ment in my frequent journeys), and for whom almost every star
has a tale to tell of so many hours elapsed since sunset, so many
remaining to the dawn, continue gazing on the vault above, also
thinking. Our horses' pace never varies; no new object breaks
the monotonous gloom of our narrow horizon; the night seems as
though it had no end; we all grow drowsy, and go on as if in an
evil dream.
## p. 11007 (#219) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11007
Aman draws forth from the loose breast-folds of his dress a
small clay pipe. The elegant workmanship of the bowl, and the
blue ornaments of its rim, declare it to be of Mosool manufacture.
Aided more by feeling than by sight, he proceeds deliberately to
fill it from a large tobacco pouch, made of cloth, once gayly em-
broidered, now sadly stained and tarnished; carefully arranging
the yellow 'Irak tobacco (the only quality obtainable south of
Bagdad, and of which we had laid in the necessary store at
Showey'rat) with the coarse broken stalks undermost, and the fine
dust-like leaf particles for a covering above. Next, with a single
blow on the flint, he strikes a light, lays it delicately on the top,
replaces the wire-work cupola over the pipe's mouth, and smokes
like a man who intends to make the most of his enjoyment, and
who economizes his pleasure that it may last the longer.
He is not long alone in this proceeding; for whether seeking
a remedy against sleepiness, or ennui, or perhaps both, Musa'ab
quickens his pace a little, and bringing his horse alongside of
Aman's, asks for a light in his turn. But his pipe is not all for
himself, Howeyrith claiming a share in it; whilst the negro,
Shebeeb, considers his complexion sufficient warrant for taking a
pull in company with Aman. I myself, though a minute before
absent, or nearly so, from everything around in thought, am
aroused from my revery by the pleasant smell of the smoke,
and ask also for a light, which Aman gives me. All the others,
Ja'ad and Moharib alone excepted, follow the example.
The night air freshens, it blows from the east. Looking round
somewhat backward on our left, we see a faint yellow gauze of
light, a spear-shaped ray; it is the zodiacal harbinger of the sun.
It widens, it deepens,- for brighten that dull ray does not, and
the hope it permits of a nearer halt arouses us one and all from
our still recurring torpor. The air grows cooler yet; the kaf-
feeyehs are rearranged around each chin, and the mantles-some
black, some striped, some dusky red are wrapt closer to every
form.
Suddenly, almost startling in that suddenness, the morning-
star flashes up, exactly in the central base of the dim eastern
pyramid of nebulous outline. Sa'ad, Doheym, Musa'ab, myself ——
all of us instinctively look first at the pure silver drop, glistening
over the dark desert marge; and then at Ja'ad, as though entreat-
ing him to notice it also, and to take the hint it gives. He rides
on and makes no sign. Yet half an hour more of march; during
## p. 11008 (#220) ##########################################
11008
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
which time the planet of my love has risen higher and higher,
with a rapidity seemingly disproportionate to the other stars;
and through the doubtful twilight I see Harith and Modarrib, our
night-long outriders, nearing and falling in with the rest of our
party. They know we have not much farther to go. Before us
a low range of sand-heaps, already tinged above with something
of a reddish reflect, on which the feathery ghada grows in large
dusky patches, points out the spot where Ja'ad had determined
hours before should be our brief morning rest. Once arrived
among the hillocks, Ja'ad reconnoitres them closely, then draws.
rein and dismounts; we all do the same; I, mechanically.
The horses are soon picketed, one close by the other; there is
no fear of vicious kicking or biting among these high-bred ani-
mals. Next, leaving only the cloths that have served for saddles
on their backs, we lighten them of their remaining loads: an easy
task; for except two pair of small water-skins, and a few almost
empty saddle-bags, more tassel than contents, there is not much.
to relieve them of.
Aman, thoroughly tired with the night's march, and little
troubled by cares either for the future or the present, had
quickly scooped away the soft cool sand into a comfortable hol-
low, arranged a heap of it for a pillow, and in half a minute.
lay there asleep and motionless like one dead. The other Benoo-
Riahees did the same. Ja'ad and Moharib first made up for their
previous abstinence by smoking each a half-filled pipe, then fol-
lowed the general example. For a few minutes longer I sat, the
unbidden watchman of the party, looking at them; sighed; looked
again; soon I felt my ideas growing confused, and hastily clear-
ing away in my turn somewhat of the sand, took my saddle-bags,
folded them, laid them under my head, and almost instantly fell
into dreamless slumber.
My sleep could not have lasted a full hour when with a
shiver, so freshly blew the easterly breeze of the morning, I
awoke. Rising I drew round me the woolen cloak which had
fallen away on one side, leaving me partly uncovered in my
uneasy though heavy sleep, and sat up. I looked about me, first
at my comrades: they all lay yet slumbering, every one his spear
stuck into the sand at his head, rolled up in their cloaks, some
one way, some another; then at the narrow belt of sand-hills,
among which he had alighted in the gloaming. They circled us
in at forty or fifty yards distant on every side. The clear rays
## p. 11009 (#221) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11009
of the early sun entered the hollow here and there through gaps
between the hillocks; but on most points they were still shut out,
and the level light silvered rather than gilded the sand margin
around. Except my own, not an eye was open, not a limb
stirred; the very horses were silent and motionless as their
* masters.
"Am I nearer to or further than ever from my hopes? " said
I to myself, as I gazed at the pure blue sky above me, the
heaped-up sand below, the tufted ghada on the slopes, the sleep-
ing men, and the patient, drooping horses; "and to what purpose
is all this? Fool! and a fool's errand! No: anyhow, love is love,
and life life; better to attempt and lose than never to attempt at
all. Poor Moharib, too! on a venture not his own. I wonder
what his presentiments betoken; I feel none. No hint of to-day's
future or to-morrow's. And she meanwhile-where is she at
this very moment? near or far? and does she expect me now?
Has she any information of our intent? any guess? and how shall
I find her when we meet? But shall we indeed meet? and how?
If this attempt fail, what remains? Lucky fellows," thought I,
with a look on the heavy-breathing Aman and Harith where they
lay side by side. "They at least have all the excitement of
the enterprise without any of the distressful anxieties; or rather,
without that one great, miserable anxiety, What is the end? "
THE LAST MEETING
From Hermann Agha'
[The pursuit accomplished, Hermann Agha reaches at night the encamp-
ment of his rival, who is carrying away Zahra. As Hermann and his followers
purpose an immediate attack and rescue, the young lover audaciously decides
to steal to the tent in which his betrothed is lodged, to have a first interview
with her, and perhaps to bring about by stealth an immediate flight, to the
avoidance of a battle. ]
REACHED hollow. Not a sound was heard. Had the
Wencampment been twenty miles away the quiet could not
have been more complete. Softly we dismounted, Mo-
harib, Harith, Aman, and I; gave our horses and our spears in
charge of Doheym and Ja'ad; took off our cloaks and laid them
on the sand; and in our undergarments, with no arms but sword
and knife, prepared ourselves for the decisive attempt.
XIX-689
--
## p. 11010 (#222) ##########################################
11010
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
I did not think, I had no leisure to think, as we clambered up
the loose bank, half earth, half sand; the position required the
fullest attention every moment: an incautious movement, a slip, a
sound, and the whole encampment would be on foot, to the for-
feit not of my life, not of all our lives only, that I should have
reckoned a light thing,- but of my love also. One by one we
reached the summit: before us stood the tents, just visible in
dark outline; all around was open shadow; no moving figure
broke its stillness, no voice or cry anywhere; nor did any light
appear at first in the tents. The entire absence of precaution.
showed how unexpected was our visit: so far was well; my cour-
age rose, my hope also.
