[Illustration:  THE MID-DAY HALT]

Down the track we had followed came a fair man, of slight build, riding a good mule.  He dismounted by the tree to adjust his saddle, tighten a stirrup thong, and say a brief prayer.  Then, indifferent to the heat, he hurried on, and Salam, who had held short converse with him, announced that he was an emissary of Bu Hamara the Pretender, speeding southward to preach the rising to the Atlas tribes.  He carried his life in his hands through the indifferently loyal southern country, but the burden was not heavy enough to trouble him.  Bu Hamara, the man no bullets could injure, the divinely directed one, who could call the dead from their pavilion in Paradise to encourage the living, had bade him go rouse the sleeping southerners, and so he went, riding fearlessly into the strong glare that wrapt and hid him.  His work was for faith or for love:  it was not for gain.  If he succeeded he would not be rewarded, if he failed he would be forgotten.

Very often, at morning, noon, and sunset, we would meet the r’kass or native letter-carrier, a wiry man from the Sus country, more often than not, with naked legs and arms.  In his hand he would carry the long pole that served as an aid to his tired limbs when he passed it behind his shoulders, and at other times helped him to ford rivers or defend himself against thieves.  An eager, hurrying fellow was the r’kass, with rarely enough breath to respond to a salutation as he passed along, his letters tied in a parcel on his back, a lamp at his girdle to guide him through the night, and in his wallet a little bread or parched flour, a tiny pipe, and some kief.  Only if travelling in our direction would he talk, repaying himself for the expenditure of breath by holding the stirrup of mule or horse.  Resting for three to five hours in the twenty-four, sustaining himself more with kief than with bread, hardened to a point of endurance we cannot realise, the r’kass is to be met with on every Moorish road that leads to a big city—­a solitary, brave, industrious man, who runs many risks for little pay.  His letters delivered, he goes to the nearest house of public service, there to sleep, to eat sparingly and smoke incessantly, until he is summoned to the road again.  No matter if the tribes are out on the warpath, so that the caravans and merchants may not pass,—­no matter if the powder “speaks” from every hill,—­the r’kass slips through with his precious charge, passing lightly as a cloud over a summer meadow, often within a few yards of angry tribesmen who would shoot him at sight for the mere pleasure of killing.  If the luck is against him he must pay the heaviest penalty, but this seldom occurs unless the whole country-side is aflame.  At other times, when there is peace in the land, and the wet season has made the unbridged rivers impassable, whole companies of travellers camp on either side of some river—­a silver thread in the dry season, a rushing torrent now.  But the r’kass knows every ford, and, his long pole aiding him, manages to reach his destination.  It is his business to defy Nature if necessary, just as he defies man in the pursuit of his task.  He is a living proof of the capacity and dogged endurance still surviving in a race Europeans affect to despise.