How I missed the aid of Toto one day when—he being far away in Kent, and we living near Tangier—I was at my wits' end for a dinner, and trying my hardest to catch a fowl! It was Ramadan—that terrible time when everything goes wrong and everybody is cross—and no wonder; the cruel fast, more strictly kept in orthodox Morocco than it is in most Oriental lands, forbidding the votaries of Islam, from sunrise to sunset, not only to touch food, but even to moisten their parched lips with water—and this in hot weather too! No wonder the sunset gun, instead of being to them the welcome signal for a feast, often finds them so faint and exhausted that they are in no hurry to begin eating. And no wonder, too, that Moorish servants—never very far behind those of South Africa in stupidity—are at this time a greater trial of patience than ever. One does not like to be hard on them, and the minimum of work is given to them; but everything is done so badly that their services might almost as well be dispensed with until the fast is over. Altogether, during this time of woe, the tempers of employers and employed are about equally tried.
Mohammed, our genius, who at the best of times was sure to forget one or more important items of the day's marketing, had on this occasion omitted just everything that was necessary to make a dinner. The bread was there, to be sure, so too were figs and dates; but, all having been put loose into the donkey's panniers and well jolted along the roughest of roads, the eatables had become so hopelessly mixed up with a large dab of native soft soap, bought for the week's washing, that they were only disentangled with difficulty, and the most careful cleansing failed to make them fit for human food. An earthenware jar of honey had been bought; but, being unprovided with a stopper, and left to roll about in the pannier as it pleased, it had poured its contents as a libation along the road, and, when complacently handed to me by Mohammed, was perfectly empty. All the non-edible articles of the day's orders had been carefully remembered, and stowed well away from the soap; but of fish, flesh, or fowl there was no sign. The poor fasting man could not be sent all the way back to Tangier to make good the deficiencies; yet a dinner had to be found somehow for T—— and for a gentleman guest, and with the aid of the servants I set to work to catch one of our own fowls.
But I little knew what I was attempting. Our garden, on the steep slopes of Mount Washington, with its many terraces and walks, flights of rough stone steps, and tangle of luxuriant vegetation, offered so many points of vantage to the active birds, that at the end of half an hour we were all exhausted with running, breathless and giddy with the heat; while the fowls, on the contrary, fresher and livelier than ever, seemed mocking all our efforts to catch them; and in despair I took from its hiding-place a little weapon of defence, provided in view of possible midnight visits from burglarious Moors.
Grasping the revolver in one hand, and with the other treacherously holding out a sieve of barley, I stalked one fowl after another in most unsportsmanlike fashion; inviting the guileless creatures to feed, and then firing at them, sometimes so close that it seemed as if the intended victim must be blown to pieces. But no, there he was, when the smoke cleared away, going off with a triumphant chuckle; wilder and more wary with each unsuccessful shot.
What was to be done? Time was passing; T—— would be coming home hungry by dinner-time, ready for something better than a vegetarian repast; and some creature or other—I began to feel that I did not very much care what—had not only to be caught and killed, but also cooked. Reckless and desperate, I began firing indiscriminately, even on my laying hens; but, gladly though I would have killed the best of them, not one could I hit. At last all the hunted birds were in a state of the wildest excitement; none were in sight, and an agonized chorus of cackling resounded from all parts of the garden, as if the largest and most venomous of snakes had been seen. Flinging down the revolver in disgust, I meditated the crowning baseness of snatching the poor old sitting hen from the eggs on which she had quietly sat throughout the commotion, when—joyful sight—Mohammed, who had mysteriously vanished, suddenly reappeared, triumphantly holding up by the neck a plucked fowl. It was but a poor, scraggy, spidery-looking thing, all legs and wings, and with an appearance of having kept Ramadan no less strictly than the Moorish owners from whose hut the poor fellow—anxious to retrieve his fault—had brought it. But it was something off which to dine; and never was the fattest Christmas turkey more welcome than was its timely appearance.
The rearing of fowls in South Africa is attended with endless difficulties and discouragements. Frequent epidemics of the fatal disease known as "fowl-sickness" decimate the poultry-yard, which, at the best of times, and with all care, can never be kept sufficiently stocked to supply the needs of the hot weather. Every possible foe of the gallinaceous tribe abounds in the Karroo; snakes invade the hen-house, and the blackmail which they levy on the eggs always amounts to what the Americans call "a large order;" birds of prey of many different sorts are constantly sailing over head, with sharp eyes on the look-out for opportunities of plunder; and jackals, wild cats, lynxes—or, as the Dutch call them, rooikats—and numerous other four-legged free-booters pounce at night on those hens foolish enough to make their nests far from the comparative safety of the house; the occasional discovery, in some distant bush, of a collection of empty eggshells and a heap of drifted feathers proclaiming what has been the fate of some long-missing hen or turkey.
Altogether, the poultry-keeper's troubles are considerably multiplied by the surpassing imbecility of the Karroo hens, which have no idea of taking care of themselves, and, like the ostriches, stoutly oppose all efforts made for their own welfare and that of their offspring. Their insanely erratic conduct during sitting causes by far the larger proportion of nests to come to nothing; and when they have succeeded in hatching a few chickens, they look as if they did not quite know what to do with them.
Secretary birds are sometimes taught to be very useful guardians of the poultry-yard, especially against aerial enemies,—the long-legged, solemn-looking creature stalking about all day among his feeble-minded charges, with much consciousness of his own importance. He is accused of now and then taking toll in the shape of an occasional egg or young chicken—the latter being of course bolted, anaconda-fashion; but his depredations are not extensive, and one tolerates them as one does those of the courier who, though himself not entirely above suspicion, takes good care that his master is robbed by no one else.
Our secretary, Jacob, whose education had been neglected in youth, refused to make himself useful as a protector of the poultry-yard. His character, never the most amiable, deteriorated rapidly after we brought him up-country, carefully packed for the long railway journey; the numerous bandages in which he was swathed to secure his long, slender legs from breakage giving him—but for his protruding, vulture-like head—the appearance of a gigantic ibis-mummy. Our first plan of making him trudge on foot along the road with the Walmer caravan of ostriches was given up, as we felt sure that, with his already-mentioned "cussedness," he would give more trouble to the herds than all the rest of the troop together, and either get a knock on the head to settle him, or else escape, never to be heard of again. At any rate, he would be quite sure not to arrive at his destination.
Poor Jacob did not flourish in the Karroo, where kittens were scarce, and where no butcher's cart brought daily and ample supplies for his colossal appetite; and an existence in which fresh meat was so rare a luxury must have been for him a kind of perpetual Lent.