Following the plan we had agreed on, we laid ourselves flat on
the sand, and so dragged ourselves forward on and on, hardly
lifting our heads a little to look round from time to time, till
we found ourselves near the front tent furthest on the left. No
one had stirred without, and the tent itself was silent as a grave.
Round it, and round the tent that stood next behind it, we
crawled slowly on, stopping now and then, and carefully avoiding
the getting entangled among the pegs and outstretched ropes.
Above all, we gave the widest berth possible to what appeared in
the darkness like four or five blackish mounds on the sand, and
which were in fact guards, wrapped up in their cloaks; and for-
tunately for us, fast asleep.
When he had arrived at the outside corner of the encamp-
ment, Harith stopped, and remained crouched on the ground
where the shade was deepest; it was his place of watch. Twenty
or twenty-five paces further on, Aman at my order did the same.
Moharib accompanied me till, having fairly turned the camp, we
came close behind Zahra's tent, in which I now observed for the
first time that a light was burning. Here Moharib also stretched
himself flat on his face, to await me when I should issue forth
from among the curtains.
And now, as if on purpose to second our undertaking, arrived
unsought-for the most efficacious help that we could have desired
to our concealment. While crossing the sandy patch, I had felt
on my face a light puff of air, unusually damp and chill. Look-
ing up, I perceived a vapory wreath, as of thin smoke, blown
along the ground. It was the mist; and accustomed to the desert
and its phenomena, I knew that in less than half an hour more
the dense autumn fog would have set in, veiling earth and every-
## p. 11011 (#223) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
IIOII
thing on it till sunrise. This time, however, the change in the
atmosphere was quicker than usual; so that before I had got
behind the tent range, the thickness of the air would hardly have
allowed any object to be seen at a few yards' distance, even. had
it been daylight. As it was, the darkness was complete.
Creeping forward, I gradually loosened one of the side pegs
that made the tent-wall between the ropes fast to the ground.
Through the opened chink a yellow ray of light shot forth into
the fog; the whole tent seemed to be lighted up within. Hastily
I reclosed the space, while a sudden thrill of dread ran through
me: some maid, some slave might be watching. Or what if I
had been mistaken in the tent itself? What if not she but others
were there? Still there was no help for it now; the time of
deliberation had gone by: proceed I must and I would, whatever
the consequences.
Once more I raised the goat's-hair hangings, and peeped in.
I could see the light itself, a lamp placed on the floor in front,
and burning: but nothing moved; no sound was heard. I crawled
further on my hands and knees, till the whole interior of the
tent came into view. It was partly covered with red strips of
curtain, and the ground itself was covered with carpets. Near
the light a low couch, formed by two mat'resses one upon the
other, had been spread; some one lay on it;-O God! she lay
there!
The stillness of the night, the hour, the tent, of her sleep,
her presence, her very unconsciousness, awed, overpowered me.
For a moment I forgot my own purpose, everything. To venture
in seemed profanation; to arouse her, brutal, impious. Yet how
had I come, and for what? Then in sudden view all that had
been since that last night of meeting at Diar-Bekr stood distinct
before me; more yet, I saw my comrades on their watch outside,
the horses in the hollow; I saw the morrow's sun shine bright
on our haven of refuge, on our security of happiness. Self-
possessed and resolute again, I armed myself with the conscience
of pure love, with the memory and assurance of hers, and en-
tered.
Letting the hangings drop behind me, I rose to my feet;
my sword was unsheathed, my knife and dagger were ready in
my belt; my pistols, more likely to prove dangerous than useful
at this stage of the enterprise, I had left below with my horse.
Then, barefoot and on tiptoe, I gently approached the mattress
## p. 11012 (#224) ##########################################
IIOI2
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
couch. It was covered all over with a thin sheet of silken gauze;
upon this a second somewhat thicker covering, also of silk, had
been cast: and there, her head on a silken rose-colored pillow,
she lay, quiet as a child.
I can see her now,- thus continued Hermann, gazing fixedly
on the air before him, and speaking not as though to his friend
but to some one far off,- I can see her even now. She was
robed from head to foot in a light white dress, part silk, part
cotton, and ungirdled; she rested half turning to her right side;
her long black hair, loosened from its bands, spread in heavy
masses of glossy waviness, some on her pillow, some on her
naked arm and shoulder, ebony on ivory; one arm was folded
under her head, the other hung loosely over the edge of the
mattress, till the finger-tips almost touched the carpet. Her face
was pale,- paler, I thought, than before; but her breathing came
low, calm, and even, and she smiled in her sleep.
Standing thus by her side, I remained awhile without move-
ment, and almost without breath. I could have been happy so
to remain for ever. To be with her, even though she neither
stirred nor spoke, was Paradise: I needed neither sign nor speech
to tell me her thoughts; I knew them to be all of love for me,
-love not rash nor hasty, but pure, deep, unaltered, unalter-
able as the stars in heaven. It was enough: could this last, I
had no more to seek. But a slight noise outside the tent, as if
of some one walking about the camp, roused me to the sense of
where I was, and what was next to be done. I must awaken
her; yet how could I do so without startling or alarming her?
Kneeling softly by the couch, I took in mine the hand that
even in sleep seemed as if offered to me, gently raised it to my
lips, and kissed it. She slumbered quietly on. I pressed her
fingers, and kissed them again and yet again with increasing
warmth and earnestness. Then at last becoming conscious, she
made a slight movement, opened her eyes, and awoke.
"What! you, Ahmed! " she said, half rising from the bed: “I
was just now dreaming about you. Is it really you? and how
came you here? - who is with you? - are you alone? " These
words she accompanied with a look of love full as intense as my
own; but not unmixed with anxiety, as she glanced quickly round
the tent.
"Dearest Zahra! sister! my heart! my life! " I whispered, and
at once caught her in my arms. For a moment she rested in
## p. 11013 (#225) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11013
my embrace; then recollecting herself, the place, the time, drew
herself free again.
"Did you not expect me, Zahra ? " I added; "had you no
foreknowledge, no anticipation, of this meeting? or could you
think that I should so easily resign you to another? "
The tears stood in her eyes. "Not so," she answered; "but
I thought, I had intended, that the risk should be all my own. I
knew you were on our track, but did not imagine you so near;
none else in the caravan guessed anything. You have anticipated
me by a night, one night only; and-O God! — at what peril to
yourself! Are you aware that sixty chosen swordsmen of Benoo-
Sheyban are at this moment around the tent? O Ahmed! O my
brother! What have you ventured? Where are you come? "
In a few words, as few as possible, I strove to allay her
fears. I explained all to her: told her of the measures we had
taken, the preparations we had made, the horse waiting, the
arms ready to escort and defend her; and implored her to avail
herself of them without delay.
Calmly she listened; then, blushing deeply, "It is well, my
brother," she said; "I am ready. " Thus saying, she caught up
her girdle from the couch, and began to gather her loosened
garments about her, and to fasten them for the journey. No
sign of hesitation now appeared, hardly even of haste. Her eye
was bright, but steady; her color heightened; her hand free from
tremor.
