Of course in this capacity the ‘strong man’ superseded the European Legations in control of the town. The old order of things began to revive. Moors were beaten on the market-place; Moslems again insulted Europeans and jostled them in the streets; and soon, the Legations feared, heads would hang again upon the city gates. So an appeal went up to the Sultan that Raisuli be displaced, and Abdul Aziz, though he had evidently pledged himself to Raisuli, readily agreed to the demands of the European representatives. But the wary governor, getting wind of a plot, escaped to the mountains before the arrival of the Sultan’s emissaries; and though troops followed him, burned and pillaged his home and carried off his women, the fugitive himself escaped to renew armed hostilities against the Maghzen soldiers.
Unable to defeat the brigand at arms, after many months Abdul Aziz decided to employ diplomacy, and Kaid Maclean, old and wise in the ways of the Moors and trusted by those who knew him, undertook for the Sultan to convey new pledges to Raisuli and to guarantee them with the word of a Britisher. But the brigand wanted something more substantial, and though he had given his word of honour—his ïamen—that he would not molest the Kaid, the old Scotsman was made prisoner when he arrived; for Kaid Maclean went to meet Raisuli with only half-a-dozen men, hoping to inspire him with trust and to win his confidence.
After demanding, I am told, £120,000 (together with the release from prison of many tribesmen and the return of his women), the brigand finally agreed to accept the sum of £20,000 and the protection of a British subject. This last, which was proposed by the British Government, brings Raisuli of course under the jurisdiction of the Consular Court, and, to fetch him from the mountains in case he should be wanted, £15,000 of the £20,000 ransom is deposited to his credit in a bank, subject to his good behaviour. But I am not sure that the British Government did an all-wise thing. Foreign protection is greatly sought after by the Moors. In the case of others who enjoy it the power is used to plunder their fellows, and Raisuli may be expected to employ his strength and his new position in some cunning way. The Moorish authorities, always anxious to avoid encounters with the consulates and legations, generally allow protected subjects to do what they please. Raisuli may now exploit his fellow-countrymen with certain safety, or he may direct the profitable business of gun-running—at which he has already had considerable experience, like many other protégés and foreign residents—and no one is likely to protest.
At any rate it seems hardly fair to protect a villain in this manner.
CHAPTER X
DOWN THE COAST
Luck with me seems to run in spells. Once on a campaign in the Balkans I had the good fortune to be on hand at everything; massacre, assassination, nor dynamite attack could escape me; I was always on the spot or just at a safe distance off. In Morocco things went consistently the other way. Beginning with the Casablanca affair when I was in America, everything of a newspaper value happened while I was somewhere else. The day the Sultan entered Rabat after his long march from the interior, I sailed past the town unable to land. Now I was to be taken to Laraiche, when a month before I had failed to get there to meet the two score European refugees coming down from Fez.
We took passage—Weare and I—on the same little steamer by which we had come to Tangier, bound now down the Atlantic coast, again intending to stop at Rabat, ‘weather permitting.’ There was not a breath of air; the sea was ‘like a painted ocean’; every prospect favoured. But our captain, the Scorpion villain, hugged the coast with a purpose, and as might have been expected the ship was signalled at Laraiche. We had to stop and pick up freight, which proved to be some forty crates of eggs billed for England. Old memories of unhappy breakfasts revived, and, our sympathies going out to fellow Christians back in London, we argued with the captain that it was not fair to take aboard these perishable edibles till he should return from Mogador. But the captain smiled, putting a stubby finger to his twisted nose, and explained that though eggs were eggs, the wind might be blowing from the west when the ship passed back. But though my ill-fortune in Morocco was enough to ruin the reputation of a Bennet Burleigh, there were always compensations, and on this occasion we were recompensed with a sight of the most fascinating port along the Moorish coast.
As the ship moves into the river cautiously, to avoid the bar, you ride beneath the walls and many domes of a great white castle, silent, to all appearances deserted, and overgrown with cactus bushes. Below—for the castle stands high upon a rock—is an ancient fortress, also white, which the ship passes so close that it is possible, even in the twilight, to make out upon the muzzles of the one-time Spanish guns designs of snakes and wreaths of flowers; and looking over the parapet you may see the old-time mortars made in shapes like squatting gnomes. From the ship that night we watched the moon rise and the phosphorescence play upon the water, and the splendid Oriental castle took on a fairy-like enchantment.
THE CASTLE AT LARAICHE.