CHAPTER XI.
LIFE AT TANGIER.

Mr. Hay had married, in 1845, a daughter of Mr. Carstensen, a former Danish Consul-General to Morocco. Except when the exigencies of a climate which proved very trying in summer for children of northern race compelled him to send them home, he, with his wife and young family, resided either at the old Government House in Tangier or in a villa called by him ‘The Wilderness,’ outside the walls, which had belonged to his father-in-law. This existence was only varied by missions to the Court or occasional visits to England. Beyond the very small European society, composed chiefly of the various Representatives and their families, residence in Tangier offered no occupation for the leisure hours of a young and active man. Thrown therefore on the resources of sport, he mingled constantly with the wilder natives of the hills as well as with the less uncivilised farmers and agricultural peasantry of the plains. His interest in these folk grew, and he gained their respect and even affection.

Justice amongst these people, when regarded from a purely personal point of view, as Mr. Hay found, often took rather a romantic than a strictly logical form. But his hope was to gain the hearts of the natives, and he knew that such an aim was best attained by bending in some cases to such national prejudices and customs as those which are illustrated in the following letter to his mother.

‘The Wilderness,’ Tangier, June 22, 1852.

The other night A. and I were woke by my servant Azdot informing me he had just seized a robber who had come into the garden to steal our horses, but that the fellow, though stabbed in the breast by the son of Hadj Abdallah, whom he had attacked with a sword, had managed to slip out of his jelab (outer cloak) and get away, leaving as trophies the jelab and a sword they had wrested from him.

A quarter of an hour after I had dismissed Azdot, I heard a couple of shots close by the house. My people had found the companion of the robber, who attacked them and then attempted to make off and was fired upon, but managed to get away—though tracks of blood were found in the gap of the hedge through which he had escaped.

This morning I sent off a body of my hunters into the country, about twelve miles from here, to where I suspected the robbers lived: the men were identified and brought before me. They confessed their crime, but declared that they had only come to rob the fruit.

Whilst telling the man the punishment I was about to inflict on him, he escaped; so we raised a hue and cry, and judge and attendants all made after him. His object, however, was only to get hold of my horse, whose protection he claimed, according to Moorish custom. He was again brought before me and I was compelled to let him off the bastinado[23], condemning him to prison only. R. was standing near me at the time and, to his surprise, the robber sprang towards him, and seizing him by the hand said to me, ‘I call on you in God’s name and for the love of this boy, under the hem of whose garment I seek refuge, to have pity on me.’

After this appeal there was no use in talking of punishing the man, and the upshot of all was that I caused the rascal to pay a doubloon to my men and two of the Kaid’s soldiers for arresting him. The man and his brother are the Robin Hoods of this neighbourhood, and, grateful for my pardon, declare that they are ready to defend me and mine whenever I call on them: or if any of my cows, camels, or horses are robbed to cause them to be restored.