(Algerine,
Moor so keen,
No drink wine,
No taste swine.)

He then handed the wine to the old Moor, who drank it off, and then, led by the boy, made for the door without saying a word.

“Hade mushe halal,” (that is not lawful,) said I to him with a loud voice.

“Cul shee halal,” (everything is lawful,) said the old Moor, turning his sightless and spectacled eyes in the direction from which my voice reached him.  “Of everything which God has given, it is lawful for the children of God to partake.”

“Who is that old man?” said I to Pascual Fava, after the blind and the leader of the blind had departed.  “Who is he!” said Pascual; “who is he!  He is a merchant now, and keeps a shop in the Siarrin, but there was a time when no bloodier pirate sailed out of Algier.  That old blind wretch has cut more throats than he has hairs in his beard.  Before the French took the place he was the rais or captain of a frigate, and many was the poor Sardinian vessel which fell into his hands.  After that affair he fled to Tangier, and it is said that he brought with him a great part of the booty which he had amassed in former times.  Many other Algerines came hither also, or to Tetuan, but he is the strangest guest of them all.  He keeps occasionally very extraordinary company for a Moor, and is rather over intimate with the Jews.  Well, that’s no business of mine; only let him look to himself.  If the Moors should once suspect him, it were all over with him.  Moors and Jews, Jews and Moors!  Oh my poor sins, my poor sins, that brought me to live amongst them! —

“’Ave Maris stella,
Dei Mater alma,
Atque semper virgo,
Felix coeli porta!’”

He was proceeding in this manner when I was startled by the sound of a musket.

“That is the retreat,” said Pascual Fava.  “It is fired every night in the soc at half-past eight, and it is the signal for suspending all business, and shutting up.  I am now going to close the doors, and whosoever knocks, I shall not admit them till I know their voice.  Since the murder of the poor Genoese last year, we have all been particularly cautious.”

Thus had passed Friday, the sacred day of the Moslems, and the first which I had spent in Tangier.  I observed that the Moors followed their occupations as if the day had nothing particular in it.  Between twelve and one, the hour of prayer in the mosque, the gates of the town were closed, and no one permitted either to enter or go out.  There is a tradition, current amongst them, that on this day, and at this hour, their eternal enemies, the Nazarenes, will arrive to take possession of their country; on which account they hold themselves prepared against a surprisal.

Footnote: 

{0} “Om Frands Gonzales, og Rodrik Cid. 
End siunges i Sierra Murene!”
Kronike Riim.  By Severin Grundtvig.  Copenhagen, 1829.

{1} Doing business, doing business—­he has much business to do.