Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

According to the Hoyle of travelers a glimpse of Morocco was next in order. But with the absurdity of things inanimate and Oriental both the Tangiers steamers were scheduled to loll out the day in harbor. When "Skittles" had again stowed away my chattels, I drifted aimlessly out into the city. But the old eagerness to tread Spanish soil was soon upon me, heightened now by the sight of Algeciras gleaming across the bay. The harbor steamer would have landed me there a mere peseta poorer. Instead, I sauntered through the Landport gate and away along the shifting highway which the Holder of the Rock has dubbed, in his insular tongue, the "Road to Spain."

It led me past the double rank of sentry boxes between which soldiers of England tramp everlastingly, and into bandit-famed La Linea. A Spaniard in rumpled uniform scowled out upon me from the first stone hovel, but, finding me empty-handed, as silently withdrew. I turned westward through the disjointed town and out upon the curving shore of the bay.

Here was neither highway nor path. Indeed, were each Spanish minute tagged with a Broadway price-mark, the peseta would have been dearly saved, for the apparent proximity of Algeciras had been but a tricking of the eye. Hour after hour I waded on through seashore sand, halting now and then in the shadow of some time-gnawed watch-tower of the departed Moor, before me such a survey of the shimmering sea to the very base of the hazy African coast as amply to justify the setting of an outlook on this jutting headland.

The modern guardian of the coast dwells more lowly. Every here and there I came upon a bleached and tattered grass hut just out of reach of the languid surf, and under it a no less ragged and listless carabinero squatted in Arabic pose and tranquillity, musket within reach, or frankly and audibly asleep on his back in the sand. Yet his station, too, was wisely chosen. The watch and ward of to-day is set for no war-trimmed galley from the rival continent, but against petty smugglers skulking along the rim of the bay. Nor could the guard better spend his day than asleep: his work falls at night.

It was the hour of siesta when I shuffled up a sandy bank into Algeciras. Except for a cur or two that slunk with wilted tail across the plaza, the town lay in sultry repose. I sat down in a shaded corner of the square. Above me nodded the aged city tower, housing the far-famed and often-cursed bell of Algeciras. Recently, which is to say some time during the past century, it was cracked from rim to crown; and the city fathers have not yet taken up the question of its replacement. Meanwhile, it continues afflictingly faithful to its task. At quarter-hourly intervals it clanked out across the bay like the suspended hull of a battleship beaten with the butt of a cannon, a languid sigh rose over the drowsing city, and silence settled down anew.

As the shadows spread, life revived, slowly and yawningly at first, then swelling to a contrasting merry-making that reached its climax toward midnight in the festooned streets beyond the plaza. Algeciras was celebrating her annual feria. Somewhere I fell in with a carpenter in blouse and hemp sandals, whose Spanish flowed musically as a woodland brook, and together we sauntered out the evening among the lighted booths. The amusement mongers were toiling lustily. Gypsy and clown, bolerina, juggler, and ballad-singer drew each his little knot of idlers, but a multitude was massed only around the gambling tables. Here a hubbub of excited voices assailed the ear; an incessant rain of coins fell on the green cloth, from the ragged and the tailored, from quavering crones and little children. The carpenter dived into the fray with his only peseta, screaming with excitement as the wheel stopped on the number he had played. Within an hour a pocket of his blouse was bulging with silver. I caught him by the sleeve and shouted a word in his ear. Wild horses could not have dragged him away, nor the voices of sirens have distracted his eyes from the spinning trundle. A half-hour later he did not possess a copper.

"If you had listened," I said, when we had reached a conversational distance, "you would not have lost your fortune."

"What fortune!" he panted. "All I have lost, señor, is one peseta, and had an evening of a lifetime."

I caught the morning steamer to Gibraltar and an hour later was pitching across the neck of the Mediterranean on board the Gebel Dersa. Third-class fare to Africa was one peseta; first-class, ten; and the difference in accommodation about forty feet,--to wit, the distance from the forward to the afterdeck. One peseta, indeed, seemed to be the fixed charge for any service in this corner of the world. My evening meal, the night's lodging, the boatman's fee for setting me aboard the steamer had each cost as much. It would be as easy to quote a fixed selling-price for mining-stocks as to set the value of that delusive Spanish coin. The summer's average, however, was close upon sixteen cents for the peseta, of which the céntimo is the hundredth part. There are at large, be it further noted, a vast number of home-made pesetas worth just sixteen cents less, which show great affinity for the stranger's pocket until such time as he learns to emulate the native and sound each coin on the stone set into every counter.

It was while we were skirting the calcined town of Tarifa that I made the acquaintance of Aghmed Shat. The introduction was not of my seeking--but of the ingratiating ways of Aghmed I need say nothing, known as he is by every resident of our land. At least I can recall no fellow-countryman whose visiting-card he did not dig up from the abysmal confusion of his inner garments.