Once or twice he saw the Europeans during that spring. For close by in the plain a great stone arch and some broken pillars showed where the Roman city of Volubilis had stood. And by those ruins once or twice a party of Europeans encamped.
Dimoussi visited each encampment, begged money of the “consools,” and watched with curiosity the queer mechanical things they carried with them—their cameras, their weapons, their folding mirrors, their brushes and combs. But on each visit he became more certain that there were too many Europeans in Morocco.
“A djehad is needed,” said one of the old men sitting outside the gate—“a holy war—to exterminate them.”
“It is not easy to start a djehad,” replied Dimoussi.
The elders stroked their beards and laughed superciliously.
“You are young and foolish, Dimoussi. A single shot from a gun, and all Moghrebbin is in flame.”
“Yes; and he that fired the shot certain of Paradise.”
Not one of them had thought to fire the shot. They were chatterers of vain words. But the words sank into Dimoussi’s mind; for Dimoussi was different. He began to think, as he put it; as a matter of fact, he began to feel.
He went up to the tomb of Mulai Idris, bribed the guardian, who sat with a wand in the court outside the shrine, to let him pass, and for the first time in his life stood within the sacred place. The shrine was dark, and the ticking of the clocks in the gloom filled Dimoussi’s soul with awe and wonderment.
For the shrine was crowded with clocks: grandfather clocks with white faces, and gold faces, and enamelled faces, stood side by side along the walls, marking every kind of hour. Eight-day clocks stood upon pedestals and niches; and the whole room whirred, and ticked, and chimed; never had Dimoussi dreamed of anything so marvellous. There were glass balls, too, dangling from the roof on silver strings, and red baize hanging from the tomb.
Dimoussi bowed his head and prayed for the djehad. And as he prayed in that dark and solitary place there came to him an inspiration. It seemed that Mulai Idris himself laid his hand upon the boy’s head. It needed only one man, only one shot to start the djehad. He raised his head and all the ticking clocks cried out to him: “Thou art the man.” Dimoussi left the shrine with his head high in the air and a proudness in his gait. For he had his mission.
Thereafter he lay in wait upon the track over the plain to Mequinez, watching the north and the south for the coming of the traveller.
During the third week of his watching he saw advancing along the track mules carrying the baggage of Europeans. Dimoussi crouched in the bushes and let them pass with the muleteers. A good way behind them the Europeans rode slowly upon horses. As they came opposite to Dimoussi, one, a dark, thin man, stretched out his arm and, turning to his companion, said:
“Challoner, there is Mulai Idris.”
At once Dimoussi sprang to his feet. He did not mean to be robbed of his great privilege. He shook his head.
“Lar, lar!” he cried. “Bad men in Mulai Idris. They will stone you. You go to Mequinez.”
The man who had already spoken laughed.
“We are not going to Mulai Idris,” he replied. He was a man named Arden who had spent the greater part of many years in Morocco, going up and down that country in the guise of a Moor, and so counterfeiting accent, and tongue, and manners, that he had even prayed in their mosques and escaped detection.
“You are English?” asked Dimoussi.
“Yes. Come on, Challoner!”
And then, to his astonishment, as his horse stepped on, Dimoussi cried out actually in English:
“One, two, three, and away!”
Arden stopped his horse.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked; and he asked in English.
But Dimoussi had spoken the only five words of English he knew, and even those he did not understand.
Arden repeated the question in Arabic; and Dimoussi answered with a smile:
“I, too, am English.”
“Oh! are you?” said Arden, with a laugh; and he rode on. “These Moors love a joke. He learned the words over there, no doubt, from the tourists at Volubilis. Do you see those blocks of stone along the track?”
“Yes,” answered Challoner. “How do they come there?”
“Old Mulai Ismail, the sultan, built the great palace at Mequinez two hundred years ago from the ruins of Volubilis. These stones were dragged down by the captives of the Salee pirates.”
“And by the English prisoners from Tangier?” said Challoner suddenly.
“Yes,” replied Arden with some surprise, for there was a certain excitement in his companion’s voice and manner. “The English were prisoners until the siege ended, and we gave up Tangier and they were released. When Mulai Ismail died, all these men dragging stones just dropped them and left them where they lay by the track. There they have remained ever since. It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Challoner thoughtfully. He was a young man with the look of a student rather than a traveller. He rode slowly on, looking about him, as though at each turn of the road he expected to see some Englishman in a tattered uniform of the Tangier Foot leaning upon a block of masonry and wiping the sweat from his brow.
“Two of my ancestors were prisoners here in Mequinez,” he said. “They were captured together at the fall of the Henrietta Fort in 1680, and brought up here to work on Mulai Ismail’s palace. It’s strange to think that they dragged these stones down this very track. I don’t suppose that the country has changed at all. They must have come up from the coast by the same road we followed, passed the same villages, and heard the pariah dogs bark at night just as we have done.”
Arden glanced in surprise at his companion.
“I did not know that. I suppose that is the reason why you wish to visit Mequinez?”
Challoner’s sudden desire to travel inland to this town had been a mystery to Arden. He knew Challoner well, and knew him for a dilettante, an amiable amateur of the arts, a man always upon the threshold of a new interest, but never by any chance on the other side of the door, and, above all, a stay-at-home. Now the reason was explained.
“Yes,” Challoner admitted. “I was anxious to see Mequinez.”
“Both men came home when peace was declared, I suppose?” said Arden.
“No. Only one came home, James Challoner. The other, Luke, turned renegade to escape the sufferings of slavery, and was never allowed to come back. The two men were brothers.
“I discovered the story by chance. I was looking over the papers in the library one morning, in order to classify them, and I came across a manuscript play written by a Challoner after the Restoration. Between the leaves of the play an old, faded letter was lying. It had been written by James, on his return, to Luke’s wife, telling her she would never see Luke again. I will show you the letter this evening.”
“That’s a strange story,” said Arden. “Was nothing heard of Luke afterwards?”
“Nothing. No doubt he lived and died in Mequinez.”
Challoner looked back as he spoke. Dimoussi was still standing amongst the bushes watching the travellers recede from him. His plan was completely formed. There would be a djehad to-morrow, and the honour of it would belong to Dimoussi of Agurai.
He felt in the leathern wallet which swung at his side upon a silk orange-coloured cord. He had ten dollars in that wallet. He walked in the rear of the travellers to Mequinez, and reached the town just before sunset. He went at once to the