she sang, and she returned to her starting point.
“Great Britain!” she cried.
Here she saluted for a long time while marking time and calling out in a gruff voice: “One, two, one, two! Can’t you girls keep time! Miss Montmorenci, you’ve a ladder in your stocking, and if you think any one is going to take the trouble to climb up it, you flatter yourself. Miss de Bourbon, you haven’t marked your face and it can do with a lot!” and off she went to the tune of the “British Grenadiers.” When she came opposite to Paul again she held out her short skirt on each side, dropped a low curtsey and declared:
“And that, ladies and gentlemen, will conclude our entertainment for this evening.”
It was to conclude their entertainment for many and many an evening, for whilst Paul laughed and applauded, from right above their heads, it seemed, a voice vibrant and loud and clear dropped its call to prayer through the open roof of the court.
“Allah Akbar! God is above all. There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet. Rise and pray! Rise and do the thing that is good. There is no God but God!”
It was the same voice to which Si El Hadj Arrifa was listening in another quarter of the city. Paul’s house was built in the very shadow of the Karouein Mosque, and the voice pealing from its high minaret in the silence of the night, familiar though both Marguerite and he were with it, never failed to startle them. It was a voice deep, resonant, a voice of music and majesty.
“The Companions of the Sick!” said Paul, as they listened to it without moving, caught in the spell of its beauty.
“There are ten of them,” said Marguerite. “Like all the rank and fashion of Fez, I set my clocks by their voices.”
“Yes, ten,” Paul explained. “Ben Hayoun, a rich man lay very ill in this city, and night after night he could get no sleep. The silence became terrible to him. He felt an appalling sense of loneliness as the hours dragged by and not a sound varied them. So, when he recovered, he founded this order of ten mueddins, each of whom must chant the summons to prayer for a half of one of the five hours which precede the dawn, so that those in pain shall be no more alone. They call them the companions of the sick.”