The Croesus Of Yemen - Part 1

Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, is one of the noblest cities of Arabia Felix, and is said to rival beautiful Damascus in many of her exquisite features. The Imam of Yemen who ruled in the beginning of this century could claim rank among the most whimsical princes who ever sat on a throne. He was a man of weak intellect, strong passion, boundless vanity, and a religious enthusiasm entirely foreign to his subjects, who are indifferent followers of Mohammed. That eccentric Commander of the Faithful conceived the singular fancy that he was animated by the soul of the last Prophet, and he suited his conduct to his conceit, there being no one to dispute his ludicrous presumption. He dressed in green, sermonized his people in the style of the Koran, read _surahs_ of his own creation, raved of his nocturnal visits to heaven, descanted on visions and revelations vouchsafed to him, and scrupulously arranged his household in imitation of Mohammed's, not forgetting the seventeen wives of the founder of Islam, including an Ayesha, who was the power behind the Imam's throne, being the flower of his harem.

The most important person who stood next to the Imam in power, and above him in wisdom, was the great Kadi, or judge, Omar, who presided over the supreme court of Sanaa, and was in fact the walking code and cyclopædia of Yemen. What he did not know only Allah and His Prophet could reveal. The wise Kadi had no doubt at all that the Imam was a spiritual duplicate of the true Prophet, and he received in recognition the proud title of the "Lion of God," reminiscent of Mohammed's most devoted champion who fought his battles, and died sword in hand.

Omar plied his legal profession so well, had so many questions of justice and equity referred to him from every quarter of the land, that he rose to be the wealthiest Moslem of Sanaa, exceeded in his opulence by one man only, and that was the renowned Ben Abir, surnamed "The Croesus of Yemen." Ben Abir was no Moslem, but a Hebrew, and one who feared nothing so much as the remote likelihood of slighting his faith.

The Imam's ruling passion for prophetic honors was equalled by his unprophetic mania for building monumental structures with an extravagance which drained his treasure. Lacking the vast resources of the Caliph of Estamboul, the prince of Yemen nevertheless aspired to rival the head of the faithful in the monumental magnificence of his great capital; and immense sums were lavished on the embellishments of a city which was meant to dazzle even the strangers who had wondered at the imperial palaces of the mighty Sultan himself. The drawback was the limited revenues of the Imam's domains, and the shrewd Kadi, forestalling the danger of a royal recourse to his riches, was instrumental in causing his master to draw on Ben Abir for large sums, in return for titles and privileges which enabled the misused Israelite to indemnify himself in a measure for advances he never expected to see returned. Unlimited in the extent of his commercial enterprises, and furnished with as many military escorts as he chose to ask for, Ben Abir's caravans carried loads of silk, cotton, hardware, weapons and trinkets as far as Hadramaut, Hejaz and Nejd, fearless of the dangers of the Tehamah and the deathful simoons of the arid desert; and they returned to the seashore with tons of coffee, packs of gum, ostrich feathers, dyes and pearls, which foreign vessels carried to distant lands. To all this Ben Abir added the breeding of the finest Arabian horses, such as are only found in Nejd, and it became a current saying that whatever the Croesus of Yemen touched turned into gold.

Now, it happened that, previous to the closing celebration of the Ramadhan Fast, Ben Abir presented his sovereign with one of his choicest Nejdi stallions, of spotless white and a most fiery temper, caparisoned in the most approved fashion. Delighted with the gift, the Imam showed his appreciation by mounting the spirited animal on the solemn occasion brought about by the sacrificial ceremony which marks the close of the Fast. As ill-luck would have it, a distracted saint, who had just issued from his cave looking more like a chimpanzee than a human being, threw himself in the way of the stallion with a yell that frightened both horse and rider. Snorting and balking in recoil from the object of terror, the high-spirited creature reared and fell backward injuring the Kadi, who was behind, and landing the second edition of the Prophet on a rock, with a broken leg and a dislocated jaw as mementos of the inauspicious incident. Somebody had to be burdened with the blame, and the Kadi realized his opportunity. As soon as sufficiently recovered from his own hurts to sit in judgment, Omar declared Ben Abir guilty of high treason for having tempted the Imam to mount a mad horse, and condemned him to perish by decapitation, unless he should ransom his life for a fabulous sum, which was named, with the additional condition that it be paid in solid gold. Within twenty-four hours the gold was in the hands of the Imam's treasurer, and Ben Abir was a poor man.

When Ayesha, the flower of the royal harem, who was of Hebraic origin, heard of the Kadi's sentence, she appealed to her prophetic lord's conscience against the flagrant injustice. The Imam was moved to the extent of offering to return a small portion of the robbery, provided the Hebrew would enter the mosque. Ben Abir would not listen to the thought of such treason to the God of his fathers, and had a brave wife to sustain him in his trial, with two children, one an ineffably charming maiden, to comfort him. Nor was he entirely destitute, his commercial credit remaining good.

