Sabat and Abdallah were already up and out, and that day they said the
Mohammedan prayer before the Kaaba itself with other pilgrims who had
come from many lands--from Egypt and Abyssinia, from Constantinople
and Damascus, Baghdad and Bokhara, from the defiles of the Khyber
Pass, from the streets of Delhi and the harbour of Zanzibar.

We do not know what Abdallah looked like. He was probably like most
young Arab chieftains, a tall, sinewy man--brown-faced, dark-eyed,
with hair and a short-cropped beard that were between brown and black.

His friend Sabat was, however, so striking that even in that great
crowd of many pilgrims people would turn to look at him. They would
turn round, for one reason, because of Sabat's voice. Even when he was
just talking to his friend his voice sounded like a roar; when he got
excited and in a passion (as he very often did) it rolled like thunder
and was louder than most men's shouting. As he spoke his large white
teeth gleamed in his wide mouth. His brown face and black arched
eyebrows were a dark setting for round eyes that flashed as he spoke.
His black beard flowed over his tawny throat and neck. Gold earrings
swung with his agitation and a gold chain gleamed round his neck. He
wore a bright silk jacket with long sleeves, and long, loose-flowing
trousers and richly embroidered shoes with turned-up toes. From a
girdle round his waist hung a dagger whose handle and hilt flashed
with jewels.

Abdallah and Sabat were better educated than most Arabs, for they
could both read. But they were not men who could stay in one place
and read and think in quiet. When they had finished their worship at
Mecca, they determined to ride far away across the deserts eastward,
even to Kabul in the mountains of Afghanistan. So they rode, first
northward up the great camel-route toward Damascus, and then eastward.
In spite of robbers and hungry jackals, through mountain gorges, over
streams, across the Syrian desert from oasis to oasis, and then across
the Euphrates and the Tigris they went, till they had climbed rung by
rung the mountain ranges that hold up the great plateau of Persia.

At last they broke in upon the rocky valleys of Afghanistan and came
to the gateway of India--to Kabul. They presented themselves to Zeman
Shah, the ruler of Afghanistan, and he was so taken with Abdallah's
capacity that he asked him to be one of his officers in the court.
So Abdallah stayed in Kabul. But the restless,