Mouraki

“ For the present the matter was of small moment; [Pg 230] for Mouraki was there with his men, and the power of the Lord—or Lady—of Neopalia in abeyance. The island was at the feet of the Governor.
Indeed such was its attitude, and great was the change in the islanders when, in the cool of the evening, I walked up the street by Mouraki’s side escorted by soldiers and protected by the great gun of the gunboat commanding the town. There were many women to watch us, few men, and these unarmed, with downcast eyes and studious meekness of bearing. Mouraki seemed to detect my surprise. ”

“ The death-cry that Mouraki Pasha uttered under Demetri’s avenging knife seemed to touch a spring and set us all a-moving. The sound of it turned the soldiers’ idle lassitude into an amazed wonder, which again passed in an instant to fierce excitement. Phroso leapt, with a shriek, to her feet. I hurled myself across the space between me and the rope, knife in hand. The soldiers, neglecting their unarmed prisoner, turned with a shout of rage, and rushed wildly up the slope to where Demetri stood, holding his blade towards heaven. ”

“ Furious with the trick Mouraki had played them, they rejoiced openly at his fall and mingled their congratulations to me with hearty denunciations of the dead man. In sober reality we had every reason to be glad. Our new master was of a different stamp from Mouraki. He was a proud, reserved, honest gentleman, with no personal ends to serve. He had informed me that I must remain on the island till he received instructions concerning me, but he encouraged me to hope that my troubles were at last over ”

“ So is prudence burnt up in the bright flame of a man’s rage.
I knew where to find Kortes. He would be keeping his faithful watch outside his Lady’s room. Mouraki had never raised any objection to this attendance; to forbid it would have been to throw off the mask before the moment came, and Mouraki would not be guilty of such premature disclosure. Moreover the Pasha held the men of Neopalia in no great respect, and certainly did not think that a single islander could offer any resistance to his schemes. ”

“ But does it suit the dignity of Mouraki Pasha to lie untended on the shore, while his men row off to the harbour? It will look as though you had loved him little. You, four of you, allow one man to kill him, and then you leave his body as if it were the body of a dog!’
I had no definite reason for wishing them to return and take up Mouraki’s body; but every moment gained was something. Neopalia had bred in me a constant hope of new chances, of [Pg 364] fresh turns, of a smile from fortune following quick on a frown. So I urged on them anything which would give a respite. ”

“ A very good-natured device indeed! She must be an amiable girl,’ smiled the Pasha. ‘Precisely the sort of girl to make a man’s home happy.’
‘She hasn’t much chance of marriage in Neopalia,’ said I.
‘Heaven makes a way,’ observed Mouraki piously. ‘By-the-by, the device seems to have imposed on our acquaintance Kortes.’
‘Oh, perhaps,’ I shrugged. ‘He’s a little smitten himself, I think, and so very ready to be jealous.’
‘How discriminating!’ murmured Mouraki admiringly. ‘As a fact, my dear Wheatley, the lady said nothing. ”

“ At this instant the door opened and the officer who had been with us in the morning entered.
‘I have laid his Excellency’s body in his cabin,’ he said.
‘Come,’ said the captain, ‘we will go and see it, my lord.’
I followed him to where Mouraki lay. The Pasha’s face was composed and there was even the shadow of a smile on his pale lips.
‘Do you believe what I tell you?’ I asked. ‘I tried to save the girl from him and in return he meant to kill me. Do you believe me? If not, hang me for his murder; if you do, why am I a prisoner? What have I done? ”

“ And she’s so fond of me—oh, I couldn’t resist it!’ I was simpering like any affected young lady-killer.
Mouraki was a clever fellow, but the blow had been a sudden one. It strains the control even of clever fellows when a formidable obstacle springs up, at a moment’s notice, on a path that they have carefully prepared and levelled for their steps. The Pasha’s rage mastered him.
‘You’ve changed your mind rapidly, Lord Wheatley,’ said he.
‘I know nothing,’ I rejoined, ‘that does change a man’s mind so quickly as a pretty girl.’
‘Yet some men hold to their promises,’ said he with a savage sneer. ”

