That personage himself presently appeared on horseback, accompanied by his five sons and a crowd of servants. The ambassador received them in his tent, and conversed with them through the interpreters. He asked one of his sons if he had ever heard of Italy. The young man answered that he had heard it mentioned several times. One of them asked whether England or Italy was farthest from Morocco; how many cannons we had, what was the name of our chief city, and how the king was dressed. As they spoke, they all examined curiously our neckties and our watch-chains. The ambassador then asked the governor some questions about the extent and population of his province. Either he knew nothing, or did not choose to tell; any how, it was not possible to get any information out of him. I remember he said that the exact number of the population could not be known. “But about what number?” was asked. Not even about the number could be known. Then he questioned us again. “How did we like the city of Alkazar? Should we like to stay in Morocco? Why had we not brought our wives?” They drank tea with us, and after many salutations and genuflexions, remounted their horses, and spurred away, or rather disappeared; for as there was not a village or a house within eyeshot, all those who came and went made the effect of people who had risen out of the ground, or vanished into thin air.
This, like every other day, closed with a splendid sunset, and a noisy, merry dinner. But the night was one of the most disturbed that we had had throughout the journey; perhaps because it was necessary in the land of Seffian that the ambassador should be more carefully guarded than in other places, the night sentinels kept each other awake by singing, every quarter of an hour, a verse from the Koran. One intoned the words, and all the others responded in chorus, in loud voices, accompanied by the neighing of steeds and the barking of dogs. We had hardly dropped asleep when we were aroused again, and could not succeed in closing an eye. By way of addition, a little after midnight, in one of the intervals of silence, a wild, harsh voice arose out in the fields, and never ceased until dawn. Sometimes it approached, then seemed to recede, then approached again very near, taking a tone of menace, or lamenting, despairing, and bursting out now and then in piercing cries or yells of laughter that chilled one’s bones. It was the saint wandering about the confines of the camp, and calling down God’s malediction on our heads. In the morning when we issued forth from our tents, there he was erect, like a spectre in front of his solitary Cuba, bathed in the first rose tints of dawn, and pouring out curses in a harsh voice, waving his skeleton arms above his head.
I went in search of the cook to see what he thought of this awful personage. But I found him so busy making coffee for an impatient crowd who were all attacking him at once, that I had not the heart to torment him. Some were talking Arabic, Ranni spoke Sicilian, the Calefato Neapolitan, Hamed Spanish, and M. Vincent French.
“Ma, I can’t understand a word you say, gallows-birds that you are!” screamed the cook in despair.
“Ma, this is Babylon! Let me breathe! Do you want to see me die? Oh che pais, mi povr’om! Oh, what a country for a poor man to be in! They all talk together, and no one understands the other!”
When he had recovered his breath a little, I pointed out the howling saint, and asked him, “Well, what do you think of that piece of impudence?”
He raised his eyes to the Cuba, looked steadily at the saint for a few moments, and then with a gesture of profound contempt answered in Piedmontese accent, “Guardo e passi!”[[3]] and withdrew with dignity into his tent.
CHAPTER VI.
KARIA-EL-ABBASSI.
We struck our camp and moved on in the usual order, amid the cries and musket-shots of the escort, arriving in two hours’ time at a small watercourse which marked the confines of Seffian. Here we were met by a large company of horsemen, led by the governor of the province which extends from Seffian to the large river Sebù. The escort from Ben-Auda turned and disappeared; we forded the stream, and were instantly surrounded by the new-comers.
