DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0120
104
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
to say that we had shot at a partridge. Even be-
fore saluting the strangers, with a hurried voice and
quivenng lip, the sheik asked the cause of our
firing ; and when Paul told him, according to my
instructions, that the cause was merely a simple
bird; he was evidently relieved, although, unable
to master h's emotion, he muttered," Cursed be the
partridge, and cursed the gun, and cursed the hand
that fired it." He then saluted our new compan-
ions, and all sat down around his long spear to
smoke and drink coffee. I withdrew a little apart
from them, and threw myself on the ground, and
then began to suffer severely from a pain which, in
my constant excitement since the cause of it oc-
curred, I had not felt. The pistol which I fired in
the tomb had been charged by Paul with two
balls, and powder enough for a musket; and, in the
firing, it recoiled with such force as to lay open the
back of my hand to the bone. While I was bind-
ing it up as well as I could, the sheik was taking
care that I should not suffer from my withdrawal.
I have mentioned Paul's lying humour, and my
own tendency that way ; but the sheik cast all our
doings in the shade ; and particularly, as if it had
been concerted beforehand, he averred most sol-
emnly, and with the most determined look of truth
imaginable, that we had not been in Wady Mous-
sa; that I was a Turk on a pilgrimage to Mount
Hor; that when he was in Cairo waiting for the
caravan of pilgrims, the pacha sent the Habeeb Ef-
fendi to conduct him to the citadel, whither he went
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
to say that we had shot at a partridge. Even be-
fore saluting the strangers, with a hurried voice and
quivenng lip, the sheik asked the cause of our
firing ; and when Paul told him, according to my
instructions, that the cause was merely a simple
bird; he was evidently relieved, although, unable
to master h's emotion, he muttered," Cursed be the
partridge, and cursed the gun, and cursed the hand
that fired it." He then saluted our new compan-
ions, and all sat down around his long spear to
smoke and drink coffee. I withdrew a little apart
from them, and threw myself on the ground, and
then began to suffer severely from a pain which, in
my constant excitement since the cause of it oc-
curred, I had not felt. The pistol which I fired in
the tomb had been charged by Paul with two
balls, and powder enough for a musket; and, in the
firing, it recoiled with such force as to lay open the
back of my hand to the bone. While I was bind-
ing it up as well as I could, the sheik was taking
care that I should not suffer from my withdrawal.
I have mentioned Paul's lying humour, and my
own tendency that way ; but the sheik cast all our
doings in the shade ; and particularly, as if it had
been concerted beforehand, he averred most sol-
emnly, and with the most determined look of truth
imaginable, that we had not been in Wady Mous-
sa; that I was a Turk on a pilgrimage to Mount
Hor; that when he was in Cairo waiting for the
caravan of pilgrims, the pacha sent the Habeeb Ef-
fendi to conduct him to the citadel, whither he went