Bab Bab 30 · IV. The Caravan on the March.

. IV. The Caravan on the March.

LEAVING Milianah at the earliest hour next morning, the intrepid

Tartarin and the no less intrepid Prince Gregory descended towards

the Shelliff Plain through a delightful gorge shaded with jessamine,

carouba, tuyas, and wild olive-trees, between hedges of little native

gardens and thousands of merry, lively rills which scampered down from

rock to rock with a singing splash--a bit of landscape meet for the

Lebanon.

As much loaded with arms as the great Tartarin, Prince Gregory had, over

and above that, donned a queer but magnificent military cap, all covered

with gold lace and a trimming of oak-leaves in silver cord, which gave

His Highness the aspect of a Mexican general or a railway station-master

on the banks of the Danube.

This plague of a cap much puzzled the beholder; and as he timidly craved

some explanation, the prince gravely answered:

“It is a kind of headgear indispensable for travel in Algeria.”

Whilst brightening up the peak with a sweep of his sleeve, he instructed

his simple companion in the important part which the military cap plays

in the French connection with the Arabs, and the terror this article of

army insignia alone has the privilege of inspiring, so that the Civil

Service has been obliged to put all its employees in caps, from the

extra-copyist to the receiver-general. To govern Algeria (the prince is

still speaking) there is no need of a strong head, or even of any head

at all. A military cap does it alone, if showy and belaced, and shining

at the top of a non-human pole, like Gessler’s.

Thus chatting and philosophising, the caravan proceeded. The barefooted

porters leaped from rock to rock with ape-like screams. The guncases

clanked, and the guns themselves flashed. The natives who were passing,

salaamed to the ground before the magic cap. Up above, on the ramparts

of Milianah, the head of the Arab Department, who was out for an airing

with his wife, hearing these unusual noises, and seeing the weapons

gleam between the branches, fancied there was a revolt, and ordered the

drawbridge to be raised, the general alarm to be sounded, and the whole

town put under a state of siege. A capital commencement for the caravan!

Unfortunately, before the day ended, things went wrong. Of the black

luggage-bearers, one was doubled up with atrocious colics from having

eaten the diachylon out of the medicine-chest: another fell on the

roadside dead drunk with camphorated brandy; the third, carrier of

the travelling-album, deceived by the gilding on the clasps into the

persuasion that he was flying with the treasures of Mecca, ran off into

the Zaccar on his best legs.

This required consideration. The caravan halted, and held a council in

the broken shadow of an old fig-tree.

“It’s my advice that we turn up Negro porters from this evening

forward,” said the prince, trying without success to melt a cake of

compressed meat in an improved patent triple-bottomed sauce-pan. “There

is, haply, an Arab trader quite near here. The best thing to do is to

stop there, and buy some donkeys.”

“No, no; no donkeys,” quickly interrupted Tartarin, becoming quite red

at memory of Noiraud. “How can you expect,” he added, hypocrite that he

was, “that such little beasts could carry all our apparatus?”

The prince smiled.

“You are making a mistake, my illustrious friend. However weakly and

meagre the Algerian bourriquot may appear to you, he has solid loins. He

must have them so to support all that he does. Just ask the Arabs. Hark

to how they explain the French colonial organisation. ‘On the top,’ they

say, ‘is Mossoo, the Governor, with a heavy club to rap the staff; the

staff, for revenge, canes the soldier; the soldier clubs the settler,

and he hammers the Arab; the Arab smites the Negro, the Negro beats

the Jew, and he takes it out of the donkey. The poor bourriquot having

nobody to belabour, arches up his back and bears it all.’ You see

clearly now that he can bear your boxes.”

“All the same,” remonstrated Tartarin, “it strikes me that jackasses

will not chime in nicely with the effect of our caravan. I want

something more Oriental. For instance, if we could only get a camel”--

“As many as you like,” said His Highness; and off they started for the

Arab mart.

It was held a few miles away, on the banks of the Shelliff. There were

five or six thousand Arabs in tatters here, grovelling in the sunshine

and noisily trafficking, amid jars of black olives, pots of honey, bags

of spices; and great heaps of cigars; huge fires were roasting whole

sheep, basted with butter; in open air slaughter-houses stark naked

Negroes, with ruddy arms and their feet in gore, were cutting up kids

hanging from crosspoles, with small knives.

In one corner, under a tent patched with a thousand colours, a Moorish

clerk of the market in spectacles scrawled in a large book. Here was a

cluster of men shouting with rage: it was a spinning-jenny game, set on

a corn-measure, and Kabyles were ready to cut one another’s throats over

it. Yonder were laughs and contortions of delight: it was a Jew trader

on a mule drowning in the Shelliff. Then there were dogs, scorpions,

ravens, and flies--rather flies than anything else.

But a plentiful lack of camels abounded. They finally unearthed one,

though, of which the M’zabites were trying to get rid--the real ship of

the desert, the classical, standard camel, bald, woe-begone, with a long

Bedouin head, and its hump, become limp in consequence of unduly long

fasts, hanging melancholically on one side.

Tartarin considered it so handsome that he wanted the entire party to

get upon it. Still his Oriental craze!

The beast knelt down for them to strap on the boxes.

The prince enthroned himself on the animal’s neck. For the sake of the

greater majesty, Tartarin got them to hoist him on the top of the hump

between two boxes, where, proud, and cosily settled down, he saluted

the whole market with a lofty wave of the hand, and gave the signal of

departure.

Thunderation! if the people of Tarascon could only have seen him!

The camel rose, straightened up its long knotty legs, and stepped out.

Oh, stupor! At the end of a few strides Tartarin felt he was losing

colour, and the heroic chechia assumed one by one its former positions

in the days of sailing in the Zouave. This devil’s own camel pitched and

tossed like a frigate.

“Prince! prince!” gasped Tartarin pallid as a ghost, as he clung to the

dry tuft of the hump, “prince, let’s get down. I find--I feel that I

m-m-must get off; or I shall disgrace France.”

A deal of good that talk was--the camel was on the go, and nothing could

stop it. Behind it raced four thousand barefooted Arabs, waving their

hands and laughing like mad, so that they made six hundred thousand

white teeth glitter in the sun.

The great man of Tarascon had to resign himself to circumstances. He

sadly collapsed on the hump, where the fez took all the positions it

fancied, and France was disgraced.