In one of the mountain ranges of Yemen one Friday afternoon, as the sun began to approach the rim of the horizon, a small caravan made a halt. The dromedaries were freed from their burdens and allowed to browse, and a dark tent was stretched for the use of the master of the caravan. On a matting on the ground a rug was spread and a few pillows were put thereon for the ease of a middle-aged person who, dismounting from his horse, took possession of the transient resting-place. As soon as he found himself within the tent he washed himself with water drawn from the nearest spring, changed his garments, brought forth a silver lamp, which he filled with oil, a silver flask full of wine, and a goblet of the same metal. With nightfall the lamp illumined the tent, and the inmate stood lost in prayer, with his face turned to the east. A blessing uttered over the wine was followed by a frugal meal, and the rest of the evening was spent in study of sacred lore. At the entrance to the tent, near a spear struck into the soil, stood a black sentry, while at a distance the camel drivers made themselves comfortable for the night. The lord of the caravan was Ben Abir, his sentinel was Ibraeem, a freed slave, who, having been treated kindly by his master in his happier days, would not desert him now that fortune declined to smile on him.

The night was very dark, and would have been voiceless but for the sighs and moans of the dromedaries, who seemed audibly to commiserate one with another upon the hardships of life. About midnight the silence was unbroken, the discontented animals having buried their sense of trouble in dreamless sleep. At this hour Ben Abir was roused by his faithful attendant, who informed him of a great marvel that was to be seen before the tent. A heap of gold cropped up from the ground, each coin scintillating like a star. "Rise, O, master! Allah sends thee a treasure," cried the devoted slave.

"What is it thou art raving of, O, Ibraeem!--art thou dreaming?" said Ben Abir.

"Indeed I am wide awake, O, master!--step forth and trust to thine own senses if thou doubtest mine; here is the hoard Allah would have thee take," insisted Ibraeem.

As Ben Abir peered out of his tent to convince himself of Ibraeem's illusion, he saw with amazement a golden pile of coin, the pieces glowing like lupine eyes in the dark. This is a temptation of the evil one, thought the scrupulous Israelite, who would not have touched pelf on his Sabbath for the wealth of the Indies.

"Touch not a piece of this hoard, Oh, Ibraeem!--if thou fearest Allah, and wouldst not disobey Ben Abir. If the treasure is to be mine, it will remain where it is till after my Sabbath; if it be not mine, the breaking of my holy day will not save it for me. What is to be, will be. Go to sleep," closed the pious Yemenite, and retired to his couch, Ibraeem, after a little natural hesitation, doing likewise. What right, after all, had he to question the deep wisdom and deeper faith of his generous master?

But sleep would not return to Ben Abir. Through the coarse goat hair texture that made up the covering of his tent the glittering mass stared at him like so many living eyes, and he felt a chill run through the marrow of his bones. While he was at a loss to explain how the glare of the hoard penetrated the opaque material of his tent, a new wonder diverted his attention. An inclined plane, broad as a valley and smooth as glass, stretched down from the deep heavens with both ends lost, one among the starry configurations, the other in the unfathomed abysses of the nether world. The only irregularity in the sweep of the prodigious highway was a terrace which made a connecting link between the upper and the lower part of the plane. In the heart of the terrace shone the hoard which a while before had been seen before the tent.

Ben Abir doubted not that there was an evil design back of this marvelous display, but he felt safe in the consciousness of his firm loyalty. His feeling of safety, however, was somewhat shaken by a terrific detonation, like the eruption of a volcano. It was the signal for a numberless host to ascend towards the terrace, who, dividing and subdividing, started to march up in frowning armies to the sound of wailing notes,--clarions and clashing cymbals mixing with a chaos of noise produced by all the instruments of music known. The vanguard was made up of a serried division of vicious gholes whose march resembled more the dance of droll harlequins than the pace of warriors. At their heels came a vast herd of monstrous bipeds, with head, tail and hoofs of the boar, making the air shudder with their hideous grunts, and piercing the sable of night with their grim eyes. Next followed a division of bipedal beasts, rolling fiery eyeballs, striking their sides with tails like those of lions, and rending the atmosphere with roars of fury. Back of these came bounding an enormous pack of bellowing hell-hounds, each one a Cerberus, armed with the deadly teeth and claws of the tiger. Close behind tramped an appalling herd of deformities, hunch-backed elephants, with raised trunks that were hissing serpents, and tusks which reached down to the ground tearing up fragments of rock and hurling them against the terrace with diabolic fury. The rear was taken up by a grisly multitude of animated skeletons, who yelled, grinned, laughed, danced,--drawing up and thrusting out their bony limbs with wriggling motion, and varying the infernal performance by a series of somersaults. Back of all burst a deluge of red fire which shot with raging impetuosity among the hellish monsters, who instead of being deterred appeared to derive strength from the consuming element. But fierce as was the rush against the terrace, beyond its outer limits the demons could not pass.