“ Will you tell Mouraki first?’
‘No—her first. She may refuse.’
‘She loathes him too much to refuse anything.’
‘Good. When, then?’
‘To-night. She will leave him soon.’
‘But he watches her to her room.’
‘Yes; but you, my lord, know that there is another way.’
[Pg 262]
‘Yes, yes; by the roof. The ladder?’
‘It shall be there for you in an hour.’
‘And you, Kortes?’
‘I’ll wait at the foot of it. The Pasha himself should not mount it alive.’
‘Kortes, it is trusting me much.’
‘I know, my lord. If you were not a man to be trusted you would do what you are going to pretend.’
‘I hope you’re right. ”

“ In truth I have never known a death greeted with more general satisfaction. The soldiers regarded me with quiet approval. To the people of Neopalia I became a hero: everybody seemed to have learnt something at least [Pg 379] of the story of my duel with the Pasha, and everybody had been (so it now appeared) on my side. I could not walk up the street without a shower of benedictions; the islanders fearlessly displayed their liking for me by way of declaring their hatred for Mouraki’s memory and their exultation in his fitting death. ”

“ A writer on the East has said of the Moors that they are the Puritans of Islam, and the first glimpse of Morocco will attest the truth of this. Not a Moor has laid aside the jeleba and the corresponding headgear, turban or fez. In the streets of Tangier—of all Moorish towns the most ‘contaminated’ with Christians—there is not a tramway or a hackney cab. Not a railway penetrates the country anywhere, not a telegraph, nor is there a postal service. Except for the discredited Sultan (whose ways have precipitated the disruption of the Empire) not a Moor has tried the improvements of Europe. ”

“ There is scarcely a Jew of property in Morocco who is not protected, and there are hundreds and hundreds of protected Moors; but though many Moors have enjoyed security for themselves and their belongings by this means, others less fortunate, more especially some years ago, have only escaped the talons of Moorish despotism to fall into the clutches of European swindlers, adventurers who have dared—themselves somewhat beyond the reach of their own home government—to fleece the unsuspecting Mohammedan, bribing some basha to imprison him for the rest of his days. ”

“ For several years I had been watching Morocco as a man who follows the profession of ‘Special Correspondent’ always watches a place that promises exciting ‘copy.’ For many years trouble had been brewing there. On the Algerian frontier tribes were almost constantly at odds with the French; in the towns the Moors would now and then assault and sometimes kill a European; round about Tangier a brigand named Raisuli repeatedly captured Englishmen and other foreigners for the sake of ransom; and among the Moors themselves hardly a tribe was not at war with some other tribe or with the Sultan. ”

“ Then the view was lost in the date-palm forest, through which tiny tributaries of the Tensift run babbling over the red earth, while the kingfisher or dragon-fly, "a ray of living light," flashes over the shallow water, and young storks take their first lessons in the art of looking after themselves.
When a Moor has amassed wealth he praises God, builds a palace, and plants a garden; or, is suspected, accused—despotic authority is not particular—and cast into prison! In and round Marrakesh many Moors have gained riches and some have held them. The gardens stretch for miles. ”

“ ALMORAVIDES (properly Murābiṭis, the name being corrupted through the Spanish) , a Berber horde from the Sahara which, in the 11th century, founded the fourth dynasty in Morocco. By this dynasty the Moorish empire was extended over Tlemçen and a great part of Spain and Portugal. The name is derived from the Arab. Murābit, a religious ascetic (see Marabout) . The most powerful of the invading tribes was the Lamţūna (“veiled men”) from the upper Niger, whose best-known representatives now are the Tuareg. ”

“ Morocco as it is is a very fine place spoiled by civilization. Not nice civilization but the dregs of it, the broken down noblemen of Spain and cashiered captains of England and the R—— L——'s of America. They hunt and play cricket and gamble and do nothing to maintain what is best in the place or to help what is worst. I love the Moors and the way they hate the Christian and the scorn and pride they show. They seem to carry all the mystery and dignity of Africa and of foreign conquests about them, and they are wonderfully well made and fine looking and self-respecting. ”

