In the early days Marzuk saw life from a secure position on his mother’s back. So soon as morning dawned, the pair would leave their mud hut beyond the northern gate of Timbuctoo, and seek the market, there to spread out and arrange such produce as had been collected overnight for the day’s sale.

In their season Aminah, the mother of Marzuk, sold the three fruits we have never seen in our western world, the rich karita or butter fruit, the satisfying nata which yields a sort of sweet flour in pods, and the cheese fruit, upon which a man may dine and not go hungry.

Marzuk’s mother was a black woman from below the Niger, in the Soudan, and very ugly to the eyes of all save her little boy. But her white loin cloths and shifts were cleaner than those of most of her neighbours, and worn with some nicety.

She wore her hair in three rolls on the top of her head, supported by a white fillet about her brows, and she was so industrious and cheery that the day’s end seldom found any of her market stock unsold, and generally saw quite an imposing heap of cowries in the old calabash that was kept for use as a till. Money was unknown.

So Marzuk, well-fed, grew strong and straight and comely, learning to help his mother in her work, and to play truant from his duties and adventure alone into Timbuctoo itself, and to the Niger banks beyond. When he returned Aminah would beat him soundly, and cry over him in mother fashion, while painting for him luridly the dangers of the road.

She spoke with rolling eyes and bated breath of the fierce Touaregs, the brigands from the Sahara, who went through the streets of Timbuctoo veiled against the glare of the African sun; of the hippopotami by the Niger’s bank that were ever lying in wait to make meals of naughty boys; of the treacherous and pathless sand-dunes to the north, and of hungry monkeys chattering in the trees—monkeys that were really little children changed from their natural shape for disobedience to parents. But neither stripes nor warnings could keep Marzuk’s feet from straying.

The grass lands near the river, where the sheep pastured, were Marzuk’s favourite resort, because of the white ospreys that dwelt there. These birds loved to follow the sheep from place to place, taking no notice of shepherds or farmers, but ever intent upon the actions of their four-footed friends.

Yet the boy kept well out of the way of all Touaregs, the veiled men of the desert of whom his mother had spoken. He watched them from a safe distance when they roamed through the city, spear in hand, ready and willing to quarrel with any native who should cross their path.

They wore a head-dress that covered their fore-heads and helped to shade their eyes, and a veil that shrouded the lower part of the face and kept the mouth free from sand.

Their true home was the desert, where they reared vast flocks on scanty pasture, but they held the natives of Timbuctoo in no respect, and would stalk through the market-place, spear at the ready and sword beside them, and call the men of the city “Sand-eaters,” because they went with mouths and nostrils uncovered. On their side the natives spoke of the Touaregs as the “Abandoned of God,” and would have kept them from the city altogether, had their strength been equal to their will.

Day by day camel caravans reached Timbuctoo, coming across the desert from Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia. Marzuk’s one interest in his home district was connected with these caravans.

Twice a year, in midwinter and midsummer, the camels would arrive in huge convoys. There would be many hundreds of the unhandy supercilious beasts there at one time, enjoying their longed-for rest, and making hearty meals on the more succulent growths of the dwarf forest.

The camel-drivers themselves, gaunt, hard-lived men, with faces like birds of prey, had many adventurous tales to tell, and Marzuk was a very ready listener. He heard how the veiled thieves of the desert held up whole caravans and taxed them, helping themselves moderately if unopposed, but quite ready for wholesale killing if resisted in any way. He heard, too, of the great salt country, visited by all caravans coming from Morocco.

“It is a wonderful place,” said Hadj Abdullah the camel-driver, on a day when he arrived at Timbuctoo after six months’ absence, “and Allah has set it in the midst of the desert where no unbeliever may see it. The houses are fashioned out of salt, and so is the mosque, there are camel-skins over all the buildings, and the people live on their salt.”

“Oh, my master, do they eat it?” asked Marzuk.

“Silence, little empty head,” said Aminah, his mother, who listened beside him. And the camel-driver continued:—

“Twice a year we go there, carrying away the white salt, which is the best, and the red-veined if the other supply has failed. In return we leave dates and corn and cotton, and so these people live.

