In The Tail Of The Peacock Part 19

The polished track led us on: still no sign of a village, nor any evidences of civilization. At last from the top of a ridge we looked over and down into a calm green oasis, "a lodge in some vast wilderness,"

secluded, sheltered, where it would have been good to pitch a tent and camp for many moons. We swung along downwards, dropped under the lee of the hill, and our path skirted the fringe of the green oasis. It was not many acres in extent; it was covered with short scant gra.s.s; it would have made an ideal polo-ground.

Water lay over a small corner of it, and beyond a shadow of doubt it had once been the bottom of a lake; indeed, the Beni Salam tribe believe that water still lies underneath the turf. Here the first sign of humanity showed itself: two goatherds drove their flock down to the water, and one of them carried in the hood of his brown jellab a few hours' old kid; they soon pa.s.sed on and disappeared among the boulders and heath.

The long level lines of the green oasis were broken at the edge by diminutive bones of rock protruding through the gra.s.s. Sunk in the hollow of the hills, there was little or no wind; the sun glowed indolently down on the green lawn, tempting us to stay; but the foot-prints in the red soil pointed forward, and we turned our backs upon the flat stretches of sunny turf and left the waveless tarn behind.

No more emerald oasis, but grey-green scrub and stones on the mountain-sides: we were up again in a stern and desolate defile, waste beyond waste strewn with rocks. The distances were oddly deceptive in the rare, clear air: a saddle between two peaks looked miles away--we were upon it in half an hour; again, a turret of rock apparently within a stone's-throw was a weary climb. And still the red trail snaked on before us. Even the big grey donkey began to lose its interest and to require "encouragement" from the Moorish boy.

We speculated as to whether we should ever reach a village before it was time to make tracks for the world below, while the sun was well up. At last, in front of us, a long low saddle intervened, with rising ground on each side: this we determined to scale, once mounted on top see all there was to be seen, and go no farther. And toil brought its unexpected and exceeding great reward. Standing on the crest-line, shading our eyes with our hands, mountain beyond mountain lay in the distance--the Anjeras, the hills of Spain, the Mediterranean, Gibraltar; while in the foreground cl.u.s.tered four villages, brown mud-coloured huts upon the brownish slopes, and only picked out of their surroundings by means of the one little whitewashed spot of a mosque. Below us a river had carved a gorge in the red soil and tumbled over worn boulders beside the nearest village, but it was more or less hidden from sight.

Much as we wanted to go on, it was impossible. First, there was not time.

Secondly, the donkey would have had as much as was good for him by the time he got back. Therefore we chose a warm, sheltered spot, backed by sun-baked rocks and scented with cropped tussocks of yellow gorse; and there we lunched, the boy and donkey slipping out of sight, and leaving us alone, with the hills, and the sound of the wind.

It must be a long tramp into Tetuan, even for hill people born to the life of the open road,--four hours into the city with heavy loads of charcoal, f.a.ggots, chickens, eggs, b.u.t.ter, vegetables; four hours back again with oil, sugar, salt, tea, and every sort of necessary which is not home grown. And three times a week. And only women. We met a string of them as we set our faces homewards, like "toiling cattle straining across a thousand hills"; but they all had a word to say and a smile, as they sloped along at a steady swing.

The sun was setting when we left the good upper world of silence and the winds; by-and-by the crest-line intervened between ourselves and the strong serene heights--they were seen no more; and we came "hand over hand down the Beanstalk" which led to the white city below.

CHAPTER IX

WE LEAVE TETUAN--A WET NIGHT UNDER THE STARS--S'LAM DESERTS US--WE SAIL FOR MOGADOR--PALM-TREE HOUSE--SUS AND WADNOON COUNTRIES--THE SAHARA--THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS.

CHAPTER IX

The stream of life runs, ah! so swiftly by, A gleaming race 'twixt bank and bank--we fly, Faces alight and little trailing songs, Then plunge into the gulf, and so good-bye.

ABOUT the month of April, Morocco takes its head from under its wing; the bad weather turns its back on the country; the tracks dry up and are fit for travellers to take to once more. The time had come for the sake of which we had borne with the rains, and we longed to be off, to know something more of this strange and fascinating land.