But even as she stooped to gather up her veil from the pil-
low on which she had laid it, and prepared to cast it over her
head, she suddenly started, hearkened, raised herself upright,
stood still an instant, and then, putting her hand on my arm,
whispered, "We are betrayed: listen! "
Before she had finished speaking I heard a rustle outside, a
sound of steps, as of three or four persons, barefoot and cau-
tious in their advance, coming towards the front of the tent. I
looked at Zahra: she had now turned deadly pale; her eyes were
fixed on the curtained entrance: yet in her look I read no fear,
only settled, almost desperate resolution. My face was, I do not
doubt, paler even than hers; my blood chilled in my veins. In-
stinctively we each made to the other a sign for silence-a sign
indeed superfluous in such circumstances-and remained attentive
to the noise without. The steps drew nearer; we could even
distinguish the murmur of voices, apparently as of several people
## p. 11014 (#226) ##########################################
11014
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
talking together in an undertone, though not the words them-
selves. When just before the entrance of the tent, the footfall
ceased; silence followed. The curtains which formed the door
were drawn together, one a little overlapping the other, so as to
preclude all view from the outside; but they were in no way
fastened within; and to have attempted thus to close them at that
moment would have been worse than useless.
Zahra and I threw our arms, she round me, I round her; and
our lips met in the mute assurance that whatever was to be the
fate of one should also be the fate of the other. But she blushed
more deeply than ever, crimson-red. I could see that by the light
of the lamp which we longed to, but at that moment dared not,
extinguish. Its ray fell on the door-hangings, outside which stood
those whom their entire silence, more eloquent then than words,
proclaimed to be listeners and spies. Who they were, and what
precisely had brought them there, and with what intent they
waited, we could not tell.
Half a minute - it could not have been more passed thus in
breathless stillness; it was a long half-minute to Zahra and me.
At last we heard a sort of movement taking place in the group
without it seemed as though they first made a step or two for-
wards; then returned again, talking all the while among them-
selves in the same undertone; then slowly moved away towards
the line of tents in front. No further sound was heard: all
was hushed. Zahra and I loosed our hold, and stood looking at
each other. How much had been guessed, how much actually
detected, I could not tell; she however knew.
"Fly, Ahmed," she whispered; "fly! That was the Emeer
himself. They are on the alert: you are almost discovered; in a
few minutes more the alarm will be given throughout the camp.
For your life, fly! "
I stood there like one entranced; the horror of that moment
had numbed me, brain and limb. And how could I go? Her
voice, her face, her presence were, God knows, all on earth to
me. How then could I leave them to save a life valueless to me
without them?
"In God's name," she urged, "haste. Your only hope, brother,
lies in getting away from here quickly and unperceived; in the
darkness you can yet manage it: tell me, how is it outside ? »
"Thick mist," I answered: "it was coming on before I
reached the tent. "
## p. 11015 (#227) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11015
"Thank God! " she said with a half-sob of relief, and a tone
the like of which I never heard before or after: "that it is
has saved you; that has prevented your companions from being
discovered. Dearest Ahmed," she continued, kissing me in her
earnestness, as you love me, for my sake, for your own sake,
for both of us, fly, it is the only chance left. "
"Fly, Zahra! Zahra, my life!
tax me for a wizard," said he to the magistrates: "you may as
well tax me for a buzzard; I have done no harm. " They tried
him with repeating the Lord's Prayer, which it was thought
impossible for a witch to do. According to Parris's record, "he
missed in several parts of it. " His accusers persisted. "Well,
burn me or hang me," said he, "I will stand in the truth of
Christ; I know nothing of the matter, any more than the child
that was born to-night. " Among others, John Willard was now
## p. 10995 (#207) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10995
apprehended. As a constable he had served in the arrest and
custody of some of the reputed witches. But he came to see the
absurdity of the thing, and was said to have uttered something
to the effect that it was the magistrates that were bewitched,
and those who cheered them on. Willard was forthwith cried
out against as a wizard, and committed for trial [May 18th].
Affairs were in this condition when the King's Governor
arrived [May 14th]. About a hundred alleged witches were now
in jail, awaiting trial. Their case was one of the first matters
to which his attention was called. Without authority for so.
doing,- for by the charter which he represented, the establish-
ment of judicial courts was a function of the General Court,— he
proceeded to institute a special commission of Oyer and Ter-
miner, consisting of seven magistrates, first of whom was the
hard, obstinate, narrow-minded Stoughton. The commissioners
applied themselves to their office without delay. Their first act
[June 2d] was to try Bridget Bishop, against whom an accusation.
twenty years old, and retracted by its author on his death-bed,
had been revived. The court sentenced her to die by hanging,
and she was accordingly hanged at the end of eight days. Cot-
ton Mather, in his account of the proceedings, relates that as
she passed along the street under guard, Bishop "had given a
look towards the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and
immediately a dæmon, invisibly entering the house, tore down
a part of it. " It may be guessed that a plank or a partition had
given way under the pressure of the crowd of lookers-on col-
lected for so extraordinary a spectacle.
At the end of another four weeks the court sat again [June
30th], and sentenced five women, two of Salem, and one each of
Amesbury, Ipswich, and Topsfield, all of whom were executed,
protesting their innocence [July 19th]. In respect to one of them,
Rebecca Nourse, a matron eminent for piety and goodness, a ver-
dict of acquittal was first rendered. But Stoughton sent the jury
out again, reminding them that in her examination, in reference
to certain witnesses against her who had confessed their own guilt,
she had used the expression, "they came among us. " Nourse
was deaf, and did not catch what had been going on. When
it was afterwards repeated to her, she said that by the coming
among us she meant that they had been in prison together. But
the jury adopted the court's interpretation of the words as sig-
nifying an acknowledgment that they had met at a witch orgy.
## p. 10996 (#208) ##########################################
10996
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
The Governor was disposed to grant her a pardon. But Parris,
who had an ancient grudge against her, interfered and prevailed.
On the last communion day before her execution, she was taken
into church, and formally excommunicated by Noyes, her min-
ister.
Of six persons tried at the next session of the court [August
5th], the Reverend George Burroughs, a graduate of Harvard
College, was one. At a certain point of the proceedings the
young people pretending to have suffered from him stood mute.
Stoughton asked who hindered them from telling their story.
"The Devil, I suppose," said Burroughs. "Why should the Devil
be so careful to suppress evidence against you? " retorted the
judge, and with the jury this encounter of wits told hardly
against the prisoner [August 19th]. His behavior at his execu-
tion strongly impressed the spectators in his favor. "When he
was upon the ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his
innocency, with such solemn and serious expressions as were to
the admiration of all present. His prayer (which he concluded
by repeating the Lord's Prayer) was so well worded, and uttered.
with such composedness, and such (at least, seeming) fervency of
spirit as was very affecting, and drew tears from many, so that
it seemed to many the spectators would hinder the execution.
Cotton Mather, who was present on horseback, made them a
quieting harangue. The accusers said the Black Man stood and
dictated to him. "
In the course of the next month, in which the Governor left
Boston for a short tour of inspection in the Eastern country,
fifteen persons-six women in one day, and on another eight
women and one man were tried, convicted, and sentenced.
Eight of them were hanged [September 9th, September 17th,
September 22d, September 19th]. The brave Giles Corey, eighty
years of age, being arraigned, refused to plead. He said that the
whole thing was an imposture, and that it was of no use to put
himself on his trial, for every trial had ended in a conviction,—
which was the fact. It is shocking to relate that, suffering the
penalty of the English common law for a contumacious refusal
to answer, the peine forte et dure,-he was pressed to death.
with heavy weights laid on his body. By not pleading he in-
tended to protect the inheritance of his children, which, as he
had been informed, would by a conviction of felony have been
forfeit to the crown.
