"After many adversities, joy."

Moorish Proverb.

Outside the walls of Mazagan an English traveller had pitched his camp. Night had fallen when one of his men, returning from the town, besought admission to the tent.

"Well, how now?"

"Sir, I have a woman here, by thy leave, yes, a woman, a slave, whom I found at the door of thy consulate, where she had taken refuge, but the police guard drove her away, so I brought her to thee for justice. Have pity on her, and God will reward thee! See, here! Rabhah!"

At this bidding there approached a truly pitiable object, a dark-skinned woman, not quite black, though of decidedly negroid appearance—whose tattered garments scarcely served to hide a half-starved form. Throwing herself on the ground before the foreigner, she begged his pity, his assistance, for the sake of the Pitiful God.

"Oh, Bashador," she pleaded, addressing him as though a foreign envoy, "I take refuge with God and with thee! I have no one else. I have fled from my master, who has cruelly used me. See my back!"[page186]

Suiting action to word, she slipped aside the coverings from her shoulder and revealed the weals of many a stripe, tears streaming down her face the while. Her tones were such as none but a heart of stone could ignore.

"I bore it ten days, sir, till I could do so no longer, and then I escaped. It was all to make me give false witness—from which God deliver me—for that I will never do. My present master is the SheÏkh bin ZÁharah, Lieutenant KaÏd of the Boo Azeezi, but I was once the slave-wife of the English agent, who sold me again, though they said that he dare not, because of his English protection. That was why I fled for justice to the English consul, and now come to thee. For God's sake, succour me!"

With a sob her head fell forward on her breast, as again she crouched at the foreigner's feet, till made to rise and told to relate her whole story quietly. When she was calmer, aided by questions, she unfolded a tale which could, alas! be often paralleled in Morocco.

"My home? How can I tell thee where that was, when I was brought away so early? All I know is that it was in the SÛdÁn" (i.e. Land of the Blacks), "and that I came to Mogador on my mother's back. In my country the slave-dealers lie in wait outside the villages to catch the children when they play. They put them in bags like those used for grain, with their heads left outside the necks for air. So they are carried off, and travel all the way to this country slung on mules, being set down from time to time to be fed. But I, though born free, was brought by my mother, who had been carried[page187] off as a slave. The lines cut on my cheek show that, for every free-born child in our country is marked so by its mother. That is our sultan's order. In Mogador my mother's master sold me to a man who took me from her, and brought me to DÁr el BaÏda. They took away my mother first; they dragged her off crying, and I never saw or heard of her again. When she was gone I cried for her, and could not eat till they gave me sugar and sweet dates. At DÁr el BaÏda I was sold in the market auction to a shareefa named LÁlla MoÏna, wife of the mountain scribe who taught the kÁdi's children. With her I was very happy, for she treated me well, and when she went to Mekka on the pilgrimage she let me go out to work on my own account, promising to make me free if God brought her back safely. She was good to me, Bashador, but though she returned safely she always put off making me free; but I had laid by fifteen dollars, and had bought a boxful of clothes as well. And that was where my trouble began. For God's sake succour me!

"One day the agent saw me in the street, and eyed me so that I was frightened of him. He followed me home, and then sent a letter offering to buy me, but my mistress refused. Then the agent often came to the house, and I had to wait upon him. He told me that he wanted to buy me, and that if he did I should be better off than if I were free, but I refused to listen. When the agent was away his man SarghÎni used to come and try to buy me, but in vain; and when the agent returned he threatened to bring my mistress into trouble if she refused. At last she had to yield, and I cried[page188] when I had to go. 'Thou art sold to that man,' she said; 'but as thou art a daughter to me, he has promised to take care of thee and bring thee back whenever I wish.'

"SarghÎni took me out by one gate with the servants of the agent, who took care to go out with a big fat Jew by another, that the English consul should not see him go out with a woman. We rode on mules, and I wore a white cloak; I had not then begun to fast" (i.e. was not yet twelve years of age). "After two days on the road the agent asked for the key of my box, in which he found my fifteen dollars, tied up in a rag, and took them, but gave me back my clothes. We were five days travelling to MarrÁkesh, staying each night with a kaÏd who treated us very well. So I came to the agent's house.

"There I found many other slave girls, besides men slaves in the garden. These were Ruby, bought in Saffi, by whom the agent had a daughter; and Star, a white girl stolen from her home in SÛs, who had no children; Jessamine the Less, another white girl bought in MarrÁkesh, mother of one daughter; Jessamine the Greater, whose daughter was her father's favourite, loaded with jewels; and others who cooked or served, not having children, though one had a son who died. There were thirteen of us under an older slave who clothed and fed us.

"When the bashador came to the house the agent shut all but five or six of us in a room, the others waiting on him. I used to have to cook for the bashador, for whom they had great receptions with music and dancing-women. Next door there was a [page189] larger house, a fandak, where the agent kept public women and boys, and men at the door took money from the Muslims and Nazarenes who went there. The missionaries who lived close by know the truth of what I say.

"A few days after I arrived I was bathed and dressed in fresh clothes, and taken to my master's room, as he used to call for one or another according to fancy. But I had no child, because he struck me, and I was sick. When one girl, named Amber, refused to go to him because she was ill, he dragged her off to another part of the house. Presently we heard the report of a pistol, and he came back to say she was dead. He had a pistol in his hand as long as my forearm. We found the girl in a pool of blood in agonies, and tried to flee, but had nowhere to go. So when she was quite dead he made us wash her. Then he brought in four men to dig a pit, in which he said he would bury butter. When they had gone we buried her there, and I can show you the spot.

"One day he took two men slaves and me on a journey. One of them ran away, the other was sold by the way. I was sold at the Tuesday market of SÎdi bin NÛr to a dealer in slaves, whom I heard promise my master to keep me close for three months, and not to sell me in that place lest the Nazarenes should get word of it. Some time after I was bought by a tax-collector, with whom I remained till he died, and then lived in the house of his son. This man sold me to my present master, who has ill-treated me as I told thee. Oh, Bashador, when I fled from him, I came to the English consul because I was told that the agent had had no right[page190] to hold or sell me, since he had English protection. Thou knowest what has happened since. Here I am, at thy feet, imploring assistance. I beseech thee, turn me not away. I speak truth before God."

No one could hear such a tale unmoved, and after due inquiry the Englishman thus appealed to secured her liberty on depositing at the British Consulate the $140 paid for her by her owner, who claimed her or the money. Rabhah's story, taken down by independent persons at different times, was afterwards told by her without variation in a British Court of Law. Subsequently a pronouncement as to her freedom having been made by the British Legation at Tangier, the $140 was refunded, and she lives free to-day. The last time the writer saw her, in the service of a European in Morocco, he was somewhat taken aback to find her arms about his neck, and to have kisses showered on his shoulders for the unimportant part that he had played in securing her freedom.

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