And then four months later it was all sharply recalled.
He was at home and they were sitting out under the big cedar on the lawn when the second post arrived. “Here’s your lot—catch!” said his brother throwing some letters across to him.
“Oh! can I have the stamp?” shrieked a small nephew, as he saw a foreign postmark.
The budget fell just short of Forde and landed face downwards, the white blank of a postcard staring at him from the grass.
He gazed at it silently. A passing breeze shook the roses on the terrace and a few crimson petals loosened themselves, fluttered a moment and floated soundlessly to the ground. There seemed to him a pause in the warm stir of summer and then a voice cried gaily, “Hullo, who’s your absent-minded friend?”
CHAPTER VI
SFAX
Sfax, like Kairouan and Sousse, is a walled town and the Souks are even more fascinating than those of Kairouan. The European part of the town is quite separate, and is picturesquely built in the Moorish style, the wide streets planted with palms running across to the harbour with its busy shipping. It is a very flourishing place, the centre of the olive oil industry and also the port for the phosphates which are obtained in such quantities near Metlaoui and other places. These mines seem almost inexhaustible, and new veins are always being discovered. One sees truckloads and truckloads of the stuff, looking like sand, coming along the line. In running the hand through it, one finds quantities of fishes’ teeth, quite whole and perfect and so sharp that they can pierce leather. Some are as large as the teeth of a fox, pointed and white, and there are some that have two fangs or even three. The phosphates are one of the richest products of this country. The ‘ore’ is sometimes shipped direct from Sfax, being loaded into vessels specially prepared to carry it, or it is first chemically treated in the neighbourhood and then exported as super-phosphate. The mining districts contain a large population of workers, chiefly immigrants, with French managers in authority.
