Early next day the effects of our audience began to manifest themselves. The sick, the halt, the lame, and impotent, all besieged the tent, having been kept away apparently by the uncertainty of the Kaid’s attitude towards the Nazarenes. But as all Europeans are supposed not only to know something of medicine and to carry drugs about with them on all occasions, the afflicted fairly besieged me, and I dispensed my medicines with a freedom quite without fear of consequences, and not restrained as doctors are in “policed” countries, where every now and then the public fall into a panic when a case of human vivisection, carried out (upon the poor) in the pure joy of scientific life, leaks from inside the precincts of some hospital. Gratitude, which dies with knowledge, but flourishes luxuriantly as long as the medicine man is a being quite apart, working his wonders unrestrained by scientific bounds, showed itself in several ways. Yet, as per usual, most pathetically in inverse proportion to the riches of the patient, for several who should have recompensed my skill (or zeal) according to the goodness of their clothes, slunk off, as people do at home after street acrobats have been performing, and when the little boy who has risked his life upon a pyramid of father, big brother, and several uncles, straining in his baggy cotton tights (which give him the appearance of a cab horse shaken in the legs), is just about to come round holding out his tambourine. So I dispensed my stock, which I had brought to spread my fame and smooth my path in Tarudant, quite cheerfully; ophthalmia, tetanus, sciatica, elephantiasis, ulcers, and twisted limbs, with rheumatism, deafness, and El Burd, I alleviated by the faith of those who took my drugs. The more extraordinary and complicated were the instructions which I gave, the better pleased the patient was, and sometimes came back twice or three times to ask if the quinine or seidlitz powder was to be taken on every fifth or ninth recurring day. One poor Bezonian, for whom I had prescribed something or other, came in the evening, and lugging out from underneath his cloak a dirty pocket-handkerchief, produced a handful of greasy copper coin, worth, perhaps, one penny halfpenny in all, and with excuses for his poverty in Shillah, which came to me through Arabic, entreated me to pay myself for my prescription. I answered as nobly as I could, “The credit is Allah’s,” and the poor man advanced, kissed me upon the shoulder, and went out, perhaps to tell to-day of the great Christian doctor who would take no fee. Others brought eggs and bread, and these I took, as it would have been an insult to them to refuse, and besides that, I fancy the mere idea of having paid made my hell broths appear more efficacious to the simple folk. Who, even in England, that does not believe that the two guineas which he pays to see some great specialist [234] in Harley Street does not advance his case, and were it five I fancy the greater part of patients would leave the doctor’s mansion cured, or else omit to go, and all is one in cases where faith heals.

My most popular recipe for coughs may yet achieve the popularity which is reserved for faith-healing amongst the Christian world. Take four Beecham’s Pills, and bruise them in a mortar with an ounce of cloves and two of Argan oil, a piece of rancid butter, and a cup of magia (spirit made from dates); rub well upon the chest, anoint the feet, and take a spoonful of the same liquid in tepid water, now and then, continuing our light and nourishing couscouso and shisha, [235a] and please Allah the cough will disappear.