“So terrible is the glare of the salt,” added the camel-driver, “that if we have women or children, we leave them in the oases, a day’s journey from the city.”

Besides the precious salt of El Djouf, which was stamped in Timbuctoo and sent down the Niger to districts where it was worth its weight in gold, the caravans brought indigo, blue cotton and white, mirrors for the women, calico, sugar, tea and coffee, and white paper for the Marabouts. On their journey home they were supposed to take gold dust and ivory, the long feathers of the wild ostrich and undressed leather. But the head of the caravan knew of a commodity more valuable than these, and some of the panniers that had carried salt to Timbuctoo had living freight on the way back.

Hadj Abdullah employed agents in the city, and well he knew how to arrange such business as he had, of whatever kind it might be, without exciting the suspicion of the natives.

The camels slowly recovered their strength, the produce of Hadj Abdullah’s great caravan had been disposed of profitably by barter, and the goods he had received in exchange would afford plenty of work for his beasts.

One morning the Moor stopped before the calabashes where Aminah’s stores were placed. Marzuk was by his mother’s side for once. Already in his thirteenth year, he looked strong, healthy and intelligent. Hadj Abdullah noted these things, whilst seeming to examine Aminah’s little store.

“Oh, my mother,” he said with grave courtesy, “have you any cheese-fruit, or has all gone for the year?”

“I fear it has been eaten, my lord,” replied the black woman respectfully.

“The pity,” he replied. “For a plentiful supply such as my house (family) desires, I would give a whole piece of fine blue cloth—the last that is left me. Perhaps some fruit remains yet in the plantations by the river. Can the boy go seek it?”

“I will send him, my lord,” replied Aminah, delighted beyond measure at the idea of getting a piece of the cloth that cowries could not buy.

“He must be back before the second day at sunrise,” said the Moor, and resumed his walk.

So Marzuk set off at daybreak on the following morning with many warnings of the ill that would befall if his return were delayed. He passed through the town, leaving it by the southern gate before anybody but the guard was awake, and was soon knee-deep in the meadows that the Niger keeps ever green.

He tramped along merrily enough, quite unconscious that two Arabs had followed him from the huts beyond the southern wall. The ospreys were everywhere—Marzuk saw nothing but the white birds, and the shining river, and the butterflies, blue and gold, that fluttered over the meadows.

On a sudden he heard footsteps, and saw the Arabs hurrying in his direction. He stood to see them pass, and as they reached him they turned suddenly and flung themselves upon him. There was no struggle, only the white birds heard one choked cry of terror, and some few rose from the meadow to the comparative safety of a neighbouring tree.

His captors carefully gagged Marzuk, and bound legs and arms tightly with cords of palmetto, then he was rolled in sacking and carried back to a hut. When the Arabs returned to the city they carried what seemed to be a bale of raw cotton slung on a pole between them, and they made unchallenged way to the caravan quarter, beyond the city’s northern gate.

Within the vast enclosure of thorn and cactus that inclosed the caravanserai only the last great bales of merchandise remained for the camels, and among these Marzuk was left to pant for breath in an atmosphere that would have stifled any but a negro. Towards the afternoon, when he had seen his latest acquisition safely stored, Hadj Abdullah sought the market-place by the mosque.

“Oh, mother,” said he to Aminah, “has the lad returned with the cheese-fruit?”

“No, my master,” she replied angrily. “I am cursed in the boy. He goes on errands and returns when he likes.”

“I am sorry, mother,” replied Hadj Abdullah, “for by Allah’s grace to-morrow’s sunrise will see us on the road again.”

From the mosques of the city the Mueddin called for the prayer said by devout Moslems at the hour of the false dawn. On walls and battlements the early wakened doves were fluttering sleepily, the guards at the gates still slept, the life of the city had not stirred. But beyond the caravan quarter the camels and mules of Hadj Abdullah were moving out slowly in single file.

There were seventy or eighty camels in all and ten mules, some of which carried Arab women who sat in the comfort born of habit, smoking pipes of the native tobacco.

First on the road were six camels, each carrying two children in what had been salt-panniers.

Marzuk, whose thongs had been loosened, and whose thirst had been assuaged, was but one of the twelve whom Hadj Abdullah had bought secretly or stolen, and, beyond the men engaged by him and the natives he had bribed, none knew aught of the camel’s freight.

