The little nest of mud huts are found, after a certain amount of hesitation and preliminary going ahead by “The Aged,” and toward nightfall three picturesque horsemen ride up and dismount; they are the sowars detailed by the Ameer’s orders to Abdurraheim, or some other border-land khan, to escort me across the Desert of Despair.

“The Aged” bravely returns to Tabbas in the morning by himself.  When on the point of departing, he surveys me wistfully across a few feet of space and shouts “h-o-i!” He then regards me with a peculiar and indescribable smile.  It is not a very hard smile to interpret, however, and I present him with the customary backsheesh.  Pocketing the coins, he shouts “h-o-i!’” again, and delivers himself of another smile even more peculiar and indescribable than the other.

“Persian-like, receiving a present of money only excites his cupidity for more,” I think; and so reply by a deprecatory shake of the head.  This turns out to be an uncharitable judgment, however, for once; he goes through the pantomime of using a pen and says, “Abdurraheim Khan.”  He saw me write my name, the date of my appearance at Tabbas, etc., on a piece of paper and give it to Abdurraheim Khan, and he wants me to do the same thing for him.

The three worthies comprising my new escort are most interesting specimens of the genus sowar; the leader and spokesman of the trio says he is a khan; number two is a mirza, and number three a mudbake.  Khans are pretty plentiful hereabouts, and it is nothing surprising to happen across one acting in the humble capacity of a sowar; a mirza gets his title from his ability to write letters; the precise social status of a mudbake is more difficult to here determine, but his proper roosting-place is several rungs of the social ladder below either of the others.  They are to take me through to the Khan of Grhalakua, the first Afghan chieftain beyond the desert, and to take back to the Ameer a receipt from him for my safe delivery.

It is a far easier task to reckon up their moral calibre than their social.  Before being in their delectable company an hour they reveal that strange mingling of childlike simplicity and total moral depravity that enters into the composition of semi-civilized kleptomaniacs.  The khan is a person of a highly sanguine temperament and possesses a headstrong disposition; coupled with his perverted notions of meum and tuum, these qualities will some fine day end in his being brought up with a round turn and required to part company with his ears or nose, or to be turned adrift on the cold charity of the world, deprived of his hands by the crude and summary justice of Khorassan.  His eyes are brown and large, and spherical almost as an owl’s eyes, and they bulge out in a manner that exposes most of the white.  He wears long hair, curled up after the manner of Persian la-de-da-dom, and in his crude, uncivilized sphere evidently fancies himself something of a dandy.