With some of the Englishmen we took long rides around the town, passing several times through the _m’halla_, where we were never welcome; the camp of Abdul Aziz was in sympathy with Mulai Hafid. We saw the soldiers who were sent to fight Hafid and joined his ranks with all their arms. Gradually we saw the army dwindle away until there could have been no more than four thousand men between the discredited Sultan and his hostile brother, whose following of tribesmen was reported to number variously from twenty to sixty thousand men. Had the army of the French not stood between them and fought the Hafid _m’hallas_, Rabat would surely have fallen and Abdul Aziz would now be a royal prisoner safe in the keeping of his brother. For want of money to pay the troops Abdul Aziz was forced to pawn his jewels; and at last, by a royal decree, he made good ‘a hundred sacks’ of silver coins that had been confiscated as counterfeit. It was because of a threatened revolt of the troops for want of pay that the Spaniards in February occupied the port of Mar Chica. CHAPTER XII THE PIRATE CITY OF SALLI Across the river from Rabat and across a stretch of sand half-a-mile wide, a low line of white battlements, showing but a single gate, keeps the famous city of Salli, the headquarters of the Moroccan pirates, who in their day made themselves feared as far as the shores of England. Every one remembers that it was to Salli Robinson Crusoe was taken and held in slavery for many months, finally escaping in a small boat belonging to his Moorish master. For years the corsairs were the scourge of Christian merchantmen, and up to two centuries ago they plied their trade, which was deemed honourable among the Moors and carried with it the title ‘Amir-el-Bahr,’ Lord of the Sea, from which has come the English word Admiral. It has been but a few years since Salli could be visited by Europeans, and the inhabitants boast to-day that not a Christian lives within their sacred walls. They do not know that the _Times_ correspondent--of whom I have spoken often already--once stayed amongst them for some time; they remember only a thin, studious, devout Moslem, who knew the Koran and the history of Islam as they did not, and had travelled to all the holy places. Harris told me that greater hospitality and truer courtesy could have been shown him nowhere than among the descendants of the Salli Rovers. But the deference, I may add, was to the Moorish garb he wore; to the man who wears the clothes of an infidel, and, reversing their custom, shaves his face and lets the hair grow on his head, there is little common decency accorded.