The land of the Bey

by T. Wemyss Reid

Their dirty brats and wenches;

And they crawl from bales and benches

In a hundred thousand stenches.

For Greeks read Algerians—and really I hardly think it is necessary to change the word—and one has a very fair picture in Thackeray’s delightful doggerel of the white squall of this afternoon.

Two hours after leaving Bone we reached La Calle, a small, desolate-looking town pitched at the bottom of a deep bay, and, like all these North African ports, surrounded by an amphitheatre of brown hills. La Calle is famous as one of the great seats of the coral fishery, and this fishery is carried on by a colony of Italians. Unfortunately for the comfort of persons wishing to visit La Calle, these Italians are employed to convey passengers from the steamer to the tiny little harbour, and this afternoon they gave us a “taste of their quality” which was worthy of the very worst days of the Sicilian and Neapolitan banditti. The sea was running, I won’t say mountains, but certainly hillocks, high, and the steamboat was rolling incessantly. Under the best of circumstances the transfer of the passengers from the vessel to small boats must therefore have been a work of considerable risk. Indeed, at one moment you saw a little cockle-shell of a boat waiting to convey passengers twenty feet off in the trough of the sea, and the next instant it was being jammed against the ladder which the trembling voyagers had to descend. But to add to the ordinary perils of transhipment under such conditions, the worthy coral-fishers of La Calle, who I am convinced had left their country for their country’s good, engaged in the fiercest struggle over each hapless passenger as he got to the foot of the ladder. They shrieked and swore and tore their hair; they uttered blasphemies so foul and horrible that one was thankful that their language was to a great extent unintelligible; they aimed furious blows at each other with oars and boat-hooks, and thought nothing of endeavouring to stave in the side of a rival boat, though they must have known that its occupants would assuredly have been drowned if they had succeeded. It was a naval battle on a small scale, and I confess that as I looked at it, as I saw these frail little craft tossed to and fro by the boiling sea, and beheld their owners, apparently possessed by the most maniacal fury, striking and cutting and cursing at each other, regardless of imminent danger to themselves, I became as much absorbed in the spectacle as though I were looking on at a new Trafalgar.

But when the unfortunate passengers, trembling girls and women, and men who seemed to share their terrors, became involved in the struggle, rage and indignation came uppermost in my breast, and I was strongly tempted to try whether the sight of a revolver might not have reduced these ruffians to some degree of quietude. It was really piteous to see one poor woman, evidently in a very delicate state of health, and perfectly livid with terror, led down the heaving ladder. In the extremity of her alarm she implored us all, as we were Christians, to let her die in peace on board the steamer. She had been exceedingly sick on the passage from Bone, and one would have thought she would have hailed the prospect of reaching land with delight. But the horrors of that middle passage from the ship to the shore were too much for her. And then as she clung convulsively to her husband and a stout sailor on the slippery plank at the foot of the ladder which the waves every moment threatened to submerge, the ruffians in the boats made straight for her, and literally endeavoured to tear her from her husband’s grasp. At each moment I expected to see the whole group fall into the sea; but at last the poor creature was flung, almost senseless from fright, into the bottom of one of the boats, her baby was tossed in after her as though it had been a bundle, and the husband, after finding himself buried to his waist in a green sea which suddenly swept up the side of the Charles Quint, was permitted to join them. So the work went on for an hour or more, forming one of the most painful and exciting spectacles I ever beheld. I am not particularly timid about matters of this sort; but I confess I would not have landed at La Calle this afternoon under any pressure short of that of absolute necessity. Many persons are drowned every year on this coast in the attempt to land, much of the risk and consequent loss of life arising from the atrocious misbehaviour of the boatmen.

At last, when the shades of night were closing in, we turned our backs upon La Calle, and once more made direct for the Gulf of Tunis. By this time we were in something more than a mere squall. The wind was blowing strong from the south-west, and the sea was following the big steamer in huge green waves which seemed trying to catch and overwhelm us. How we pitched and rolled, and staggered and tossed and thumped along! The dinner-bell rang, and I turned into the saloon. Of course the “fiddles” were on the table; but even those detestable instruments did not prevent half my soup being emptied into my waistcoat, or a bottle of Bordeaux from pouring in a crimson tide over the tablecloth. Colonel Allegro was the only passenger who joined me at the meal; and it was eaten under difficulties of no ordinary kind. At one moment the colonel seemed to be lying on his back immediately below me, whilst plates, knives, forks, and glasses all appeared to be slipping towards him, with intent to disappear in his huge open mouth; at the next he was glaring down upon me from an inaccessible height, from which he was discharging at my devoted head the crockery and cutlery he had just been upon the point of swallowing.

