What with overseeing the yards, where battered corsairs were constantly refitting, and supervising the Pilot’s School, where young Moors were taught the rudiments of navigation, MacBride was kept busy during the day, and his household saw little of him, but in the evenings he returned rejoicing to the bosom of his family, never abroad to stray, the soul of domesticity. He would lounge on the heaped cushions, his long pipe in his teeth, his tankard handy, Schems-ed-dah nestling against one shoulder, Tama and Ayesha taking turns with the other, and call for his jester, Saïd. “Hey, boy, tell us about ole Jerry and the bear.” Then Ortho would squat and tell imaginary anecdotes of Jerry, and the captain would hoot and splutter and choke until the three little girls thumped him normal again. “Rot me, but ain’t that rich?” he would moan, tears brightening his scarlet cheeks. “Ain’t that jist like ole Jerry—the ole rip! He-he! Tell us another, Saïd—that about the barber he shaved and painted like his own pole—go on.” Saïd would tell the story. At first he had been at pains to invent new episodes for Captain Gish, that great hero of MacBride’s boyhood, but he soon found it quite unnecessary; the old would do as well—nay, better. It was like telling fairy stories to children, always the old favorites in the old words. His audience knew exactly what was coming, but that in no way served to dull their delight when it came. As Ortho (or Saïd) approached a well-worn climax a tremor of delicious expectancy would run through Schems-ed-dah (he was talking in Arabic now), Tama and Ayesha would clasp hands, and MacBride sit up, eyes fixed on the speaker, mouth open, like a terrier ready to snap a biscuit. Then the threadbare climax. MacBride would cast himself backwards and beat the air with ecstatic legs; Schems-ed-dah clap her hands and laugh like a ripple of fairy bells; Ayesha and Tama hug each other and swear their mirth would kill them. When they recovered, the story-teller was rewarded with rum and tobacco from that staunch Moslem MacBride, with sweetmeats and mint tea from the ladies. He enjoyed his evenings. During the winter they sat indoors before charcoal braziers in which burned sticks of aromatic wood, but on the hot summer nights they took to the roof to catch the sea breeze. Star-bright, languorous nights they were. Below them the white town, ghostly glimmering, sloped away to the coast and the flats. Above them the slender minaret, while on the lazy wind came the drone of breakers and the faint sweet scent of spice gardens. Voluptuous, sea-murmurous nights, milk-warm, satin-soft under a tent of star-silvered purple. Sometimes Schems-ed-dah fingered a gounibri and sang plaintive desert songs of the Bedouin women, the two other girls, snuggling, half-asleep, against MacBride’s broad chest, crooning the refrains.