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At the end of the time specified which had appeared an age to the impatient trio Bacri returned to the skiffa with two coarse burnouses similar to the one worn by Mariano. He directed Francisco and Lucien to put these on, after exchanging their varied habiliments for the jacket, short drawers, and red fez or cap, worn by Moors of the middle class.
"You are the only friend we have in the city except, indeed, the Padre Giovanni, who has no power to save us." "Alas!" returned the Jew, leading his friends into the skiffa, and seating himself on the edge of the fountain that played there, "you lean on a broken reed. My power is not sufficient to protect myself.
Here, seated under the shadow of a Moorish arch way, drinking lemonade, in default, as he said, of better tipple, Ted resolved to bide his time, but his time seemed rather long of coming. He therefore boldly entered the magnificent skiffa in search of Colonel Langley.
Among other entertainments there was a wrestling match about to take place in the skiffa of the palace. Before proceeding to the skiffa, Omar had shown his guests his menagerie, which contained some remarkably fine specimens of the black-maned lion, with a variety of panthers, jackals, monkeys, and other animals.
The mask-ball was a very great affair indeed when it came off which it did at the country residence of the French consul. The mansion, which was Mauresque in style, was splendidly decorated with flags of various nations, and the skiffa, with its sparkling fountain and graceful palmettas, was a perfect blaze of variegated lamps.
They ran now, in good earnest, and quickly reached the door of Jacob Mordecai's house, which Bacri opened with a key, and shut gently after letting his friends pass, so that the soldiers lost sight of them as if by a magical disappearance. "Your house is plundered," said Francisco to Bacri, after Jacob Mordecai had conducted them to the skiffa of his dwelling. "I guessed as much.
The Aga carried no light, although the laws ordained that all who moved about after night-fall should do so; but Bacri knew him as well by his outline and gait as if he had seen his face in the sunshine. Descending the stair at once, the Jew opened the door and let him in. "Thou art surprised, Bacri?" said Hamet, swaggering into the skiffa, where Angela chanced to be at work at the time.
Entering the skiffa, the Dey took his seat on a throne, and ordered the wrestlers to begin. In the centre of the court was a pile of sawdust, surmounted by a flag.
These hung amid the foliage of the creepers that twined round the curved marble pillars, and their red garish light contrasted powerfully with the clear purity of the star-lit sky, which formed the natural roof of the skiffa. The grounds around the consulate were also decorated and lighted up with the taste for which the French are peculiarly noted.
The young Arab chiefs are permitted to pay their respects; they are preceded from the skiffa, or entrance, by their music, and a dancing woman or two advance with great form, and with slow steps, to the centre of the court, under the bride's window; here the ladies salute their visitors with "loo! loo! loo!" which they return by laying their right hand on their breasts, as they are conducted quite round the circle.
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