This person was the Irishman of the company—­a happy, reckless, facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs on every disaster that befell them.  He made one song on himself—­

     El Arby was a black man
     They called him “’Larby Kosk:” 
     He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
     And stole slippers in the Mosque.

Israel was stunned.  Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken.  “Stay here,” he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was quelled; “never leave this place.  Whatever they say, stay here.  I will come back.”  After that he had been like a man who was dumb.  Neither insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word or a cry out of him.  He had walked on in silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the faces of his guard, and never breaking his fast save with a draught of water by the way.

At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel’s arrival a number of women and children came to the prison with provisions.  It was a wild and gruesome scene that followed.  First, the frantic search of the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild shouts as each one found his own.  “Blessed be God!  She’s here! here!” Then the maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come.  “My Ayesha!  Where is she?  Curses on her mother!  Why isn’t she here?” After that the shrieks of despair from such as learned that their breadwinners were dying off one by one.  “Dead, you say?” “Dead!” “No, no!” “Yes, yes!” “No, no, I say!” “I say yes!  God forgive me! died last week.  But don’t you die too.  Here take this bag of zummetta.”  Then inquiries after absent children.  “Little Selam, where is he?” “Begging in Tetuan.”  “Poor boy! poor boy!  And pretty M’barka, what of her?” “Alas!  M’barka’s a public woman now in Hoolia’s house at Marrakesh.  No, don’t curse her, Jellali; the poor child was driven to it.  What were we to do with the children crying for bread?  And then there was nothing to fetch you this journey, Jellali.”  “I’ll not eat it now it’s brought.  My boy a beggar and my girl a harlot?  By Allah!  May the Kaid that keeps me here roast alive in the fires of hell!” Then, apart in one quiet corner, a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the lap of his beautiful young wife.  “You’ll not be long coming again, dearest?” he whispers.  She wipes her eyes and stammers, “No—­that is—­well—­” “What’s amiss?” “Ali, I must tell you—­” “Well?” “Old Aaron Zaggoory says I must marry him, or he’ll see that both of us starve.”  “Allah!  And you—­you?” “Don’t look at me like that, Ali; the hunger is on me, and whatever happens I—­I can love nobody else.”  “Curses on Aaron Zaggoory!  Curses on you!  Curses on everybody!”

No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this ’Larby the negro swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of bread—­