‘“No such violence is required,” said Kaid Meno. “After midnight, when all is quiet, take off your shoes, go in silence to the path round the southern side of the wall, take pickaxes with you, and choose the best spot for making a hole through the tapia wall. I know the ground,” continued the Kaid; “you will find a drop of five feet from the path to the orchard. Take plenty of rope with you. Steal up to a horse—you will find several picketed—and lead him to the aperture in the wall. Then cast the horse quickly and quietly, bind his fore and hind legs firmly to his barrel, hoist him over your heads, and push him through the hole.”
‘“What then?” asked the men; “where can we hide the horse? We cannot take him out into the country, for the gates of the town will be closed.”
‘“That is all settled,” replied Kaid Meno. “I have arranged with a Berber cattle-lifter, who came to ask a favour of me this morning, that he is to wait to-night, with four of his companions, where the river passing under the walls enters the town.
‘“When a whistle is heard, a rope will be cast into the stream, with a float and white signal attached. This rope will be taken hold of by you and fastened to the horse, which, securely bound, will be cast into the river. The men outside, on hearing a second whistle, will haul the animal under the walls of the town through the archway. A little water will not choke the horse, which will become their property, and they will of course lose no time in making off to the mountains before dawn.”
‘“To each of you,” he added, “I give four ducats; and if the Sultan disgraces the Arab Kaid, I shall have an ox killed and give a feast to our regiment.”
‘Meno’s orders were carried out. Some of my camp-followers who slept in the orchard heard a horse moving about at night, but supposed the animal had got loose.
‘In the morning the robbery was reported.—I visited the orchard and saw the aperture through which the animal had been passed. The wall was three feet thick, and the hole, five feet from the ground, looked so small that it was a wonder how the poor beast had been jammed through.
‘Early notice of the robbery had been given to the Governor of Fas. The Arab Kaid was immediately placed under arrest, and orders issued that the town gates should be kept closed and search made in every garden and stable of a suspicious character. This was done, but without result.
‘The Sultan “thundered and lightened,” as the myrmidons of the Court told me, on hearing of the daring outrage that had been committed within the grounds assigned by His Sherifian Majesty for the quarters of the British Mission, and His Majesty vowed vengeance on the perpetrators of the theft.
‘Later in the day, an Arab camel-driver reported to the Basha that he had seen, early in the morning, a grey horse mounted bareback by a Berber, who was riding with speed towards the mountains.