The camp was pitched upon the north bank of the Wad Nefis, not far from Tamoshlacht. Above it towered the Atlas, looking like a wall, with scarce a peak to break its grim monotony. A fringe of garden lands enclosed the sanctuary, in which the great Sherif lived in patriarchal style; half saint, half warrior, but wholly a merchant at the bottom, as are so many Arabs; all his surroundings enjoyed peculiar sanctity.

In the long avenue of cypresses the birds lived safely, for no one dared to frighten them, much less to fire a shot. His baraka, that is the grace abounding, that distils from out the clothes, the person and each action of men such as the Sherif, who claim descent in apostolic continuity from the Blessed One, Mohammed, Allah’s own messenger, protected everything. Of a mean presence, like the man who stood upon the Areopagus and beckoned with his hand, before he cast the spell of his keen, humoristic speech upon the Greeks, the holy one was of a middle stature. His face was marked with smallpox. His clothes were dirty, and his haik he sometimes mended with a thorn, doubling it, and thrusting one end through a slit to form a safety-pin. His shoes were never new, his turban like an old bath towel; yet in his belt he wore a dagger with a gold hilt, for he was placed so far above the law, by virtue of his blood, that though the Koran especially enjoins the faithful not to wear gold, all that he did was good.

Though he drank nothing but pure water, or, for that matter, lapped it like a camel, clearing the scum off with his fingers if on a journey, he might have drank champagne or brandy, or mixed the two of them, for the Arabs are the most logical of men, and to them such a man as the Sherif is holy, not from anything he does, but because Allah has ordained it. An attitude of mind as good as any other, and one that, after all, makes a man tolerant of human frailties.

Allah gives courage, virtue, eloquence, or skill in horsemanship. He gives or he withholds them for his good pleasure; what he has written he has written, and therefore he who is without these gifts is not held blamable. If he should chance to be a saint, that is a true descendant, in the male line, from him who answered nobly when his foolish followers asked him if his young wife, Ayesha, should sit at his right hand in paradise, “By Allah, not she; but old Kadijah, she who when all men mocked me, cherished and loved, she shall sit at my right hand,” that is enough for them.

So the Sherif was honoured, partly because he had great jars stuffed with gold coin, the produce of his olive yards, and also of the tribute that the faithful brought him; partly because of his descent; and perhaps, more than all, on account of his great store of Arab lore on every subject upon earth. His fame was great, extending right through the Sus, the Draa, and down to TazaÛelt, where it met the opposing current of the grace of Bashir-el-Biruk, Sherif of the Wad-Nun. He liked to talk to Europeans, partly to show his learning, and partly to hear about the devilries they had invented to complicate their lives.

So when the evening prayer was called, and all was silent in his house, the faithful duly prostrate on their faces before Allah, who seems to take as little heed of them as he does of the other warring sects, each with its doctrine of damnation for their brethren outside the pale, the Sherif, who seldom prayed, knowing that even if he did so he could neither make nor yet unmake himself in Allah’s sight, called for his mule, and with two Arabs running by his side set out towards the unbeliever’s camp.

Though the Sherif paid no attention to it, the scene he rode through was like fairyland. The moonbeams falling on the domes of house and mosque and sanctuary lit up the green and yellow tiles, making them sparkle like enamels. Long shadows of the cypresses cast great bands of darkness upon the red sand of the avenue. The croaking of the frogs sounded metallic, and by degrees resolved itself into a continuous tinkle, soothing and musical, in the Atlas night. Camels lay ruminating, their monstrous packs upon their backs. As the Sherif passed by them on his mule they snarled and bubbled, and a faint odour as of a menagerie, mingled with that of tar, with which the Arabs cure their girth and saddle galls, floated towards him, although no doubt custom had made it so familiar that he never heeded it.