Meanwhile, on the upper extension of the celestial highway there was a quick mustering of radiant squadrons, and an array of embattled lines which extended beyond the remotest galaxies. The summons had gone forth to be ready for the infernal invader, and the denizens of the stars responded in unnumbered myriads. Signals flashed from height to height, and save the warning note of a trumpet faintly heard now and then, the pregnant silence of the ethereal combatants contrasted strangely with the fiendish defiance of the howling goblins.

The moments of suspense were intensified by the swelling of the hoard to amazing dimensions; not that the coins multiplied, but they grew in size and in lustre, until each one resembled the solar disk. It was no more a pile, but a pyramid, of gold set in a frame of thickening darkness.

A peal of thunder from on high was the sign for the encounter. Like a sea of lightning, the radiant vanguard swept adown the terrace with a mien so dreadful and weapons so deterring that the black divisions fled in horror before the blasting might that shook the deeps to the foundation.

With all his attention concentrated on the engagement, Ben Abir had not seen that a cherub stood before him one of those precious disks in his hand, until the apparition spoke. "So much is thine, O, righteous Ben Abir! the rest will come," were the mystic words of the benign power.

Ben Abir could not accept the gift without stretching his arms to their full length, and found it impossible to hold it the moment his hands closed round the edge of the fiery wheel. Finding the priceless treasure was slipping from his grasp he called for Ibraeem to help.

"What is it thou wouldst have me do for thee, master?" asked the attendant when roused from his sound sleep.

"Have I called thee, Ibraeem? Yes, I did call thee; but it was all a dream, a dream as awful as the vision of Jacob in the wilderness.--How far advanced is the night? Is there anything left of the golden hoard?" inquired Ben Abir.

"The camels are astir, and the east is gray, but the gold is all gone, master,--all gone. Had we taken it, thou wouldst again be the Croesus of Yemen," said the simple-minded Ibraeem, regretfully. "We ought to have taken it, ought we not?"

"It is well that we kept our hands from it; it was a temptation held out by the evil one, Ibraeem, who lures man into error. What is to be will be.--Let me be alone for a little space; I am somewhat perturbed," concluded Ben Abir, who wished to think over his unearthly vision.

With eyes closed, the Hebrew endeavored to recall the dark and bright phantoms of the night, pondering what it all might mean. And that hoard, which his humble servant had witnessed and referred to, had been too tangible a reality to be transferred to the domain of the spectral.

The radiant flood-gates of heaven's light-oceans opened wide. The Orient was ablaze with the glories of an early sunrise, which had been initiated by waves of gilded crimson; and Arabia Felix rose from a transcendental dream to bathe in dew as brilliant as the pearls of Halool and Katar. The air vibrated with the joyous notes of the feathered freebooters; there were the finch, the lark and the thrush to lead in the matin concert, and the beautifully-crested hoopoe, on whom Solomon bestowed a golden crown for services rendered him in the desert and for messages carried between His Majesty and Belkeys, the Queen of Sheba. Sweet was the scent of the air, and the sparkling dew was as yet unabsorbed by the glowing heat of the rising day.

Ben Abir issued from his tent to feel that nature donned her festal robes in honor of the Sabbath blessed of the Lord. Was it not his over-soul that made him realize the holiness of God's creation? How different the world looked to him on week-days. But think of whatever he might, before his mental gaze still soared his vision undispelled by the cheer of sunshine and life. His heart throbbed with prophetic apprehension. Who was wise enough to enlighten him?

However, the day was passed in worship and study; and at the sight of the first three stars in the firmament, the scrupulous Ben Abir bade his farewell to the Sabbath by the blessing uttered over a cup of wine; and, lantern in hand, proceeded to search the spot whereon the golden hoard had been seen on the previous night. One gold piece only he found on turning up the sand with the tip of his sandal, but it was enough to make his heart flutter, conscious that the coin in his hand was not of human make. Returning to his tent, the precious piece was deposited on a pillow with a trembling hand, when lo! the thing began to dilate and grow in brilliance, until it reached the size and shape of the golden disk he had in his vision received from an angel's hand. Ben Abir bit his thumb to assure himself that he was awake. Was it not another illusion? To the touch it was an ordinary coin; to the eye it had the form of a mighty targe of burnished gold. "It is mine, and I shall keep it as the secret and talisman of my life, a gift of the Most High, blessed be He!" whispered the loyal Israelite, and the mysterious coin was carefully wrapped up and put away.