Tired of dispensing, I strolled out to the olive grove, sat down, began to smoke, and watched two men seated close by, dressed in white robes, and evidently of the richer sort. One read a letter to his friend, with explanations upon every line, and with apparently some trouble to himself, for every now and then he drew a character in the sand with his forefinger, and compared it with the doubtful character in the document he read. In the same fashion I have seen grave, reserved, grey-bearded men in South America sit entertained for hours in “painting” [235b] horses’ marks upon the sand, and reasoning wisely upon every one of them. The man who listened said not a word, but looked entranced with admiration at the deep knowledge of his friend. I take it, reading and writing should not be abused, or it may chance with them to fare even as it has fared with sweet religion, which first a mystery concealed in a learned tongue, and thus respected and believed without inquiry, then became understandable by its translation to the vulgar speech, lost credit, and to-day has fallen into a fashion, and changes in complexion, form, and authenticity, as quickly as a hat brought from Paris in the spring falls into dowdiness and becomes ridiculous almost before the owner is aware.We marvelled greatly that we had not been able to discover what were the Kaid’s intentions in regard to us, and, casting up the time, found we had passed nine days already in the place. Curious, in prison, or in a ship, or stuck alone in some wild hut on prairie, or on Pampa, to remark how long the time seems for the first few days, and then begins to race, so that before one is aware a month is past which at the first looked like eternity to face. And stranger still, how in a week or so, the newspapers and books, the so-called intellectual conversation, news of the outside world, the theatres, churches, politics, and the things which by their aggregated littleness, taken together, seem important, fall out of one’s life. The condition of one’s horse, the weather, crops, the storm, or coming revolution, all take their places and become as important as were the unimportant great events which a short time ago, served up distorted in an evening paper, wiled away our time.

Thus life at Kintafi after a little became quite natural to us, and at least as cheerful for a continuance as life in Parliament, in Paris, London, or any other of the dreary hives of pleasure or of thought. We rose at daylight, drank green tea and smoked, went down to bathe, came back and breakfasted, looked at the horses led to water, listened to the muezzin call to prayers, walked in the olive grove or watched the negroes in the corn field; engaged in conversation with some of the strange types, we read el Faredi, speculated on how long the “rekass” would tarry on the road from the Sultan’s camp, and wondered at the perpetual procession of people always arriving at the castle to beg for something, a horse, a mule, a gun, some money, or in some way or other to participate in the Kaid’s Baraka. [236] Had I but been allowed to ride about and explore the country, I should have been content to stay a month. However, there was no order, and all those who are not strong enough to disobey have to stick strictly to an order in the East.

As an example of how orders are obeyed, one day during my sojourn at Kintafi, Lutaif and I had wandered about a mile following the Wad el N’fiss and crossing it once or twice to save the bends. As we were walking we had to take our slippers off and cross barefooted, picking our way over the pebbles in the fierce stream, which made it difficult to walk. On our return, just at a ford where the current ran particularly swift, we met two mounted men, followers of the Kaid, whom we knew well, and one of whom I had prescribed for in my character of medicine man. Thinking the chance a good one, I asked the man to let me ride across, knowing his feet were hard as leather, and intending to have given him a trifle for lending me the horse. The man excused himself with many apologies, and said he had been sent to exercise the horse, and had no order to let any one ride on it, and dare not upon any pretext let me get upon its back. He had no reason to be uncivil, and was no doubt in terror of what the Kaid might do had the news come to him that he had gone an atom beyond his strict command.

Easterns of any nation are good company to be thrown with on an occasion such as the one in which I found myself. Lutaif had a never failing fund of stories about things he had seen and heard, and told them with the absolute lack of self-consciousness which alone makes a story pleasant, and which distinguishes an Eastern story-teller from the Western, who in his story always has an eye on the effect of what he tells.