Frightened as never in his life before, bruised and sickened by the camel’s irregular stride, his flesh scarred and his bones aching from the pressure of the raw hide thongs that had bound his limbs, faint for lack of food, and with nerves strained almost to breaking point, Marzuk was never in doubt about what had befallen him. He had been captured to be sold as a slave.

From the resting-place of the caravan the last camel had started on the road to Morocco, across eight hundred miles of desert, steering a north-north-westerly course over a track marked by the skeletons of men and beasts that had fallen by the way.

In her mud hut Aminah, never suspecting the truth, thought angrily and fearfully of the absent boy, and prayed that he might safely escape the hippopotami coming for their nightly prowl along the river banks.

As day succeeded day, other caravans arrived from the desert, but never a sign of the lad from the riverside came to relieve a mind grown weary now from anxiety and self-reproach. Weeks passed, and months, until Aminah knew that her prayers had failed to prevent evil spirits sacrificing her boy to the wild beasts of the river. And then she grew old suddenly, and within the year her place in the market was vacant.

Hadj Abdullah’s caravan made slow progress. The dwarf forest left behind, the sand waves of the Sahara stretched out before them, and in traversing this dry and burning sea the caravan endured days and weeks of travelling that taxed men and beasts to the uttermost.

Once a day, at sunset, the caravan halted, and then Marzuk and his eleven companions were taken from their panniers and fed. The Hadj feared to travel by starlight, save when forced to it by anticipation of an attack by the veiled brigands of the desert, lest the track should be missed.

Marzuk’s companion, a girl younger than himself, proved unable to endure the camel’s irregular stride, the scanty food, and the blinding sunlight. Before they had been two weeks on the road she could not eat. One morning she broke out into a fit of screaming that passed gradually into moans, and then stopped abruptly. In the evening, when the baskets were lowered, Hadj Abdullah was summoned in haste, but he could do no more than curse the man who had sold the child to him for half a bar of salt, and had sworn that she was sound and fit for the caravan journey. A little hole was scooped out in the sand; the tally of the caravan had been reduced by one. Next morning the burdens were rearranged, and Marzuk was carried in a basket with another lad, the camel that had carried him being requisitioned to carry one of the drivers who had fallen sick.

For many years the hardships of the journey remained fresh and vivid in Marzuk’s memory. Oases were long days apart, the brackish water was always hot and never plentiful, they saw no living things unless a viper ran across their path, or a few desert antelopes showed for a moment on the horizon. Sometimes, when the eyes ached behind tight-closed lids from the cruel glare of sky and sand, Marzuk would wake with a start at his companion’s cry—“See, Marzuk! they are taking us home again”. Then they saw Timbuctoo spread before them, the mosques clearly to be distinguished, the tall palm trees and clay-built houses seemingly but a few miles away. The camels would raise their heads and lengthen their stride. But the visionary city would come no nearer, and gradually it would fade before their longing eyes—the mirage that had set it down amid the sands had vanished into aching sun-scorched space.

Weeks passed slowly, so slowly that Marzuk’s pannier mate, a weakling at best, succumbed to the trials of the road, and was left to rest under a little mound of sand that the first wind would level. Marzuk, too, began to lose strength, and passed long hours in a state of semi-consciousness, but he had been reared well and generously, and before he had time to break down altogether, the oasis of Tindouf was reached.

The back of the weary journey was broken. Thereafter oases were more frequent, the caravan passed great weekly markets, the country of the Touaregs was quite left behind, and the natives met were men of fair skin, though sunburnt. The Atlas Mountains appeared on the eastern horizon, filling Marzuk with brief terror, for he had never seen snow, or imagined hills like those that filled the far distance. To the little black boy from Timbuctoo, the great mountain range appeared as the awesome wall of a new world, but his curiosity helped him to pluck up spirit and prepare to face whatever the future might have in store. The Draa country was left behind, the Sus country reached and passed, Tarudant being seen hull down on the western horizon, like a ship far out at sea; and one fine morning, when rosy light peeping over the snow-filled caverns of the higher Atlas found the caravan already upon the road, the Moors raised their voices and praised a saint whose name the lad had never heard.