-
—
## p. 10997 (#209) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10997
In the following month [October] the malady broke out in
another neighborhood. One Ballard, of the town of Andover,
whose wife was ill in a way that perplexed their medical friend,
sent to Salem to see what light could be obtained from the witch-
detectors there. A party of them came to his help, and went
to work with vigor. More than fifty persons at Andover fell
under accusation, some of the weaker minded of whom were
brought to confess themselves guilty not only of afflicting their
neighbors, but of practicing such exercises as riding on animals
and on sticks through the air.
There were no executions, however, after those which have
been mentioned as occurring on one day of each of four suc
cessive months. There had been twenty human victims, Corey
included; besides two dogs, their accomplices in the mysterious
crime. Fifty persons had obtained a pardon by confessing; a
hundred and fifty were in prison awaiting trial; and charges had
been made against two hundred more. The accusers were now
flying at high quarries. Hezekiah Usher, known to the reader as
an ancient magistrate of fair consideration, was complained of;
and Mrs. Thacher, mother-in-law of Corwin, the justice who had
taken the earliest examinations. Zeal in pushing forward the
prosecutions began to seem dangerous; for what was to prevent
an accused person from securing himself by confession, and then
revenging himself on the accuser by arraigning him as a former
ally?
Mrs. Hale, wife of the minister of Beverly who had been
active in the prosecutions, and Dudley Bradstreet of Andover,
the old Governor's son, who had granted warrants for the com-
mitment of some thirty or forty alleged witches, were now
accused. The famous name of John Allyn, Secretary of Con-
necticut, was uttered in whispers. There had even begun to
be a muttering about Lady Phips, the Governor's wife; and Mr.
Willard, then minister of the Old South Church in Boston, and
afterwards head of the College, who, after yielding to the infat-
uation in its earliest stage, had made himself obnoxious and
suspected by partially retracing his steps. People began now to
be almost as wild with the fear of being charged with witchcraft,
or having the charge made against their friends, as they had
been with the fear of suffering from its spells. The visitation,
shocking as it had been, had been local. It had been almost
confined to some towns of Essex County. In other parts of the
## p. 10998 (#210) ##########################################
10998
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
province the public mind was calmer, or was turned in the dif-
ferent direction of disgust at the insane tragedies, and dread of
their repetition. A person in Boston, whose name had begun to
be used dangerously by the informers at Andover, instituted an
action for defamation, laying his damages at a thousand pounds;
a measure which, while it would probably have been ruinous to
him had he made a mistake in choosing his time, was now found,
at the turning of the tide, to have a wholesome effect.
After the convictions which were last mentioned, the Com-
mission Court which had conducted the trials adjourned for two
months. Thanks to the good sense of the people, it never met
again. Before the time designated for its next session, the Gen-
eral Court of the Province assembled, and the cry of the op-
pressed and miserable came to their ear. The General Court
superseded the Court of Special Commission, the agent of all the
cruelty, by constituting a regular tribunal of supreme jurisdiction
[November 25th]. When that court met at the appointed time,
reason had begun to resume her sway; and the grand jury at
once threw out more than half of the presentments [1693, Janu-
ary 3d]. They found true bills against twenty-six persons. The
evidence against these was as good as any that had proved fatal
in former trials; but only three of the arraigned were found
guilty, and all these were pardoned. One of them may have
owed her conviction to a sort of rude justice: she had before con-
fessed herself a witch, and charged her husband, who was hanged
on her information. Stoughton, who had been made Chief Just-
ice, showed his disapprobation of the pardons by withdrawing
from the bench with passionate anger [February 21st]. Phips
wrote to the Lords of Trade a disingenuous letter, in which he
attempted to divert from himself, chiefly at Stoughton's expense,
whatever blame might be attached to the recent transactions; it
even appeared to imply, what was contrary to the fact, that the
executions did not begin till after his departure from Boston to
the Eastern country.
The drunken fever-fit was now over, and with returning so-
briety came profound contrition and disgust. A few still held
out against the return of reason.
There are some men who
never own that they have been in the
who are forever incapable of seeing it.
dog stubbornness, that might in other times have made him a
St. Dominic, continued to insist that the business had been all
wrong, and a few men
Stoughton, with his bull-
## p. 10999 (#211) ##########################################
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
10999
right, and that the only mistake was in putting a stop to it.
Cotton Mather was always infallible in his own eyes. In the
year after the executions he had the satisfaction of studying an-
other remarkable case of possession in Boston; but when it and
the treatise which he wrote upon it failed to excite much atten-
tion, and it was plain that the tide had set the other way, he
soon got his consent to let it run at its own pleasure, and turned
his excursive activity to other objects. Saltonstall, horrified by
the rigor of his colleagues, had resigned his place in the com-
mission at an early period of the operations. When reason re-
turned, Parris, the Salem minister, was driven from his place by
the calm and decent, but irreconcilable, indignation of his parish-
ioners. Noyes, his well-intentioned but infatuated neighbor in
the First Parish, devoting the remainder of his life to peaceful
and Christian service, caused his church to cancel by a formal
and public act [1712] their excommunication of the blameless
Mrs. Nourse, who had died his peculiar victim.
Members of some of the juries, in a written public declara-
tion, acknowledged the fault of their wrongful verdicts, entreated
forgiveness, and protested that, "according to their present minds,
they would none of them do such things again, on such grounds,
for the whole world; praying that this act of theirs might be
accepted in way of satisfaction for their offense. " A day of Gen-
eral Fasting was proclaimed by authority, to be observed through.
out the jurisdiction, in which the people were invited to pray
that "whatever mistakes on either hand had been fallen into,
either by the body of this people, or by any orders of men,
referring to the late tragedy raised among us by Satan and his
instruments, through the awful judgment of God, he would hum-
ble them therefor, and pardon all the errors of his servants and
people. " On that day [1696, January 14th] Judge Sewall rose in
his pew in the Old South Church in Boston, handed to the desk
a paper acknowledging and bewailing his great offense, and ask-
ing the prayers of the congregation "that the Divine displeasure
thereof might be stayed against the country, his family, and him-
self," and remained standing while it was read by the minister.
To the end of his long life, the penitent and much-respected
man kept every year a private day of humiliation and prayer
on the same account. Twenty-eight years after, he prays in
an entry in his diary in reference to the transaction, "The good
and gracious God be pleased to save New England, and me and
## p. 11000 (#212) ##########################################
1. 000
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY
my family! " Ann Putnam, one of the three beginners of the mis-
chief, after thirteen years, came out of the long conflict between
her conscience and her shame, with a most affecting declaration
of her remorse and grief, now on record in the books of the
Danvers church. Twenty years after, the General Court made
grants to the heirs of the sufferers, in acknowledgment of their
pecuniary losses. "Some of them [the witch accusers] proved
profligate persons," says Governor Hutchinson, "abandoned to all
vice; others passed their days in obscurity and contempt. "
## p. 11001 (#213) ##########################################
I1001
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
(1826-1888)
STRANGE personality, inviting a strange life, a career of curi-
ous and indeed of highly romantic interest, yet of imperfect
fruitfulness. such is the summary of Palgrave's individu-
ality, and of his sixty-two busy years of work and wandering. An
assortment of mysteries, intangible and confused, hung about him
while he lived. His death did not answer many significant and open
personal questions. Scholar, poet, soldier, missionary-priest, traveler,
lecturer, learned Orientalist and linguist, Arabian explorer, doctor, spy,
secret agent, diplomatist,-Palgrave was all these; and in them all
the real Palgrave appeared, to friend or
to foe, chiefly in fragmentary and uncertain
aspects.
