Still no tidings of our long looked for orders to be gone. All our companions in adversity, the Persian, the man with the “sad heart,” the tribesmen in the tent which had been pitched close to our own; even the three Sheikhs from Sus at last had gone, having, after their long delay, settled their business and assured me of their friendship should I visit Sus, their minds made up never again to venture inside the lion’s den. Our tents alone, like mushrooms, dotted the Maidan, and over all the valley the late autumn sun shed a deep calm, making the hills stand out as if cut out of cardboard in the middle distance of a theatre.
The enormous mud-built castle, with its flat roofs and flat-topped flanking towers, took a prehistoric air, and for the first time I imagined I was looking at some old Carthaginian building; for its architecture resembled nothing I had ever seen, being as unlike an Arab Kasbah as to a feudal castle in the north, with somehow a suggestion of a teocalli, such as Bernal Diaz, or Cortes, described in Mexico; or as if related in some curious way to the great buildings in Palenque, temples at Apam, or the more ancient dwellings of the Aztec race upon the Rio Gila. Sheep walked behind their shepherds, who played upon reed pipes as in the times of Hesiod; goats went to pasturage, the kids skipping and playing with the ragged boys, whilst from the distance came the wild sound of the Moorish Ghaita, which, like the bagpipes, is ever most alluring heard from afar; from the hills floated the scent of thyme, germander, gum cistus, and the aromatic undergrowth of this last outpost of the European flora, jutting into the sands of Africa. The river prattled on its stony bed, and on its bank the horses of the Kaid went down to drink, and listlessly I strolled to look at them, thinking, perhaps, that I should have to wait until the autumn rains had made the mountain paths impassable, and that the Kaid would be obliged to send me back against his will through the mysterious passes of the south.
As I mused, drinking in the strange semi-Arcadian, semi-feudalistic scene, the Chamberlain, attended by his guards, crossed the Maidan, came to my tent, and, sitting down, informed me that it was the pleasure of the Kaid that we should start. I asked had the rekass arrived from the Sultan; but the Chamberlain would give no definite reply, until I told him that our men had seen the messenger arrive. What were the exact terms of the Sultan’s message I did not learn, but they could not have been extremely pleasant, either for me or for the Kaid; for in Morocco the Sultan never likes to be put in the position of risking complications with Europeans who might appeal to their home Government, and usually casts all the onus both of action and of failure on his Kaids.
Now was the time to make a last despairing effort to go on to Tarudant; therefore, I tried the Chamberlain in every way I could think of, but without success. Though I had not by this time half the money with me, I offered him a hundred dollars, to which he answered as before, “What is the use to me of a hundred or a thousand dollars without my head?” I shifted ground, and said I could not think of leaving without a personal interview with the Kaid to thank him for his hospitality. But here again the faithful Chamberlain was ready with a message, “that it pained his Excellency not to receive me, but his wound had broken out afresh, and that he sent many salaams and wished me a prosperous journey back to the coast.” So as a last resource I asked the Chamberlain “What if I get on horseback, and ride straight on to Sus?” only to be met with a grave question if I thought I had the best horse in the valley, and if, supposing any tribesman was to fire by accident, I thought my clothes were stout enough to turn a ball.
Seeing there was no chance, I made a virtue of necessity, ordered my tent to be taken down, and all got ready for the road.
The Chamberlain behaved with infinite tact, allowing no one to come near us, either to steal or ask for money, and took his “gratification” with an air of having earned it by laborious work; then shook my hand, and said he hoped some day to meet me, and that I was to think he had only acted as he had, by the orders of his chief. He then shook hands, first with Lutaif, then with Mohammed-el-Hosein and Swani, and took his leave, leaving us all alone on the Maidan, in a broiling sun, with nothing to eat, and ten or twelve hours of the hardest mountain roads to pass before it was possible to procure food for our animals or for ourselves. How all the others felt I do not know; but for myself, when I reflected on my journey lost, my twelve days of detention, and how near I had been to reaching Tarudant, being stopped but by the merest chance, I felt inclined to laugh. Knowing that almost all the houses were in ruins on the way, and that the only place where it was possible to buy barley for the mules was at a little castle called Taquaydirt-el-Bur, which belonged to the Kaid, and the Sheikh of which was known as a fanatical and disagreeable man, I sent Lutaif to the castle for the last time to get a letter from the Kaid to his lieutenant on the road. Quite evidently they were determined we should go, for in about half an hour Lutaif returned with the letter and a negress carrying some bread and couscousou, on which we made a hearty breakfast, knowing that we should get nothing more till night.
When one has little to pack, arrangements for a journey are soon despatched, and we had nothing but our tent and a few rugs; no food, no barley for the mules, and the precious stock of medicines, which was to have made my name in Tarudant, was long run out. The men all worked like schoolboys packing to go home, especially Mohammed-el-Hosein, who had never thought to leave the place alive, or at the least to lose his mules, and be well beaten for his pains. His spirits rose enormously, and he assured me he was ready even now to try the road by Agadhir. Swani sang Spanish and English sailors’ songs, not to be quoted until the “woman movement” either makes women accustomed to the tone of much of sailors’ conversation, or else refines our mariners and makes their talk more fit for ears polite, or hypocritical. Ali was like a man in a dream, and felt his mule all over to see if it had suffered by the long exposure to heat and rain, with barely any food. It winced, and kicked at him to show its love, and to assure him that its spirit was not injured by its fast.
So all being ready, and not a soul about, I mounted, took the black Amsmizi horse by the head and felt his mouth, touched him with the spur, and let him run across the empty Maidan, turned him and made him rear, and plunging down the steep path to the beach, just met the horses of the Kaid for the last time, being led out to drink. The wounded cream colour, now almost quite recovered, stood up and gave a long defiant neigh, and as we rode under the castle walls upon the stony bed of the N’fiss, the figure of the Chamberlain appeared, and waved to us in a friendly fashion, so that my last impression of the place was his grave figure, silent and robed in white, and the fierce stallion neighing on the beach.
About a mile, following the river’s bed, the trail leads through a scrub of oleanders, rises and enters a fantastic path worn in the limestone rock, cut here and there into pyramids and pinnacles by time, by traffic, and by winter rains, and looking something like the “seracs” formed in the ice upon the edge of certain glaciers. We followed it about a quarter of a mile, and turning, saw the castle of the Thelata-el-Jacoub for the last time.
But as I checked my horse, who, now his little spurt of spirit over, felt the twelve days’ lack of food, and hung his head, I gazed upon the monstrous mud-built, yellowish-red pile, marked once again the olive grove upon the edge of the Maidan, just caught the mosque tower with its green metallic tiles, the cornfields, and the wild, narrow valley stretching to the snow-capped hills, the river like a steel wire winding in and out between its steep high banks, and in my heart thanked fortune which, no doubt for some wise (though hidden) purpose of its own, had kept me prisoner for twelve well-filled days in such a place. Lutaif, in spite of all his piety, as he took his last look at the valley of Kintafi, I fancy muttered something which sounded like an imprecation on Mohammed and his faith, but yet confessed that even in the Lebanon there was no valley wilder or more beautiful than that of the N’fiss. Mohammed-el-Hosein felt at his beard as if to assure himself it still grew on his chin, and without stint cursed Kaid and castle, tribe, place, and all the dwellers in it to the fourth and fifth generation of the sons of mothers who never yet said No. Swani was of opinion that of all men he had seen the Shillah were the most like Djins, and beat even the Jaui, [249] who, as all men knew, are sprung from monkeys, in ill-favouredness of face and wickedness of heart.