Down the Coast of Barbary. H. Bedford-Jones

a Christian.”

      Upon returning to the consulate he had come within a few hundred feet of his destination; he was passing a low-arched doorway carved with the hand which spells the name of Allah. From the shadowed depths two figures darted out, plunged bodily upon him. Spence fell backward, the two men on top of him; as he fell, he glimpsed that twisted face with the birthmark.

      He crashed down. A knife clashed on the stone beside his ear, but already his long arms were busy. He jerked one man over his head, heaved, twisted himself. He pulled clear, rolled over, and leaped to his feet in time to meet the rush of the man in the black burnoose. Spence drove his fist into the misshapen features, and the man reeled away.

      At this instant the consulate Negro dashed up, scimitar bared. A dozen other men converged on the scene. The two assassins paused not, but took to their heels, with a crowd streaming after them. Two minutes later, Patrick Spence was safe in the consulate.

      He told Dr. Shaw of the incident, but the worthy divine related it to Holden in the light of an attempted robbery. Shaw feared lest the consul forbid the journey as too dangerous, and was taking no chances. So the matter was passed off without great comment.

      That night, the safe conduct having been provided, Dr. Shaw and Patrick Spence packed up. The consul provided them with letters of credit upon a Jew of Mequinez, while Shaw lingered lovingly over his rapier, maps and instruments—particularly the latter.

      “This brass quadrant,” he discoursed, “I had from Mr. Professor Bradley at Wanstead. It is so well graduated that I can even distinguish the division upon the limb to at least one-twelfth part of a degree. And this compass hath the needle well touched—”

      The good divine seemed quite oblivious to the fact that he was entering an almost unknown land, measuring wits against the most unscrupulous man of the age. Yet Dr. Shaw, as Spence knew well, was a shrewd comrade, reliable to the full, and quite able to use his sword as effectively as his instruments.

      At dawn Spence wakened to the shrill cries of muezzins, lifting into the gray morning, calling the faithful to prayer. From all around they came; from the grand mosque, El Khebir, from the Mosque of Hassan, from the Zaouia, from the palace mosque, and others.

      And in the courtyard the escort of twenty Spahis knelt at prayer, their gorgeous uniforms glittering in the new sunlight.