WITH BASQUES AND MOORS 169 



whole or not, he had told the patron home truths 

 that nothing could unsay. I asked Gitouche what 

 was wrong, but he said merely that Prospere was 

 a pig and that his mother but I forget the rest. 



My next outing was in the crescent frame of 

 sand and white city that borders Tangier Bay, 

 not a hundred yards from the crazy little pier 

 that juts out beneath the Custom House, between 

 that in fact and the anchorage of the Gibel Moussa, 

 I sat in a tiny coble with Abslam, the Moor. 

 He was a sinewy fellow, six feet and more in his 

 yellow slippers, and the rest of his wardrobe would 

 not have weighed more than my straw hat. 

 Unlike the other Abslam, his hair was shaved so 

 close to the round skull that the oak would have 

 got no purchase. He was a fine fisherman, was 

 Abslam, better than his little son, who came out 

 apparently for the purpose of being sick over the 

 bow, having carefully left our live shrimps in the 

 full glare of the April sun. 



Having rebuked the offspring of his loins in 

 about five-and-twenty crisp sentences, Abslam 

 turned to me and explained that Allah had in his 

 infinite wisdom taken from him the apple of his 

 eye, a son of great promise by an older wife, leav- 

 ing him the obj ect that now lay prone in the bottom 

 of the boat in the place of the departed. Mektub ! 

 It was written ! But it was a woundy bad 

 bargain, all the same ! 



