When this decision became known, there was loud lamentation and great dismay in the harem. It was one thing to come on a pleasure-trip, and quite another to find it turned into a military promenade through a country swarming with enemies. It was not reassuring to hear, on camping for the night, that the mountaineers had swept off into slavery during the march some twenty of the non-combatants in the rear, nor to find in the morning that two or three guards had been murdered in the darkness close to one’s tent. Nor was it pleasant, in the course of the day, just when a particularly nasty place in a steep descending path had been reached, with a precipice on one side and a perpendicular wall of rock on the other, to be assailed suddenly by tremendous stones, which came crashing down across the path, frightening the mules and almost unseating their riders, while a brisk fusillade from the summit of the cliffs showed that it was no avalanche which thus interrupted the march, and caused the ladies to scream frantically to the guards and soldiers to save them and take them out of this horrible place. To do the soldiers justice, they were no more anxious for the ladies’ presence at such a juncture than they were themselves, declaring that what with the rocks crashing down, the mules capering, and the women screaming, it was impossible to take aim or to do anything quietly. Under these circumstances the Pasha thought it advisable to bestow his household in some safe place before beginning military operations in earnest, and the caravan moved on as fast as possible towards the fort and town of Sardiyeh, the seat of the Mutesalim’s government, where Jamileh Khanum, with her attendants, was to be left under a strong guard.
The Mutesalim was to accompany his Excellency into the field, to see how a little war of this kind ought to be conducted, with the prospect of almost certain disgrace and probable death if any disaster occurred to the Pasha’s arms, or any mishap ruffled the Pasha’s temper. Although in the course of his eventful life Ahmed Khémi had been under fire more than once, he was not a soldier, and the Mutesalim thought the outlook sufficiently dreary to send on a message to his household telling them to leave Sardiyeh and go into hiding before the Pasha’s arrival, that they might not be exposed to his vengeance. When the arrival of the caravan at the fort disclosed the fact that the ladies’ apartments were untenanted, the Mutesalim explained that he had sent away his family in order that there might be more room for his Excellency’s household, and the Pasha was graciously pleased to accept the excuse. The rooms vacated proved, however, insufficient to meet the needs of the party, and for Cecil and her pupil, with their attendants, accommodation was found in the best house in the little town by the simple process of turning the inhabitants out to make room for them. Whether the rightful owners quartered themselves in turn upon their neighbours, or whether they retired to the stables or the kitchen, Cecil could not discover, but she was inexpressibly thankful to have once more a little domain which she could call her own.