The second son of Sir Francis Palgrave,
the English historical writer and antiqua-
rian, William Gifford Palgrave was born in
Westminster, January 24th, 1826. He dis-
tinguished himself in belles-lettres as a
Charterhouse schoolboy, and graduated from
Trinity College, Oxford, when only twenty,
after an exceptionally short University resi-
dence. The East had already much at-
tracted him. Rejecting high opportunities WILLIAM G. PALGRAVE
of distinction opening to him in England
through his father's powerful influences, he entered the Indian serv-
ice as a lieutenant in the Eighth Bombay Regiment. His superior
education, his firmness of mind, and his temperamental adaptation
for Eastern military life, insured his advance in the service; but
here again Palgrave's tendency to turn from anything like commit-
ting himself in a given direction, and working out his material wel-
fare in commonplace method, seem to have affected his future. His
head was already full of Oriental literature; and it is said that not
a little merely through his study of such a work as 'Antar,' he felt
he must meet the less familiar life and less accessible peoples of the
East on another than military footing,- one far more intimate. He
had, too, at this time strong religious convictions and aspirations.
He entered the Roman Catholic Church, became a Jesuit in Madras,
and was ordained a priest.
## p. 11002 (#214) ##########################################
I 1002
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
For the next fifteen years Palgrave was an extremely hard-worked
Jesuit missioner in Southern India. In June 1853 he went to Rome.
There he met with distinguished attention, though in an unobtrusive
- in fact, almost a clandestine way. It may be said that he was
early a complete master of half a dozen European tongues, in addi-
tion to as many of the languages or dialects of the East. He learned
a language with something like preternatural quickness; though he
forgot one quite as suddenly, as soon as not needed in his affairs.
In the autumn of the year that had found him in Rome, he was sent
to Syria, and conducted most successfully some valuable missionary
undertakings at Zahleh. He was a born proselytist. Syria and the
Syrians, Arabia and the Arabians, became an open book to him.
With the persecution of the Maronite Christians from the Druses, the
Maronites were anxious that he should be their actual leader in the
war. This, however, he declined to do, although he bestirred him-
self actively, quite as far as any priest could becomingly go, in the
task of the practical military instruction of the dismayed Maronites.
The massacre of June 1861 nearly cost him his life; in fact, he just
escaped. His Syrian mission now interrupted, he became an Occi-
dental again. He revisited Europe; lectured in Great Britain on the
Syrian massacres, and was requested by Napoleon III. of France to
furnish authoritative data as to them. This he did with much suc-
cess, meeting with a most cordial personal interest on the Emperor's
part.
―
So perfectly could Palgrave assume the Oriental,—especially the
Arab, Syrian, or Levantine,—so complete had become his knowledge
of the races of the East and of shades of Eastern character and reli-
gion, that in 1862, after his return to Syria, he undertook one of the
most dangerous and adventurous tests of his genius for acting in
character. Mohammedanism he had by heart. He was able to be
a Mussulman among Mussulmans. He knew every shade of Islamic
orthodoxy and Islamic heterodoxy; and he could quote the higgling
commentators on the Koran as literally as he could cite the Most
Perspicuous Book itself. The French government felt special interest
at this time in learning definite particulars of the attitude toward
France of Central Arabia proper, with its group of little known cen-
tral tribes, and isolated towns and peoples; and France also wished
to ascertain how far the finer Arabian blood stock could be procured
for bettering the breed of French horses. At the same time Palgrave
himself was desirous of determining whether Central Arabia offered
a real and safe field for Catholic mission work. The district he was
asked to traverse and to study on these errands included that por-
tion of Arabia most out of touch with all European sounding; and
more of a difficulty than that, it was one savagely fanatical in its
## p. 11003 (#215) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11003
Mohammedan orthodoxy. It was a territory in which no European
traveler would be tolerated. To visit it invited death. Palgrave
accordingly began and completed his tour in disguise. He penetrated
to Hofhuf, Raïd, and to other centres of Mohammedan and Wahabee
religiosity, as a traveling Syrian physician. He nearly came to grief
two or three times; but by his assurance and his perfect familiarity
with his surroundings, he escaped more than some troublesome and
passing suspicions. He even gained the actual favor of the most
exclusive authorities of the Peninsula; and pursuing his explorations,
drew his various conclusions with complete success, and returned with
his head on his shoulders, to write one of the most fascinating rec-
ords of Arabian wanderings ever penned - his 'Narrative of a Year's
Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia' (1865).
No sooner was one task of travel ended than Palgrave was ready
for a new one. An Abyssinian journey occupied the summer of
1865, when he was commissioned to obtain the release of Mr. Cam-
eron, the consul, and of other English captives, from the clutches of
King Theodore. He remained in Egypt, under government instruc-
tions, till 1866; and then after a short visit to England he became
the British consular representative at Soukhoum Kalé. Many years
of government service, travel, and exploration followed, including
wanderings (frequently in disguise) through Asia Minor, the Euphrates
country, Anatolia, and Persia. He continued his consular duties by
accepting posts in Manila and Bangkok, and also studied Farther
India assiduously while residing in it. Finally the current of his
interests and official appointments set westerly; and after consular
services in the West Indies and Uruguay, he died at Montevideo in
September 1888. During the latter portion of his life he became
sufficiently interested in Shintoism to lapse from his Christian belief;
but before his death he repudiated what had been but an imperfect
apostasy, and received the last sacraments of the church of his
youth and middle age. His remains were brought with affectionate
care from the Uruguay city where he passed away. He is buried in
Fulham.
So far as Palgrave's mind and work, and especially his exquisite
knowledge of Eastern life and peoples, have a literary representation,
we find it in the 'Narrative' of his risky expedition through Central
Arabia; and not less clearly in one bit of fiction of astonishing brill-
iancy, sincerity, and vividness. This last is 'Hermann Agha. ' It is
to all intents a love story, withal a short and sad one. The material
in this tale, wholly Oriental, and modern-Oriental as well, is slight.
There is little between its covers, when we compare the slender
book with the elaborate romances of less authoritative but more pre-
tentious tale-tellers in Orientalism. But it is a transcript from the
## p. 11004 (#216) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11004
passionate heart and the fatalistic soul of the East. The directness
and emotional intensity of the story hold the reader under an irre-
sistible spell from beginning to end. It has been said, on one or
another authority, that in 'Hermann Agha' Palgrave ventured (dis-
guised to the last) to embody a considerable autobiographic element,
and reminiscences that were quite personal to himself. This can
scarcely be clear to the uninitiated reader of 'Hermann Agha'; but
hardly a character or passage in the tale reads like the creation of a
novelist's mere fancy, however sensitive or robust.
THE NIGHT RIDE IN THE DESERT
From Hermann Agha'
[Hermann Agha, the narrator and hero of Palgrave's dramatic love story of
Arabia, has learned that his affianced wife Zahra is being carried away into
a distant part of the desert country by the Emeer Daghfel, who has the con-
sent of Zahra's parents to a marriage with the young girl. Hermann, his
friends Moharib, Aman, and Modarrib, and others, make up a small troop
and hurry to overtake the bridal train. The following admirable descriptive
episode is part of the chapter setting forth their romantic pursuit. ]
WⓇ
E ALL left the garden together; there was plenty of occupa-
tion for every one in getting himself, his horse, his weap-
ons, and his traveling-gear, ready for the night and the
morrow. Our gathering-place was behind a dense palm grove
that cut us off from the view and observation of the village;
there our comrades arrived, one after another, all fully equipped,
till the whole band of twelve had reassembled. The cry of the
night prayers, proclaimed from the mosque roof, had long died
away into silence; the last doubtful streak of sunset faded from
the west, accompanied by the thin white crescent of the young
moon; night still cloudless, and studded with innumerable stars,
depth over depth, reigned alone. Without a word we set forth
into what seemed the trackless expanse of desert, our faces be-
tween west and south,-the direction across which the Emeer
Daghfel and his caravan were expected to pass.
