By the time the little camp was astir and the charcoal fires had done their duty to eggs, coffee, and porridge, Pepe Ratto, accompanied by two of his Berber trackers, rode into the valley, and dismounted on the level ground where our tent was pitched. At first sight the sportsman stood revealed in our welcome visitor. The man whose name will be handed down to future generations in the annals of Morocco's sport would attract attention anywhere. Tall, straight, sunburnt, grizzled, with keen grey eyes and an alert expression, suggesting the easy and instantaneous change from thought to action, Pepe Ratto is in every inch of him a sportsman. Knowing South Morocco as few Europeans know it, and having an acquaintance with the forest that is scarcely exceeded by either Moor or Berber, he gives as much of his life as he can spare to the pursuit of the boar, and he had ridden out with his hunters this morning from his forest home, the Palm Tree House, to meet us before we left the Argans behind, so that we might turn awhile on the track of a "solitaire" tusker.
So the mules were left to enjoy an unexpected rest while their owners enjoyed an uninterrupted breakfast, and the kaid was given ample time in which to groom his horse and prepare it and himself for sufficiently imposing entrance into the Picture City[53] that evening. Salam was instructed to pack tents and boxes at his leisure, before he took one of my sporting guns and went to pursue fur and feather in parts of the forest immediately adjacent to the camp. A straight shot and a keen sportsman, I knew that Salam would not bother about the hares that might cross his path, or birds that rose in sudden flight away from it. His is the Moorish method of shooting, and he is wont to stalk his quarry and fire before it rises. I protested once that this procedure was unsportsmanlike.
"Yes, sir," he replied simply. "If I wait for bird to fly may be I miss him, an' waste cartridge."
A NARROW STREET IN MOGADOR
This argument was, of course, unanswerable. He would follow birds slowly and deliberately, taking advantage of wind and cover, patient in pursuit and deadly in aim. Our points of view were different. I shot for sport, and he, and all Moors, for the bag. In this I felt he was my superior. But, barring storks, all creatures were game that came within Salam's range.
No Moor will harm a stork. Even Moorish children, whose taste for destruction and slaughter is as highly developed as any European's, will pick up a young stork that has fallen from its nest and return it to the mother bird if they can. Storks sit at peace among the women of the hareem who come for their afternoon airing to the flat roof-tops of Moorish houses. Moorish lovers in the streets below tell the story of their hopes and fears to the favoured bird, who, when he is chattering with his mandibles, is doing what he can to convey the message. Every True Believer knows that the stork was once a Sultan, or a Grand Wazeer at least, who, being vain and irreligious, laughed in the beards of the old men of his city on a sacred day when they came to pay their respects to him. By so doing he roused the wrath of Allah, who changed him suddenly to his present form. But in spite of misdeeds, the Moors love the stately bird, and there are hospitals for storks in Fez and Marrakesh, where men whose sanctity surpasses their ignorance are paid to minister to the wants of the sick or injured among them. Many a time Salam, in pursuit of birds, has passed within a few-yards of the father of the red legs or his children, but it has never occurred to him to do them harm. Strange fact, but undeniable, that in great cities of the East, where Muslims and Christians dwell, the storks will go to the quarter occupied by True Believers, and leave the other districts severely alone. I have been assured by Moors that the first of these birds having been a Muslim, the storks recognise the True Faith, and wish to testify to their preference for it. It is hard to persuade a Moor to catch a stork or take an egg from the nest, though in pursuit of other birds and beasts he is a stranger to compunction in any form.
One of the trackers gave me his horse, and Pepe Ratto led the way down the stream for a short distance and then into thick scrub that seemed to be part of wild life's natural sanctuary, so quiet it lay, so dense and undisturbed. After the first five minutes I was conscious of the forest in an aspect hitherto unknown to me; I was aware that only a man who knew the place intimately could venture to make a path through untrodden growths that were left in peace from year to year. It was no haphazard way, though bushes required careful watching, the double-thorned lotus being too common for comfort.