May is a better month than April, up in the north, for travelling; April is often dashed with the tail-end of the rains; but our desire was to go down into the far south, and May and June in the south are both too hot to enjoy camping out. April is quite warm enough; indeed, Morocco City "stokes up" early in April; therefore we made it the middle of March when we said good-bye to Jinan Dolero and set our faces Tangier-wards, there to await some steamer which should take us down the coast. The odds and ends which had furnished us at Tetuan and were not wanted had to be sold--a very simple matter. The day before we left our white garden-house, S'lam and some _mesdames_, as in his best French he always spoke to us of his ragged countrywomen, carried them into the sok, as they were, on their backs; and they were sold to the highest bidder among the market-goers.

To transport ourselves and our belongings over to Tangier, a Jew muleteer was requisitioned, who provided men and mules for the two days' journey. After long consultations we decided to take S'lam with us on our travels in the capacity of personal servant and head cook--partly because he could cook, partly because, in spite of the Tahara-and-bottle-of-water-or-poison episode, we liked him, and he had been a good servant according to his lights. After all, he was probably as trustworthy, and more so, than any man we could pick up in a hurry down south--at least, everybody warned us that they were a set of rascals there, of whom we were to beware. Finally, he was used to us and we were used to him. So S'lam set out with our cavalcade, and we proposed to keep him while we were at Tangier, take him by boat to Mogador, and after our march was over return him to Tetuan. But, while "man proposes----"

I was sorry for Tahara. She was left behind with her old enemy--S'lam's mother. He left the mother money, but Tahara not one flus. He said, too, that when he came back from Morocco City he should go straight off to the Riff and get work there; and Tahara would be left again. Such is the custom of the country: the husband may go off for a year, at intervals returning to his wife, whom he leaves generally under some sort of supervision. So poor little Tahara, who had no voice in her marriage, but had wept all the way to Tetuan under the escort of her bridegroom and brother, was left penniless in the old mother's clutches. She had no relatives near to help her, otherwise I have no doubt that she would have got a divorce. We could only ask Z---- to keep an eye on her, for interference in the Moorish domestic hearth on the part of a European would be a fool's work indeed.

It was March 19 when we began to wander once more, having handed the keys of Jinan Dolero back to its owner and cleared out the little white house.

Unfortunately we pitched on the _Aid-el-Kebeer_ (the Great Feast), starting the very day before it was due; and, in consequence of the Mohammedan-World being upside-down with joyful antic.i.p.ation, could get no good mules, nor induce any one but a Jew to leave Tetuan at such a time.

S'lam looked forward to feasting with his brother at Tangier, and started off with a good grace. A more serious miss than either Moorish servants or reliable mounts was perhaps a tent. There was none to be had in Tetuan at just that time, and a night had to be pa.s.sed upon the way. However, there was no help for it: we set off as we were, and arrived towards sunset at the half-way caravanserai, the little white-walled fondak on the top of the hills, where we pa.s.sed such a windy night, on our way over from Tangier in December, under canvas.

It was a good ride, and our mules travelled badly: saddles and bridles were tumbling to pieces too. For the last mile or so we both walked and sent the baggage on ahead. From a bend round the crest of a hill we said farewell to an uneven white streak set at the foot of the distant hills--Tetuan--and saw it no more. The fondak was in front of us, four lonely walls exposed to every change of weather, and no life stirring outside. We walked through the arched gateway into the square, which is surrounded with Norman arches, and found a company of mules and donkeys, of owners and drivers, taking shelter for the night: our own baggage animals were already hobbled in a line in front of the arches, under which the muleteers sit, and drink, and smoke, and sleep the hours away, till the first streak of dawn.

We scrambled up an uneven stone staircase at the corner of the square, and investigated the two little rooms at the disposal of travellers. One look: there were suggestions of the insect world in both. We recrossed the thresholds and sought further: the flat white roof above the arches round the square, if windswept, was too airy to be anything but fresh and wholesome,--it should meet all our demands. Here then, out in the open, under the sky, our two beds were arranged, in the lee of a few yards of parapet which had been built to shelter the west corner of the roof.

S'lam had a small pan of charcoal also up on the roof in our corner, over which to get something hot for us to eat; and as soon as the odd little meal was finished we turned in.

The precipitous twilight had shadowed down sufficiently to undress in more or less privacy even upon a housetop; over our beds we spread a thin woollen carpet to keep off the dew; the moon, which was beginning its last quarter, faced us full, in a sky picked out with a few stars, against which the dark outline of the hills was cut clear; there was hardly a fleck of cloud in that best roof under which a man can sleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BREEZY CAMPING-GROUND ON A ROOF-TOP.

