Page:Enterprise and Adventure.djvu/214

---

imbibed more and more the habits of a Turkish soldier; but a restless love of adventure had taken possession of him; and by the aid of a friendly merchant, whom he had known in Montenegro, he found means to escape aboard a vessel bound to Egypt. Here he enlisted in the army of the famous Mehemet Ali, and was a witness of the famous destruction of the Mamelukes. Finati, or Mahomet, as he now called himself, was then drafted into the army for service in Arabia, where a sect of Mohammedans, called the Wahabees, defied the power of the Sultan, and forbade the pilgrims to visit Mecca without paying them tribute. In his first campaign for the recovery of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Finati's old ill-fortune pursued him. The army under Jossoon Pasha was routed, and of those who were not slain by the enemy, the greater number perished before they could reach the coast where the Egyptian vessels awaited them. Although Finati escaped, his position was one of extreme peril: the heat of the country being intolerable, and water not to be found. Fortunately, however, he remembered a spring at about five miles' distance, and thither he contrived to make his way. At the well he found a little knot of his comrades, sitting despondently around the brink, the well being too deep for them to reach the water by any contrivance they could devise, though expiring with thirst; and one of the number, in the agony of despair occasioned by it, threw himself in, and perished before them all. It was now daylight, and many tracks were found by this well, so that there was a great difference of opinion as to which should be taken, and some of them separated; but that which Finati had chosen fortunately