After Tizi Ouzou the mountains were no longer sterile-seeming. The road coiled up and up snakily, between rows of leering cactus; and far below the densely wooded heights lay lovely plains through which a great river wandered. There was a homely smell of mint, and the country did not look to Stephen like the Africa he had imagined. All the hill-slopes were green with the bright green of fig trees and almonds, even at heights so great that the car wallowed among clouds. This steep road was the road to Fort National—the "thorn in the eye of Kabylia," which pierces so deeply that Kabylia may writhe, but revolt no more. Already it was almost as if the car had brought them into another world. The men who occasionally emerged from the woolly white blankets of the clouds, were men of a very different type from the mild Kabyles of the plains they had met trooping along towards Algiers in search of work.
These were brave, upstanding men, worthy of their fathers who revolted against French rule and could not be conquered until that thorn, Fort National, was planted deeply in heart and eye. Some were fair, and even red-haired, which would have surprised Stephen if he had not heard from Nevill that in old days the Christian slaves used to escape from Algiers and seek refuge in Kabylia, where they were treated as free men, and no questions were asked.
Without Fort National, it seemed to Stephen that this strange Berber people would never have been forced to yield; for looking down from mountain heights as the motor sped on, it was as if he looked into a vast and intricate maze of valleys, and on each curiously pointed peak clung a Kabyle village that seemed to be inlaid in the rock like separate bits of scarlet enamel. It was the low house-roofs which gave this effect, for unlike the Arabs, whom the ancient Berber lords of the soil regard with scorn, the Kabyles build their dwellings of stone, roofed with red tiles.
This was a wild, tormented world, broken into a hundred sharp mountain ridges which seemed to cut the sky, because between the high peaks and the tangled skein of far-away villages surged foaming seas of cloud, which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range, billowed ridges and ravines, ravines and ridges, each pointing pinnacle or razor-shelf adorned with its coral-red hamlet, like a group of poisonous fungi, or the barnacles on a ship's steep side. Such an extraordinary landscape Stephen had never imagined, or seen except on a Japanese fan; and it struck him that the scene actually did resemble quaint prints picturing half-real, half-imaginary scenes in old Japan.
"What a country for war! What a country for defence!" he said to himself, as Nevill's yellow car sped along the levels of narrow ridges that gave, on either hand, vertical views far down to fertile valleys, rushed into clouds of weeping rain, or out into regions of sunlight and rainbows.
It was three o'clock when they reached Michélet, but they had not stopped for luncheon, as both were in haste to find Mouni: and Mouni's village was just beyond Michélet. Since Fort National, they had been in the heart of Grand Kabylia; and Michélet was even more characteristic of this strange mountain country, so different from transplanted Arabia below.
Not an Arab lived here, in the long, straggling town, built on the crest of a high ridge. Not a minaret tower pointed skyward. The Kabyle place of worship had a roof of little more height or importance than those that clustered round it. The men were in striped brown gandourahs of camel's hair; the lovely unveiled women were wrapped in woollen foutahs dyed red or yellow, blue or purple, and from their little ears heavy rings dangled. The blue tattoo marks on their brown cheeks and foreheads, which in forgotten times had been Christian crosses, gave great value to their enormous, kohl-encircled eyes; and their teeth were very white as they smiled boldly, yet proudly, at Stephen and Nevill.
There was a flight of steps to mount from the car to the hotel, and as the two men climbed the stairs they turned to look, across a profound chasm, to the immense mass of the Djurdjura opposite Michélet's thin ledge. From their point of view, it was like the Jungfrau, as Stephen had seen it from Mürren, on one of his few trips to Switzerland. Somehow, those little conventional potterings of his seemed pitiable now, they had been so easy to do, so exactly what other people did.
It was long past ordinary luncheon time, and hunger constrained the two men to eat before starting out to find the village where Mouni and her people lived. It was so small a hamlet, that Nevill, who knew Kabylia well, had never heard of it until Josette Soubise wrote the name for him on one of her own cards. The landlord of the hotel at Michélet gave rapid and fluent directions how to go, saying that the distance was two miles, but as the way was a steep mountain path, les messieurs must go on foot.
Immediately after lunching they started, armed with a present for the bride; a watch encrusted with tiny brilliants, which, following Josette's advice, they had chosen as the one thing of all others calculated to win the Kabyle girl's heart. "It will be like a fairy dream to her to have a watch of her own," Josette had said. "Her friends will be dying of envy, and she will enjoy that. Oh, she will search her soul and tell you everything she knows, if you but give her a watch!"