“ But for my part there is no sentimental feeling for Morocco. That a government is old is no reason, for me, that it should be maintained. Because the Moors have always ridden horses, I see no reason why they should not ride in carriages or even in trains. In fact, I sympathise with the unfortunate beasts of burden and with the suffering Moors themselves. I was not affected, like the great French writer, more by the beauty and the romance of the country than by the horror and distress ”

“ Thus Arab life in Southern Morocco—a thriftless, desultory existence, yet with the charm of continual change and of living with the earth. "To take no thought for the morrow" is the practice of all Moors, whether Arabs or Berbers: no Moor spends money on anything which will not bring him in immediate profit, and this accounts for the fact that trees and forests are never planted, or [352] schemes started for working mines, or roads made, or bridges built ”

“ Every detail of our trip from Tangier to Rabat had been carefully planned to keep us in unbroken contact with civilization. We were to "tub" in one European hotel, and to dine in another, with just enough picnicking between to give a touch of local colour. But let one little cog slip and the whole plan falls to bits, and we are alone in the old untamed Moghreb, as remote from Europe as any mediæval adventurer. If one lose one's way in [Pg 14] Morocco, civilization vanishes as though it were a magic carpet rolled up by a Djinn. ”

“ It is generally put down to the weakness of Abdul Aziz that Morocco has come to its present pass, and there is no doubt that had the youthful Sultan possessed a little more of firmness he would not have come now to be a mere dependent of the French. But Morocco has long been doomed. Even in the days of the former Sultan, who ruled the Moors as they understood and gave them a government the likes of which they say they wish they had to-day, the tribes were constantly at war with one another and with him. ”

“ These reverses taught the Moors the power of European states, and brought about a great improvement in the position of Christians in the country. The Government of Marocco is in effect a kind of' graduated despotism, where every official, while possessing complete authority over those beneath him, must render absolute submission to his superiors. The supreme power is vested in the Sultan, the head of the State in all things spiritual and temporal. ... Of the ultimate dissolution of the Moorish dominion there can be little doubt. ”

“ The influence of the Moors was greatest south of the Tagus. In Alemtejo, and still more in Algarve, Arab and Berber types are common; and the influence of these races can everywhere be discerned in the architecture, handicrafts and speech of the peasantry. So complete was the intellectual triumph of the Moors that an intermediate “Mozarabic” population arose, Portuguese in blood, Christian in religion, but Arab in language and manners. Many of the Mozarabs even adopted the characteristic Mahommedan rite of circumcision. ”

“ The Moors, who inhabit the towns on the coast, and the cities of Fas, Mequinas, Marocco, and Terodant; who speak a corrupt Arabic language.
The Berebbers, who appear to be the Aborigines, and who retain precisely the same character that was anciently given of the Mauritanians by Sallust. These people inhabit the mountains of Atlas, north of the city of Marocco, and have a language peculiar to themselves. They are a hardy race of warriors, as artful as they are indefatigable in war; when attacked by the imperial troops, they defend themselves valiantly ”

“ Divided into tribes and wandering among the mountains, this peculiar race still exists in the kingdom of Morocco. The Bereberes were never allied with the Moors, for whom they always entertained a feeling of enmity. Though at present under the dominion of the kings of Morocco as their religious head, they brave his displeasure and authority at will. They are formidable in consequence of their numbers, courage, and indomitable spirit of independence ”

“ While these intrigues for the dismemberment of their country were going on in Europe, the Moors were being alternately cajoled and bullied by the French Government. Alleging the plea of military necessity owing to roving bands on the coterminous frontier, the French Algerian authorities occupied several oases in the South of Morocco over which the Sultan laid claim but exercised no visible authority. The murder of a French subject at Tangier led to the dispatch of a Moorish mission to Paris. ”