We started at daybreak, and marched eastward, still keeping the chain of mountains on our left. After a march of three hours, Ben Faka pitched the camp on the left bank of the Ouet Mina, upon a plateau covered with empty silos. Not a tent or even a single Arab was to be seen: the horsemen were obliged to ride for three or four hours in search of barley for their horses.
On the 4th of October we again struck our camp, and marched to within half a league of the wooded mountains I have mentioned above. Ben Faka pitched the camp on a small plain by the side of a stream which runs into the Ouet Mina. This plain is uncultivated, and in the winter it is so overflowed by the Ouet Mina as to look like a lake. It is covered with shrubs resembling the sweet briar, which bear a fruit like the medlar, only smaller, and containing a kernel. Like all the shrubs of this country, these swarm with large white snails and slugs enough to feed an army for some days. Next day we continued our march westward, bearing a few degrees to the north. We quitted the banks of the Ouet Mina, but the wooded mountain was still to our left.
After six hours’ march we halted on a plateau covered with heaps of stones which looked like the ruins of a town: but Abd-el-Kader and his marabouts told us they had never heard of the existence of one on that spot.
On the 6th of October, after a march of two hours, the camp was pitched on a plateau at the eastern extremity of the plain of Mascara, at a place called Teknifil. Near it, on five hillocks, stand five marabouts. Here we heard that the French had sent an expedition from Oran, and that General Létang was marching on El-Borgj, a village two leagues to the north of Teknifil. Abd-el-Kader immediately went to El-Borgj with all his cavalry, and forced the inhabitants to abandon it. Next day the baggage, the flocks, the women, and children of the Borgia tribe were scattered about the plain, and orders were likewise sent to the inhabitants of Mascara, which is four leagues from Teknifil, to abandon the place. We stayed at Teknifil a fortnight, during which time Abd-el-Kader gathered together all the tribes that remained faithful to him, and when his army amounted to five or six thousand he followed the French to the plains of Macta. Every day couriers arrived at the camp with false news, either that the French were surrounded on all sides, or that they had been cut to pieces by the Sultan. The Arabs announced the news to us, and accompanied it by blows, abuse, and menaces of death. Moreover, we were half starved, and the hopes with which Abd-el-Kader’s kindness had inspired us were now turned into despair.
Our days seemed long and gloomy: the Arabs maltreated us, and separated Meurice and me from the coral fishers. We had talked so long of our hopes, our home, and our families, that these subjects were quite worn out. At last, in order to pass the time, I set to work to make a chess board and a pack of cards. I stole a board from one of the powder chests (which it was my great amusement to water, at the risk of my life), and divided it into squares: I then cut some chess men out of branches of oleander: I also stole a few sheets of paper, for which Ben Faka beat me with a stick, and made a pack of cards of them. My knaves were jockeys with pipes in their mouths, and red, green, and white jackets; the queens were ladies dressed in the European fashion,—one with a bonnet, another with a foulard, another with hair dressed à la Chinoise, and the fourth with long ringlets in the English style; the kings had huge crowns on their heads. Ben Faka and Ben Abu, who had the care of Abd-el-Kader’s tent during his absence, sent Meurice and me to guard it during great part of the day; for Christians and slaves as we were, they trusted us far more than the Arabs. The cushions and the sofa had been removed, and we were especially commanded to touch nothing in the tent, as the touch of a Christian would defile anything belonging to the Sultan. We lay on the carpet of this august and holy dwelling, and played at chess and picquet. The marabouts, in spite of their horror of any representation of the human face or figure, were struck with admiration at the accuracy with which I had copied the European costume in my knaves and queens. They were very anxious to understand the game of picquet, and overpowered us with questions about every card we played. Their cards are quite different to ours, and I have seen draughts in their cafés but no chess boards, though one day when Abd-el-Kader saw me playing at chess with Meurice, he said, “My grandfather used sometimes to play with pieces like those on a draught board.”
On the 20th of October, after a halt of fourteen days at the five marabouts, during which time we were exposed to threats, blows, and cruel privations, the tents were struck. A courier arrived at the camp, in the middle of the night, with the news that the French were marching towards Oran, and that the Sultan would be at Mascara on the morning of the 21st. In spite of the lateness of the hour (it was midnight) Ben Faka ordered the troops and the baggage to set out. There was a thick fog, and we suffered cruelly from the cold and damp, which I am sure laid the seeds of the illness under which poor Meurice finally sank. Meurice and I were mounted on the mules which carried the Sultan’s coffers. Each quarter of an hour we heard the voice of Ben Faka calling through the darkness, “France! Meurice! are you on your mules?” “Yes.” “Don’t get down, and above all don’t change with any of the horsemen.” “Never fear.” Ben Faka’s uneasiness was not without cause: he was responsible for any disorder that might happen during the march, and he was always afraid that if we quitted our mules the soldiers of the escort would pillage the Sultan’s treasure; for dogs and Christians as we were, Ben Faka knew that we were more trustworthy than the proud Arab warriors. With the first rays of the sun, we arrived with all the treasure safe at the pretty town of Mascara.
The camp was pitched at the foot of the mountain which bounds the plain of Mascara on the north. A little stream, whose banks were covered with oleanders, ran through the midst of it. Mascara stands in the centre of a mountain gorge, on a steep and precipitous hill; the white and cheerful-looking houses are surrounded by a perfect grove of fig trees, and a few graceful poplars and slender minarets rise like lances among them. The view was so charming that I stole a sheet of paper and went outside the camp to sketch it. But I had scarce begun, when a mounted chaous rode up to me and gave me a blow with his stick. To avoid a repetition of it, I ran back to the tent with my unfinished sketch.
A courier brought the news of Abd-el-Kader’s arrival at the camp, and the infantry instantly armed and went about ten minutes’ march towards Mascara, where it drew up in two lines. Presently the cavalry arrived at full gallop, and was drawn up by Muftar in two bodies behind the infantry. As soon as Abd-el-Kader had passed them, the last soldiers, both horse and foot, quitted the line, and ran to place themselves in two rows before his tent. As he entered it, three discharges of cannon from Mascara announced the Sultan’s return to the neighbouring tribes. The soldiers kept up a constant firing in honour of the great victory which the Sultan had gained over the French.
All that day the camp was in a state of great confusion; horsemen belonging to the adjacent tribes were continually coming and going, and feeding their horses in the camp: this, added to the cries of joy and exultation, and the incessant galloping and firing of the soldiers, produced an indescribable tumult and clamour.
At sunset Abd-el-Kader mounted his horse, accompanied by a few marabouts and the thirty negroes, and rode to his wife’s tent, which is pitched three or four miles to the south of Mascara, on a spot near which Abd-el-Kader has a garden and a marabout.