Break-of-Dawn embraced her lord, Tama and Ayesha pouted. He presented them with a large knob of colored sweetmeat apiece and they were all smiles again. Peace was restored and Ortho stepped back under his new name, “Saïd”—the fortunate one. From then began his life of servitude at the house on the hill and it was not disagreeable. His duties were to tend the captain’s horse and the household donkey, fetch wood and water and run errands. In the early morning MacBride would mount his horse (a grossly overfed, cow-hocked chestnut), leave the town by the Malka Gate, ride hell-for-leather, every limb in convulsion, across the sands to the shipyards at the southeast corner of the town. Ortho, by cutting through the Jews’ quarter and out of the Mrisa Gate as hard as he could run, usually managed to arrive within a few minutes of the captain and spent the rest of the morning walking the horse about while his master supervised the work in the yards. These were on the bend of the river under shelter of a long wall, a continuation of the town fortifications. Here the little xebecs were drawn up on ways and made ready for sea. Renegade craftsmen sent spars up and down, toiled like spiders in webs of rigging, splicing and parceling; plugged shot holes, repaired splintered upper works, painted and gilded the flamboyant beaks and sterns, while gangs of slaves hove on the huge shore capstans, bobbed like mechanical dolls in the saw-pits, scraped the slender hulls and payed them over with boiling tallow. There were sailmakers to watch as well, gunsmiths and carvers; plenty to see and admire. The heat of the day MacBride spent on the shady side of his court in siesta among his ladies, and Ortho released the donkey from its tether among the olive trees outside the Chaafa Gate and fetched wood and water, getting the former from charcoal burners’ women from the Forest of Marmora. He met many other European slaves similarly employed—Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Dutchmen, Portuguese, Greeks and not a few British. They spoke Arabic together and a lingua franca, a compound of their several tongues, but Ortho was not attracted by any of them; they were either too reticent or too friendly. He remembered what Puddicombe had said about spies and kept his mouth shut except on the most trivial topics. Puddicombe he frequently encountered in the streets, but never at the wells or in the charcoal market. The menial hauling of wood and drawing of water were not for that astute gentleman; he had passed onto a higher plane and was now steward with menials under him.