Of course, we laughed and joked and made the best of it; but really the greatest joke of all was the attempt to eat under such circumstances. I was not surprised when my good friends, the Corsican Brothers, rose solemnly from their chairs, held on hard whilst they made polite bows to myself and the colonel, and then staggered away with interlocked arms and white faces into the darkness of the deck. Even the captain looked uncomfortable, and, for my part, I frankly confess that I should at that moment have preferred the humblest fare upon a plain deal board on solid earth to the most sumptuous repast that could have been served on this table that was behaving itself like a rocking-horse bewitched. With profound thankfulness I drank my coffee and cognac, and recognized the fact that dinner was over. I tried to smoke on deck, but soon found that it would be necessary to be lashed to one’s seat in order to be secure; so I gave up the attempt and turned into my berth. Even here it was with the greatest difficulty that I could keep myself inside the berth, the ship rolling so violently that more than once I was flung out upon the floor of the cabin, much after the fashion in which a sack of coals is discharged from a cart. I picked myself up, bruised and sore, and tried to sleep. But the screams of the frightened passengers all around me, the crash of falling boxes, and the thunder of the waves as they washed over the deck, made slumber impossible. So about eleven o’clock I made my way as best I could upon deck once more.

It was a magnificent sight which met my eyes, as I clung to the hand-rail of the hurricane-deck and peered out into the gloomy night. Heavy black clouds were flitting rapidly across the sky, the phosphorescent sea was boiling brilliantly on every side of the Charles Quint; on the starboard the long line of the coast could be seen, and through the heaving waves our noble ship went staggering along after the fashion of a Dover and Calais packet, whilst its progress was accompanied by the discordant shrieking of the wind in the cordage overhead. It was when I had finally turned in for the night, after giving a reassuring answer to an unfortunate fellow-passenger, who was convinced that all hope of our ever touching land again was gone, that I had occasion to undergo an experience which might furnish a theme for an admirable discourse. I had foolishly placed my watch under my pillow, and in one of my struggles to retain my place in my berth I broke the glass. It was a very small matter, but it is the small miseries of life that are the worst to bear; and I confess I was in no philosophic temper as, holding on like grim death to the side-board of my berth with one hand, I scraped up the broken fragments of glass as best I could with the other, and endeavoured to make it possible for me to get into bed again in safety.

Monday, October 17th.—After the storm a calm! When I awoke this morning, about seven o’clock, the brilliant sunshine was streaming in at my port, and all was perfectly still and silent in my cabin. It was difficult to realize the fact that this sedate little chamber had been going through all the antics which had tormented me a few hours earlier; but alas! there was evidence of the truth in the state of the floor, upon which the contents of one of my portmanteaus had been scattered in a promiscuous fashion. I did not lose much time in turning out, and then, indeed, I beheld a sight which more than repaid me for anything I had suffered on the previous day. The ship was at anchor in the Bay of Tunis. Do you ask me to describe the Bay of Tunis? Pray have you ever read a description of the Bay of Naples, or the Bosphorus, or the Gulf of Smyrna? No words can do justice to the exquisite scene that presented itself as I stepped upon deck this morning. The great bay is almost land-locked. To the east is a fine range of billowy hills, called the Lead Mountains, famous both for their mineral treasures and their hot springs. In the dim distance the blue peaks of the Zaghouan range were to be descried, the range of mountains that look down upon the far-famed city of Kairwan. Directly in front of me were the white houses of Goletta, among which the curious water-palace of the Bey, built upon piles and standing out into the waves, was conspicuous. Away to the west was the stony amphitheatre, rich with the memories of two thousand years, where once stood Carthage, the very spot from which Dido looked with longing eyes upon the white sails of her hero-lover as they floated over this lovely bay; and beyond Carthage, with its great College of St. Louis now dominating the spot, was the lofty peak on the edge of which is built the walled Arab town of Sidi bou Said. Everywhere there were fine hills in graceful outline sweeping down to the fresh blue waters of the Gulf, and everywhere there were strange tropical trees, lofty date-palms and straggling prickly pears, to remind me that I was no longer in Europe; whilst at every point white-walled towns and rambling palaces or fortresses met the eye. And then for our foreground we had the bay with its crowd of shipping, among which was one beautiful craft, the Bittern, from which floated the English flag. It was a lovely and refreshing scene, and as I drank in all its details with eager eye I felt thankful that I had not allowed myself to be deterred from coming here by any of the exaggerated tales of dangers and horrors which I had heard at home or on my way hither.