Some years ago I had in my service a lad of about thirteen, one of several Reefians whom I had about me for the practice of their language. Two or three years later, on returning to Morocco, I met him one day on the market.
"I am so glad to see you," he said; "I want you to help me buy some guns."
"Well, my father's dead; may God have mercy on him!"
"You see, we must kill my three uncles, I and my two brothers, and we want three guns."
"May He deliver you from such a deed. Come round to the house for some food."
"But I've got married since you saw me, and expect an heir, yet they chaff me and call me a boy because I have never yet killed a man."
I asked an old servant who had been to England, and seemed "almost a Christian," to try and dissuade him, but only to meet with an appreciative, "Well done! I always thought there was something in that lad."
So I tried a second, but with worse results, for he patted the boy on the back with an assurance that he could not dissuade him from so sacred a duty; and at last I had to do what I could myself. I extorted a promise that he would try and arrange to take blood-money, but as he left the door his eye fell on a broken walking-stick.
"Oh, do give me that! It's no use to you, and it _would_ make such a nice prop for my gun, as I am a very bad shot, and we mean to wait outside for them in the dark."
Up in those mountains every one lives in fortified dwellings--big men in citadels, others in wall-girt villages, all from time to time at war with one another, or with the dwellers in some neighbouring valley. Fighting is their element; as soon as "the powder speaks" there are plenty to answer, for every one carries his gun, and it is wonderful how soon upon these barren hills an armed crowd can muster. Their life is a hard fight with Nature; all they ask is to be left alone to fight it out among themselves. Even on the plains among the Arabs and the mixed tribes described as Moors, things are not much better, for there, too, vendettas and cattle lifting keep them at loggerheads, and there is nothing the clansmen like so well as a raid on the Governor's kasbah or castle. These kasbahs are great walled strongholds dotted about the country; in times of peace surrounded by groups of huts and tents, whose inhabitants take refuge inside when their neighbours appear. The high walls and towers are built of mud concrete, often red like the Alhambra, the surface of which stands the weather ill, but which, when kept in repair, lasts for centuries.