My servants busied themselves in unpacking the baggage as though we
had arrived at an hotel--Shereef and his helpers unsaddled their
cattle. We had left Tiberias without the slightest idea that we
were to make our way to Jerusalem along the desolate side of the
Jordan, and my servants (generally provident in those matters) had
brought with them only, I think, some unleavened bread and a rocky
fragment of goat's milk cheese. These treasures were produced.
Tea and the contrivances for making it were always a standing part
of my baggage. My men gathered in circle round the fire. The
Nazarene was in a false position from having misled us so
strangely, and he would have shrunk back, poor devil, into the cold
and outer darkness, but I made him draw near and share the luxuries
of the night. My quilt and my pelisse were spread, and the rest of
my party had all their capotes or pelisses, or robes of some sort,
which furnished their couches. The men gathered in circle, some
kneeling, some sitting, some lying reclined around our common
hearth. Sometimes on one, sometimes on another, the flickering
light would glare more fiercely. Sometimes it was the good Shereef
that seemed the foremost, as he sat with venerable beard the image
of manly piety--unknowing of all geography, unknowing where he was
or whither he might go, but trusting in the goodness of God and the
clinching power of fate and the good star of the Englishman.
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