More than ever did the caution now manifested by my com-
panions, who were better versed than myself in adventures of the
kind, impress me with a sense, not precisely of the danger, but
of the seriousness of the undertaking. Two of the Benoo-Riah,
Harith and Modarrib, — whom the tacit consent of the rest
designated for that duty, took the advance as scouts, riding far
-
## p. 11005 (#217) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11005
out ahead into the darkness, sometimes on the right, sometimes
on the left, in order that timely notice might be given to the
rest of us should any chance meeting or suspicious obstacle occur
on the way. A third, Ja'ad es-Sabāsib himself, acted, as beseemed.
his name, for guide; he rode immediately in front of our main
body. The rest of us held close together, at a brisk walking
pace, from which we seldom allowed our beasts to vary; indeed,
the horses themselves, trained to the work, seemed to comprehend
the necessity of cautiousness, and stepped on warily and noise-
lessly.
Every man in the band was dressed alike. Though I re-
tained, I had carefully concealed my pistols; the litham disguised
my foreign features, and to any superficial observer, especially
at night, I was merely a Bedouin of the tribe, with my sword at
my side, and my lance couched, Benoo-Riah fashion, alongside of
my horse's right ear. Not a single word was uttered by any one
of the band, as following Ja'ad's guidance—who knew every inch
of the ground, to my eyes utterly unmeaning and undistinguish-
able- we glided over the dry plain. At another time I might
perhaps have been inclined to ask questions; but now the near-
ness of expectation left no room for speech. Besides, I had been
long enough among the men of the desert to have learnt from
them their habit of invariable silence when journeying by night.
Talkative at other times, they then become absolutely mute. Nor
is this silence of theirs merely a precaution due to the insecur-
ity of the road, which renders it unadvisable for the wayfarer to
give any superfluous token of his presence: it is quite as much
the result of a powerful, though it may well be most often an
unconscious, sympathy with the silence of nature around.
Silent overhead, the bright stars, moving on, moving upwards
from the east, constellation after constellation, the Twins and the
Pleiads, Aldebaran and Orion, the Spread and the Perching Eagle,
the Balance, the once worshiped Dog Star, and beautiful Canopus.
I look at them till they waver before my fixed gaze; and look-
ing, calculate by their position how many hours of our long
night march have already gone by, and how many yet remain
before daybreak: till the spaces between them show preternatur-
ally dark; and on the horizon below, a false eye-begotten shim-
mer gives a delusive semblance of dawn, then vanishes.
Silent: not the silence of voices alone, but the silence of
meaning change, dead midnight. The Wolf's Tail has not yet.
## p. 11006 (#218) ##########################################
11006
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
shot up its first slant harbinger of day in the east; the quiet
progress of the black spangled heavens is monotonous as mech-
anism; no life is there. Silence; above, around, no sound, no
speech. The very cry of a jackal, the howl of a wolf, would
come friendly to the ear, but none is heard; as though all life
had disappeared forever from the face of the land. Silent every-
where.
A dark line stretches thwart before us: you might take
it for a ledge, a trench, a precipice - what you will. It is none
of these: it is only a broad streak of brown withered herb, drawn
across the faintly gleaming flat. Far off on the dim right rises
something like a black giant wall. It is not that: it is a thick-
planted grove of palms; silent they also, and motionless in the
night. On the left glimmers a range of white ghost-like shapes:
they are the rapid slopes of sand-hills shelving off into the plain;
no life is there.
Some men are silenced by entering a place of worship, a
grave-yard, a large and lonely hall, a deep forest; and in each.
and all of these there is what brings silence, though from differ-
ent motives, varying in the influence they exert over the mind.
But that man must be strangely destitute of the sympathies
which link the microcosm of our individual existence with the
macrocosm around us, who can find heart for a word more than
needful, were it only a passing word, in the desert at night.
Silent we go on; the eyes and thoughts of the Bedouins are
fixed, now on the tracks,- for there are many, barely distinguish-
able to a few yards before them through the gloom,- now on
the pebble-strewn surface beneath their horses' hoofs; at times
on some bright particular star near the horizon; while occasion-
ally they turn an uneasy glance to right or left, as though half
anticipating some unfriendly figure about to start out of the
gloom. Moharib rode generally alongside of Ja'ad, with whom
he exchanged, but not often, signs or low whispers; Aman kept
close to me. I, who had long before made a separate astral cal-
culation for each successive night of the year (a useful amuse-
ment in my frequent journeys), and for whom almost every star
has a tale to tell of so many hours elapsed since sunset, so many
remaining to the dawn, continue gazing on the vault above, also
thinking. Our horses' pace never varies; no new object breaks
the monotonous gloom of our narrow horizon; the night seems as
though it had no end; we all grow drowsy, and go on as if in an
evil dream.
## p. 11007 (#219) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11007
Aman draws forth from the loose breast-folds of his dress a
small clay pipe. The elegant workmanship of the bowl, and the
blue ornaments of its rim, declare it to be of Mosool manufacture.
Aided more by feeling than by sight, he proceeds deliberately to
fill it from a large tobacco pouch, made of cloth, once gayly em-
broidered, now sadly stained and tarnished; carefully arranging
the yellow 'Irak tobacco (the only quality obtainable south of
Bagdad, and of which we had laid in the necessary store at
Showey'rat) with the coarse broken stalks undermost, and the fine
dust-like leaf particles for a covering above. Next, with a single
blow on the flint, he strikes a light, lays it delicately on the top,
replaces the wire-work cupola over the pipe's mouth, and smokes
like a man who intends to make the most of his enjoyment, and
who economizes his pleasure that it may last the longer.
He is not long alone in this proceeding; for whether seeking
a remedy against sleepiness, or ennui, or perhaps both, Musa'ab
quickens his pace a little, and bringing his horse alongside of
Aman's, asks for a light in his turn. But his pipe is not all for
himself, Howeyrith claiming a share in it; whilst the negro,
Shebeeb, considers his complexion sufficient warrant for taking a
pull in company with Aman. I myself, though a minute before
absent, or nearly so, from everything around in thought, am
aroused from my revery by the pleasant smell of the smoke,
and ask also for a light, which Aman gives me. All the others,
Ja'ad and Moharib alone excepted, follow the example.
The night air freshens, it blows from the east. Looking round
somewhat backward on our left, we see a faint yellow gauze of
light, a spear-shaped ray; it is the zodiacal harbinger of the sun.
It widens, it deepens,- for brighten that dull ray does not, and
the hope it permits of a nearer halt arouses us one and all from
our still recurring torpor. The air grows cooler yet; the kaf-
feeyehs are rearranged around each chin, and the mantles-some
black, some striped, some dusky red are wrapt closer to every
form.
