they had passed through had stripped them of both in the name
of
tribute. The last raid on their
poverty had been made that very day
by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or sheep or oxen,
or even the guns with which they had killed the wild bear,
and their children were crying to them for bread.
So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes
in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities
to
starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish!
What of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would
feed them as He fed the birds! God was
witness to all their calamities;
He was
seeing them robbed day by day, He was
seeing them famish
hour by hour, He was
seeing them die. They had been fooled!
A vain man had thought to
plough his way to power. Through their bodies
he was now
ploughing it. "The
hunger is on us!" "Our children are
perishing!" "Find us food!" "Food!" "Food!"
With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude
in their
madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and
his company came up with them. And Israel heard their cries,
and also the voice of their leader when he answered them.
First the young
prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes
and quivering nostrils. "Do you think I am Moses," he cried,
"that I should smite the rock and work you a
miracle? If you are starving,
am I full? If you are naked, am I clothed?"
But in another
instant the fire of anger was gone from his face,
and he was
saying in a very moving voice, "My good people,
who have followed me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens
are heavier than you can bear, and that your lives are scarce
to be endured, and that death itself would be a
relief. Nevertheless,
who shall say but that Allah sees a way to avert these trials
of His poor servants, and that, unknown to us all, He is even
at this moment bringing His mercy to pass! Patience, I beg of you;
patience, my poor people--
patience and trust!"
At that the murmurs of
discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered
the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan
had burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes
worn unlawfully by vain men in that country--silver signet rings
and earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang
on the breast as
safeguard against the evil eye--as well as much
gold filagree of the kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed
them in a box and laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule,
and then given no further thought to them; but,
calling now
to the muleteer who had
charge of them, he said, "Take them quickly
to the good man yonder, and say, 'A present to the man of God and
to his people in their trouble.'"
And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver
open at the feet of the young Mahdi,
saying what Israel had bidden him,
it was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky
had opened and rained manna on their heads.
"It is an answer to your prayer," he cried; "an angel from heaven
has sent it."
Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened
to them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own
parched throats--
"Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!"
And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse
of men and women, all grinning like apes in their
hunger and
glee together, and sobbing and laughing in a
breath, like children,
and sent up a great broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them
succour, that they might not die. At last, when they had risen
to their feet again, every man looked into the eyes of his fellow
and said, as if
ashamed, I could have borne it myself,
but when the children called to me for bread. I was a fool."
CHAPTER X
THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
Early the next day Israel set his face
homeward, with this old word
of the new
prophet for his guide and motto: "Exact no more than is just;
do
violence to no man;
accuse none falsely; part with your
riches and
give to the poor." That was all the answer he got out of his journey,
and if any man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story,
it must have been an idle and a foolish
errand; but after El Kasar,
after Wazzan, after Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum
of all
wisdom. "I'll do it," he said; "at all risks and all costs,
I'll do it."
And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant
to bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him,
emptied his pockets of all that he should not need on his journey,
and prepared to return to his own country on foot and alone.
The men had first gaped in
amazement, and then laughed in derision;
and finally they had gone their ways by themselves, telling all
who encountered them that the Sultan at Fez had stripped their master
of everything, and that he was coming behind them penniless.
But,
knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began
his
homeward journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars
in his waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set
out from Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town,
or five long days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk
in the
daytime. Surely the Lord would see it that never before had
any man done so much to wipe out God's
displeasure as he was now doing
and yet would do. He had said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when
he told him of his
vision; but all his hopes had centred in the child.
The lot of the sin-offering must be gone from her now, and
in the resurrection he would meet her without shame. If he had brought
fruits meet to
repentance, then must her debt also be wiped away.
Surely never before had any child been so
smitten of God,
and never had any father of an afflicted child bought God's mercy
at so dear a price!
Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly,
though he dared not to utter them, lest he should seem to be
bribing God out of his love of the child. And thus if his heart
was glad as he turned towards home, it was proud also,
and if it was
grateful it was also vain; but
vanity and pride
were both
smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through
the gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding),
by three sights which, though stern and
pitiful, were of no uncommon
occurrence in that town and province.
