“No,” said Father Stork, “I don’t suppose you can. And you can’t fly, and you can’t catch frogs and fish, and you can’t build a nest or hatch eggs—can you, little Tsamani? But don’t let that worry you, for grown-up men can’t do these things either, and never think how foolish they are.”
“You are very clever, I know,” said little Tsamani, wondering. “And my father has told me you are very good too. Where do you come from, and where have the other storks gone?”
“I must tell you,” replied Father Stork rather pompously, “for it is impossible to know too much about us. We are, perhaps, the most interesting, the most highly honoured of all birds that fly. Our wisdom, our virtue have been the talk of all ages. We have been favoured by every nation, but the followers of Mohammed have always treated us more kindly than the others. You are a Mohammedan, and this house was built by your great-great-grandfather. Since he built it some of my family have always lived in this corner of the roof. We remain here when our children have joined the great procession to the North, and give up our place to one or other of the children only when we have gone on the still greater journey from which there is no return. Some day you will be a man and the friend of our family, so it is right that I should tell you all you want to know.”
“Why do you sit so closely by your nest?” asked the little boy.
“Because all storks are not honest,” replied the Father of the Red Legs. “These sticks that make the nest are collected with great difficulty and hard work. A dishonest stork—and there are such birds, I’m sorry to say—waits for the parent to leave his nest, and then steals his best twigs. So one has to be very careful.”
The little slave-girl came across the roof-top, but she only heard Father Stork clapping his beak—she could not understand anything of the words he spoke. She was not a “True Believer,” only a little girl stolen by slave-raiders from the Western Sudan, and brought across the terrible desert to the slave-market in Marrakesh, where Tsamani’s father had bought her for a little pile of silver Moorish dollars, amounting in value to about twelve English pounds. It was no part of her business to interfere if her little charge stood by the storks’ nest and Father Stork made that rattling noise with his bill. She was content to stroll round the roof, listening to the tinkle of the camels’ bells, looking down at the people in the streets beyond, or at her master’s other slaves who worked in the patio below, and passed the hours singing, shouting or quarrelling as fancy urged them.
“We have been a long time in the world,” began the stork. “Even in the Bible—which is as the Koran to people in the far countries whither my relatives go—there is a reference to us. A prophet, Jeremiah by name, testified to our wisdom as he watched us in Palestine gathering for our yearly flight. ‘Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth his appointed times,’ he said, realising, as he did, that we followed the seasons with never a mistake or approach to hesitation. His people, the Jews, ancestors of the Hudis who live to-day in the Mellah, called us Chassidim, which means the pious ones, because they understood something of our great love for our children. Can you wonder, then, if we storks are proud? Yet storks were not always birds.”
“What were you?” asked the astonished Tsamani.
“The first stork was born a Sultan,” replied the bird solemnly. “He was a merry soul, but had no fear of Allah. He sat at the head of his high staircase and received his wazeers and subjects. One day, to make them ridiculous, he had the stairs greased; and when grave, pious men were about to salute him, they slipped and fell upon those behind, and all were sorely hurt and confused. Among those hurt was a very great saint whose groans were heard in heaven. Then Allah was wrath with the Sultan, who sat back on his throne convulsed with laughter, moving his head so that his long beard fell and rose from his breast. In an instant the beard became a bill—the Sultan was turned to a stork, and in place of his laughter one heard the chatter of his bill. But happily, on account of our high descent, and our great love for our children, we are set above all other birds.”
“Are you as fond of your three white eggs as my mother is fond of me?” asked Tsamani in astonishment.