PLEASANT SERVANT. 105 camels fail not with vigorous roarings or growlings, to join their voices in good time and tune, to the harmonious concert.

We should have often been much pleased, when thus agreeably aroused from rest, to have sought some consolation in a good supper, had not our cook Achmet, a long, lanky native, too often left us unprovided with the materials for oni. Long had this man been our daily torment, from his ill-conditioned, obstinate, and contradictory spirit ; and even the most vigorous appliance of the karbatsch failed in effecting his cure, as he submitted standing erect, stiff, and perfectly silent, never giving sign or note of pain, and treating our most cutting blows with stoical indifference, and when all was over asking, " Schenu di ? " (What's this for ? ) He even now and then ventured to set us to rights, and ever was at open war with all our other servants. The man was born with a mania for discord ; could he not get up a squabble with his fellows at home, he would sally out and cast about for some cause of quarrel amongst our peaceful neighbours. That he ever lived in peace with any one, or spoke a good word of another, we never heard. With us and our actions he, as a matter of course, constantly found fault. Out of revenge, he for fourteen days in succession gave the other servants no butchers' meat ; and often when we had a sheep killed, he purposely kept the meat till it was putrid, so that they might not be able to eat it. lie also carried off our and the servants' things, and hid them, merely to be able to turn with his slanderous words suspicions of theft on some other one.

The only good about him was his talent for cooking, as he could, indeed, produce a good dinner out of almost nothing ; but this he never would exercise unless we stood over him and compelled him, or when he desired to appear exceedingly active in our eyes, for some purpose of his own. From a fellow of such character we had every thing to fear ; and when at last we discovered him to be a thief, and learnt from his own confession that he had often, ere now, stolen money, clothes, sugar, coffee, rice, various bottles of wine and rum, and sold them, our patience and forbearance towards him were at an end, and, ere half an hour was over his head, he found himself enrolled by the Bimbaschi Hassan Effendi, as soldier in the 1st regiment. We had at first pardoned him, merely dismissing him our service ; although the persons to whom he had