From the Arab huts that gather around every sanctuary, their owners living on the baraka, a high-pitched voice to the accompaniment of a two-stringed guitar played with a piece of stiff palmetto leaf, and the monotonous Arab drum, that if you listen to it long enough invades the soul, blots from the mind the memory of towns, and makes the hearer long to cast his hat into the sea and join the dwellers in the tents, blended so inextricably with the shrill cricket’s note and the vast orchestra of the insects that were praising Allah on that night, each after his own fashion, that it was difficult to say where the voice ended and the insects’ hum began.

Still, in despite of all, the singing Arab, croaking of the frogs, and the shrill pÆans of the insects, the night seemed calm and silent, for all the voices were attuned so well to the surroundings that the serenity of the whole scene was unimpaired.

The tents lay in the moonlight like gigantic mushrooms; the rows of bottles cut in blue cloth with which the Arabs ornament them stood out upon the canvas as if in high relief. The first light dew was falling, frosting the canvas as a piece of ice condenses air upon a glass. In a long line before the tents stood the pack animals munching their corn placed on a cloth upon the ground.

A dark-grey horse, still with his saddle on for fear of the night air, was tied near to the door of the chief tent, well in his owner’s eye. Now and again he pawed the ground, looked up, and neighed, straining upon the hobbles that confined his feet fast to the picket line.

On a camp chair his owner sat and smoked, and now and then half got up from his seat when the horse plunged or any of the mules stepped on their shackles and nearly fell upon the ground.

As the Sherif approached he rose to welcome him, listening to all the reiterated compliments and inquiries that no self-respecting Arab ever omits when he may chance to meet a friend.A good address, like mercy, is twice blest, both in the giver and in the recipient of it; but chiefly it is beneficial to the giver, for in addition to the pleasure that he gives, he earns his own respect. Well did both understand this aspect of the question, and so the compliments stretched out into perspectives quite unknown in Europe, until the host, taking his visitor by the hand, led him inside the tent. “Ambassador,” said the Sherif, although he knew his friend was but a Consul, “my heart yearned towards thee, so I have come to talk with thee of many things, because I know that thou art wise, not only in the learning of thy people, but in that of our own.”

The Consul, not knowing what the real import of the visit might portend, so to speak felt his adversary’s blade, telling him he was welcome, and that at all times his tent and house were at the disposition of his friend. Clapping his hands he called for tea, and when it came, the little flowered and gold-rimmed glasses, set neatly in a row, the red tin box with two compartments, one for the tea and one for the blocks of sugar, the whole surrounding the small dome-shaped pewter teapot, all placed in order on the heavy copper tray, he waved the equipage towards the Sherif, tacitly recognising his superiority in the art of tea-making. Seated beside each other on a mattress they drank the sacramental three cups of tea, and then, after the Consul had lit his cigarette, the Sherif having refused one with a gesture of his hand and a half-murmured “Haram”—that is, “It is prohibited”—they then began to talk.

Much had they got to say about the price of barley and the drought; of tribal fights; of where our Lord the Sultan was, and if he had reduced the rebels in the hills,—matters that constitute the small talk of the tents, just as the weather and the fashionable divorce figure in drawing-rooms. Knowing what was expected of him, the Consul touched on European politics, upon inventions, the progress that the French had made upon the southern frontier of Algeria; and as he thus unpacked his news with due prolixity, the Sherif now and again interjected one or another of those pious phrases, such as “Allah is merciful,” or “God’s ways are wonderful,” which at the same time show the interjector’s piety, and give the man who is discoursing time to collect himself, and to prepare another phrase.

After a little conversation languished, and the two men who knew each other well sat listlessly, the Consul smoking and the Sherif passing the beads of a cheap wooden rosary between the fingers of his right hand, whilst with his left he waved a cotton pocket handkerchief to keep away the flies.

Looking up at his companion, “Consul,” he said, for he had now dropped the Ambassador with which he first had greeted him, “you know us well, you speak our tongue; even you know Shillah, the language of the accursed Berbers, and have translated Sidi Hammo into the speech of Nazarenes-I beg your pardon—of the Rumi,” for he had seen a flush rise on the Consul’s cheek.