At present in the Lebanon it seems there is an exodus of all the educated young men towards America; and in New York there is a Syrian quarter where they speak Arabic, carry on small industries, and, curiously enough, are known to the natives as “the Arabians,” a designation which must sound most strangely to a Syrian’s ear. One of these Syrian young men, but in this instance quite uneducated, and speaking only a rough Arabic patois, started to try and reach America, where the streets are paved with gold. Having shipped as a deck hand on board a steamer at Beirout, he reached New York. There he was put ashore, and failed to get employment; wandered about the streets; was taken to the Turkish Consul, and by him shipped to Marseilles as a vagrant who was unable to support himself in the free land where every man is better than his neighbour if he has more money in his purse. Dropped ashore at Marseilles, he got aboard an Italian steamer going to the River Plate, was found and flogged, then fastened to the mast for six or seven hours, and when the vessel touched at Malaga, shoved ashore, after receiving several hearty kicks. There, almost starving, and ignorant of Spanish, he set out to tramp to Gibraltar, about sixty miles away. But most unluckily he reckoned without the odium theologicum; for happening to wear a Turkish fez, and Spain just at that time being engaged in a squabble at Alhucemas, in the Riff, the country people were in a fervour of religious rage against the Moors. New York, Marseilles, the Italian steamer, all were as nothing to what he had to suffer in his tramp in the land specially the Blessed Virgin’s [238] own. No one would have him in the villages, and when he asked for bread he met, in the fashion of the Holy Scriptures, with a stone. The children hooted him, the shepherds minding their sheep slung pebbles at him, and after three days’ journey, in a most miserable plight, he reached Gibraltar, where he met a Moor, who gave him a bag to carry to a certain place. The bag turned out to contain cigars which the Moor wished to smuggle on board a ship. Up came a policeman, beat him a little with a short club (as he explained), and took him off before a magistrate. There not a soul spoke Arabic, so he was remanded to the cells, where, as he said, he was quite comfortable and better off than in that cursed “town called Spain.” At last an interpreter arrived and the poor man found himself free, but starving, and in despair crossed to Tangier, and there on my return I found him saving up coppers to pay his passage once more to New York.

Back in our tent the staring recommenced, as for some reason many of the wilder tribesmen were, so to speak, in town, to-day. They sat outside the tent like sparrows on a telegraph, and looked at us as if we were the strangest sight they ever had beheld. Even the stolid glare of a hostile (or stupid) audience at a public meeting was nothing to their gaze. At times I thought had we but brought a monkey and an organ our fortunes had been made, and we should have to buy a camel to carry off the avalanche of copper coin.

Still there was no sign of the rekass; and so the 28th and 29th slipped past, leaving us still a-thinking, still cavilling, and wondering how much longer we should have to stay.

Almost the most interesting, and certainly the most pathetic, of my patients arrived during the 29th. A long, thin, famine-stricken man dressed in rags begged me for medicine for a “sad heart,” and certainly he had good cause for sadness, though I fancy that the peseta [240] which I gave him may have done him at least as much good as the last of my quinine. It appeared that the late Sultan, Mulai el Hassan, had destroyed his house, taken his property, and driven him to exile. Quite naturally the present Sultan had too much filial respect for his late father to undo any action, just or unjust, that he had thought fit to do. Therefore my patient, whose “sad heart” had stood out for three whole years, was still a suppliant, and his present errand was to try and interest El Kintafi in his case. For six long months he had been in the place trying his luck without success. Sometimes the Kaid would promise him his help, and then again tell him to come when he had thought the matter over and resolved what was the best to do. Meantime the man slept in the mosque by night, by day stood at the gate, and when the Kaid rode out clung to his stirrup and implored his aid. He said, “I see him every six or seven days, but there is no hope but in God.” Still he was cheerful, had his rags well washed, and was as resigned and dignified as I am certain that no Christian, out of fiction, could possibly have been. “God the great Helper;” but then how slow but merciful in this case, if only by the faith he had implanted to endure his own neglect. So the sad-hearted man of sorrows made his notch upon my life, as the old Persian and the Oudad had done, and still perhaps waits for the Kaid on mornings when his Excellency rides out to hunt or hawk with a long train of followers, issuing from the horseshoe arch, with negroes holding greyhounds in the leash, horsemen perched high on their red saddles, the sun falling upon long silver-mounted guns, haiks waving in the air, whilst from the ramparts of the castle comes the shrill note of joy the women raise when, in Morocco, men go out to hunt, to war, to play the powder; [241] or when, at weddings, the bride, stuffed in a gilded cage upon a mule, is taken home.