First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east
of the new town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner,
going by the high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room
for a thousand women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is
the greatest in Morocco and rests on eight hundred pillars,
he came upon two slaveholders selling twelve or fourteen slaves.
The slaves were all girls, and all black, and of varying ages,
ranging from ten years to about thirty. They had
lately arrived
in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and the Wargha,
and some of them looked worn from the desert passage. Others were fresh
and
cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were adorned,
after their
doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters,
with love-charms of silver worn about their necks, with their fingers
pricked out with hennah, and their eyelids darkened with kohl.
Thus they were drawn up in a line for public
auction;
but before the sale of them could begin among the buyers
that had gathered about them in the street, the overseers
of the Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection
for their master. This the eunuchs
presently did, and when two of them
nicknamed Areefahs--gaunt and hairless men, with the faces
of evil old women and the
hoarse voices of ravens--had picked out
three fat black maidens, the business of the
auction began by the sale
of a negro girl of seventeen who was brought out from the rest and
passed around.
"Now, brothers," said the slave-master, "look see; sound of wind
and limb--how much?"
"Eighty dollars," said a voice from the crowd.
"Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her--rosy lips,
fit for the kisses of a king, eh? How much?"
"A hundred dollars."
"A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred. It's giving the girl away.
Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound."
The slave-master
thrust his thumb into the girl's mouth and walked her
round the crowd again.
"Breath like new-mown hay, brothers. Now's the chance for true believers.
How much?"
"A hundred and ten."
"A hundred and ten--thanks, Sidi! A hundred and ten for this jewel
of a girl. Dirt cheap yet, brothers. Try her muscles.
Look at her flesh. Not a flaw
anywhere. Pass her round, test her,
try her, talk to her--she speaks good Arabic. Isn't she fit for a Sultan?
She's the best thing I'll offer to-day, and by the Prophet,
if you are not quick I'll keep her for myself. Now, for the third
and last time--seventeen years of age, sound, strong, plump, sweet,
and intact--how much?"
Israel's blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl,
and to hear what shameless questions they asked of her,
and with a long sigh he was turning away from the crowd,
when another man came up to it. The man was black and old
and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white selham.
But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him,
he made a great shout of
anguish, and,
parting the people,
pushed his way to the girl's side, and opened his arms to her,
and she fell into them with a cry of joy and pain together.
It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before,
had been brought from the Soos through the country
of Sidi Hosain ben Hashem, having been torn away from his wife,
who was since dead, and from his only child, who thus strangely
rejoined him. This story he told, in broken Arabic; to those
that stood around, and, hard as were the faces of the bidders,
and
brutal as was their trade; there was not an eye among them all
but was melted at his story.
Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, "I will give
twenty dollars to buy him the girl's liberty," and
straightway another
and another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount
of the last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it,
and the girl was free.
Then the poor negro, still
holding his daughter by the hand,
came to Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks,
and said in his broken way: "The
blessing of Allah upon you,
white brother, and if you have a child of your own may you never lose her,
but may Allah favour her and let you keep her with you always!"
That
blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear,
and, facing about before
hearing the last of it, he turned
down the dark arcade that descends into the old town as into a vault,
and having crossed the markets, he came upon the second
of the three sights that were to smite out of his heart
his pride towards God. A man in a blue tunic girded with a red sash,
and with a red cotton
handkerchief tied about his head,
was driving a
donkey laden with trunks of light trees cut
into short lengths to lie over its panniers. He was clearly
a Spanish woodseller and he had the weary, averted, and
downcast look of a race that is despised and kept under.
His
donkey was a bony creature, with raw places on its flank
and shoulders where its hide had been worn by the friction
of its burdens. He drove it slowly; crying "Arrah!" to it
in the tongue of its own country, and not
beating it cruelly.
At the bottom of the arcade there was an open place where a foul ditch
was crossed by a rickety
bridge. Coming to this the man hesitated
a moment, as if
doubtful whether to drive his
donkey over it
or to make the beast
trudge through the water. Concluding to cross
the
bridge, he cried "Arrah!" again, and drove the
donkey forward
with one blow of his stick. But when the
donkey was in the middle of it,
the
rotten thing gave way, and the beast and its burden fell
into the ditch. The
donkey's legs were broken, and when a throng
of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard's cry, had cut away its panniers