He sat with his hands about his knees wrapped in a spotless white djellab.

“You are from Morocco,”* said Sanders in Arabic, “or from Dacca?” The man nodded.

“The people of Dacca are dogs,” he said, in the singsong voice of a professional story-teller. “One man, who is a cousin of my mother’s, stole twenty douros from my house and went back to Dacca by a coast boat before I could catch him and beat him. I hope he is killed and all his family also. Bismallah. God is good!”

Sanders listened, for he knew the Tangier people for great talkers.

The man went on. “Whether a man be of the Ali or Sufi sect, I do not care. There are thieves of both kinds.”

“Why do you come here?” asked Sanders.

“Once I knew a man who sat in the great sok.” (Sanders let him tell his story in his own way.) “And all the country people who brought vegetables and charcoal to the market would kiss the edge of his djellab and give him a penny.

“He was an old man with a long white beard, and he sat with his beads in his lap reciting the Suras of the Koran.

“There was not a man in Tangier who had not kissed the edge of his djellab, and given him five centimes except me.”

“When the people from far-away villages came, I used to go to a place near the door of his little white house and watch the money coming to him.

“One day when the sun was very hot, and I had lingered long after the last visitor had gone, the Haj beckoned me and I went nearer to him and sat on the ground before him.

“He looked at me, saying no word, only stroking his long white beard slowly. For a long time he sat like this, his eyes searching my soul.

“‘My son,’ he said at last, ‘how are you called?’

“‘Abdul az Izrael,’ I replied.

“‘Abdul,’ he said, ‘many come to me bringing me presents, yet you never come.’

“‘Before God and His prophet,’ I swore, ‘I am a poor man who often starves; I have no friends.’

“‘All that you tell me are lies,’ said the holy man, then he was silent again. By and by he spoke. “‘Do you say your prayers, Abdul?’ he asked.” ‘Four times every day,’ I replied. “‘You shall say your prayers four times a day, but each day you shall say your prayers in a new place,’ and he waved his hand thus.”

Abdul Azrael waved his hand slowly before his eyes. Sanders was interested. He knew the Moors for born story-tellers, and was interested. “Well?” he said.

The man paused impressively. “Well, favoured and noble master,” he said, “from that day I have wandered through the world, praying in new places, for I am cursed by the holy man because I lied to him, and there is that within me which impels me. And, lord, I have wandered from Damaraland to Mogador, and from Mogador to Egypt, and from Egypt to Zanzibar.”

“Very pretty,” said Sanders. “You have a tongue like honey and a voice like silk, and it is written in the Sura of the Djinn, ‘Truth is rough and a lie comes smoothly. Let him pass whose speech is pleasing.’”

Sanders was not above taking liberties with the Koran, as this quotation testifies.

“Give him food,” said Sanders to his orderly, “later I will send him on his way.”

A little later, the Commissioner crossed over to the police lines, and interrupted the Houssa Captain at his studies–Captain Hamilton had a copy of Squire’s Companion to the British Pharmacopaeia open before him, and he was reading up arsenic (i) as a cure for intermittent fever; (ii) as an easy method of discharging himself from the monotony of a coast existence.

Sanders, who had extraordinary eyesight, comprehended the study at a glance and grinned.

“If you do not happen to be committing suicide for an hour or so,” he said, “I should like to introduce you to the original Wandering Jew from Tangier.”

The Houssa closed his book with a bang, lit a cigarette and carefully extinguished the match.

“This,” he said, addressing the canvas ceiling of his hut, “is either the result of overwork, or the effect of fishing in the sun without proper head protection.”

Sanders threw himself into a long seated chair and felt for his cheroots.

Then, ignoring the Houssa’s insult, he told the story of Abdul Azrael, the Moor.

“He’s a picturesque mendicant,” he said, “and has expressed his intention of climbing the river and crossing Africa to Uganda.”

“Let him climb,” said the Houssa; “from what I know of your people he will teach them nothing in the art of lying. He may, however, give them style, and they stand badly in need of that.”

Abdul Azrael accordingly left headquarters by the store canoe which carried government truck to the Isisi villages.

There was a period of calm on the river. Sanders found life running very smoothly. There were returns to prepare (these his soul loathed), reports from distant corners of his little empire to revise; acts of punishments administered by his chiefs to confirm–and fishing.

Once he ran up the river to settle a bigger palaver than the new king of the Akasava could decide upon, but that was the only break in the monotony. There was a new Administrator, a man who knew his job, and knew, too, the most important job of all was to leave his subordinates to work out their own salvation.

Sanders finished his palaver with the Akasava, gave judgment, which was satisfactory to all parties, and was returning to the enjoyment of that contentment which comes to a man who has no arrears of work or disease of conscience.

He left the Akasava city at sunset, travelling through the night for his own convenience. The river hereabout is a real river, there being neither sand-bank nor shoal to embarrass the steersman. At five o’clock he passed Chumbiri.

He had no reason to believe that all was not well at Chumbiri, or cause to give it anything but a passing glance. He came down-stream in the grey of dawn and passed the little village without suspicion. He saw, from the bridge of the Zaire, the dull glow of a fire on the distant foreshore–he was in midstream, and here the river runs two miles wide from bank to bank. Day came with a rush. It was little better than twilight when he left the village to starboard, and long before he came to the sharp bend which would hide Chumbiri from view, the world was flooded with strong white light.

One acquires the habit of looking all ways in wild Africa. It was, for example, a matter of habit that he cast one swift glance backward to the village, before he signalled to the helmsman with a slight bend of his head, to bring the helm hard-a-port. One swift glance he threw and frowned. The tiny town was clearly to be seen.