Gerouan stood out against the sky. Nearer to him upon his right rose the high rock of Jebel Zarhon. In some fold of that mountain lay this fabulous city of Mulai Idris.
Dimoussi walked forward, a tiny figure in that vast solitude. There were no villages, there were no trees anywhere. The plateau extended ahead of him like a softly heaving sea, as far as the eye could reach. It was covered with bushes in flower; and here and there an acre of marigolds or a field of blue lupins decked it out, as though someone had chosen to make a garden there.
Then suddenly upon Dimoussi’s right the hillside opened, and in the recess he saw Mulai Idris, a city high-placed and dazzlingly white, which tumbled down the hillside like a cascade divided at its apex by a great white mosque.
The mosque was the tomb of Mulai Idris, the founder of the empire. Dimoussi dropped upon his knees and bowed his forehead to the ground. “Mulai Idris,” he whispered, in a voice of exaltation. Yesterday he had never even heard the name of the town. To-day the mere sight of it lifted him into a passion of fervour.
Those white walls masked a crowded city of filth and noisome smells. But Dimoussi walked on air; and his desire to see more of the world died away altogether.
He was in the most sacred place in all Morocco; and there he stayed. There was no need for him to work. He had the livelong day wherein to store away in his heart the sayings of his elders. And amongst those sayings there was not one that he heard more frequently than this:
“There are too many Europeans in Morocco.”
Fanaticism was in the very stones of the town. Dimoussi saw it shining sombrely in the eyes of the men who paced and rode about the streets; he felt it behind the impassivity of their faces. It came to him as an echo of their constant prayers. Dimoussi began to understand it.
Once or twice he saw the Europeans during that spring. For close by in the plain a great stone arch and some broken pillars showed where the Roman city of Volubilis had stood. And by those ruins once or twice a party of Europeans encamped.
Dimoussi visited each encampment, begged money of the “consools,” and watched with curiosity the queer mechanical things they carried with them—their cameras, their weapons, their folding mirrors, their brushes and combs. But on each visit he became more certain that there were too many Europeans in Morocco.
“A djehad is needed,” said one of the old men sitting outside the gate—“a holy war—to exterminate them.”
“It is not easy to start a djehad,” replied Dimoussi.
The elders stroked their beards and laughed superciliously.
“You are young and foolish, Dimoussi. A single shot from a gun, and all Moghrebbin is in flame.”
“Yes; and he that fired the shot certain of Paradise.”
Not one of them had thought to fire the shot. They were chatterers of vain words. But the words sank into Dimoussi’s mind; for Dimoussi was different. He began to think, as he put it; as a matter of fact, he began to feel.
He went up to the tomb of Mulai Idris, bribed the guardian, who sat with a wand in the court outside the shrine, to let him pass, and for the first time in his life stood within the sacred place. The shrine was dark, and the ticking of the clocks in the gloom filled Dimoussi’s soul with awe and wonderment.
For the shrine was crowded with clocks: grandfather clocks with white faces, and gold faces, and enamelled faces, stood side by side along the walls, marking every kind of hour. Eight-day clocks stood upon pedestals and niches; and the whole room whirred, and ticked, and chimed; never had Dimoussi dreamed of anything so marvellous. There were glass balls, too, dangling from the roof on silver strings, and red baize hanging from the tomb.
Dimoussi bowed his head and prayed for the djehad. And as he prayed in that dark and solitary place there came to him an inspiration. It seemed that Mulai Idris himself laid his hand upon the boy’s head. It needed only one man, only one shot to start the djehad. He raised his head and all the ticking clocks cried out to him: “Thou art the man.” Dimoussi left the shrine with his head high in the air and a proudness in his gait. For he had his mission.
Thereafter he lay in wait upon the track over the plain to Mequinez, watching the north and the south for the coming of the traveller.
During the third week of his watching he saw advancing along the track mules carrying the baggage of Europeans. Dimoussi crouched in the bushes and let them pass with the muleteers. A good way behind them the Europeans rode slowly upon horses. As they came opposite to Dimoussi, one, a dark, thin man, stretched out his arm and, turning to his companion, said:
“Challoner, there is Mulai Idris.”
At once Dimoussi sprang to his feet. He did not mean to be robbed of his great privilege. He shook his head.
“Lar, lar!” he cried. “Bad men in Mulai Idris. They will stone you. You go to Mequinez.”
The man who had already spoken laughed.
“We are not going to Mulai Idris,” he replied. He was a man named Arden who had spent the greater part of many years in Morocco, going up and down that country in the guise of a Moor, and so counterfeiting accent, and tongue, and manners, that he had even prayed in their mosques and escaped detection.
“You are English?” asked Dimoussi.
“Yes. Come on, Challoner!”
And then, to his astonishment, as his horse stepped on, Dimoussi cried out actually in English:
“One, two, three, and away!”
Arden stopped his horse.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked; and he asked in English.
But Dimoussi had spoken the only five words of English he knew, and even those he did not understand.
Arden repeated the question in Arabic; and Dimoussi answered with a smile:
“I, too, am English.”
“Oh! are you?” said Arden, with a laugh; and he rode on. “These Moors love a joke. He learned the words over there, no doubt, from the tourists at Volubilis. Do you see those blocks of stone along the track?”
“Yes,” answered Challoner. “How do they come there?”
“Old Mulai Ismail, the sultan, built the great palace at Mequinez two hundred years ago from the ruins of Volubilis. These stones were dragged down by the captives of the Salee pirates.”
“And by the English prisoners from Tangier?” said Challoner suddenly.
“Yes,” replied Arden with some surprise, for there was a certain excitement in his companion’s voice and manner. “The English were prisoners until the siege ended, and we gave up Tangier and they were released. When Mulai Ismail died, all these men dragging stones just dropped them and left them where they lay by the track. There they have remained ever since. It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Challoner thoughtfully. He was a young man with the look of a student rather than a traveller. He rode slowly on, looking about him, as though at each turn of
