Part 43 (1/2)
Stretton looked around impatiently.
”But there is no one within miles,” he exclaimed; and, as if to contradict him, a man walked out from the bushes by the stream and came towards them. He had been robbed on this very track not two hours before by eleven mounted Berbers. He had been driving three mules laden with eggs and food to Mulai Idris, and his mules and their loads had been taken from him. He was walking home, absolutely penniless, His whole fortune had been lost that day; and when once again the travellers started upon their journey he ran at a trot beside their horses for safety's sake.
The road mounted now on to stony and mountainous country. It wound continually, ascending in and out amongst low, round peaks towards the summit of a great line of hills which ran from east to west opposite to them against the sky.
”Beyond the hills,” cried Ibrahim, ”is the plain of the Sebou.”
A big village crowned the hill just where the track ascended. It had been placed there to protect the road. In a little while they came to the brow of the hill, and suddenly they saw, far below them, the great plain of the Sebou, green and level, dotted with villages and the white tombs of saints and clumps of trees, stretching away as far as the eye could reach. It was afternoon, not a cloud was in the sky, and the sun shone through the clear, golden air beneficently bright. The hillside fell away to the plain with a descent so sheer, the plain broke so abruptly upon the eyes, that the very beauty of the scene caught the breath away. Both Warrisden and Stretton reined in their horses, and sat looking across the plain as a man might who suddenly from the crest of some white cliff sees for the first time the sea.
And then Warrisden heard his companion begin to hum a song. He caught some of the words, but not many.
”Oh, come out, mah love, I'm awaitin' foh you heah!” Tony began, and suddenly checked himself with an expression of anger, as though the words had a.s.sociations which it hurt him to recall.
”Let us ride on,” he said, and led the way down the steep, winding track towards the plain.
They pressed on that evening, and camped late in the Beni Ha.s.san country. Stretton slept that night, but he slept fitfully. He had not yet come to the end of his perplexities, and as he rode away from their camping-ground in the morning he said, impulsively--
”It is quite true. I have thought of it. I am to blame. I should have gone into the house that night.”
He was endeavouring to be just, and to this criticism of himself he continually recurred. He should have entered his house in Berkeley Square on the night when he contented himself with looking up to the lighted windows. He should have gone in and declared what was in his mind to do. Very likely he would only have made matters worse.
Contempt for a visionary would very likely have been added to the contempt for a ne'er-do-weel. Certainly no faith would have been felt by Millie in the success of his plan. He would have been asked, in a lukewarm way, to abandon it and stay at home. Still, he ought to have gone in. He had made a mistake that night.
All that day they rode through the Beni Ha.s.san country westwards. The plain was level and monotonous; they pa.s.sed village after village, each one built in a circle round a great s.p.a.ce of open turf, into which the cattle were driven at night. For upon the hills, and in the forest of Mamura to the south, close by, the Z'mur lived, and between the Beni Ha.s.san and the Z'mur there is always war. In the afternoon they came to the borders of that forest, and skirting its edge, towards evening reached the caravanserai of El Kantra.
The travellers saw it some while before they came to it--four high, smooth, castellated walls crowning a low hill. It stands upon the road from Fez to Rabat, and close to the road from Rabat to Larache, and a garrison guards it. For you could almost throw a stone from its walls into the trees of Mamura. Stretton and Warrisden rode round the walls to the gate, and as they pa.s.sed beneath the arch both halted and looked back.
Outside was a quiet country of grey colours; the sun was near to its setting; far away the broken walls of the old Portuguese town of Mediyah stood upon a point of vantage on a hillside, like some ruined castle of the Tyrol. Inside the caravanserai all was noise and shouting and confusion. In the thickness of the walls there were little rooms or cells, and in these the merchants were making their homes for the night, while about them their servants and muleteers buzzed like a hive of bees. And the whole great square within the walls was one lake of filthy mud, wherein camels, and mules, and donkeys, and horses rolled and stamped and fought. A deafening clamour rose to the skies. Every discordant sound that the created world could produce seemed to be brayed from that jostling throng of animals as from some infernal orchestra. And the smell of the place was fetid.
”Let us pitch our camp outside!” said Warrisden. But the captain of the garrison came hurrying up.
”No,” he cried excitedly. ”The Z'mur! The Z'mur!”
Stretton shrugged his shoulders.
”I am getting a little bored with the Z'mur,” said he.
”They have sent in word to us,” the captain continued, ”that they mean to attack us to-night.”
Stretton looked perplexed.
”But why send in word?” he asked.
The captain of the garrison looked astonished at the question.
”So that we may be ready for them, of course,” he replied, quite seriously; for life in Morocco has some of the qualities of _opera-bouffe_. ”So you must come inside. You have a letter from my lord the Basha of Fez, it is true. If the letter said you were to sleep outside the walls of El Kantra, then I would kiss the seal and place it against my forehead, and bring out my five hundred men to guard you, and we should all get killed. But it does not say so.”
His five hundred men were really short of fifty. Stretton and Warrisden laughed; but they had to go inside the caravanserai. This was the last day on which they ran any risk. To-morrow they would cross the Sebou at Mediyah, and beyond the Sebou the road was safe.
They rode inside the caravanserai, and were allotted a cell which obtained some privacy from a hurdle fixed in the ground in front of it. The gates of the caravanserai were closed, the sunset flushed the blue sky with a hue of rose; the mueddhin came out upon the minaret which rose from the southern wall, and chanted in a monotone his call to prayer; and then a drummer and a bugler advanced into the crowded square. Suddenly there fell upon Stretton's ears, competing with the mueddhin and the uproar of the animals, the ”Last Post.”