But Ortho cared little for that; he was at home in the house on the hill and passably happy. It was only necessary for him to watch the Government slaves being herded to work in the quarries and salt-pans, ill-clad, half-starved, battered along with sticks and gun butts, to make him content with his mild lot. Not for nothing had he been named “Saïd,” the fortunate. He had no longer any thought of escape. One morning returning with wood he met a rabble in the narrow Souika. They had a mule in their midst, and dragging head down at the mule’s tail was what had once been a man. His hands were strapped behind him so that he could in no way protect himself but bumped along the ruts and cobbles, twisting over and over. His features were gone, there was not a particle of skin left on him, and at this red abomination the women cursed, the beggars spat, the children threw stones and the dogs tore. It was a Christian, Ortho learnt, a slave who had killed his warder, escaped and been recaptured. The rabble went on, shouting and stoning, towards the Fez Gate, and Ortho drove his donkey home, shivering, determined that freedom was too dear at that risk. There was nothing in his life at the captain’s establishment to make him anxious to run. The ample Mahma did not regard him with favor, but that served to enhance him in the eyes of Saheb, the steward, between whom and the housekeeper there was certain rivalry and no love lost. The two negresses were merely lazy young animals with no thoughts beyond how much work they could avoid and how much food they could steal. Of the harem beauties he saw little except when MacBride was present and then they were fully occupied with their lord. MacBride was amiability itself. Captain MacBride at sea, at the first sign of indiscipline, tricing his men to the main-jeers and flogging them raw; Captain MacBride, yard-master of Sallee, bellowing blasphemies at a rigger on a top-mast truck, laying a caulker out with his own mallet for skimped work, was a totally different person from Ben MacBride of the house on the hill. The moment he entered its portals he, as it were, resigned his commission and put on childish things. He would issue from the tunnel and stand in the courtyard, clapping his hands and hallooing for his dears. With a flip-flap of embroidered slippers, a jingle of bangles and twitters of welcome they would be on him and he would disappear in a whirl of billowing haiks. The embraces over, he would disgorge his pockets of the masses of pink and white sweetmeats he purchased daily and maybe produce a richly worked belt for Ayesha, a necklace of scented beads for Tama, fretted gold hair ornaments for Schems-ed-dah, and chase them round and round the orange tree while the little things snatched at his flying coat-tails and squealed in mock terror.