‘We come from God, and to Him we return,’ and ‘There is no guard against fate,’ are the quoted comments of the Turkish admiral. He counselled that the death should be concealed until Akbar's return to Dihlī, and brought forward experience drawn from his own country's similar circumstances. This was done and various fictions were composed. A man personated the dead Emperor in public audience, and there were rejoicings over his recovery from the fall. Sīdī 'Alī took leave of the grandees, and conveyed the false news of Humāyūn's restoration to health in a friendly way along his route. By the time he reached Lāhōr he found that Akbar had been proclaimed, and his name read in the Friday prayers. Here, as before, the traveller had to wait for royal orders, because the governor had, or invented, useful orders for the crisis, that no one should pass to Kābul. Then he was sent to the presence in Kilānūr, where Akbar honoured his father's passport and let the harassed and home - sick man continue his journey, with money for expenses and a strong escort to Kābul.
Before bidding him good-bye on his still lengthy journey, it may be said that he and his four escorting begs and his sailors marched to Peshāwar through the night to escape that Adam Ghakkar who had made over Kāmrān to Humāyūn; that they saw two rhinoceroses, an event which makes one wonder whether there still remained a part of the ancient lake of the plain of Peshāwar to serve as habitat for the huge and now vanished beasts; and that they crossed the many-memoried Khaibar.
In Kābul the admiral saw Humāyūn's two sons,
Muḥammad Hakīm and Farrukh-fāl, who were born in
the same month of 1553, one being the child of Māh-
Sīdī 'Alī found Kābul beautiful and speaks of its snowy girdle, its gardens and its running water. He traced pleasure and merriment and feasting everywhere, and even instituted comparison between it and Paradise to the disadvantage of the latter. But he had no time for ‘frivolities,’ and thought only of hurrying home. He saw Mu'nim Khān in the city, and being told by him that he could not cross the passes, observed that men had overcome mountains, and under the care of a local guide whose home was on the road, accomplished the feat with labour and safely. He took the road to Tāliqān and there saw our well-known friends, Sulaimān and Ibrāhīm, but he is silent as to Ḥaram. Here, too, he wrote and offered his ghazel, and was both welcomed and speeded. In Tāliqān we must leave him who has been a welcome new figure amongst familiar actors.