“What rubbish, to din me about the Orient!” grumbled the great Tartarin; “there are not even as many Turks here as at Marseilles.”
All of a sudden he saw a splendid camel strut by him quite closely, stretching its long legs and puffing out its throat like a turkey-cock, and that made his heart throb. Camels already, eh? Lions could not be far Off now; and, indeed, in five minutes’ time he did see a whole band of lion-hunters coming his way under arms.
“Cowards!” thought our hero as he skirted them; “downright cowards, to go at a lion in companies and with dogs!”
For it never could occur to him that anything but lions were objects of the chase in Algeria. For all that, these Nimrods wore such complacent phizzes of retired tradesmen, and their style of lion-hunting with dogs and game-bags was so patriarchal, that the Tarasconian, a little perplexed, deemed it incumbent to question one of the gentlemen.
“And furthermore, comrade, is the sport good?”
“Not bad,” responded the other, regarding the speaker’s imposing warlike equipment with a scared eye.
“Killed any?”
“Rather! Not so bad—only look.” Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed that it was rabbits and woodcock stuffing out the bag.
“What! do you call that your bag? Do you put such-like in your bag?”
“Where else should I put ‘em?”