Tartarin Of Tarascon Part 13

The prince enthroned himself on the animal's neck. For the sake of the greater majesty, Tartarin got them to hoist him on the top of the hump between two boxes, where, proud, and cosily settled down, he saluted the whole market with a lofty wave of the hand, and gave the signal of departure.

Thunderation! if the people of Tarascon could only have seen him!

The camel rose, straightened up its long knotty legs, and stepped out.

Oh, stupor! At the end of a few strides Tartarin felt he was losing colour, and the heroic chechia a.s.sumed one by one its former positions in the days of sailing in the Zouave. This devil's own camel pitched and tossed like a frigate.

"Prince! prince!" gasped Tartarin pallid as a ghost, as he clung to the dry tuft of the hump, "prince, let's get down. I find--I feel that I m-m-must get off; or I shall disgrace France."

A deal of good that talk was--the camel was on the go, and nothing could stop it. Behind it raced four thousand barefooted Arabs, waving their hands and laughing like mad, so that they made six hundred thousand white teeth glitter in the sun.

The great man of Tarascon had to resign himself to circ.u.mstances. He sadly collapsed on the hump, where the fez took all the positions it fancied, and France was disgraced.

V. The Night-watch in a Poison-tree Grove.

SWEETLY picturesque as was their new steed, our lion-hunters had to give it up, purely out of consideration for the red cap, of course. So they continued the journey on foot as before, the caravan tranquilly proceeding southwardly by short stages, the Tarasconian in the van, the Montenegrin in the rear, and the camel, with the weapons in their cases, in the ranks.

The expedition lasted nearly a month.

During that seeking for lions which he never found, the dreadful Tartarin roamed from douar to douar on the immense plain of the Sh.e.l.liff, through the odd but formidable French Algeria, where the old Oriental perfumes are complicated by a strong blend of absinthe and the barracks, Abraham and "the Zouzou" mingled, something fairy-tale-like and simply burlesque, like a page of the Old Testament related by Tommy Atkins.

A curious sight for those who have eyes that can see.

A wild and corrupted people whom we are civilising by teaching them our vices. The ferocious and uncontrolled authority of grotesque bashaws, who gravely use their grand cordons of the Legion of Honour as handkerchiefs, and for a mere yea or nay order a man to be bastinadoed.

It is the justice of the conscienceless, bespectacled cadis under the palm-tree, Maw-worms of the Koran and Law, who dream languidly of promotion and sell their decrees, as Esau did his birthright, for a dish of lentils or sweetened kouskous. Drunken and libertine cadis are they, formerly servants to some General Yusuf or the like, who get intoxicated on champagne, along with laundresses from Port Mahon, and fatten on roast mutton, whilst before their tents the whole tribe waste away with hunger, and fight with the harriers for the bones of the lordly feast.

All around spread the plains in waste, burnt gra.s.s, leafless shrubs, thickets of cactus and mastic--"the Granary of France!"--a granary void of grain, alas! and rich alone in vermin and jackals. Abandoned camps, frightened tribes fleeing from them and famine, they know not whither, and strewing the road with corpses. At long intervals French villages, with the dwellings in ruins, the fields untilled, the maddened locusts gnawing even the window-blinds, and all the settlers in the drinking-places, absorbing absinthe and discussing projects of reform and the Const.i.tution.

This is what Tartarin might have seen had he given himself the trouble; but, wrapped up entirely in his leonine-hunger, the son of Tarascon went straight on, looking to neither right nor left, his eyes steadfastly fixed on the imaginary monsters which never really appeared.

As the shelter-tent was stubborn in not unfolding, and the compressed meat-cakes would not dissolve, the caravan was obliged to stop, morn and eve, at tribal camps. Everywhere, thanks to the gorgeous cap of Prince Gregory, our hunters were welcomed with open arms. They lodged in the aghas' odd palaces, large white windowless farmhouses, where they found, pell-mell, narghilehs and mahogany furniture, Smyrna carpets and moderator lamps, cedar coffers full of Turkish sequins, and French statuette-decked clocks in the Louis Philippe style.

Everywhere, too, Tartarin was given splendrous galas, diffas, and fantasias, which, being interpreted, mean feasts and circuses. In his honour whole goums blazed away powder, and floated their burnouses in the sun. When the powder was burnt, the agha would come and hand in his bill. This is what is called Arab hospitality.

But always no lions, no more than on London Bridge.

Nevertheless, the Tarasconian did not grow disheartened. Ever bravely diving more deeply into the South, he spent the days in beating up the thickets, probing the dwarf-palms with the muzzle of his rifle, and saying "Boh!" to every bush. And every evening, before lying down, he went into ambush for two or three hours. Useless trouble, however, for the lion did not show himself.

One evening, though, going on six o'clock, as the caravan scrambled through a violet-hued mastic-grove, where fat quails tumbled about in the gra.s.s, drowsy through the heat, Tartarin of Tarascon fancied he heard though afar and very vague, and thinned down by the breeze--that wondrous roaring to which he had so often listened by Mitaine's Menagerie at home.