“You like our country, and have lived in it for more than twenty years. I do not speak to you about our law, for every man cleaves to his own, but of our daily life. Tell me now, which of the two makes a man happier, the law of Sidna Aissa, or that of our Prophet, God’s own Messenger?”

He stopped and waited courteously, playing with his naked toes, just as a European plays with his fingers in the intervals of speech.

The Consul sent a veritable solfatara of tobacco smoke out of his mouth and nostrils, and laying down his cigarette returned no answer for a little while.

Perchance his thoughts were wandering towards the cities brilliant with light—the homes of science and of art. Cities of vain endeavour in which men pass their lives thinking of the condition of their poorer brethren, but never making any move to get down off their backs. He thought of London and of Paris and New York, the dwelling-places both of law and order, and the abodes of noise. He pondered on their material advancement: their tubes that burrow underneath the ground, in which run railways carrying their thousands all the day and far into the night; upon their hospitals, their charitable institutions, their legislative assemblies, and their museums, with their picture-galleries, their theatres—on the vast sums bestowed to forward arts and sciences, and on the poor who shiver in their streets and cower under railway arches in the dark winter nights.As he sat with his cigarette smouldering beside him in a little brazen pan, the night breeze brought the heavy scent of orange blossoms, for it was spring, and all the gardens of the sanctuary each had its orange grove. Never had they smelt sweeter, and never had the croaking of the frogs seemed more melodious, or the cricket’s chirp more soothing to the soul.

A death’s-head moth whirred through the tent, poising itself, just as a humming-bird hangs stationary probing the petals of a flower. The gentle murmur of its wings brought back the Consul’s mind from its excursus in the regions of reality, or unreality, for all is one according to the point of view.

“Sherif,” he said, “what you have asked me I will answer to the best of my ability.

“Man’s destiny is so precarious that neither your law nor our own appear to me to influence it, or at the best but slightly.

“One of your learned Talebs, or our men of science, as they call themselves, with the due modesty of conscious worth, is passing down a street, and from a house-top slips a tile and falls upon his head. There he lies huddled up, an ugly bundle of old clothes, inert and shapeless, whilst his immortal soul leaves his poor mortal body, without which all its divinity is incomplete; then perhaps after an hour comes back again, and the man staggering to his feet begins to talk about God’s attributes, or about carrying a line of railroad along a precipice.”

The Sherif, who had been listening with the respect that every well-bred Arab gives to the man who has possession of the word, said, “It was so written. The man could not have died or never could have come to life again had it not been Allah’s will.”

His friend smiled grimly and rejoined, “That is so; but as Allah never manifests his will, except in action, just as we act towards a swarm of ants, annihilating some and sparing others as we pass, it does not matter very much what Allah thinks about, as it regards ourselves.”

“When I was young,” slowly said the Sherif, “whilst in the slave trade far away beyond the desert, I met the pagan tribes.

“They had no God . . . like Christians. . . Pardon me, I know you know our phrase: nothing but images of wood.“Those infidels, who, by the way, were just as apt at a good bargain as if their fathers all had bowed themselves in Christian temple or in mosque, when they received no answer to their prayers, would pull their accursed images down from their shrines, paint them jet black, and hang them from a nail.

“Heathens they were, ignorant even of the name of God, finding their heaven and their hell here upon earth, just like the animals, but . . . sometimes I have thought not quite bereft of reason, for they had not the difficulties you have about the will of Allah and the way in which he works.

“They made their gods themselves, just as we do,” and as he spoke he lowered his voice and peered out of the tent door; “but wiser than ourselves they kept a tight hand on them, and made their will, as far as possible, coincide with their own.

“It is the hour of prayer. . . .

“How pleasantly the time passes away conversing with one’s friends”; and as he spoke he stood erect, turning towards Mecca, as mechanically as the needle turns towards the pole.His whole appearance altered and his mean presence suffered a subtle change. With eyes fixed upon space, and hands uplifted, he testified to the existence of the one God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Bounteous, the Generous One, who alone giveth victory.

