Part 11

The Prince is in appearance older than his age, being in his fifteenth year. In his mien there is a dignity beyond his years. He looks the Sultan, and I recall the words of Haj: "He may succeed his father before many months are past, for rumor has it that El-Hasan III is hastening back to Fez to die." Strange indeed that this thought should have come to me just then, for at the very moment that my eyes met those of Abd-el-Aziz, he was already Sultan—he was the Great Commander of the Faithful. The boy himself did not then know it; the army and the people were still ignorant of the event; but that very morning the old Emperor, Mulai El-Hasan III, had "received the visit of death," and had closed his long career of military journeyings. We therefore looked upon the face of one who almost within the hour had been called to rule the destinies of dark Moghreb, to sit on the Shareefian throne, to become the feared and hated ruler of a semi-barbarous land, to bear the Imperial burden of a direct descendant of Mohammed.

So absorbed are we in studying the face and manner of Abd-el-Aziz, that we forget our whereabouts, forget the thousands of horsemen who are chanting their welcome to the son of their Emperor. But when, a moment later, the Prince rides on, we are suddenly aroused to a sense of our perilous situation. The troops which formed the left wing of the host, and have already rendered their salute, have now broken rank and come dashing northward behind the line of cavaliers, that they may fall in at the upper end of the line and be at hand to take part in the final powder play as the Prince enters the city gate. A Basha, followed by his banner-bearers, advances toward us, his brigade forming a phalanx so broad that we cannot hope to avoid its onrush. To the right escape is barred by the long file of white-robed riders; to the left we dare not ride, for another troop is there racing past at full gallop. We are hemmed in. There is nothing for it but to join in the tumultuous rush of the wave of horses and men which is thundering toward us. We urge our horses to their utmost speed, and a moment later we find ourselves engaged in a race for safety, a roaring torrent of Moorish warriors surging roundabout us. Should our horses stumble, we are lost. No power on earth can stem that furious tide. Our only salvation is coolly to guide our running steeds, avoiding obstacles and collisions; but how easily an angered Moor, indignant at our having looked squarely into the sacred countenance of his prince, could ride us down, and attribute the accident to our rash attempt to emulate the rough-riders of the Moroccan plains!

Thus we are swept onward as by the surge of a white-crested wave, until the torrent breaks against the grim old walls of Rabat, and the flood of horsemen recoils, divides, and spreads itself on either side of the trail leading to a massive mediæval gate.

The scene recalls the days of the Crusades. An armed host are at the gate of a walled city, fantastic banners wave, the clash and roar of battle and the tramp of many hoofs is heard, and then a mighty shout rings from six thousand throats as the gate swings open to admit an Emperor's son. The spectacle is not for unbelievers, but we have cautiously drawn near enough to witness the triumphal entry and to hear the shrill salutations of the thousand closely veiled Moorish women who are massed on either side of the imposing portal.

Then follows a mad rush cityward of soldiers and civilians. The tortuous passages of the old gates are choked for hours with swirling currents of humanity. By the time we have reached our camp by a circuitous route, Abd-el-Aziz is safely housed in the Imperial Palace of Rabat. The dying wish of Mulai El-Hasan has been accomplished, his favorite son, and appointed successor, has reached in safety a fortified city, and has been joined by a large and loyal force under the command of trusted chiefs. This has been done before the elder son, or the ambitious uncle, has had time to learn of Mulai El-Hasan's death, and to raise the standard of revolt. Seldom it is that a Sultan mounts peacefully to his throne. There are always many claimants, each supported by a faction; and had Hasan's death been known in Fez while Abd-el-Aziz was on the road, he never would have had a chance at the succession despite the expression of his father's will.

On the day of his proclamation the young Sultan makes a triumphal progress through the streets. He rides a superb horse, with rich green trappings. His form is hid in folds of white. On either side walks the Mul-es-Shuash, a trusted retainer charged with the task of waving a cloth to flick imaginary flies from the Imperial Master. The Sultan lacks, however, the most important insignia of Moorish Majesty, the scarlet umbrella, which is now being carried across the southern plains in the funeral cortege of his father. Companies of red-clothed infantry guard the prince; he is followed by a hundred dignified Moors magnificently mounted. His passing is greeted with enthusiastic shouts from the men in the streets, and shrill piercing cries, of "You, you, you!" from hundreds of veiled women on the house-tops.

We follow the procession to the beach, and watch the Emperor embark on the Imperial barge, which will bear him to Salli to pray in one of the historic mosques. A short distance up the river the entire Moorish Navy lies at anchor—a solitary little steam-yacht, dressed with many flags, but too poor even to fire a salute. An hour later his Majesty returns and, joined by the princely retinue in waiting on the Rabat side, re-enters the city to confer with the viziers of his late father and make plans for a triumphal progress inland to Fez, his capital.

