"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!"
[page 186]
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[page 187] 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!