CHAPTER IX.
MY COUNTRYMAN One summer, in the south of Syria, amid that tumbled wilderness of cliff and chasm, shale and boulder, which surges all around the Sea of Lot, we had been riding since the dawn without encountering a human being, and with relief at last espied a village, having some trace of cultivated land about it, and a tree.
Rashid was on ahead.

Suleyman had been beside me, but had dropped behind in order to perform some operation on his horse's hoof.

As I came down the last incline on to the village level I heard angry shouts, and saw a crowd of fellahin on foot mobbing Rashid.

Urging my horse, I shouted to him to know what was happening.

At once a number of the villagers forsook him and surrounded me, waving their arms about and talking volubly.
I had gathered, from their iteration of the one word 'moyeh,' that water was the matter in dispute, even before Rashid succeeded in rejoining me.
He said: 'I rode up to the spring which flows beneath that arch, and was letting my horse drink from the stone trough of water, when these maniacs rushed up and dragged my horse away, and made this noise.