With intense interest we have followed these events; we are conspicuously unwelcome to the Moors, being forced into prominence in our efforts to attain effective points of view for making photographic records of these historic incidents. We wonder why we are not molested—why we are able to escape the stonings to which many a rash Christian onlooker has been subjected. Haj, the invaluable, makes clear the reason of our immunity. Knowing that our actions would make us objects of hostility, the ingenious Haj spent several days, before the arrival of the Prince, in visiting the numerous military camps and spreading among the Bashas, Kaids, and Sheiks, certain reports concerning us and the object of our presence, that would insure our safety and give us a high place in the estimation of every warlike Moor.

The Moors admire above all things a good gun. To them the repeating Winchester is the noblest work of man. The tribesman armed with one of those coveted American weapons is worth a dozen enemies armed with the native flintlock. Therefore did Haj conceive a fabrication that worthily crowned the forty days of persistent perjury to which we owed so many splendid opportunities. Discreetly, confidentially, he informed the men of every tribe that we, his Christian masters, were no less personages than the "Winchester Brothers," makers of the famous rifles, proprietors of the vast factories in America. We are come, he added, to perfect plans for arming the tribes faithful to the Emperor, that they may quickly exterminate the rebellious Beni-Zimour and the other unsubdued clans which defy the Imperial power. And the chieftains said to Haj, "As God is great, we shall protect your noble masters! They may move as freely as they wish amidst our troops, who will treat them with due respect." During our last days in Rabat, obsequious warriors came to our camp bringing broken Winchesters, begging us to repair them. One morning a handsomely-mounted boy, the son of a powerful Kaid, rode up attended by a small escort. He asked for Mr. Winchester. My friend bowed low and blushed. The little fellow kissed his own hand, my friend did likewise. Then, through our interpreter, the boy placed an order for a boy's-size Winchester, instructing us to make the best rifle that money could buy, very light and small, but large enough to kill sixteen rebels without reloading. We entered the order on the seared and yellow pages of our Christian consciences. Our fame as fabricants of arms threatened to get us into trouble; inquiries and demands for repairs increased each day. We were not sorry when, a few days later, our summons to depart was given by the whistle of a coasting merchant-ship which loomed up off the bar, as the fog lifted shortly after sunrise.

The order to break camp is given; our men work with a will, for should we fail to reach the ship in time, it will mean a delay of at least two weeks or a long land-journey with the animals, along the sandy coast road to Tangier. We bid farewell to Achmedo, Kaid Lharbi, Abuktayer, and Bokhurmur, to the horses, mules, and burros, which are to find their way slowly back to Tangier by land, while we, with Haj and remaining provisions, go cruising up the coast in comfort on an English ship.

Embarkation at Rabat is easier to plan than to accomplish. No ship can cross the bar; if the wind blows from the west, the huge native lighters cannot climb over the inrolling breakers, and the ship, after a courteous delay, steams off, leaving the drenched, discomfited passengers to return shoreward and possess their souls in patience until there comes the happy conjunction of a passing steamer and a calmer day.

Fortune, however, favored us in this as it did in all other things during our wanderings in Morocco. True, the breakers are rolling mountain-high across the bar, the forty-foot lighter is tossed like an egg-shell on their crests, or dropped with awful suddenness into abysses formed between cliffs of green transparent water. But our sturdy crew of twenty Salli men, descendants of the famous Rovers, attack the billows with that dogged perseverance that made their fathers the masters of the sea and all that sailed upon it. Wave after wave sweeps past—green-robed, with draperies foaming white, as if the cohorts of the sea were striving to surpass the Moorish squadrons in a glorious lab-el-baroud—a powder play where foam and spray and the roar of waters supplant the flowing burnooses, rolling smoke, and din of volley firing.

This is our last impression of Morocco, this overwhelming "fantasia" of the billows. And as we look back through clouds of flying spray at the grim Kasbah of Rabat, at the white city, and the smiling hillsides roundabout, we say with Pierre Loti, "Farewell, dark Moghreb, Empire of the Moors, mayst thou remain, many years yet, immured, impenetrable to the things that are new! Turn thy back upon Europe! Let thy sleep be the sleep of centuries, and so continue thine ancient dream. And may Allah preserve to the Sultan his unsubdued territories and his waste places carpeted with flowers, there to do battle as in old times the Paladins, and gather in his harvest of rebel heads! May Allah preserve to the Arab race its mystic dreams, its immutability scornful of all things, and its gray rags; may he preserve to the Moorish ruins their shrouds of whitewash, and to the mosques their inviolable mystery!"

FOOTNOTE

[a] Budgett Meakin—"The Land of the Moors" Mr. Meakin's three volumes, "The Moorish Empire," "The Land of the Moors," and "The Moors" are recommended to readers who desire fuller information concerning Morocco and its people.