Wishing to win him over, I promised him a fitting reward and went to my camel. I paid the old guide his wages and dismissed him.
At 3.15 we departed with the new guide, leading our camels. Scarcely had we reached the valley when a war cry resounded behind us. Turning round, I perceived a crowd of savage forms, men and women, running after us with rifles, spears, and bludgeons. On the right there was a smaller encampment, and from this also various people were hurrying against us. After a while we were surrounded. The men and women flung themselves on us like wild beasts.
“You Christians! accursed Christians! we must slay you,” they shouted, striking us with the butts of their rifles and attacking our camels with sticks and spears, so that some of the beasts ran away. What followed cannot easily be described, and, even if I were to attempt it, such a description would seem improbable to many and would not do justice to the danger in which we were. They dragged us off to the smaller camp; Rifʻat and Tûmân they condemned to death as Christians and threatened to kill them at once. The rest of us were to suffer a similar fate, because the rapacious Beli wished to remove all witnesses of their crime. Surrounded by a pack of infuriated men and women, abused, ridiculed, and even beaten, we did not close an eye all night.
On Friday, July 1, 1910, early in the morning, a large troop of the Sḥama’ clan arrived at our camp and, after an agitated and wordy warfare, compelled our tormentors to deliver us up and dragged us off to their camp, which was pitched by the spring of Abu Râka in the valley of al-Ǧizel. Our sufferings continued, but we were helped by the fact that at the very beginning I had cried out that I was traveling to Slîmân eben Refâde, the head chief of all the Beli, that I was journeying therefore before his countenance and under his protection, and that I called upon each one of those present to report to him how the Beli were infringing his protection. Toward noon there rode into the camp at Abu Râka a negro serving under Slîmân eben Refâde; he threatened, if they would not release us, to tell his master how his name had been reviled by our tormentors. The negro took our part because I had gained his favor by a considerable gift. Negotiations went on for a very long time before we won our case. Our photographic appliances were knocked about, the plants
