s
prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa,
brotherhood--a juggler who had travelled through the country with a lion
by a halter--was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn to a tune
that he had heard on the coast.

Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the
companions that were to share it. There had been a moment's pause in
the clamour of their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The
prisoners knew him, and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every
mouth was agape. Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind
him. He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer
vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress, and then sat down
helplessly by a pillar on the ground.

A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of
bread. "Hungry, brother? No?" said the youth. "Cheer up, Sidi! No good
letting the donkey ride on your head!"

This person was the Irishman of the company--a happy, reckless,
facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing
for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs
on every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself--

El Arby was a black man
They called him "'Larby Kosk:"
He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
And stole slippers in the Mosque.

Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. "Stay
here," he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was
quelled; "never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will
come back." After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither
insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word or a cry out of him.
He had walked on in silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the
faces of his guard, and never breaking his fast save with a draught of
water by the way.

At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by
their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival a
number of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was
a wild and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of
the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild
shouts as each one found his own. "Blessed be God! She's here! here!"
Then the maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come.
"My Ayesha! Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn't she here?"
After that the sh