We trusted to our horses to make out the path, which sometimes ran along the verge of precipices.
I cannot say that I was happy in my mind.

Rashid made matters worse by dwelling on the risks we ran not only from abandoned men but ghouls and jinnis.

The lugubrious call of a hyaena in the distance moved him to remark that ghouls assume that shape at night to murder travellers.
They come up close and rub against them like a loving cat; which contact robs the victims of their intellect, and causes them to follow the hyaena to its den, where the ghoul kills them and inters their bodies till the flesh is ripe.
He next expressed a fear lest we might come upon some ruin lighted up, and be deceived into supposing it a haunt of men, as had happened to a worthy cousin of his own when on a journey.

This individual, whose name was Ali, had been transported in the twinkling of an eye by jinnis, from somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hama to the wilds of Jebel Caf (Mount Caucasus), and had escaped a hideous and painful death only by recollection of the name of God.

He told me, too, how he himself, when stationed at Mersin, had met a company of demons, one fine evening in returning from an errand; and other tales which caused my flesh to creep.
The groves receded.