So he interned bag after bag in the ample folds of his dress until they could hold no more, for he was a smaller man than his father.
Three bags remained, which he said he could not possibly carry in his dress, and begged that I would keep them. I replied angrily, and fetching a basket, put the remaining bags into it, and, bidding him ‘Good-night,’ I passed him through the garden gate.
Next day I received, through a mutual Mohammedan friend in the confidence of the family, a message from Benabu’s widow, to say her son[33] had delivered to her all that he had received from me.
A week passed, and Fatmeh again asked me for an interview. He informed me he had come with a message from his mother and sister to reiterate their thanks, and to beg that I would not refuse to accept, as a token of their gratitude, a Spanish ‘three-decker,’ of which Fatmeh gave the following history.
‘In the last great naval war between Spain and England, my great-grandfather was Basha of Tangier. He was on the most intimate terms of friendship with the Spanish Representative, and was a strong partisan of Spain and unfriendly towards the English. Having granted to the Spanish Representative some special privilege unauthorised by the Sultan, his intrigues and proceedings came to the knowledge of His Sherifian Majesty. An officer and an executioner were dispatched forthwith to Tangier: my ancestor was decapitated, and his head was placed by special order of the Sultan over the gateway of the residence of the Spanish Representative.
‘Amongst other gifts which had been presented to my ancestor by the Spanish Government was the model of a Spanish three-decker, in a glass case, about four feet long. It was much prized by my late father, and my mother and our family beg you to accept it.’
I accepted the gift of the line-of-battle ship. It was a curious old model, very complete, with figures of sailors in the rigging, and Spanish flag flying.
This model may have been of the ‘Santissima Trinidad,’ one of the largest three-deckers sunk by the English at the battle of Trafalgar. Her masts were washed ashore on the Moorish coast not far from Cape Spartel, were taken possession of by the Moorish authorities and floated down to the mouth of the river Wad el Halk, which enters the bay near the site called ‘old Tangier[34],’ an arsenal built by the Romans wherein to lay up their galleys. The masts were floated as far as the village of Sharf, and placed across the high banks of the river; parapets of masonry were built on each side to form a bridge for horse and foot-passengers.
The bridge was still in use twenty years ago, and I have often crossed it; but one of the masts having given way, it was taken down by order of the Sultan, and a Portuguese architect was employed to erect a stone bridge in its place. The Portuguese had nearly completed the work, when a freshet from the hills levelled it to the water’s edge, hardly leaving a vestige of the fabric. The Moors declared the bridge was accursed by Allah, as the Sultan had employed an Infidel ‘Nazarene’ instead of a Mohammedan architect. A Moor was then dispatched from Fas by the Sultan to rebuild the bridge, which he executed in a satisfactory manner on three arches and sluices.
An aged Tangerine, some twenty years ago, told me that he and many other Moors witnessed from the heights of the hills near Cape Spartel[35] the great battle, and that their hearts were with the English. He said the firing was terrific, with an occasional explosion. Wreckage and many bodies were cast upon the African shore.