Part 15 (1/2)
In the distance the sea shone. The white roofs glittered in the moonbeams. On the sea breeze was heard the strumming of a few belated guitars. The Tarasconian muezzin gathered himself up for the effort during a s.p.a.ce, and then, raising his arms, he set to chanting in a very shrill voice:
”La Allah il Allah! Mahomet is an old humbug! The Orient, the Koran, bashaws, lions, Moorish beauties--they are all not worth a fly's skip!
There is nothing left but gammoners. Long live Tarascon!”
Whilst the ill.u.s.trious Tartarin, in his queer jumbling of Arabic and Provencal, flung his mirthful maledictions to the four quarters, sea, town, plain and mountain, the clear, solemn voices of the other muezzins answered him, taking up the strain from minaret to minaret, and the believers of the upper town devoutly beat their bosoms.
VIII. Tarascon again!
MID-DAY has come.
The Zouave had her steam up, ready to go. Upon the balcony of the Valentin Cafe, high above, the officers were levelling telescopes, and, with the colonel at their head, looking at the lucky little craft that was going back to France. This is the main distraction of the staff. On the lower level, the roads glittered. The old Turkish cannon breaches, stuck up along the waterside, blazed in the sun. The pa.s.sengers hurried, Biskris and Mahonnais piled their luggage up in the wherries.
Tartarin of Tarascon had no luggage. Here he comes down the Rue de la Marine through the little market, full of bananas and melons, accompanied by his friend Barba.s.sou. The hapless Tarasconian left on the Moorish strand his gun-cases and his illusions, and now he had to sail for Tarascon with his hands in his otherwise empty pockets. He had barely leaped into the captain's cutter before a breathless beast slid down from the heights of the square and galloped towards him. It was the faithful camel, who had been hunting after his master in Algiers during the last four-and-twenty hours.
On seeing him, Tartarin changed countenance, and feigned not to know him, but the camel was not going to be put off. He scampered along the quay; he whinnied for his friend, and regarded him with affection.
”Take me away,” his sad eyes seemed to say, ”take me away in your s.h.i.+p, far, far from this sham Arabia, this ridiculous Land of the East, full of locomotives and stage coaches, where a camel is so sorely out of keeping that I do not know what will become of me. You are the last real Turk, and I am the last camel. Do not let us part, O my Tartarin!”
”Is that camel yours?” the captain inquired.
”Not a bit of it!” replied Tartarin, who shuddered at the idea of entering Tarascon with that ridiculous escort; and, impudently denying the companion of his misfortunes, he spurned the Algerian soil with his foot, and gave the cutter the shoving-off start. The camel sniffed of the water, extended its neck, cracked its joints, and, jumping in behind the row-boat at haphazard, he swam towards the Zouave with his humpback floating like a bladder, and his long neck projecting over the wave like the beak of a galley.
Cutter and camel came alongside the mail steamer together.
”This dromedary regularly cuts me up,” observed Captain Barba.s.sou, quite affected. ”I have a good mind to take him aboard and make a present of him to the Zoological Gardens at Ma.r.s.eilles.”
And so they hauled up the camel with many blocks and tackles upon the deck, being increased in weight by the brine, and the Zouave started.
Tartarin spent the two days of the crossing by himself in his stateroom, not because the sea was rough, or that the red fez had too much to suffer, but because the deuced camel, as soon as his master appeared above decks, showed him the most preposterous attentions. You never did see a camel make such an exhibition of a man as this.
From hour to hour, through the cabin portholes, where he stuck out his nose now and then, Tartarin saw the Algerian blue sky pale away; until one morning, in a silvery fog, he heard with delight Ma.r.s.eilles bells ringing out. The Zouave had arrived and cast anchor.
Our man, having no luggage, got off without saying anything, hastily slipped through Ma.r.s.eilles for fear he was still pursued by the camel, and never breathed till he was in a third-cla.s.s carriage making for Tarascon.
Deceptive security!
Hardly were they two leagues from the city before every head was stuck out of window. There were outcries and astonishment. Tartarin looked in his turn, and what did he descry! the camel, reader, the inevitable camel, racing along the line behind the train, and keeping up with it!
The dismayed Tartarin drew back and shut his eyes.
After this disastrous expedition of his he had reckoned on slipping into his house incognito. But the presence of this burdensome quadruped rendered the thing impossible. What kind of a triumphal entry would he make? Good heavens! not a sou, not a lion, nothing to show for it save a camel!
”Tarascon! Tarascon!”