ed, as has been described, his
household was, of course, scattered to the winds. Those who were
slaves, meekly--or otherwise--awaited their orders, which were various,
according to their condition. Some of them were sent to toil at the
fortifications, others to carry material into the town. Those who were
free betook themselves to their kindred, and their favourite
employments. A few members of the household joined the army of defence.

Among these latter was our friend Rais Ali, who, being a Moor, and
having been a pirate, and still being young and strong, was deemed a fit
subject to defend his hearth and home.

His hearth, by the way, was defended pretty well by the Moorish lady
whom we introduced at the beginning of this volume, with the able
assistance of a small negro whom Rais had purchased for a few shillings
in the slave-market.

It must not be supposed that Rais Ali was a willing defender of his
home. If he could have delegated that duty to others, he would have
preferred it. Had it been possible for him to have retired into a
distant part of the Zahara, and there dwelt at ease, while daily
telegrams were forwarded to him of the progress of events, he would have
considered himself supremely happy; but such was not his fortune, and,
being of a philosophical turn of mind, he wisely succumbed to the
inevitable.

It was so fated that Rais Ali was ordered to serve as a gunner at the
Fish Market battery, just in front of the mosque Djama Djedid. Bravely
did our interpreter proceed daily to his duties, and intensely did he
hope that there might never be any occasion for his services.

But whatever fate might decree for him, Rais Ali had a peculiar knack of
decreeing a few things for himself which neither fate nor anything else
appeared to be able to deprive him of. One of these decrees was that,
come what might, he should have his morning cup of coffee; another, that
he should have a daily shave; a third, that he should have a bath at
least once a week.

As one of the occasions on which he fulfilled his destiny and carried
out his own fatal decrees bears on our tale, we will follow him.

Having begun the day, at a very early hour, with his cup of coffee, he
proceeded in a leisurely way to a certain street in the town where was
kept a Turkish bath. This was not an Anglified Turkish bath, good
reader, but a real one; not an imitation, but the actual thing itself
fresh from Turkey, managed by Turks, or M