as is the way of those cattle, 'but we do not
get a duke here every day.'"

We laughed, and Fluker bursts out with—

"The sea is washing emerald clear,
     The nodding palms I see,
And I hear the cymbal beat, that shows
     We are coasting Barbarie."

The Arab went on: "I was myself born
at Fez, and do not know much of these
Tetuan people, whose manners do not
resemble our own, though they believe in the
same God and the same Prophet. You
English would be surprised to see what I
have at Tangiers. I was once there during
the Ramadan, and saw the soldiers seize a
man caught stealing a case of dates from
Mequinez, the sweetest and most golden-
dusted there are in all Africa. They did not
want any trial. They dragged him, after a
short bastinado, up to the wall of the market-
place, where there was a large iron ring.
There they pulled off his turban, pulled up
his sleeve, and cut his hand off. If you go,
therefore, English gentlemen, to that Moorish
city, take care of men with one hand; for
they are rogues. Above all, avoid men with
both hands cut off, for they are the Devil
himself."

"And how, Ben-Hafiz, does this humane
system work?" said Fluker, who had been
shrugging his shoulders, to express
disapproval.

"Extremely well, English gentleman.
People are so honest in that city, that if you
were to-night to drop a purse of gold in the
most frequented street, you would find it
next day just where you left it."

"Come, come, old fellow," says Fluker,
moved to speak, "draw it mild; you mean
the purse, not the gold."

"The faithful man speaks faithfully," says
the Arab, scowling, but still grave and quiet.
"I speak of what I have seen." Here flowed
out some indistinct Arabic words, I am afraid
not complimentary to Fluker's ancestors,
particularly his maternal relation. "Am I a dog,
that I must swear by the Koran about everything
I say? I tell thee" (the more angry the
Arab got, the more oriental and scriptural his
language, I observed, became), "you English
have your law courts, your wigs made of cab-
horses' tails, your black bedgowns, and skins
of woolly animals: we go before the Cadi, who
hears both sides, and then drives every one
out of the room, takes down evidence on a
spare scrap of paper, gives his judgment, and
tears up the record. That is our Arab way;
and shall I be called a liar, and my father's
grave be defiled, because your customs and
ours differ?" The captain here jerked out
angry orders to reef, just to cool his temper.

Fluker, rather frightened, said: "Why, old
fellow, you're not going to cut up rusty about
that? I meant no harm. Here, let's fill
your pipe with some of this bird's-eye: it's
capital good bird's-eye, I can tell you. So—

"White roses bloomed in every cloud,
     White as the froth on the sea,
As we shook out every swelling sail
      To speed to Barbarie."

The captain relented, and went on telling
us how nearly, he had heard, Prince Waldemar
of Prussia, while sketching, had been cut
off by the Rif matchlockmen, and related
how he himself, a year ago, had all but fallen
into their hands. He was with an Englishman
of science, whom he was taking round
the coast. They had been for an hour or
two at the edge of a cave not far from
Tetuan, trying to cut from a rock under water
a curious sort of webby nest, which the Arab
described as netted like coral, yet fine as silk.
They had partly succeeded, and had got back
into the cave, when they felt hands on their
shoulders, and saw two blacks, who had been
watching them. Before, however, the blacks
could proceed to use their swords, the escort
had rushed in, disarmed them, and tied them
back to back with cords.

I do not know, indeed, what the irascible
Ben-Hafiz would not have told us of the
Rif men on camels, who come to Tangiers to
buy at the market, had not at this moment
Ceuta hove—I believe that is the right
expression—in sight. For a long time Gib had
been lowering and lessening: now to a Primrose
Hill, now to a mole-hill, now to a mole
on Ocean's cheek. We were at Ceuta; the
town my countrymen, during the war,
prudently garrisoned, much to the indignation of
the ungrateful Spaniard.

In the scuffle, jostle, and confusion of
women's bundles, soldiers' knapsacks, leather
mail-bags, and bread-sacks, I and Fluker
are all but forgotten. The captain is shouting
at the shore, the sailors are shouting at
each other, hauling at ropes, all but the steers-
man, who sits much troubled and disarranged;
for no Spanish crew will take a vessel in
within a quarter of a mile of the shore. We
are carted out into boats, into which, with
acrobatic balancing and shin-breakings over
oars and benches, we get, and are soon on
the pier.

I see nothing in Ceuta—the town of
Seven Hills: the little decayed Rome, from
whence the Berbers shipped to conquer
Spain, slay Don Roderic, and furnish matter
for a yawning epic—but rows and angles of
decaying ramparts, and a slope of houses
that seem slipping off into the sea. What
I do see, and rejoice in, is far away to the
right; the mountainous green hills—the image
of those of Devonshire grown old—running
down to meet the waves and hear the latest
tidings of the conquered country, away
yonder of whose houses certain turbaned
men here, in Africa, still keep the title-deeds
and keys. There they stretch away like a
rolling green desert; treeless but verdant,
with only here and there the whitewashed
walls of a Moorish hut to break the solitary
grandeur of that greenness.