“None of these black fellows speak English,” came the self-assured
voice again. Then, though I could have heard his natural tone full
fifty feet away, the man called much louder: “Hey! what’s the name of
that point out there?”
I should have chosen to make no answer; but remembering the courtesy
and dignity of the race I was impersonating, I replied without turning,
“Cape Spartel.”
You must have said something, for a moment later he laughed, saying,
“Not a bit of it. Now see me jolly him up.” I heard footsteps, and then
some one leaned against the parapet, close beside me. “Backsheesh,” he
intimated, and jingled some coins in his pocket.
I stood silent, so he tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Are you one
of the palace guards?” Unsuppressed by my monosyllabic “No,” he
persisted by saying, “What’s your business, then?” jingling his coins
again. “Stop pulling me, Mai,” he added, as an aside.
“I am a stranger in Tangier,” I answered quietly.
“From whereabouts?” he questioned.
“The East.”
“Oh, you’re one of the wise men, are you?” he observed jocosely. “Are
you a Jew or a Mohammedan?”
“Not the latter, fortunately for you.”
“And why fortunately?” he nagged.
“Because a true believer would have taken the question as a deadly
insult.”
“They’d be welcome,” he laughed, “though it is rather irritating to be
mistaken for a Jew. I shouldn’t like it myself.”
I thought of the dignified Jew traders who had made part of our caravan
in the journey from Bagdad to Damascus, and answered, “There is little
danger of that.”
“I guess not,” he assented. “But if you aren’t a Jew or a Mohammedan,
what are you?”
He had spoiled my mood, and since it was gone I thought I would amuse
myself with the man. “A seeker of knowledge from the Altai Mountains,”
I responded.
“Never heard of them,” he announced; “or is it your Choctaw for those?”
he added, pointing towards the dark masses of the Atlas Mountains.