And with her cutting-whip she viciously snapped off the heads of some poppies. The episode of Tarquin's answer to the emissary of Sextus occurred to me, and I felt that if my colleague, Horace St. J——, were there, he would have passed a very bad quarter of an hour.
The females of our party joined us, and I formally presented them, taking a malicious pleasure in emphasizing the "your Highness." The Shereefa received them right graciously, but it was easy to notice that a chill came over the conversation. They were careful never to use the title to their English sister. In fact, it was a tacit ladies' battle.
It was time to leave, and the Shereefa presented her visitors with two nosegays, gathered by her own hands. The act had in it something very royal, with the smallest trace of sly condescension. The Shereef accompanied us to the outer gate. On the way I motioned to Captain No. 1 to offer him a cigar. He did; his Highness accepted it, bowed, and gravely put it in his pocket. As we stood on the road at parting, a peasant was passing with a load of twigs on his shoulders. He cast them off, threw himself on his knees, kissed the hem of the holy man's garments, and the back of his proffered hand.
We were descending the hill when a rustle in the bushes attracted me, and a white face peeped out and a voice besought me in English to stop. It was the Shereefa's London lady's-maid. She could not resist the temptation of enjoying a few sentences with one of her own race. From her I learned that there were twenty-seven Moorish women in her master's household; that there was a tank at Wazan large enough to float a ship; that her master had been married before, and had two sons and a lovely Mahometan child, a daughter, to whom the Shereefa was teaching English and the piano; "but remember, please," and here she grew important, and had all the dignity of a retainer, with a great sense of what was due to her caste and the proprieties, "that my mistress's children, if she have any, will be Europeans!"
As we got back to our hotel the muezzins were summoning the faithful to their vesper orisons, and Albert was moaning ruefully under the sideboard. Mrs. Captain had out her sweetly pretty pet at once, and covered him with caresses and endearments.
"Somebody has given him something that has disagreed with him. Was it you?" she said to me, and there was that in her tone which made me quake in my shoes.
Meekly and truthfully I protested that I had not; I had fed him in the morning in her own presence; the darling was in his usual health and spirits when we left, but—intercede for me, Puck, and you aerial imps of mischief, for no other spirit will—I could not help murmuring in audible soliloquy, "The carcase of that mongoose, which was on the square outside this morning, is no longer there."
The scene that followed, to borrow the hackneyed phrase, beggars description. The house was turned upside down; to my mental vision arose sal volatile and burnt feathers, swoons and hysterics. Mahomet's dove alone can tell how all might have ended had not the Frenchman suggested a bolus. Captain No. 1 and I were commissioned to inquire into the mystery of the disappearance of that baleful mongoose. When we got out of earshot of the hotel there was the popping of a cork, and we emptied effervescing beakers to the speedy recovery of Albert the Beloved. Certes, that bull-dog had a very bad fit of dyspepsia; but the bolus did him a world of good, and before we retired to rest we had the felicity to hear him crunching a bone. Peace spread its wings over our pillows.
The next day we took a trip to the lighthouse on Cape Spartel, the women labouring in the field making curious inspection of the cavalcade as it wended by, but quickly turning away their faces as we males tried to snatch a look at them. The road was no better than a rugged track on a stony plateau. There was a spacious view from the Phare, which was an iron and stone building put up at the cost of three or four of the European Powers (I forget which now), the keepers being chosen from each of the contributory nations. The Sultan had given the site, but refused to hand over a blankeel towards the expenses, arguing that as he had no fleet, he had no personal object in making provision against wrecks. We were well mounted, but these Barbary cattle have a nasty trick of lashing out, so that it is prudent to give a wide range to their hind-hoofs. Mahomet, riding with very short stirrups, led the party. My saddle was an ancient, rude, and rotten contrivance, and as I loitered on the road home, giving myself up to idle fantasy, my friends got on far ahead. Waking from my day-dream I gave the nag the heel, and as it sprang forward at a canter the girth turned completely round, and I was pitched over in unpleasant nearness to a hedge of cactus. The ground was soft, and I was not much bruised; but when I rose the nag had disappeared round a corner, and I was left alone in the African twilight. Presently a sinewy fiery-eyed Moor came with panther-step in sight leading me back the nag. He had a basket of oranges on his back, and gave me one with a respectful salaam as I vaulted on my Arab steed and galloped Tangier-ward bareback.
Judging from the scanty rags upon him, this man was of the poorest, yet he asked for nothing; there were sympathy, innate politeness and independence withal in his bearing. To him I abandoned the saddle; it was the least he might have for his friendly act. Talking over this incident with the Frenchman at Bruzeaud's, who knew the country, he told me that the Moor was intelligent, honest, faithful to his engagements, and had a go in him that, under advantageous circumstances, would enable him to spring again to his former height of power and riches. But he struck me as happy, although some of his social customs recalled the feudal age, and he lived under the always-present contingency of decapitation. May it be long before speculation rears the horrid front of a joint-stock hotel in Tangier, or the prospectors go divining for copper, coal, iron, silver and gold. I could wish the Moorish women, however, would wash their children's heads occasionally, and not take them up by the ankles when they spank them. After a sojourn in every way pleasurable—pshaw! Albert's illness was a trifle, and we soon resigned ourselves to the miseries of the prisoners on the hill—we ate our last morsel of the Jewish pasch-bread of flour and juice of orange, cracked our last bottle of champagne, and took our leave of the Dark Continent with lightsome heart. The impression this little by-journey left upon me was so agreeable that I could not avoid the enticement to communicate it to the reader. If I have wandered from romantic Spain, it was only to take him to a land more romantic still.