we passed such a windy night, on our way over
from Tangier in December, under canvas.

It was a good ride, and our mules travelled badly: saddles and bridles
were tumbling to pieces too. For the last mile or so we both walked and
sent the baggage on ahead. From a bend round the crest of a hill we said
farewell to an uneven white streak set at the foot of the distant
hills--Tetuan--and saw it no more. The fondak was in front of us, four
lonely walls exposed to every change of weather, and no life stirring
outside. We walked through the arched gateway into the square, which is
surrounded with Norman arches, and found a company of mules and donkeys,
of owners and drivers, taking shelter for the night: our own baggage
animals were already hobbled in a line in front of the arches, under
which the muleteers sit, and drink, and smoke, and sleep the hours away,
till the first streak of dawn.

We scrambled up an uneven stone staircase at the corner of the square,
and investigated the two little rooms at the disposal of travellers. One
look: there were suggestions of the insect world in both. We recrossed
the thresholds and sought further: the flat white roof above the arches
round the square, if windswept, was too airy to be anything but fresh and
wholesome,--it should meet all our demands. Here then, out in the open,
under the sky, our two beds were arranged, in the lee of a few yards of
parapet which had been built to shelter the west corner of the roof.
S`lam had a small pan of charcoal also up on the roof in our corner, over
which to get something hot for us to eat; and as soon as the odd little
meal was finished we turned in.

The precipitous twilight had shadowed down sufficiently to undress in
more or less privacy even upon a housetop; over our beds we spread a thin
woollen carpet to keep off the dew; the moon, which was beginning its
last quarter, faced us full, in a sky picked out with a few stars,
against which the dark outline of the hills was cut clear; there was
hardly a fleck of cloud in that best roof under which a man can sleep.

[Illustration: A BREEZY CAMPING-GROUND ON A ROOF-TOP.

[_To face p. 254._]

Below, down in the square, the picketed mules stamped and munched barley;
the muleteers' voices, back under the arches in the colonnade, arose and
fell, round a fire where green tea was brewing and much kif was in course
of being smoked; occasionally an owl hooted. Waking from time to time,
the moon was al