[_To face p. 254._]

Below, down in the square, the picketed mules stamped and munched barley; the muleteers' voices, back under the arches in the colonnade, arose and fell, round a fire where green tea was brewing and much kif was in course of being smoked; occasionally an owl hooted. Waking from time to time, the moon was always staring down (I shall never forget that moon); but at each interval it had moved farther round overhead. At last it sank behind the field of vision, and up "in that inverted bowl we call the sky" the remote and pa.s.sionless stars had it all to themselves.

About half-past three in the morning we were awakened suddenly by the patter of rain on our faces, great single drops, which quickened into a hurrying shower; while gusts of wind from the south-west rose and swept round the corner of the low parapet against which we had put the heads of the beds. One glance showed that the sky was overcast; it was very dark, most of the stars were hidden, and there was an ominous sound of rain in the wind. The fondak is notably a wet resting-place, for it lies on the top of the watershed which divides the plains of Tetuan and Tangier, and it draws the clouds like a magnet.

One of us put up a sun-umbrella, which had been useful on the hot ride the day before; it kept an end of one bed more or less dry, and fortunately the shower did not last long, while underneath warm bedding it was possible to keep dry for a time. The wind rose, however, and forced itself in at every fold of the bedclothes. We had carefully arranged all our kit under the parapet close to the beds, partly to prevent its being stolen, which sometimes happens if left out of the owner's reach, partly to prevent its rolling or blowing off the unprotected edge of the roof.

The sunset of the night before had not foretold wind; but wind there began rapidly to be, and by-and-by the lid of one of our cooking-pots bowled along the roof, fell over the edge, and rattled on the stones in the square below: a cloth belonging to the cuisine took flight next over the outer wall, and was seen no more. We lay speculating on what might follow. Then another shower began; but the clouds were lifting a little, and it was short if it was sharp; while underneath the blankets there was not much to complain of.

At four o'clock a sound of life began down below; the muleteers were all up and stirring in the square. Lights were lit, for since the moon and stars had been obscured, the night had turned from brilliant light into one of shadows and blackness. Was there to be more rain? Nothing else mattered. In this fine interval--for the last shower was stopping--it seemed wise to get up and dress and have our bedding rolled together: neither of us was going to move into the rooms. Certainly dressing was a chilly opportunity. The evening before had been warm; but the rain freshened the air, and the wind made it still more brisk. It was darker than ever--too windy to have kept a light going; and clothes, discovered with some difficulty in the shadows in hiding-places under rugs and pillows where they had been stowed the evening before to escape the dew, were hurried into in the dark anyhow and any way, half blown inside-out in the wind.

At half-past four S'lam came up on to the roof-top with a light (which was promptly extinguished) and a pail of cold fresh water, in which we had an acceptable wash. He rolled up our bedding, and brought an earthenware pan of burning charcoal, which was stowed away in a corner of the stone stairway out of the wind, and on which the kettle soon began to boil. At this point two remaining stars were put out by the advancing dawn--a wan and shivering dawn. Sitting in the lee of the parapet, five o'clock saw us ready, and supplied with hot tea and eggs. Not long after, the rain-clouds blew over and the day broke clear.

Meanwhile, the muleteers had loaded up and vanished with the first streak of daylight, in order to be in Tetuan in time for the great feast that day; the inner square of the caravanserai was deserted; our own five mules were all that was left. It was not a long business loading them: the last rope was knotted, and the muleteers drove them off. We followed, riding out under the gateway, whereon is written in Arabic a sentence to the effect that Mulai Abdurrahman built the fondak in 1256, according to Mohammedan reckoning of time.

The sky was grey and menacing: too many of the little single clouds called "wet dogs" drifted across it. Having started at half-past five, not till three o'clock that afternoon did we reach Tangier; halting once on the march, at ten o'clock, and that only for half an hour for lunch. A heavy storm cut that halt short, for the rest of the day the "wet dogs"

were true to themselves, and we were deluged. Vivid lightning flashed and cracking peals of thunder rolled over the plain; it was one of those March days which make March no month for camping out in Northern Morocco.

