In childish joy they wandered up and down in the drenching flood, without fear or thought of harm, with laughing eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their palms to the rain and drinking it.

Hailing each other in the voices of boys, jesting and shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came without aim or direction.

The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering like jays, and the Moors at the gate salaamed to them.

Mule-drivers cried "Balak" in tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers sat idle at their doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs stood in knots, with faces that shone under the closed hoods of their dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square capered about like flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long guns into the air for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and sometimes embraced each other, thinking of their homes that were far away.
Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that the procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from the Kasbah.

At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and gorgeous--notwithstanding the rain--in peaked shasheeah and crimson selham.