Silence but for the sputter of the brazier and the squeak of a mouse in the wall.
Then Ortho heard the soft plud-plud of bare feet crossing the room and he knew the girl was standing over him.
“Well, sweet,” he sighed, “come to complete your work? I am still in your hands.”
She tumbled on her knees beside him, clasped his head to her breast and sobbed, sobbed, sobbed as though she would never stop.
CHAPTER XXIII
Ortho spent that winter in Morocco City, but in the spring was sent out with a force against the Zoua Arabs south of the Figvig Oasis, which had been taken by Muley Ismail and was precariously held by his descendants. They spent a lot of time and trouble dragging cannon up, to find them utterly useless when they got there. The enemy did not rely on strong places—they had none—but on mobility. They played a game of sting and run very exasperating to their opponents. It was like fighting a cloud of deadly mosquitoes. The wastage among the Crown forces was alarming; two generals were recalled and strangled, and when Ortho again saw the Koutoubia minaret rising like a spear-shaft from the green palms of Morocco it was after an absence of ten months.
Ourida met him in transports of joy, a two-month baby in her arms. It was a son, the exact spit and image of him, she declared, a person of already incredible sagacity and ferocious strength. A few years and he too would be riding at the head of massed squadrons, bearing the green banner of the Prophet.
Ortho, burned black with Saharan suns, weak with privation, sick of the reek of festering battlefields, contemplated the tiny pink creature he had brought into the world and swore in his heart that this boy of his should follow peaceful ways.
Fighting men were, as a class, the salt of the earth, simple-hearted, courageous, dog-loyal, dupes of the cunning and the cowardly. But apart from the companionship he had no illusions concerning the profession of arms as practiced in the Shereefian empire; it was one big bully maintaining himself in the name of God against a horde of lesser bullies (also invoking the Deity) by methods that would be deemed undignified in a pot-house brawl. He was in it for the good reason that he could not get out; but no son of his should be caught in the trap if he could help it. However, he said nothing of this to Ourida. He kissed her over and over and said the boy was magnificent and would doubtless make a fine soldier—but there was time to think about that.
He saw winter and summer through in Morocco, with the exception of a short trip on the Sultan’s bodyguard to Mogador, which port Mahomet had established to offset fractious Agadir and taken under his special favor.