An aged Israelite with a long train of mules came from the Sus that morning. He wore a sort of compromise between Oriental and European clothes, which gave him an incredibly abject look, the elastic-sided boots and ivory-handled cane contrasting most ill-favouredly with his long gaberdine; his ten-carat watch-chain, with a malachite locket hanging from it, rendering the effect of his maroon cloth caftan mean and civilised. He told me that his chief business was to lend money to the Kaids, and that his mules were packed with silver dollars, being the interest on the capital lent to various Governors in Sus. He expressed no fear of any attack upon his caravan; and when I quoted the saying that “if the caravan is attacked the poor man has nothing to fear,” returned, “Nor has the Jew, who is indispensable to the great ones of the earth.” Nevertheless he bore about him several old bullet wounds, and carried underneath his gaberdine a first-rate Smith and Wesson pistol, which he said he would not care to be obliged to use. I put him down as one who, given the opportunity, would shoot an unbeliever like a dog, having generally observed that readiness to shoot goes in an inverse ratio with readiness to talk, and that the man who always has a pistol in his hand might just as often, for all purpose of defence, carry a meerschaum pipe. The way he travelled was curious, for, in the Sus amongst the Berber tribes, he had to take a tribesman, to whom he paid a certain sum, to see him safely through the tribe, who, in his turn, delivered him, on leaving his territory, to another man, and so on right through the country which he had to pass. This system is recognised throughout the Atlas range, and generally wherever the Berber tribes inhabit, and is known as el Mzareg, that is, the protection of the lance, for anciently the protecting tribesman bore a lance, but, nowadays, usually is satisfied with the stout cudgel which all hillmen use. Baruch, the Hebrew with the ivory crutch-handled stick, informed me that, in the Sus, nearly every Jewish family was obliged to have his corresponding Mzareg, who protected and also fleeced them; and that, in consequence, most of those “Pedlars of the ghetto,” in spite of all their industry, were poor. A curious down-trodden race the Atlas Jews, ostensibly the slaves of every one, and in reality their masters; for owing to the incapacity for commerce in the Berbers, every affair where money changes hands has to be brought about by the assistance of some quick-witted Jew. So, just as in Europe, though without being in other respects superior to the races amongst whom they live, the Atlas Jews control the warlike Berbers as easily and as completely as their brethren control all those with whom they come in contact on a business footing throughout the world. Baruch had his home in Mequinez, and was not from Toledo, but an Oriental Jew, his people, as he said, having come into Morocco after the great dispersion, and he himself being of the tribe of Benjamin; though, when I asked him how he knew, he said it was a tradition in his family, and that the ancients never spoke untruth. Into this matter I forbore to enter, and generally gave an assent, quoting the Toledan-Jewish proverb, that “if Moses died, Adonai still survived,” [243] which he at once knew in its Arabic form, and asked me, as Israelites in the East will often do if you appear to know a little of their lore, if I, too, was of the chosen race. This worthy Baruch, in appearance like a head cut out of walnut wood, set round with fleecy wool, asked me, when passing Mequinez, to remember I had my house there, and said that I should find him, Baruch ben Baruch, as a father and a friend. Unfortunately, since then I have not passed Mequinez; but, if I do so, hope to eat my “adafina” in my father’s house.

These promises and resolutions one makes, in passing through the world, to return to some place which has struck our fancy, to see some friend who lives ten thousand miles away, are like the apple blossoms blown across a lawn by a May wind; for are not dead flower leaves and broken promises but the illusions of a possibility which might have turned out bitter in the fruit? So, our medicine done, our stock of patience almost exhausted, another day went past, leaving us no other resource to pass the time but to lounge up and down the Maidan, and when evening came welcome the sunset on the spacious amphitheatre of hills.

As the sun sank, the ochre-coloured earth began to glow, each stunted hill bush stood out and became magnified, the rose and purple streaks of light shifted and ran into each other; then faded into violet and pale salmon-colour haze and falling on the snow-capped hills lighted them up, making them reverberate the light upon the rose-red walls and yellow towers, so that the castle seemed to burn, and the muezzin upon his tower appeared to call the faithful to their prayers from a red stalk of flame.