The early dawn of the first day of the week found Ben Abir's caravan winding its way amidst a wilderness of tropic vegetation and scattered rocks; but the tide of fortune still turned against him. Torrents of rain impeded the march of his camels and damaged the goods he depended on for the success of his journey. While the dromedaries were in the act of crossing a bridge the span gave way and three of the poor brutes went down never to rise again; and to complete his ruin, fire broke out at the caravansary where he had hoped to find refuge from the weather's inclemencies, and he had good cause to be grateful even for escape from death in the flames that consumed the remnant of his merchandise, largely secured on credit. The Croesus of Yemen found himself on the brink of poverty, a ruined man with a crowd of creditors to lodge him in one of Sanaa's abominable prisons. He knew the Kadi who would speak the sentence, and he prepared to face the inevitable, trusting that something would happen to render his painful situation bearable.

There lived at this time another person in Sanaa who actually rejoiced at the disgrace and impoverishment of Ben Abir; and this contrary both to his own temper, and to the popular sympathies with a man who in his better days alleviated human misery to the best of his ability. That exception was Hayem Cordosa. The cause of the ill feeling in Cordosa's breast was an unhappy, one-sided romance, which had driven his son, Menahem, to desperation. Until a certain morning that youth had but one dream, and that was knowledge. It was the fateful moment when he chanced to meet in the street an exquisitely lovely boy mounted on a pony in charge of a black man. The child's silken locks were darker than the jet black face of his attendant, his complexion was like milk and blood, his lips reminded one of the red coral, his teeth of the purest pearl, while his eyes suggested the dreams of angels in realms of ineffable felicity. A few questions put to the slave brought the information that infinitely fairer than the child was his elder sister Estrelia. In the glow of his loyal admiration Ibraeem, who had the child in charge, portrayed to the interested youth a maiden who was more beautiful than the Peri of Yemen. So great was her beauty that her pellucid witchery shone through her veil, while her perfect form would have been envied by the graces of antiquity. Ibraeem did not think that he exaggerated matters by assuring Menahem that Estrelia's loveliness illumined the apartments of her privacy, and that her eyes would enchant the deadly _rukta_. If the youth had any doubt about it, the cherub-like sweetness of her little brother dispelled the doubt.

Menahem was not a youth to be despised. His fidelity to principle was as great as his learning in sacred literature was deep. He felt justified in offering his heart to Ben Abir's daughter, but met with a rebuff, and became desperate. The erstwhile cheerful youth grew gloomy, courted seclusion, brooded on vengeance; and finally resorted to the extremity of deserting his faith, to the great sorrow of his scrupulously religious parents. It was a mad step, but there was method in the madness. The apostate put himself under the protection of Omar, and the learned Kadi presented him to his royal master as a convert to Islam; the Imam received him with favor, assured him of a seat in Paradise, and made him his cup-bearer. Menahem was where he wished to be, but Cordosa hated the house of Ben Abir.

It was during the last trip of the fallen Croesus of Yemen that the convert took an opportunity to speak to the Imam of the maiden who had driven him mad, and he spoke of her as the "luminous Peri of Yemen, whose radiant beauty enlightens Ben Abir's home."

Under ordinary circumstances there was not a thing within the boundaries of his dominion the Imam would hesitate to lay hand on if he deemed its possession desirable. In this especial case the remembrance of a broken leg and dislocated jaw seemed to justify any step calculated to afford some recompense for those injuries which gave the aspirant to prophetic veneration a hideous aspect. When consulted in the matter, the Kadi failed to see it in any other light--"Thou art the blessed re-birth of the last prophet, the prince of this great land, and there is no power in the heavens to interfere with thy right, O, commander of the faithful! when thou seest fit to save a soul from perdition. As to the increase in thy harem beyond the number consecrated by the will of Mohammed, thy servant will be grateful for any of thy Houris, if thou deignest to transfer her to the humbler home of thy devoted Kadi," was Omar's suggestion.

Had the secret remained among its originators and been carried out promptly, the fate of Estrelia would have been sealed; but the removal of one from the Imam's harem put Ayesha on her mettle. She suspected a new arrival, and, having fathomed the mind of Yemen's lord, she was alarmed at the prospect of being eclipsed by superior charms, thus forfeiting her hitherto undisputed rule; and she lost no time in apprising the right persons of Estrelia's imminent danger. Thus did it come to pass that when, led by the apostate, the minions of the prince descended on Ben Abir's unprotected home, they had to report that their nocturnal invasion had been a failure. The "luminous peri of Yemen" had been warned in time.