I am called " The Christian " 



stern were tolerably protected by the three-cornered mizzen- 

 sail. A little Hebrew boy, who crept for shelter nearer to 

 me than the purser's ideas of etiquette approved, was 

 commanded to " quitarse d'arriba del Cristiano " (to remove 

 himself from above the Christian), which rather struck my 

 fancy, it having never occurred to me before to be so 

 specially designated by my father. 



When the shower was over, and the accounts of the 

 mendicity scheme settled, I asked Judas Iscariot to let me 

 look at the list, and to explain the alphabet to me. I wrote 

 out a few of the first lines of Genesis, and got him to write 

 it in the cursive character. The two young Moors, seeing 

 a writing-lesson going on, came to look ; so I suddenly 

 changed my pencil, and ran off into a verse of the Koran ; 

 whereupon the infidels began to exclaim, and we at once 

 fraternised on the strength of a mutual, though probably on 

 both sides a very slight, acquaintance with the writings of 

 Mahomet. 



We entered into a sort of heterogeneous conversation, 

 mingling for its elements the little they knew of Spanish 

 with the little I knew of Arabic. One of them, who 

 proved to be a barber, had a talent for drawing, and 

 illustrated his discourse on the beauty and magnificence of 

 Tangier with a sketch of the mosque tower. He drew 

 quite in the mediaeval style, with broad black lines. At 

 the top of his tower was a turbaned Muezzin with a 

 speaking-trumpet, which if he had dropped it perpendicu- 

 larly from the mouthpiece would have touched the ground. 

 Still higher was a tremendous square stiff flag, with a 

 crescent in the middle, drawn with a gigantic minuteness 

 of attention to the rings, and pulleys, and cords which were 

 to hoist it on the staff. Beside it, in the same style, he 

 drew a fort, with bomb-shells flying in all directions. 



172 



