Hamid’s practice to take only one meal a day, and
that he took that in the morning, and it began
slowly to dawn upon me that I should be expected
to fall in with the ways of my host. My baggage,
with the exception of a Gladstone and the hold-all
which contained my bedding, was all downstairs in
the basement, and I began to speculate as to whether
during the night I should be able to slink down the
staircase without breaking my neck or waking anyone,
and open one of the provision-cases to procure
some food. "
In the meantime Hamid talked glibly on of the
beauties of his father’s zawia, of the number of
palms and camels which he possessed, and of the
reforms which he intended to introduce into the
order when, on his father’s death, he came into the
great saintship of his family. He intended, he said,
to do up the mosque, and to cover the inside of its
dome with arabesques like those at Tougourt. He
was going to build a big dar-dief for travellers—he
invited me to come to stay there ‘as long as I
liked.’ He would use the camels belonging to the
zawia for trade, and would not allow them to spend
their lives in eating their heads off on the desert
scrub. In fact, this very go-ahead young saint
intended to reorganise the whole system of the
monastery.
Aïssa, with one eye upon the door through which
the slaves had disappeared, translated all this
rigmarole in the most perfunctory manner. He was
evidently as anxious about his supper as I, and both
El Haj and El Ayed shared in his alarm. El Ayed
never took his eyes off the door, while El Haj, safely
seated out of sight behind his cousin, was surreptitiously
munching two or three dates which he had
found in the hood of Aissa’s burnous.
Suddenly the door opened and an enormously
stout greasy-looking negro waddled, puffing with
the exertion, into the room, slammed the door
behind him with a bang, flopped down with a sigh
of relief on to the carpet, and, without paying the
slightest attention to me, made some remark to
Hamid.
Hamid introduced him. He was his fellow-saint,
our host. He kissed hands with me in an offhand
manner, and turned at once and entered into a
rather heated discussion, of which I could not catch
the gist, with Hamid in a semi-whisper.
Aissa, after listening for a little while, tugged
my sleeve to attract my attention, and, leaning forward,
whispered with conviction:
‘ The fat marabout is very angry with Hamid for
bringing us here. He objects to the expense.’
Here was a pretty state of things. It was halfpast
nine at night, and apparently we were going to
be turned out at a moment’s notice to camp out as
best we could in the desert.
At this juncture El Ayed, evidently unable to
bear the suspense any longer, slipped noiselessly
down the staircase, and we heard him softly close
the outer door as he went off into the village close
by to forage for himself.
Hamid saw him go, and in a state of great disgust
rose up, caught the marabout by the arm, and