willing defender of his home. If he could have delegated that duty to others, he would have preferred it. Had it been possible for him to have retired into a distant part of the Zahara, and there dwelt at ease, while daily telegrams were forwarded to him of the progress of events, he would have considered himself supremely happy; but such was not his fortune, and, being of a philosophical turn of mind, he wisely succumbed to the inevitable.
It was so fated that Rais Ali was ordered to serve as a gunner at the Fish Market battery, just in front of the mosque Djema Djedid. Bravely did our interpreter proceed daily to his duties, and intensely did he hope that there might never be any occasion for his services.
But whatever fate might decree for him, Rais Ali had a peculiar knack of decreeing a few things for himself which neither fate nor anything else appeared to be able to deprive him of. One of these decrees was, that, come what might, he should have his morning cup of coffee; another, that he should have a daily shave; a third, that he should have a bath at least once a week.
As one of the occasions on which he fulfilled his destiny and carried out his own fatal decrees bears on our tale, we will follow him.
Having begun the day, at a very early hour, with his cup of coffee, he proceeded in a leisurely way to