Suddenly, almost startling in that suddenness, the morning-
star flashes up, exactly in the central base of the dim eastern
pyramid of nebulous outline. Sa'ad, Doheym, Musa'ab, myself ——
all of us instinctively look first at the pure silver drop, glistening
over the dark desert marge; and then at Ja'ad, as though entreat-
ing him to notice it also, and to take the hint it gives. He rides
on and makes no sign. Yet half an hour more of march; during
## p. 11008 (#220) ##########################################
11008
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
which time the planet of my love has risen higher and higher,
with a rapidity seemingly disproportionate to the other stars;
and through the doubtful twilight I see Harith and Modarrib, our
night-long outriders, nearing and falling in with the rest of our
party. They know we have not much farther to go. Before us
a low range of sand-heaps, already tinged above with something
of a reddish reflect, on which the feathery ghada grows in large
dusky patches, points out the spot where Ja'ad had determined
hours before should be our brief morning rest. Once arrived
among the hillocks, Ja'ad reconnoitres them closely, then draws.
rein and dismounts; we all do the same; I, mechanically.
The horses are soon picketed, one close by the other; there is
no fear of vicious kicking or biting among these high-bred ani-
mals. Next, leaving only the cloths that have served for saddles
on their backs, we lighten them of their remaining loads: an easy
task; for except two pair of small water-skins, and a few almost
empty saddle-bags, more tassel than contents, there is not much.
to relieve them of.
Aman, thoroughly tired with the night's march, and little
troubled by cares either for the future or the present, had
quickly scooped away the soft cool sand into a comfortable hol-
low, arranged a heap of it for a pillow, and in half a minute.
lay there asleep and motionless like one dead. The other Benoo-
Riahees did the same. Ja'ad and Moharib first made up for their
previous abstinence by smoking each a half-filled pipe, then fol-
lowed the general example. For a few minutes longer I sat, the
unbidden watchman of the party, looking at them; sighed; looked
again; soon I felt my ideas growing confused, and hastily clear-
ing away in my turn somewhat of the sand, took my saddle-bags,
folded them, laid them under my head, and almost instantly fell
into dreamless slumber.
My sleep could not have lasted a full hour when with a
shiver, so freshly blew the easterly breeze of the morning, I
awoke. Rising I drew round me the woolen cloak which had
fallen away on one side, leaving me partly uncovered in my
uneasy though heavy sleep, and sat up. I looked about me, first
at my comrades: they all lay yet slumbering, every one his spear
stuck into the sand at his head, rolled up in their cloaks, some
one way, some another; then at the narrow belt of sand-hills,
among which he had alighted in the gloaming. They circled us
in at forty or fifty yards distant on every side. The clear rays
## p. 11009 (#221) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11009
of the early sun entered the hollow here and there through gaps
between the hillocks; but on most points they were still shut out,
and the level light silvered rather than gilded the sand margin
around. Except my own, not an eye was open, not a limb
stirred; the very horses were silent and motionless as their
* masters.
"Am I nearer to or further than ever from my hopes? " said
I to myself, as I gazed at the pure blue sky above me, the
heaped-up sand below, the tufted ghada on the slopes, the sleep-
ing men, and the patient, drooping horses; "and to what purpose
is all this? Fool! and a fool's errand! No: anyhow, love is love,
and life life; better to attempt and lose than never to attempt at
all. Poor Moharib, too! on a venture not his own. I wonder
what his presentiments betoken; I feel none. No hint of to-day's
future or to-morrow's. And she meanwhile-where is she at
this very moment? near or far? and does she expect me now?
Has she any information of our intent? any guess? and how shall
I find her when we meet? But shall we indeed meet? and how?
If this attempt fail, what remains? Lucky fellows," thought I,
with a look on the heavy-breathing Aman and Harith where they
lay side by side. "They at least have all the excitement of
the enterprise without any of the distressful anxieties; or rather,
without that one great, miserable anxiety, What is the end? "
THE LAST MEETING
From Hermann Agha'
[The pursuit accomplished, Hermann Agha reaches at night the encamp-
ment of his rival, who is carrying away Zahra. As Hermann and his followers
purpose an immediate attack and rescue, the young lover audaciously decides
to steal to the tent in which his betrothed is lodged, to have a first interview
with her, and perhaps to bring about by stealth an immediate flight, to the
avoidance of a battle. ]
REACHED hollow. Not a sound was heard. Had the
Wencampment been twenty miles away the quiet could not
have been more complete. Softly we dismounted, Mo-
harib, Harith, Aman, and I; gave our horses and our spears in
charge of Doheym and Ja'ad; took off our cloaks and laid them
on the sand; and in our undergarments, with no arms but sword
and knife, prepared ourselves for the decisive attempt.
XIX-689
--
## p. 11010 (#222) ##########################################
11010
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
I did not think, I had no leisure to think, as we clambered up
the loose bank, half earth, half sand; the position required the
fullest attention every moment: an incautious movement, a slip, a
sound, and the whole encampment would be on foot, to the for-
feit not of my life, not of all our lives only, that I should have
reckoned a light thing,- but of my love also. One by one we
reached the summit: before us stood the tents, just visible in
dark outline; all around was open shadow; no moving figure
broke its stillness, no voice or cry anywhere; nor did any light
appear at first in the tents. The entire absence of precaution.
showed how unexpected was our visit: so far was well; my cour-
age rose, my hope also.
Following the plan we had agreed on, we laid ourselves flat on
the sand, and so dragged ourselves forward on and on, hardly
lifting our heads a little to look round from time to time, till
we found ourselves near the front tent furthest on the left. No
one had stirred without, and the tent itself was silent as a grave.
Round it, and round the tent that stood next behind it, we
crawled slowly on, stopping now and then, and carefully avoiding
the getting entangled among the pegs and outstretched ropes.
Above all, we gave the widest berth possible to what appeared in
the darkness like four or five blackish mounds on the sand, and
which were in fact guards, wrapped up in their cloaks; and for-
tunately for us, fast asleep.
When he had arrived at the outside corner of the encamp-
ment, Harith stopped, and remained crouched on the ground
where the shade was deepest; it was his place of watch. Twenty
or twenty-five paces further on, Aman at my order did the same.
Moharib accompanied me till, having fairly turned the camp, we
came close behind Zahra's tent, in which I now observed for the
first time that a light was burning. Here Moharib also stretched
himself flat on his face, to await me when I should issue forth
from among the curtains.
And now, as if on purpose to second our undertaking, arrived
unsought-for the most efficacious help that we could have desired
to our concealment. While crossing the sandy patch, I had felt
on my face a light puff of air, unusually damp and chill. Look-
ing up, I perceived a vapory wreath, as of thin smoke, blown
along the ground. It was the mist; and accustomed to the desert
and its phenomena, I knew that in less than half an hour more
the dense autumn fog would have set in, veiling earth and every-
## p. 11011 (#223) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
IIOII
thing on it till sunrise. This time, however, the change in the
atmosphere was quicker than usual; so that before I had got
behind the tent range, the thickness of the air would hardly have
allowed any object to be seen at a few yards' distance, even. had
it been daylight. As it was, the darkness was complete.
Creeping forward, I gradually loosened one of the side pegs
that made the tent-wall between the ropes fast to the ground.
Through the opened chink a yellow ray of light shot forth into
the fog; the whole tent seemed to be lighted up within. Hastily
I reclosed the space, while a sudden thrill of dread ran through
me: some maid, some slave might be watching. Or what if I
had been mistaken in the tent itself? What if not she but others
were there? Still there was no help for it now; the time of
deliberation had gone by: proceed I must and I would, whatever
the consequences.
Once more I raised the goat's-hair hangings, and peeped in.
I could see the light itself, a lamp placed on the floor in front,
and burning: but nothing moved; no sound was heard. I crawled
further on my hands and knees, till the whole interior of the
tent came into view. It was partly covered with red strips of
curtain, and the ground itself was covered with carpets. Near
the light a low couch, formed by two mat'resses one upon the
other, had been spread; some one lay on it;-O God! she lay
there!
