not for her to be a source of danger to her friends, but rather to her enemies, so she resolved to turn away from the people, and trust for help to none, save only her haughty self. The Sheiks affected to dissuade her from so rash a course, and fairly told her that although they (having been freed from her presence) would be able to make good terms for themselves, yet that there were no means of allaying the hostility felt towards her, and that the whole face of the desert would be swept by the horsemen of her enemies so carefully, as to make her escape into other districts almost impossible. The brave woman was not to be moved by terrors of this kind, and bidding farewell to the tribe which had honored and protected her, she turned her horse's head, and rode straight away from them, without friend, or follower. Hours had elapsed, and for some time she had been alone in the centre of the round horizon, when her quick eye perceived some horsemen in the distance. The party came nearer, and nearer; soon it was plain that they were making towards her, and presently some hundreds of Bedouins, fully armed, gallopped up to her, ferociously shouting, and apparently intending to take her life at the instant with their pointed spears. Her face at the time was covered with the yashmack according to Eastern usage, but at the moment when the foremost of the horsemen had all but reached her with their spears, she stood up in her stirrups—withdrew the yashmack that veiled the terrors of her countenance—waved her arm slowly and disdainfully, and cried out with a loud voice, "Avaunt!"[1] The horsemen recoiled from her glance, but not in terror. The threatening yells of the assailants were suddenly changed for loud shouts of joy, and admiration, at the bravery of the stately Englishwoman, and festive gun-shots were fired on all sides around her honored head. The truth was, that the party belonged to the tribe with which she had allied herself, and that the threatened attack, as well as the pretended apprehension of an engagement, had been contrived for the mere purpose of testing her courage. The day
- ↑ She spoke it, I dare say, in English; the words would not be the less effective for being spoken in an unknown tongue. Lady Hester, I believe, never learnt to speak the Arabic with a perfect accent.
