For a little way the friends walked along the wild and beautiful road, which from Michélet plunges down the mountains toward Bougie and the sea; but soon they came to the narrow, ill-defined footpath described by the landlord. It led straight up a steep shoulder of rock which at its highest part became a ledge; and when they had climbed to the top, at a distance they could see a cluster of red roofs apparently falling down a precipice, at the far end.
Here and there were patches of snow, white as fallen lily-petals on the pansy-coloured earth. Looking down was like looking from a high wave upon a vast sea of other waves, each wave carrying on its apex a few bits of broken red mosaic, which were Kabyle roofs; and the pale sky was streaked with ragged violet clouds exactly like the sky and clouds painted on screens by Japanese artists.
They met not a soul as they walked, but while the village was still far away and unreal, the bark of guns, fired quickly one after the other, jarred their ears, and the mountain wind brought a crying of raïtas, African clarionettes, and the dull, yet fierce beat of tom-toms.
"Now I know why we've met no one," said Nevill. "The wedding feast's still on, and everybody who is anybody at Yacoua, is there. You know, if you're an Arab, or even a Kabyle, it takes you a week to be married properly, and you have high jinks every day: music and dancing and eating, and if you've money enough, above all you make the powder speak. Mouni's people are doing her well. What a good thing we've got the watch! Even with Josette's introduction we mightn't have been able to come near the bride, unless we had something to offer worth her having."
The mountain village of Yacoua had no suburbs, no outlying houses. The one-story mud huts with their pointed red roofs, utterly unlike Arab dwellings, were huddled together, with only enough distance between for a man and a mule or a donkey to pass. The best stood in pairs, with a walled yard between; and as Stephen and Nevill searched anxiously for some one to point out the home of Mouni, from over a wall which seemed to be running down the mountain-side, came a white puff of smoke and a strident bang, then more, one after the other. Again the wailing of the raïta began, and there was no longer any need to ask the way.
"That's where the party is—in that yard," said Nevill, beginning to be excited. "Now, what sort of reception will they give us? That's the next question."
"Can't we tell, the first thing, that we've come from Algiers with a present for the bride?" suggested Stephen.
"We can if they understand Arabic," Nevill answered. "But the Kabyle lingo's quite different—Berber, or something racy of the soil. I ought to have brought Mohammed to interpret."
So steeply did the yard between the low houses run downhill, that, standing at the top of a worn path like a seam in some old garment, the two Europeans could look over the mud wall. Squalid as were the mud huts and the cattle-yard connecting them, the picture framed in the square enclosure blazed with colour. It was barbaric, and beautiful in its savagery.
Squatting on the ground, with the last rank against the house wall, were several rows of women, all unveiled, their uncovered arms jewelled to the elbows, embracing their knees. The afternoon sunlight shone on their ceremonial finery, setting fire to the red, blue and green enamel of their necklaces, their huge hoop earrings and the jewelled silver chains pinned to their scarlet or yellow head-wrappings, struck out strange gleams from the flat, round brooches which fastened their gaily striped robes on their shoulders, and turned their great dark eyes into brown topazes. Twenty or thirty men, dressed in their best burnouses, draped over new gandourahs, their heads swathed in clean white muslin turbans, sat on the opposite side of the court, watching the "powder play" furnished by two tall, handsome boys, who handled with delicate grace and skill old-fashioned, long-muzzled guns inlaid with coral and silver, heirlooms perhaps, and of some value even to antiquaries.