an always wait. At a quarter to one a bugler on the east
side of the street, who had been sitting in the sun with his bugle, got
up and blew a call to fall in. About sixty soldiers, who had all strolled
off after the great man had disappeared into the mosque, sauntered up
from different directions. If they were a ragged and indifferently
drilled company, there was colour in the ranks at least. Every man wore a
short scarlet flannel tunic, a pair of white cotton drawers, and a red
fez: one drummer had a tunic of beetle-green. As they lined the street,
short sturdy men, with hairy legs and coffee-coloured faces, their bright
bayonets flashing in the sun, the drums thumping and the trumpeter
running up and down the scale, the dazzling sunlight gave a trace of
splendour to the medley of scarlet and steel against the whitewashed
walls.

Everybody waited expectant. A stout man in white came out of the mosque,
ordered the small boys away, and saw that there was ample room for the
basha to pass across the street and into his own house. Then the ordinary
crowd of worshippers began to file out of the building--prayers over:
green-blue kaftans lined with crimson silk, filmy white robes, snowy
turbans, moved slowly along--a dignified, impressive crowd. There was a
pause before the basha appeared, a man arranging his two yellow slippers
side by side upon the doorstep of the mosque. Another moment and the
great, voluminous, expected figure filled the doorway. A twist of his
ankles and he was in his slippers, the bugle sounded, the ragged squad
presented arms somewhat untidily, a line of servants bowed themselves low
and respectfully before him, and the basha moved slowly across the
street.

Leading his own troops, dispensing justice, an after-type of those great
Arabs who sprang from the sands of Arabia and Africa, shook Europe, and
flourished in Spain, a basha should be no tyrant, but a courteous
gentleman, a noble of "The Arabian Nights." But there was no aristocratic
trace about Asydaibdalkdar. Carrying his rosary in his hand, clothed
entirely in white, his features bore traces of servility and sensuality,
the result of poisoning the Arab and Berber blood with the strain from
Central Africa. Slavery is proving fatal to the Moorish race. Unlike the
well-bred Moor, the basha's face was deeply lined: cruelty, cunning,
pigheadedness, all fought for the upper hand in his swarthy countenance.
He walked in under his own gateway into a c