Marzuk rubbed sleepy eyes and saw in the plains a long way before them a great city in a forest of palm. Countless minarets glittered in the early light, the sun lighted some river of size and importance.

“Oh, my master!” cried Marzuk to the Moor who led a camel by his side, “is that a real city?”

“Truly,” was the grave reply, “it is Marrakesh^[5] itself.”

The long file of camels came at last to rest outside the Dukala gate and Hadj Abdullah placed his praying carpet on the ground, turned towards Mecca and returned thanks. No brigand had claimed dues of his merchandise, and out of the twelve children he had bought or stolen eight remained alive—a higher average than most travellers could record.

Marzuk, used from early days to fend for himself, with no special ties, and a feeling of confidence in his own capacities that none but a Soudanee would have felt under similar circumstances, gazed about him in deep wonderment. Before him stretched a city far exceeding Timbuctoo in area and importance, a place surrounded by a wall that seemed without end; he saw more palms in one direction than his native place boasted on all sides together, and the minarets of countless mosques standing slender and erect as the palms themselves.

That night they slept within Morocco City, in a great fandak indescribably filthy. The tired mules were brought in with the slaves, the camels remaining in the outer market in charge of their owner. Hadj Abdullah hired his beasts in Morocco City, paying a sum equivalent to two pounds a head for the journey out and home. In the fandak he addressed a brief warning to the children. They would have three days’ rest and all the food they could eat, and on the evening of the third day they would be sold. Let them do their best and all would be well with them, if they were rebellious—he closed his mouth abruptly, but his silence was significant enough.

Left in charge of the keeper of the fandak, the children lay at their ease in the reeking straw, and gave their three days to eating and drinking and singing odds and ends of songs they had heard at home. No sound of the city reached them, save at the hours of prayer, when from every minaret the faithful were called to acknowledge the Unity of Allah. On the afternoon of the third day they were taken to the baths by a strange man, and each child was arrayed in clean white linen garments, supplemented in the case of the girls by kerchiefs of many colours.

“Follow me, O slaves,” said the Moor, when they were all ready to return. He led them unresisting through the heart of the city, through the bazaars with their roofs of palm branches and box-like shops, past the arcades of the workers in brass and linen and leather and sweatmeats, to a corner where the passage ended in a heavily barred gate.

The gatekeeper drew the bolts, and showed through the open door a bare circular market-place with a broken and dilapidated arcade stretching down the centre of it, and booths all round the walls. Marzuk cast one desperate look round, as a bird at the door of a cage, but the fear of Hadj Abdullah was upon him. In another moment they had been shepherded through the gate-way and commanded to stand still while their guardian went to a Moorish official, who sat cross-legged on a carpet, and gave the numbers and description of the party.

“Five boys, three girls, Timbuctoo,” repeated the official, and wrote the details laboriously on a slip of paper with a bamboo pen.

“Follow,” commanded the Moor, and the children marched obediently to one of the huts or booths built out from the wall like covered pens.

“Go within, and stay there until the market is opened. Let none stir beyond the entrance,” he said curtly, and seeing them safely housed, went off.

Marzuk left his companions whose terror annoyed him, and going to the mouth of the pen looked out at the scene.

He saw at once that he and his little party were not alone in the slave-market. Nearly a dozen of the other pens were tenanted for the most part by adults, who could be heard chattering or singing happily enough, and in one pen, at least, quarelling violently. Certainly, they were in no way cast down, and their indifference helped to bring further confidence to Marzuk, who beckoned the most distressed of the party—a little nine-year-old girl—to come to his side and look out.

It was the eve of a great sale. The “Court Elevated by Allah” was about to leave the southern capital for the North; the great Wazeers would be seeking to make the last changes in, or additions to, their harems and households before leaving home. On this account Hadj Abdullah had not kept the slaves longer to fatten them, preferring to take the prices that would rule at a big sale for inferior goods, than what he would get for better material when the city was half empty.

The sun was beginning to decline, and a faint freshness was coming into the sultry air. The last batch of slaves had been entered; a group of auctioneers surrounded the Government official in charge of the market, and speculated hopefully upon the prices that would rule. The keeper of the gate flung it back, and Marzuk saw the arrival of the earliest buyers.

