e Persian. Seeing
that I fail to comprehend the tenor of the officer's remarks, some of the
garrulous crowd vouchsafe to explain in Turkish, others in Hindostani,
and one in Russian!

In the absence of a lunatic asylum to dodge into, I fasten on to the
officer and get him to take me out and show me the Ali-abad road, so that
I can find the way out early in the morning.

Another caravanserai is found located nearer the road leading from the
city eastward, and I determine to change my quarters quietly by the light
of the moon, leaving the crowd in ignorance of my whereabouts, so that
there will be no difficulty in getting through the streets in the
morning.

Late at night, when the now quieted city is bathed in the soft, mellow
light of the moon, and the crenellated mud walls and old ruins and
archways cast weird shadows across the silent streets, with a few chosen
companions, parties to the secret of the removal, the bicycle is trundled
through the narrow, crooked streets and under arched alleyways, to the
caravanserai on the eastern edge of the city.

Seated beneath the shadowy archway of the first caravanserai is a silent
figure smoking a kalian; as we open the gate to leave, the figure rises
up and thrusts forth an alms-receiver and in a loud voice sings out,
"Backsheesh, backsheesh; huk yah huk!" It is the same dervish that was
turned back with me by the guards at this same gate this afternoon.

My much-needed slumbers at my new quarters are rudely disturbed--as a son
of Erin might, perhaps, declare under similar circumstances--before they
are commenced, by the fearful yowling of Beerjand cats. Several of these
animals are paying their feline compliments to the moon from different
roofs and walls hard by, and their utterances strike my unaccustomed
(unaccustomed to the Beerjand variety of cat-music) ears as about the
most unearthly sound possible.

Fancying the noise is made by women wailing for the dead, from a striking
resemblance to the weird night-sounds heard, it will be remembered, at
Bey Bazaar, Asia Minor (Vol. I), I go outside and listen. Many guesses
would most assuredly be made by me before guessing cats as the authors of
such unearthly music; but cats it is, nevertheless; for, seeing me
listening outside by the door, one of the sharers of my rude quarters
comes out and removes all doubt by drawing the rude outlines of a cat in
the dust with his finger, and by delivering himself of an explanatory
"m