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KANANA'S THIRD MISSION
A vast Mohammedan army, with its almost innumerable followers, wasmarching towards Syria, to meet the hosts of the Emperor Heraclius.
Like a pillar of cloud the dust rose above the mighty throng.
Armed horsemen, ten thousand strong, rode in advance.
A veteran guard of scarred and savage men came next, mounted upon hugecamels, surrounding Kahled the Invincible and his chief officers, whorode upon the strongest and most beautiful of Persian horses.
A little distance behind were thousands of fierce warriors mounted oncamels and dromedaries. Then came another vast detachment of camelsbearing the tents, furniture, and provisions of the army; these werefollowed by a motley throng, comprising the families of many of thetribes represented in the front, while still another powerful guardbrought up the rear.
Behind the body-guard of Kahled and before the war-camels rode a smallerguard, in the center of which were two camels, bearing a litter betweenthem.
Upon this litter lay Kanana, shielded from the sun by a goat's-hairawning; for almost of necessity the army moved by daylight. It startedan hour after sunrise, resting two hours at noon, and halting an hourbefore sunset. It moved more rapidly than a caravan, however, andaveraged twenty-five miles a day.
Close behind Kanana's litter walked a riderless dromedary. At the startit was haggard and worn. Its dark hair was burned to a dingy brown bythe fierce heat of the desert; but even Kahled received less carefulattention, and every day it gathered strength and held its head a littlehigher.
The black dromedary was not allowed to carry any burden, but wasliterally covered with gay-colored cloths; decorating the pride of Omarthe Great, that had brought the good news from Mecca to Bashra in lessthan thirteen days.
Nothing pleasanter could have been announced to that terrible army ofveterans surrounding the valiant Kahled, than that it was to face themightiest host which the Emperor Heraclius could gather in all thenorth.
There was not one in all that throng who doubted, for an instant, thatKahled could conquer the whole world if he chose, in the name of Allahand the Prophet.
Many of the soldiers had followed him since the day, years before, whenhe made his first grand plunge into Persia. They had seen him made thesupreme dictator of Babylonia. They had seen him send that remarkablemessage to the great monarch of Persia:
"Profess the faith of Allah and his Prophet, or pay tribute to theirservants. If you refuse I will come upon you with a host that lovesdeath as much as you love life."
Once before had they seen him summoned from his triumphs in Persia,because all of the Mohammedan generals and soldiers in Syria were notable to cope with the power of Heraclius. They had seen him investedwith the supreme power by the Caliph Abu-Bekr, Omar's predecessor, andwatched while, single-handed, he fought and conquered the great warrior,Romanus.
Most of them had been with him before the walls of Damascus, when hebesieged that magnificently fortified city upon one side, and fought andconquered an army of a hundred thousand men upon the other side, sentfrom Antioch, by Heraclius, for the relief of the great city. Then theywitnessed the fall of Damascus, and followed Kahled as he attacked andput to flight an army outnumbering his by two to one, and equipped anddrilled in the most modern methods of Roman warfare.
They had fought with him in the fiercest battles ever recorded of thosedesert lands, and they only knew him as Kahled the Invincible.
After Abu-Bekr had died and Omar the Great had taken his place, theproud soldiers saw their general unjustly deposed and given such minorwork as tenting about the besieged cities, while others did thefighting, until he left Syria in disgust.
No wonder they were glad to see him recalled to take his proper place.They jested without end about the cowards who were frightened becauseHeraclius had threatened to annihilate the Mussulmans. And the march wasone grand holiday, in spite of heat and hardships.
As Kanana lay in his litter and listened to these bursts of eloquence inpraise of the general, he was often stirred with ardent patriotism andalmost persuaded to cast his lot among the soldiers; but the same oddtheories which before had prevented his taking up a lance, restrainedhim still.
On the fourth day he left the litter and took his seat upon the blackdromedary. Kahled directed that costly garments and a sword and lance befurnished him, but Kanana prostrated himself before the general andpleaded: "My father, I never held a lance, and Allah knows me best inthis sheepskin coat."
Kahled frowned, but Kanana sat upon the decorated dromedary precisely ashe left the perch in the harvest-field. He expected to take his placewith the camp-followers in the rear, but found that he was still to ridein state surrounded by the veteran guard. Indeed, he became a figure socelebrated and conspicuous that many a warrior in passing, afterprostrating himself before the general, touched his forehead to theground before Kanana and the black dromedary.
It might have made a pleasant dream, while sitting upon the perch in theharvest-field, but the reality disturbed him, and again he began to plansome means of escape.
He carefully computed the position of the Beni Sad encampment, anddetermined the day when the army would pass but a few miles to the eastof it.
One who has not lived upon the desert, and seen it illustrated again andagain, can scarcely credit the accuracy with which a wandering Bedouincan locate the direction and distance to any point with which he isfamiliar; but even then Kanana was at a loss as to how to accomplish hispurpose when the whole matter was arranged for him, and he was suppliedwith a work which he could perform for Allah and Arabia, still holdinghis shepherd's staff and wearing his sheepskin coat.
The army halted for the night upon the eve of the day when it would passnear the encampment of the Beni Sads. The tent which Kanana occupiedwas pitched next that of Kahled.
He sat upon the ground eating his supper. All about him was the clatterand commotion of the mighty host preparing for the night, when he heardan officer reporting to the general that in three days the supply ofgrain would be exhausted.
"My father," he exclaimed, prostrating himself before the general, "thyservant's people, the Beni Sads, must be less than a night's journey tothe north and west. They were harvesting six weeks ago, and must havefive hundred camel-loads of grain to sell. Bid me go to them to-night,and, with the help of Allah, by the sunrise after to-morrow it shall bedelivered to thy hand."
Kahled had formed a very good opinion of the Bedouin boy. He had noticedhis uneasiness, and, suspecting that he would make an endeavor toescape, he had been searching for some occupation that should preventit by rendering him more content to remain. He felt that a time mightcome when Kanana, with his sheepskin coat and shepherd's staff, might beof greater value to him than many a veteran with costly _abbe_ andgleaming sword.
The result was an order that, one hour after sunset, Kanana shouldstart, at the head of a hundred horsemen, with ten camels laden withtreasure for the purchase of grain, with twenty camels bearinggrain-sacks, and one with gifts from Kahled to the Terror of the Desert,in acknowledgment of the service rendered by his son.
When he had purchased what grain the Beni Sads would sell, he was tocontinue in advance of the army, securing supplies to the very border ofSyria.
Kanana was no prodigy of meekness that he should not appreciate thisdistinction. A prouder boy has never lived, in Occident or Orient, thanthe Bedouin shepherd who sat upon the black dromedary and publiclyreceived the general's blessing and command of the caravan.
In any other land there might have been rebellion among a hundredveteran horsemen, when placed under command of a boy in a sheepskincoat, armed only with a shepherd's staff, but there was no man of themwho had not heard wonderful tales of Kanana's courage; and the shepherdwho had left the harvest field six weeks before, known only as thecoward of the Beni Sads, set his face toward home that night, followedby a hundred savage warriors who obeyed him as one of the bravest of allthe Bedouins.
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s the caravan moved rapidly over the plain, bearing its costly burden,it is hardly surprising that the beardless chief recalled his lastinterview with his angry father, when that veteran sheik refused totrust him with a single horse to start upon his mission; but he was nonethe less anxious to reach his father's tent and receive his father'sblessing.