Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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There were several Armenians in frock suits of broadcloth, low-cut vests, and snowy shirt bosoms, like those affected by lawyers in Mississippi and Arkansas, and one howling dervish. He did not look a bit as you would expect, but was a jaunty fellow in a fancy shirt of black cotton with white spots, without a collar, and an ordinary sack suit of gray European clothes over which he wore his distinctive coat of camel’s hair with wide sleeves and facings and trimmings of broad black braid, and on his shaven head a fez of gray wool with a wide band of black around it. He carried a dainty cane and whirled it around in his fingers like a dandy when he promenaded the deck. He was a presumptuous young dervish, for he endeavoured to enjoy the privileges of first-class passengers on a third-class ticket, which the deck steward would not permit. And when he did not go back to his proper place, after being told to do so, he was rudely elbowed down the stairs. It was not a respectful way to treat a saint in embryo, which howling dervishes are supposed to be, but I suppose the deck steward had his orders, and perhaps he was accustomed to dealing with such men.