“There are the Askris,” said the man of Fez, “the tribesmen. You have taken them too quickly into your armies. You have armed them too quickly. You have placed them with their instructors in the Kashab des Cherarda by the Segma gate as a garrison for this town. Oh, madness!”
“Yes,” Paul agreed. “We should have waited a year—two years.”
“They are told that they must carry knapsacks,” continued Si El Hadj Arrifa. “With us that is work for women, an insult to men.”
“But it isn’t true,” said Paul Ravenel.
“What does that matter if it is believed? The knapsacks were carried on mules publicly through the city, so that all men might see them. Six thousand of them.”
“Not by our orders,” said Paul, and the swift look and the shrug of the shoulders with which the protest was received told him much. It was by the order of the Maghzen that those knapsacks had been paraded. The Government itself was behind this movement in the city as it was behind the insurrection on the plains. Once more he saw very clearly the four contemptuous notables upon their mules.
“Of course we have known of this trouble,” said Paul slowly. “But we thought that each instructor could make it clear to his men that the story was a lie.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa flung up his hands.
“Oh, the great lessons and nothing is learnt! Was there not trouble once for the English in India? Was there not talk of cartridges greased with the fat of pigs? It was not true. No! But it served. As the knapsacks will serve in Fez.”
“A little time,” cried Paul Ravenel, clutching at the straw of that faint hope.