The prisoners in the Riff [226] next were enlarged upon, and the Kaid asked if they had been released, and what I thought about the whole affair. Thinking the opportunity favourable to air my Arabic again, I said laboriously that I had heard there were some prisoners in the Riff, and added that there were prisoners also in the Atlas, but no doubt the Sultan would soon order their release.
His Excellency’s wounded leg was, on the whole, the subject which gave most scope for talk. Neither his Arabic nor mine was fluent enough to explain, or understand quite fully, what had taken place. More coffee having been ordered, the Chamberlain entered into an explanation which Lutaif translated when I (as happened now and then) became bewildered in the current of his speech. About two months ago the unlawfully begotten people in the Sus, egged on by certain British traders, [227a] had rebelled against their Lord. The chief offenders were sons of Jews (Oulad el Jahud), who had withdrawn themselves into a fortified position three or four days’ journey from Thelata-el-Jacoub. The Kaid was ordered to co-operate with the troops in Sus and bring the rebels back to allegiance, or destroy them all. Most probably the Kaid had no objection to an expedition out of his territory, though in point of fact his own allegiance to the Sultan did not much trouble him. However, mounted on the white horse, which I saw wounded and drinking in the river, and leading on his men, the Kaid had advanced against the revolted tribesmen, who were strongly posted amongst rocks protected with an outwork of Zaribas [227b] made of prickly bushes, from behind which they fired upon the Kaid’s forces who had no shelter, and soon suffered heavy loss. The saddles emptying on every side, the Kaid was left almost alone with about twenty men, amongst whom was I who speak (the Chamberlain remarked in passing, but without any self-consciousness), his horse received a bullet in the chest, and another in the head; but still the Kaid advanced, keeping his horse’s head as much as possible between him and the fire. At last another bullet struck the horse close to the nose and he wheeling, the Kaid received a bullet in the left leg and fell! “Then,” said the Chamberlain, “I rode close up to him, and the bullets tore up the grass on every side, when our men rallying brought us off, I and four others carrying the Kaid under a heavy fire, and the white wounded horse walking beside us, till we reached our camp.”
During the tale the Kaid sat imperturbable as a joss cut out of soapstone, but punctuating all his henchman said with an occasional “Guaha,” or some pious ejaculation fit for a man of quality to use.
In the camp they placed the wounded Kaid upon a mule, and fighting for the first two days almost incessantly, upon the evening of the sixth day they brought him home, two slaves having supported him on either side stretched on the mule, too weak to sit upright, and with four more helping the wounded horse, which the Kaid on no account would leave to be the prize of Kaffirs such as those who dwelt in Sus.
My opinion of all concerned rose not a little on listening to the history and on learning that the Kaid had hesitated not an instant to sacrifice his life, and those of all his followers, to save his favourite horse. And all the time the tale was going on I thought where had I heard all this before, for every incident seemed to me in some strange way familiar. At last I recollected that Garcilasso de la Vega (Inca) in his “Comentarios Reales del Peru,” when he relates the civil wars between the followers of the Pizarros and the forces of the Viceroy, tells how Gonzalo de Silvestre, after the battle of Huarina, found himself alone upon a horse wounded twice in the head, and in the chest, and that he gave himself up for lost, thinking his horse would fall, when “feeling him a little with the bridle, the horse threw up his head, and, snorting, blew blood through his nostrils and seemed relieved, then went on galloping, and presently I passed one of our partizans retreating, badly wounded, on a mule, not able to sit upright for his hurt, and by him walked an Indian woman, with her hand upon the wound to stop the blood.” [228] Gonzalo de Silvestre and the wounded man and horse all got off with their lives, no doubt the same tripartite deity assisting them who in his indivisible aspect came to the assistance of the Chamberlain and of the Kaid.
Could I then undertake to examine the leg and perhaps extract the ball? was put to me through the medium of the Chamberlain. For a moment I hesitated, thinking that if the ball was near the skin I would hazard it, and so earn the eternal gratitude of the Kaid and be sent on to Tarudant with honour and with an escort of his followers to guard me on the way. One look dispelled my hopes, for the wound was high up in the thigh, close to the femoral artery and had almost healed, although the patient said it gave him pain, and stopped him from getting on his horse, though when once mounted he could make a shift to ride. Reluctantly I had to say I was not able to undertake so serious a case. The Kaid’s face fell, so I advised him to send for an English doctor who I knew was staying in Morocco city for his health, and who would have been glad to see so strange a place, and put the patient upon his legs again. If he has done so by this time I do not know, or even if the Kaid made up his mind to send for him; but the chance for a doctor was unique, and therefore has, most probably, been missed.
