Presently, to our satisfaction, appeared Sa’ad the Demon, equipped as an able seaman, and looking most unlike the proprietor of two large boxes full of valuable merchandise.  This energetic individual instantly prepared for action.  With our little party to back him, he speedily cleared the poop of intruders and their stuff by the simple process of pushing or rather throwing them off it into the pit below.  We then settled down as comfortably as we could; three Syrians, a married Turk with his wife and family, the Rais or captain of the vessel,

[p.190] with a portion of his crew, and our seven selves, composing a total of eighteen human beings, upon a space certainly not exceeding ten feet by eight.  The cabin-a miserable box about the size of the poop, and three feet high-was stuffed, like the hold of a slave ship, with fifteen wretches, children and women, and the other ninety-seven were disposed upon the luggage or squatted on the bulwarks.  Having some experience in such matters, and being favoured by fortune, I found a spare bed-frame slung to the ship’s side; and giving a dollar to its owner, a sailor-who flattered himself that, because it was his, he would sleep upon it,-I instantly appropriated it, preferring any hardship outside, to the condition of a packed herring inside, the place of torment.

Our Maghrabis were fine-looking animals from the deserts about Tripoli and Tunis; so savage that, but a few weeks ago, they had gazed at the cock-boat, and wondered how long it would be growing to the size of the ship that was to take them to Alexandria.  Most of them were sturdy young fellows, round-headed, broad-shouldered, tall and large-limbed, with frowning eyes, and voices in a perpetual roar.  Their manners were rude, and their faces full of fierce contempt or insolent familiarity.  A few old men were there, with countenances expressive of intense ferocity; women as savage and full of fight as men; and handsome boys with shrill voices, and. hands always upon their daggers.  The women were mere bundles of dirty white rags.  The males were clad in “Burnus"-brown or striped woollen cloaks with hoods; they had neither turband nor tarbush, trusting to their thick curly hair or to the prodigious hardness of their scalps as a defence against the sun; and there was not a slipper nor a shoe amongst the party.  Of course all were armed; but, fortunately for us, none had anything more formidable than a cut-and-thrust dagger about ten inches long.  These Maghrabis travel in hordes under

[p.191] a leader who obtains the temporary title of “Maula,"-the master.  He has generally performed a pilgrimage or two, and has collected a stock of superficial information which secures for him the respect of his followers, and the profound contempt of the heaven-made Ciceroni of Meccah and Al-Madinah.  No people endure greater hardships when upon the pilgrimage than these Africans, who trust almost entirely to alms and to other such dispensations of Providence.  It is not therefore to be wondered at that they rob whenever an opportunity presents itself.  Several cases of theft occurred on board the “Golden Wire”; and as such plunderers seldom allow themselves to be baulked by insufficient defence, they are accused, perhaps deservedly, of having committed some revolting murders.