The stillness of the night, the hour, the tent, of her sleep,
her presence, her very unconsciousness, awed, overpowered me.
For a moment I forgot my own purpose, everything. To venture
in seemed profanation; to arouse her, brutal, impious. Yet how
had I come, and for what? Then in sudden view all that had
been since that last night of meeting at Diar-Bekr stood distinct
before me; more yet, I saw my comrades on their watch outside,
the horses in the hollow; I saw the morrow's sun shine bright
on our haven of refuge, on our security of happiness. Self-
possessed and resolute again, I armed myself with the conscience
of pure love, with the memory and assurance of hers, and en-
tered.
Letting the hangings drop behind me, I rose to my feet;
my sword was unsheathed, my knife and dagger were ready in
my belt; my pistols, more likely to prove dangerous than useful
at this stage of the enterprise, I had left below with my horse.
Then, barefoot and on tiptoe, I gently approached the mattress
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IIOI2
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
couch. It was covered all over with a thin sheet of silken gauze;
upon this a second somewhat thicker covering, also of silk, had
been cast: and there, her head on a silken rose-colored pillow,
she lay, quiet as a child.
I can see her now,- thus continued Hermann, gazing fixedly
on the air before him, and speaking not as though to his friend
but to some one far off,- I can see her even now. She was
robed from head to foot in a light white dress, part silk, part
cotton, and ungirdled; she rested half turning to her right side;
her long black hair, loosened from its bands, spread in heavy
masses of glossy waviness, some on her pillow, some on her
naked arm and shoulder, ebony on ivory; one arm was folded
under her head, the other hung loosely over the edge of the
mattress, till the finger-tips almost touched the carpet. Her face
was pale,- paler, I thought, than before; but her breathing came
low, calm, and even, and she smiled in her sleep.
Standing thus by her side, I remained awhile without move-
ment, and almost without breath. I could have been happy so
to remain for ever. To be with her, even though she neither
stirred nor spoke, was Paradise: I needed neither sign nor speech
to tell me her thoughts; I knew them to be all of love for me,
-love not rash nor hasty, but pure, deep, unaltered, unalter-
able as the stars in heaven. It was enough: could this last, I
had no more to seek. But a slight noise outside the tent, as if
of some one walking about the camp, roused me to the sense of
where I was, and what was next to be done. I must awaken
her; yet how could I do so without startling or alarming her?
Kneeling softly by the couch, I took in mine the hand that
even in sleep seemed as if offered to me, gently raised it to my
lips, and kissed it. She slumbered quietly on. I pressed her
fingers, and kissed them again and yet again with increasing
warmth and earnestness. Then at last becoming conscious, she
made a slight movement, opened her eyes, and awoke.
"What! you, Ahmed! " she said, half rising from the bed: “I
was just now dreaming about you. Is it really you? and how
came you here? - who is with you? - are you alone? " These
words she accompanied with a look of love full as intense as my
own; but not unmixed with anxiety, as she glanced quickly round
the tent.
"Dearest Zahra! sister! my heart! my life! " I whispered, and
at once caught her in my arms. For a moment she rested in
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WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11013
my embrace; then recollecting herself, the place, the time, drew
herself free again.
"Did you not expect me, Zahra ? " I added; "had you no
foreknowledge, no anticipation, of this meeting? or could you
think that I should so easily resign you to another? "
The tears stood in her eyes. "Not so," she answered; "but
I thought, I had intended, that the risk should be all my own. I
knew you were on our track, but did not imagine you so near;
none else in the caravan guessed anything. You have anticipated
me by a night, one night only; and-O God! — at what peril to
yourself! Are you aware that sixty chosen swordsmen of Benoo-
Sheyban are at this moment around the tent? O Ahmed! O my
brother! What have you ventured? Where are you come? "
In a few words, as few as possible, I strove to allay her
fears. I explained all to her: told her of the measures we had
taken, the preparations we had made, the horse waiting, the
arms ready to escort and defend her; and implored her to avail
herself of them without delay.
Calmly she listened; then, blushing deeply, "It is well, my
brother," she said; "I am ready. " Thus saying, she caught up
her girdle from the couch, and began to gather her loosened
garments about her, and to fasten them for the journey. No
sign of hesitation now appeared, hardly even of haste. Her eye
was bright, but steady; her color heightened; her hand free from
tremor.
But even as she stooped to gather up her veil from the pil-
low on which she had laid it, and prepared to cast it over her
head, she suddenly started, hearkened, raised herself upright,
stood still an instant, and then, putting her hand on my arm,
whispered, "We are betrayed: listen! "
Before she had finished speaking I heard a rustle outside, a
sound of steps, as of three or four persons, barefoot and cau-
tious in their advance, coming towards the front of the tent. I
looked at Zahra: she had now turned deadly pale; her eyes were
fixed on the curtained entrance: yet in her look I read no fear,
only settled, almost desperate resolution. My face was, I do not
doubt, paler even than hers; my blood chilled in my veins. In-
stinctively we each made to the other a sign for silence-a sign
indeed superfluous in such circumstances-and remained attentive
to the noise without. The steps drew nearer; we could even
distinguish the murmur of voices, apparently as of several people
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WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
talking together in an undertone, though not the words them-
selves. When just before the entrance of the tent, the footfall
ceased; silence followed. The curtains which formed the door
were drawn together, one a little overlapping the other, so as to
preclude all view from the outside; but they were in no way
fastened within; and to have attempted thus to close them at that
moment would have been worse than useless.
Zahra and I threw our arms, she round me, I round her; and
our lips met in the mute assurance that whatever was to be the
fate of one should also be the fate of the other. But she blushed
more deeply than ever, crimson-red. I could see that by the light
of the lamp which we longed to, but at that moment dared not,
extinguish. Its ray fell on the door-hangings, outside which stood
those whom their entire silence, more eloquent then than words,
proclaimed to be listeners and spies. Who they were, and what
precisely had brought them there, and with what intent they
waited, we could not tell.
Half a minute - it could not have been more passed thus in
breathless stillness; it was a long half-minute to Zahra and me.
At last we heard a sort of movement taking place in the group
without it seemed as though they first made a step or two for-
wards; then returned again, talking all the while among them-
selves in the same undertone; then slowly moved away towards
the line of tents in front. No further sound was heard: all
was hushed. Zahra and I loosed our hold, and stood looking at
each other. How much had been guessed, how much actually
detected, I could not tell; she however knew.
"Fly, Ahmed," she whispered; "fly! That was the Emeer
himself. They are on the alert: you are almost discovered; in a
few minutes more the alarm will be given throughout the camp.
For your life, fly! "
I stood there like one entranced; the horror of that moment
had numbed me, brain and limb. And how could I go? Her
voice, her face, her presence were, God knows, all on earth to
me. How then could I leave them to save a life valueless to me
without them?
"In God's name," she urged, "haste. Your only hope, brother,
lies in getting away from here quickly and unperceived; in the
darkness you can yet manage it: tell me, how is it outside ? »
"Thick mist," I answered: "it was coming on before I
reached the tent. "
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WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11015
"Thank God! " she said with a half-sob of relief, and a tone
the like of which I never heard before or after: "that it is
has saved you; that has prevented your companions from being
discovered. Dearest Ahmed," she continued, kissing me in her
earnestness, as you love me, for my sake, for your own sake,
for both of us, fly, it is the only chance left. "
"Fly, Zahra! Zahra, my life!
