A RIDE TO BABYLON. 371 



denly imaginative by the hopes of detaining us that 

 night from proceeding onwards, for some inscrutable 

 object of his own. There was still daylight enough 

 left to see only too clearly the wretched, miserable 

 animals that we were about to mount. There they 

 were, three angular galloways, sore -backed, girth- 

 galled, hocks spavined to a degree that was a study, 

 and feet all shapes and sizes, turned up like a Chinese 

 slipper at the toe, and worn away to nothing at the 

 heel. We positively shuddered as we thought over 

 the long weary miles that lay between us and Baby- 

 lon. We went through the farce of drawing lots, 

 I remember, and having chosen our horses as the 

 lots fell, we were about to saddle up, when Hassan 

 rushed towards us with terror-stricken countenance, 

 stayed our hands, and implored us in the name of 

 the Prophet to desist. Good heavens ! what on earth 

 did the fellow want 1 What further detention could 

 he wish to put upon us, we who had been hitherto 

 so long-suffering, so indulgent of past delay, we who 

 had listened without a murmur to the Bashi-Bazook 

 story ? It was simply this : night was coming on 

 apace, and our starting in the rapidly -increasing 

 darkness and gloom was a thing not to be dreamt 

 of by the most foolhardy of men. The boy would 

 be lost; the mules would stick fast and be deplor- 

 ably drowned in the flooded tracts of the plain across 

 which our road lay. We ourselves would inevitably 

 catch fevers from breathing the nightly exhalations 