Governors of provinces in Morocco, and throughout the East, are rather shy of going to the capital, even in such a case as this; for once there, the Sultan often takes the opportunity of making them disgorge some of the money which they have plundered in their government. On the first rumour that the Governor is in disgrace, the tribe rebels, blockades the castle, burns it down if possible, and some neighbouring Sheikh sends to the Sultan and offers a large sum to be made Governor in the disgraced man’s place. Even if things do not go quite so far as that, a journey in Morocco has its inconveniences, for generally the wives take the chance of the husband’s absence to dig up his money and send it to their friends. This happened to the Kaid of Kintafi when wounded in the Sus, and he, on his return finding his money gone, divorced two of his wives, and treated all the others to some discipline, which the Chamberlain assured me had restored peace and order to his Excellency’s house.
Our interview having lasted almost two hours, we rose to take our leave. I thanked the Kaid for his continued hospitality, assured him that I should not easily forget Kintafi, promised to send him a doctor if he wished, and quite forgot I was a prisoner. He on his part transmitted his good wishes through the medium of his henchman and Lutaif, and said he hoped we would not leave Kintafi for a few days more, as he was anxious to speak to us again. This was not quite the ending of the interview I had expected, for it amounted to an order we should not leave the place, so in conveying to him my best thanks for all his hospitality, I told him that I would let him know the latest news about the prisoners in the Riff on my return to Mogador, and in the meantime hoped Allah would guide him in all he did, and that he would continue to dispense his hospitality to all who passed, because, as Sidna Mohammed himself has said, “that hospitality, even when unasked for, blesses both the host and guest.”
Lutaif, who had the pleasure of translating this farewell, did not much like his task, but faced it manfully, and so amidst a shower of compliments we took our leave, and left the presence of our illustrious host for good. Still an experience not to have been missed, and differing extremely from the ordinary visit paid by the travelling European to a Moorish Kaid on equal terms, that is, when dressed in European clothes, furnished with letters from the Sultan and the ambassador of the traveller’s country, when one drinks tea, exchanges compliments, and learns as little of the real go on of an Oriental house, as does a man born rich learn the real workings of the people’s minds with whom he lives his life.
An Eastern potentate of the Arabian Nights was the Kaid, with all the culture of the Arabs of the Middle Ages absent, but as he was, the arbiter of life and death in a wide district. A gentleman in manners, courteous to those whom he had all the power to treat with rudeness or severity; a horseman and a fighter; a tyrant naturally, as any man would be if placed in his position; but no more tyrannical in disposition than is some new elected County Councillor, mad to make all men chaste and sober by some bye-law or another; himself a victim to a lewd Puritanism, and an insatiable love of cant. Half independent of the Sultan, leading his own troops, dispensing justice, as he thought he saw it, in his own courtyard, and to me interesting in special as a sort of after type of those great Arab Emirs who sprang from the sands of Africa and of Arabia, shook Europe, flourished in Spain, built the Alhambra and Alcazar, gave us the Arab horse and the curb bit, and kept alive the remains of Greek philosophy in Cordoba and in Toledo, when all the rest of Europe grovelled in darkness; then by degrees fell into decadence, and sank again into the sands of Africa, to still keep alive the patriarchal system, the oldest and perhaps the best conception of a simple life mankind has yet found out. Allah Ackbar; lost in a wilderness of broadcloth, I still praise God that such a man exists, if only to contrast him in my mind with the self-advertising anthropoids who make one fancy, if the Darwinian theory still holds good, that the God after whose image the first man was made had surely been an ape. Through passages and courtyards we reached the open space on which our tent was pitched, escorted by a guard of men well armed with guns and daggers, which appendages made them none the less loth to take a tip on coming to the tent than if they had been so many gamekeepers, who take their unearned money after a grouse drive, or a hot corner in the coverts, with an air of doing you a service, and whose contempt for you is only equalled by your disgust both at yourself and them.