They came in singly for the most part—Moors whose wealth was indicated by their portly presence, and by their outer robes of white and blue cloth woven in the north of England. They walked into the market-place and sat down at their ease on the ground against the unoccupied pens, or the long arcade that bisected the market-circle. Some were very old men with white beards, and a few were of forbidding appearance; but most were fat and well-favoured, True Believers to whom life came easily.

The last buyer had arrived. There must have been thirty or forty in all, and Marzuk knew that the sale was about to begin. A very old slave walked over the dusty ground, with a goatskin watering-can, and sprinkled it liberally. The dilal (auctioneer) who had brought them to the pen came up hurriedly, counted them with raised fore-finger as though they had been sheep, and told them to be ready to follow him, using the native tongue of Guinea, since Marzuk alone of the little company had as much as a smattering of Arabic.

His instructions understood, the auctioneer hurried away to the centre of the market-place, where the other dilals surrounded their chief. He looked at the sun as though to tell the hour; it was sinking behind the saint’s tomb on the edge of the market-wall. He gave a signal; the selling brethren formed themselves into a line, with their chief in the centre. Then the venerable leader lifted up his voice and prayed. He praised Allah; dilals and buyers said “Amen”. He cursed Satan; the company reiterated the curse. He employed the blessing of Sidi bel-Abbas, the city’s patron saint, friend of sellers and buyers. Might he bless the market, the dilals and the patrons. Might he send prosperity to one and all. The dilals stood with closed eyes and extended hands and said “Amen.”

Their chief’s prayer came to an end. Quickly as possible the dilals hurried to the pens they presided over.

“Come forward, all,” cried the one in charge of Marzuk’s pen, and the frightened children needed no second bidding.

“Do as you see the others doing,” said the dilal, as, with deft fingers, he rearranged the shawls of the girls and set the boy’s robes straight.

Marzuk seized his little girl friend by the hand; she took the hand of another girl; the dilal stood in the centre of the line of children, four on either side of him. Meanwhile, the other auctioneers had arranged their slaves in much the same way, and the companies stepped forward to walk slowly round the market.

They moved round the circle of the market, and the dilals called loudly upon intending buyers.

“O, Abdel Karim,” cried a burly Moor, as Marzuk’s dilal passed him for the first time, “let me see the lad who has your right hand.”

Marzuk was pushed forward. Coarsely, rather than unkindly, the Moor laid his fat hands upon the boy, felt his muscles, opened his mouth to note the state of his teeth, and asked a dozen questions that the boy’s Arabic could not have compassed had he been attending. But it happened that at the moment when he was thrust into the old man’s arms Marzuk looked up, just as a company of white ospreys swept high over the market, and in a moment he saw the Niger rising before him, and the scented fields he knew so well. Brave though he was, his eyes were flooded, and the words could not pass his throat.

“Newly arrived from the South,” admitted the dilal rather impatiently, in explanation of what he feared would be one of the outbursts that the market saw so often; “but he is strong and well, and knows a few words.”

“Forty dollars, Salesman,” said the Moor briefly; “let me see the girl.”

Marzuk’s little companion was pushed forward and, too frightened to speak, kissed the old man’s hand. He handled her with an approach to gentleness, asking the auctioneer all he wanted to know.

“Forty dollars also,” he said, when the last word was spoken.

Forthwith the dilal shifted the children for whom no bid had been yet made from the right to the left hand, and took the first vacant place in the line of auctioneers and slaves, proclaiming with a loud voice: “For the boy and the girl, forty dollars each”.

A quarter of an hour passed, while the salesman marched round and round with his charges, and in that brief period two smaller children passed from the left to the right hand side of the dilal. They were the remaining girls, for whom seventy dollars were offered, an amount working out in English money at ten pounds.

“A bad price—a bad price,” muttered the auctioneer sadly, and then he withdrew from the line and returned to the pen. “Wait here,” he said to the four boys who had not yet been asked for; “wait till the rest are sold.”

Then he hurried back to the line of auctioneers with Marzuk and the three girls, proclaiming the price and merits of his wares as loudly as possible. Several times Marzuk was summoned by an intending purchaser, and his price went slowly up to fifty-five dollars, while his companion stayed at forty-eight.