At first the hero feared he was dreaming; but in an instant further the roaring recommenced more distinct, although yet remote; and this time the camel's hump shivered in terror, and made the tinned meats and arms in the cases rattle, whilst all the dogs in the camps were heard howling in every corner of the horizon.

Beyond doubt this was the lion.

Quick, quick! to the ambush. There was not a minute to lose.

Near at hand there happened to be an old marabout's, or saint's, tomb, with a white cupola, and the defunct's large yellow slippers placed in a niche over the door, and a ma.s.s of odd offerings--hems of blankets, gold thread, red hair--hung on the wall.

Tartarin of Tarascon left his prince and his camel and went in search of a good spot for lying in wait. Prince Gregory wanted to follow him, but the Tarasconian refused, bent on confronting Leo alone. But still he besought His Highness not to go too far away, and, as a measure of foresight, he entrusted him with his pocket-book, a good-sized one, full of precious papers and bank-notes, which he feared would get torn by the lion's claws. This done, our hero looked up a good place.

A hundred steps in front of the temple a little clump of rose-laurel shook in the twilight haze on the edge of a rivulet all but dried up.

There it was that Tartarin went and ensconced himself, one knee on the ground, according to the regular rule, his rifle in his hand, and his huge hunting-knife stuck boldly before him in the sandy bank.

Night fell.

The rosy tint of nature changed into violet, and then into dark blue.

A pretty pool of clear water gleamed like a hand-gla.s.s over the river-pebbles; this was the watering-place of the wild animals.

On the other slope the whitish trail was dimly to be discerned which their heavy paws had traced in the brush--a mysterious path which made one's flesh creep. Join to this sensation that from the vague swarming sound in African forests, the swishing of branches, the velvety-pads of roving creatures, the jackal's shrill yelp, and up in the sky, two or three hundred feet aloft, vast flocks of cranes pa.s.sing on with screams like poor little children having their weasands slit. You will own that there were grounds for a man being moved.

Tartarin was so, and even more than that, for the poor fellow's teeth chattered, and on the cross-bar of his hunting-knife, planted upright in the bank, as we repeat, his rifle-barrel rattled like a pair of castanets. Do not ask too much of a man! There are times when one is not in the mood; and, moreover, where would be the merit if heroes were never afraid?

Well, yes, Tartarin was afraid, and all the time, too, for the matter of that. Nevertheless, he held out for an hour; better, for two; but heroism has its limits. Nigh him, in the dry part of the rivulet-bed, the Tarasconian unexpectedly heard the sound of steps and of pebbles rolling. This time terror lifted him off the ground. He banged away both barrels at haphazard into the night, and retreated as fast as his legs would carry him to the marabout's chapel-vault, leaving his knife standing up in the sand like a cross commemorative of the grandest panic that ever a.s.sailed the soul of a conqueror of hydras.

"Help! this Way, prince; the lion is on me!"

There was silence. "Prince, prince, are you there?"

The prince was not there. On the white moonlit wall of the fane the camel alone cast the queer-shaped shadow of his protuberance. Prince Gregory had cut and run with the wallet of bank-notes. His Highness had been for the month past awaiting this opportunity.

VI. Bagged him at Last.

IT was not until early on the morrow of this adventurous and dramatic eve that our hero awoke, and acquired a.s.surance doubly sure that the prince and the treasure had really gone off, without any prospect of return. When he saw himself alone in the little white tombhouse, betrayed, robbed, abandoned in the heart of savage Algeria, with a one-humped camel and some pocket-money as all his resources, then did the representative of Tarascon for the first time doubt. He doubted Montenegro, friendship, glory, and even lions; and the great man blubbered bitterly.

Whilst he was pensively seated on the sill of the sanctuary, holding his head between his hands and his gun between his legs, with the camel mooning at him, the thicket over the way was divided, and the stupor-stricken Tartarin saw a gigantic lion appear not a dozen paces off. It thrust out its high head and emitted powerful roars, which made the temple walls shake beneath their votive decorations, and even the saint's slippers dance in their niche.

The Tarasconian alone did not tremble.

"At last you've come!" he shouted, jumping up and levelling the rifle.

Bang, bang! went a brace of sh.e.l.ls into its head.

It was done. For a minute, on the fiery background of the African sky, there was a dreadful firework display of scattered brains, smoking blood, and tawny hair. When all fell, Tartarin perceived two colossal Negroes furiously running towards him, brandishing cudgels. They were his two Negro acquaintances of Milianah!

Oh, misery!

This was the domesticated lion, the poor blind beggar of the Mohammed Monastery, whom the Tarasconian's bullets had knocked over.

This time, spite of Mahound, Tartarin escaped neatly. Drunk with fanatical fury, the two African collectors would have surely beaten him to pulp had not the G.o.d of chase and war sent him a delivering angel in the shape of the rural constable of the Orleansville commune. By a bypath this garde champetre came up, his sword tucked under his arm.

The sight of the munic.i.p.al cap suddenly calmed the Negroes' choler.

Peaceful and majestic, the officer with the bra.s.s badge drew up a report on the affair, ordered the camel to be loaded with what remained of the king of beasts, and the plaintiffs as well as the delinquent to follow him, proceeding to Orleansville, where all was deposited with the law-courts receiver.