Added to that, the track was in a shocking state--up to the girths in mud and water and clay of a sticky and treacherous nature. The mules slipped back at every step. We had many small rivulets to cross, and were obliged to make great detours in order to circ.u.mvent them at all. Even then our baggage was in the greatest peril, for the mules could barely keep their feet; and once down in some of the deepest quagmires, there would have been the utmost difficulty in getting them up again, or in rescuing our unfortunate kit. And the rain came through everything, bedding and all being fairly drenched. The mules which carried the baggage were of course much the best of our beasts: R.'s and my mounts were indeed sorry for themselves. The last hour was the darkest, during which R.'s mule fell down for the sixth or seventh time--it was slippery and rough--and we had the worst piece of country of all to cross, where we found one unfortunate mule bogged in a sort of mud stream. Though a soaking does not greatly signify when dry clothes and a roof lie at the journey's end, nine hours at a foot's pace, through mud and water, wet and weary, will take the heart out of most people. We tailed into Tangier, a dilapidated, worn string of bedraggled vagrants, and rode to the Continental. An hour later, clean and dry, in comfortable chairs, with hot coffee, there was content.

Meanwhile, S'lam was not at all fulfilling our expectations; and since we left the fondak, far from distinguishing himself on the march, he failed over and over again to rise to the occasion, excellent servant though he had been in the garden-house near his own city. While the muleteers walked all the way from Tetuan, driving the baggage-mules and urging on our own, S'lam by arrangement rode on the top of a light load; and there he sat, huddled up on the mule, wet and discontented, dawdling behind, last of all, in the cavalcade, and anything but living up to his character of soldier-servant and escort. By virtue of his late service in the Algerian army and his rifle, he should have been admirably adapted to fill that capacity; but less like a soldier, and more like a whimpering dog, man never looked. Nor did he look after our things, allowing them to be badly exposed to the rain, and taking no precautions for protecting anything. In the face of condemnation he sulked.

Arrived at Tangier, nearly a week elapsed before a Hungarian boat put in, by which we could sail for Mogador. S'lam was of course due daily at the hotel to report himself and to execute orders. It was on one of these occasions, upon the very morning before we were due to start for Mogador, that he sprung upon us his intention of going straight back to Tetuan.

This announcement came rather like a bolt from the blue. We had congratulated ourselves upon taking down into the interior a more or less tried and faithful knave, where knaves of such a description were proverbially scarce; and now our henchman announced that he had no longer any wish or any intention of accompanying us to Morocco City.

The reasons or excuses which he gave were: first, that his wages were insufficient; and, secondly, that "a courier" had been sent over to him from Tetuan to tell him that his mother and his wife were quarrelling to such a degree that Tahara had threatened to go back to her native Riff country with her brother unless S'lam returned, and if she took that step it would mean a divorce.

His wages had been already raised considerably, because the post he was now to fill had more duties connected with it: they might have been further increased. The other excuse may or may not have been true; but as the two women had never done anything else except quarrel, the situation was a foregone conclusion. The old mother may have been trying to poison Tahara again. But would S'lam trouble to prevent that? Whatever his motive, it was more than annoying that at the last moment he should throw us over, leaving no time in which to look out for a new man, and a reliable man, without whom, in a country as lawless as Morocco, it would be a little rash, on the part of two people only, to travel.

But an unwilling servant is not to be endured. We gave S'lam his release, stipulating only that he should return the dollars advanced him for his wife and mother not many days before.

To this he protested that he had no money, not a peseta left--every coin had either been spent at the feast or had been left at Tetuan.

In this case, the best plan would be, we said, for S'lam to take with him a letter to the Consul at Tetuan explaining to him what had happened; then as S'lam earned money, he might pay it into the Consul's hands for us, until he had made good the sum advanced him. At this S'lam looked blank: he said such a letter would mean _prison_ for him. We stood firm.

It was a rude shock to our faith when his hand found its way into the leather bag at his side under his jellab, and he pulled out and threw on the table two-thirds of the money which had been given him.

It was suggested that he should pay the whole sum.

No! he was penniless.

Then in that case he could sell the new jellab he had just bought.

He scoffed at the idea.

In reply to our order to come to the hotel the first thing the following morning and see our baggage safely on board the steamer, he said that he should leave Tangier at daybreak, and that it was quite impossible for him to attend upon us, evidently expecting that his prepaid wages would be amicably allowed to slide. But not in the face of this final desertion. We reiterated the former course--a letter to the Consul at Tetuan; again he pleaded abject poverty; but meeting only with inclemency, once more plunged his hand into his bag, and pulled out dollars amounting exactly to the sum which he had been advanced.