Describes a Retreat among the Hills.
Let us turn now, good reader, to a scene more congenial—namely, the garden in front of the British consul’s country residence.
One evening, two weeks after the event just narrated, Ted Flaggan and Rais Ali chanced to meet at the gate.
“Ye’ve got stirrin’ times of it here intirely. Mister Ally Babby,” said the tar, whose familiarity almost verged on impudence; “what betwane you an’ the 40,000 thieves—more or less—in the town, I find it rare entertainment.”
“Yoos complimentary dis marnin’,” returned the interpreter, with a smile.
“It’s always the way with me. I howld that purliteness is chape.—Ye’ve heard the noos, I s’pose?”
“W’at noos?” demanded Ali.
“W’y, the noos that the war betwane this Raigincy of Algiers an’ Tunis is goin’ on raither favourable, and that forty mules were brought in this morning loaded with human heads.”
“Oh yes, I heers dat,” replied Ali carelessly, as he filled his pipe from Flaggan’s tobacco-pouch. “I sees all de hids as I comes up de road dis marnin’. Twinty more mule hims ’xpec’ for come in de morrer mornin’.”
“You don’t mane it!” said Ted. “They seem to be free of their heads away at Tunis.—But there’s more noos than that,” continued the seaman, calmly scanning the seaward horizon, as he filled his pipe. “Have ’ee heard that the Dey Omar has cut off the head of Sidi Hassan for nothin’ worse than a touch of imperliteness?”