Within four days of Paris, it seemed incredible that here was a spot that civilisation had apparently overlooked, and which still retained all the barbaric pomp of a thousand years ago. Fowls with their throats cut lay about the streets awaiting preparation for pilau; malefactors for the most trifling offences had their hands hacked off in the leading thoroughfares; whilst under the windows of the Sherif of Wazan’s palace half a dozen naked musicians blew their insides out from morning to night, and discoursed a series of diabolical sounds that made the contemplation of anything but their music impossible.
Here Martin—late messman of the Racoon—had started the “Royal Hotel,” and after providing his visitors with an excellent dinner, favoured them with morceaux on a flute, of which he prided himself on being a virtuoso.
Martin was as black as the blackest hat, and from the suspicious slits in his ears justified the assumption that he was a liberated West Indian slave. The music he emitted with eyes closed, possibly the most soulful, was certainly the most doleful, and had evidently been picked up when watching the anchor being weighed on H.M.S. Racoon.
“Where do you come from, Martin?” on one occasion inquired an inquisitive officer.
“Devonshire,” was the unexpected reply; “but I left home in my infancy.”
He had made this assertion so often that there is no doubt he believed it.
Returning from Tangier on one occasion, I brought with me a quantity of Kuss-Kuss cloth, which catching the eye of a voracious brother subaltern he inquired where I had got it.
“Oh,” I said, “the Sherif of Wazan sent it over for distribution in return for the guard of honour we supplied last month when he was here.”
“Then I’m entitled to some?” he remarked.
“I’m afraid it’s all been claimed,” I replied, and to keep up the illusion I got half a dozen youngsters to cross and re-cross the square with a piece under their arms and deposit it somewhere, for another to fetch it and leave it elsewhere. It seemed, indeed, that the traffic was never to end, and next morning an official complaint was made by the aggrieved one, and he discovered he had been the victim of a practical joke.