Then, sinking down, he laid his forehead on the ground, bringing his palms together. Three times he bowed himself, and then rising again upon his feet recited the confession of his faith.

The instant he had done he sat him down again; but gravely and with the air of one who has performed an action, half courteous, half obligatory, but refreshing to the soul.

The Consul, who well knew his ways, and knew that probably he seldom prayed at home, and that the prayers he had just seen most likely were a sort of affirmation of his neutral attitude before a stranger, yet was interested.

Then, when the conversation was renewed, he said to him, “Prayer seems to me, Sherif, to be the one great difference between the animals and man.

“As to the rest, we live and die, drink, eat, and propagate our species, just as they do; but no one ever heard of any animal who had addressed himself to God.”

A smile flitted across the pock-marked features of the descendant of the Prophet, and looking gravely at his friend,—

“Consul,” he said, “Allah to you has given many things. He has endowed you with your fertile brains, that have searched into forces which had remained unknown in nature since the sons of Adam first trod the surface of the earth. All that you touch you turn to gold, and as our saying goes, ‘Gold builds a bridge across the sea.’

“Ships, aeroplanes, cannons of monstrous size, and little instruments by which you see minutest specks as if they were great rocks; all these you have and yet you doubt His power.

“To us, the Arabs, we who came from the lands of fire in the Hejaz and Hadramut. We who for centuries have remained unchanged, driving our camels as our fathers drove them, eating and drinking as our fathers ate and drank, and living face to face with God. . . . Consu’, you should not smile, for do we not live closer to Him than you do, under the stars at night, out in the sun by day, our lives almost as simple as the lives of animals? To us He has vouchsafed gifts that He either has withheld from you, or that you have neglected in your pride.

“Thus we still keep our faith. . . . Faith in the God who set the planets in their courses, bridled the tides, and caused the palm to grow beside the river so that the traveller may rest beneath its shade, and resting, praise His name.

“You ask me, who ever heard of any animal that addressed himself to God. He in His infinite power . . . be sure of it . . . is He not merciful and compassionate, wonderful in His ways, harder to follow than the track that a gazelle leaves in the desert sands; it cannot be that He could have denied them access to His ear?

“Did not the lizard, Consul . . ., Hamed el Angri, the runner, the man who never can rest long in any place, but must be ever tightening his belt and pulling up his slippers at the heel to make ready for the road . . ., did he not tell you of El Hokaitsallah, the little lizard who, being late upon the day when Allah took away speech from all the animals, ran on the beam in the great mosque at Mecca, and dumbly scratched his prayer?”

The Consul nodded. “Hamed el Angri,” he said, “no doubt is still upon the road, by whose side he will die one day of hunger or of thirst. . . . Yes; he told me of it, and I wrote it in a book. . . .”

“Write this, then,” the Sherif went on, “Allah in his compassion, and in case the animals, bereft of speech, that is in Arabic, for each has his own tongue, should not be certain of the direction of the Kiblah, has given the power to a poor insect which we call El Masgad to pray for all of them. With its head turned to Mecca, as certainly as if he had the needle of the mariners, he prays at El Magreb.

“All day he sits erect and watches for his prey. At eventide, just at the hour of El Magreb, when from the ‘alminares’ of the Mosques the muezzin calls upon the faithful for their prayers, he adds his testimony.

“Consu’, Allah rejects no prayer, however humble, and that the little creature knows. He knows that Allah does not answer every prayer; but yet the prayer remains; it is not blotted out, and perhaps some day it may fructify, for it is written in the book.

“Therefore El Masgad prays each night for all the animals, yet being but a little thing and simple, it has not strength to testify at all the hours laid down in Mecca by our Lord Mohammed, he of the even teeth, the curling hair, and the grave smile, that never left his face after he had communed with Allah in the cave.”

The Consul dropped his smoked-out cigarette, and, stretching over to his friend, held out his hand to him.

“Sherif,” he said, “maybe El Masgad prays for you and me, as well as for its kind?”

The answer came: “Consu’, doubt not; it is a little animal of God, . . . we too are in His hand. . . .”