I joined the Sultan at Suez." This time Ralston, who had been moving about the room in search of some papers which he had mislaid, came to a stop.

His attention was arrested.
He sat down in a chair and prepared to listen.
"Go on," he said.
"I wanted to go to Mecca," said Hatch, and Ralston nodded his head as though he had expected just those words.
"I did not see how I was going to get there by myself," Hatch continued, "however carefully I managed my disguise." "Yet you speak Arabic," said Ralston.
"Yes, the language wasn't the difficulty.

Indeed, a great many of the pilgrims--the people from Central Asia, for instance--don't speak Arabic at all.

But I felt sure that if I went down the Red Sea alone on a pilgrim steamer, landed alone at Jeddah, and went up with a crowd of others to Mecca, living with them, sleeping with them, day after day, sooner or later I should make some fatal slip and never reach Mecca at all.

If Burton made one mistake, how many should I?
So I put the journey off year after year.