For the other two girl children, a bright, intelligent pair, and not without good looks of a kind, there was a very brisk bidding; three country Kaids were bent upon purchasing them. The three sat along the arcade some twenty yards from one another, and raised the price of the two little girls three, four, sometimes five dollars at a time, the auctioneer thanking them with a “Praise be to Allah the One!” every time the price was augmented.

At last the Kaid from a town on the far side of the Atlas Mountains raised the price to one hundred and thirty-five dollars at which figure the bidding ceased, and the two children were handed over to their new master.

Greatly elated at the thought of his commission, which, though but two and a half per cent., would be quite appreciable, the auctioneer took Marzuk in one hand and the girl in the other, and marched briskly round, declaring their merits and the last bid.

The girl caught up her companion in price, and, passing from hand to hand, was chosen at last by one of the Kaids, who had failed to purchase the pair of girls, at eighty-two dollars. Marzuk saw her frightened eye and quivering lip, she looked once at him and burst into a violent paroxysm of sobbing.

But there was never a big sale in the Sok-el-Abeed without tears in plenty. They were of no more moment to the crowd than the water that the carriers from the south country sprinkled over the sandy market-place.

The auctioneer fetched another boy from the pen and walked round with him and Marzuk.

The latter felt now that the end was coming, he knew that his purchase lay between a fat white-bearded Moor from the country and the keeper of the fandak. He heard the price raised slowly to seventy-five dollars, at which the keeper of the fandak declared with an angry word that he would go no higher.

It was to no hard servitude that Marzuk was taken in the early days when he went for the first time to a master’s house. He was appointed to wait upon his master’s son, a lad of little more than his own age, and if a few blows and some ill-usage were his portion from time to time, he was troubled but little so long as food was good and plentiful.

When the two boys grew towards manhood, their relations became more intimate and friendly, and Marzuk, who had been told off to the fields at every harvest time, was raised to a rather more responsible position, and called upon to superintend the labour of the others. They worked on the land, ploughing and reaping, cultivating the orchards and digging water-pits, or they carried the produce of their master’s fields to the markets of the city.

Here he succeeded, and was sent by his master to the far country markets with corn and oil, sometimes taking journeys of two or three weeks’ duration. Once again his record was satisfactory, and he was further promoted to carry letters and messages to the great country chiefs, with whom his master had commercial or social relations.

So it happened that he escaped the harder fate that waits upon slaves who are idle or vicious or so unfortunate as to find a bad master. Marzuk learned to ride fearlessly, and to know the great tracks that pass for roads in Morocco, and stretch between the far scattered cities.

His master’s house held many slaves—they were regarded as a source of wealth, and were encouraged to do their best. In earlier days, when slaves were very cheap, they had not fared so well, but now that a master must pay heavily, he would not waste man or woman as he could afford to do in times when Mulai Ismail ruled and England held Tangier.

To-day Marzuk is the chief of his master’s household, a strong, intelligent fellow, who rejoices in the whitest of djellabas and the largest size of yellow slippers, carries a long rosary, and rules his master’s other servants with a rod of iron.

Marzuk has picked up a great deal of Arabic; he has become a Mohammedan, and looks forward to the day when he will be manumitted, and will be able to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Thereafter he will embark his small store of dollars in trade, and with his knowledge of markets and capacity for sustained work he should end by employing slaves of his own.

I have set down the main features of his story as he told them to me in his master’s house, in days not long gone past when I was a guest there, and entered, so far as I might, into the fascinating life of the East, and I cannot refrain from adding that Marzuk stands to-day on a far higher rung in the ladder of civilisation and progress than he would have reached if the curse of slavery had not fallen on him in far Timbuctoo.

And therein (a wholesome reflection for the more arrogant among us) slavery, as understood and practised in the world of Islam, differs mightily from slavery as understood and practised in Christian lands a few years ago.

I make no mention of the sort of slavery still existing, under European auspices, on the Congo, and in many of the cities of every country of Europe. Allah forbid that sleek, smiling Marzuk, upon whose ample shoulders the burden of labour has fallen so lightly, should ever know the bitterness of such sad lives as these.