HOW WE FARED. 213 



by experience that it is best to eat him at once. And 

 a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, administered half an hour 

 before his execution, will always considerably mitigate 

 his toucrhness. 



Karroo fowls, living a free and active life, are exceed- 

 ingly agile on their legs, and when their time comes 

 for paying the debt of nature they are by no means 

 easy to catch. But Toto took this duty upon himself, 

 and very jealously asserted his right to perform it. 

 All we had to do was to point out to him the selected 

 victim. Then, with the true collie instinct, he would 

 follow it up, never losing it or making any mistake ; 

 and, thou^-h it mioht take refui^e in the midst of some 

 twenty or thirty other fowls, Toto would pick it out 

 from among the crowd without an instant's hesitation. 

 And when caught, it was never pounced on roughly, 

 but just quietly held down by the big, gentle paws, 

 from which u v/ould be taken, perfectly unhurt. 



How I missed the aid of Toto one day when — he 

 being far away in Kent, and we living near Tangier — 

 I was at my wits' end for a dinner, and trying my 

 hardest to catch a fowl! It was Ramadan — that 

 terrible time when everything goes wrong and every- 

 body is cross — and no wonder ; the cruel fast, more 

 strictly kept in orthodox Morocco than it is in most 

 Oriental lands, forbidding the votaries of Islam, from 

 sunrise to sunset, not only to touch food, but even to 

 moisten their parched lips with water — and this in hot 

 weather too ! No w^onder the sunset gun, instead of 

 being to them the welcome signal for a feast, often 



