We took passage--Weare and I--on the same little steamer by which we had come to Tangier, bound now down the Atlantic coast, again intending to stop at Rabat, ‘weather permitting.’ There was not a breath of air; the sea was ‘like a painted ocean’; every prospect favoured. But our captain, the Scorpion villain, hugged the coast with a purpose, and as might have been expected the ship was signalled at Laraiche. We had to stop and pick up freight, which proved to be some forty crates of eggs billed for England. Old memories of unhappy breakfasts revived, and, our sympathies going out to fellow Christians back in London, we argued with the captain that it was not fair to take aboard these perishable edibles till he should return from Mogador. But the captain smiled, putting a stubby finger to his twisted nose, and explained that though eggs were eggs, the wind might be blowing from the west when the ship passed back. But though my ill-fortune in Morocco was enough to ruin the reputation of a Bennet Burleigh, there were always compensations, and on this occasion we were recompensed with a sight of the most fascinating port along the Moorish coast. As the ship moves into the river cautiously, to avoid the bar, you ride beneath the walls and many domes of a great white castle, silent, to all appearances deserted, and overgrown with cactus bushes. Below--for the castle stands high upon a rock--is an ancient fortress, also white, which the ship passes so close that it is possible, even in the twilight, to make out upon the muzzles of the one-time Spanish guns designs of snakes and wreaths of flowers; and looking over the parapet you may see the old-time mortars made in shapes like squatting gnomes. From the ship that night we watched the moon rise and the phosphorescence play upon the water, and the splendid Oriental castle took on a fairy-like enchantment. [Illustration: THE CASTLE AT LARAICHE.]