The energetic Scot interrupted. ‘I should like to see your men fire a volley so that I might get a picture; my paper wants scenes of the fighting about Casablanca.’ ‘Perhaps I can do so in a few minutes, if you stay by me.’ The general passed within a few yards, and, ignoring us, went back to the ambulance brigade to see a wounded man of the Foreign Legion. We followed him and took his photograph as he shook hands with the trooper on the litter. ‘Good picture,’ I said. ‘Rotten,’ said the Scot. ‘They’ll think in London that I got Drude to pose; the wounded chap hadn’t a bloodstain on him and he smoked a cigarette.’ We had not long to wait, however, before an example of real misery came to our view. A Goumier covered with blood, riding a staggering wounded horse, brought in a Moor without a stitch of clothes, tied by a red sash to his saddle. Captor, captive, and horse fell to the ground almost together. The Goumier had been shot in the chest, and expired while his fellow horsemen relieved him of his purple cloak and his turban and gave him water. The Moor (who had been taken in the fire at Taddert) was a mass of burns from head to foot. On one hand nothing remained but stumps of fingers, and loose charred flesh hung down from his legs. Well might the French have shot this creature; but they bound up his wounds. At one o’clock the Arab camp was a mass of smouldering rags, while Taddert blazed from every corner. The day’s work was done. Long parallel lines of men marching single file in open order trailed over the stony ground back towards the white walled city. CHAPTER V NO QUARTER On the next excursion with the French I happened to see the shooting of six prisoners. We set out from camp as usual at early morning and moved up the coast for a distance of eight miles, with the object of examining a well which in former dry seasons supplied Casablanca with water and was now no doubt supplying the Arabs round about. By marching in close formation and keeping always down in the slopes between hills we managed to get to the well and to swing a troop of Goumiers round it without being noticed by a party of thirteen Moors, of whom only three were properly mounted.