The lake water was salt, but there was a spring among the hills, and
when the hawks were resting (they rested every second day) Owen
liked to go there and lie under the tamarisks, dreaming of Sicily,
of "the visionary flocks" and their shepherds no less visionary,
comparing the ideal with the real, for before him flocks grazed up
the hillside and his eyes followed the goats straying in quest of
branches, their horns tipped with the wonderful light which threw
everything into relief--the bournous of the passing bedouin, the
woman's veil, whether blue or grey, the queer architecture of the
camels and dromedaries coming up through a fold in the hills from
the lake, following the track of the caravans, their long, bird-like
necks swinging, looking, Owen thought, like a great flock of
migrating ostriches.
It was pleasant to lie and dream this pastoral country and its
people, seen through a haze of fine weather which looked as if it
would never end. The swallows had just come over and were tired;
Owen was provoking enough to drive them out of the tamarisks just to
see how tired they were, and was sorry for one poor bird which could
hardly keep out of his way. Whence had they come? he asked,
returning to a couch of moss. Had any of them come from Riversdale?
Perhaps some had been hatched under his own eaves? (Any mention of
Riversdale was sufficient to soften Owen's heart.) And now under the
tamarisks his thoughts floated about that bleak house and its
colonnade, thinking of a white swallow which had appeared in the
park one year; friends were staying with him, every one had wanted
to shoot it, but leave had not been granted; and his natural
kindness of heart interested him as he lay in the shade of the
tamarisks, asking himself if the white swallow would appear,
thinking that the bird ought to nod to him as it passed, smiling at
the thought, and the smile dying as his dragoman approached; for he
was coming to teach him Arabic. Owen liked to exercise his
intelligence idly; a number of little phrases had already been picked
up, and his learning he tried on the bedouins as they came up the
hill from the lake, preferring speech with them rather than with his
own people, for his own people might affect to understand him, his
dragoman might have prompted them, whereas the new arrivals afforded
a more certain examination, and Owen was pleased when the bedouin
understood him.
Next day he was hawking, and the day after he was again under the
tamarisks learning Arabic, and so the days went by between sport and
study without his perceiving them until one morning Owen found the
spring in possession of a considerable caravan, some five and twenty
or thirty camel-drivers and horsemen; and anxious to practise the
last phrases he had acquired, he went forward to meet the Saharians,
for they were easily recognisable as such by the blacker skin and a
pungent blackness in the eyes. The one addressed by Owen delighted
him by answering without hesitation:
"From Laghouat."
The hard, guttural sound he gave to the syllables threw the word into
wonderful picturesqueness, enchanting Owen. It was the first time he
had heard an Arab pronounce this word, so characteristically
African; and he asked him to say it again for the pleasure of
hearing it, liking the way the Saharian spoke it, with an accent at
once tender and proud, that of a native speaking of his country to
one who has never seen it.
"How far away is--?"
Owen tried to imitate the guttural.
"Fifteen days' journey."
"And what is the road like?"
With the superlative gesture of an Arab the man showed the smooth
road passing by the encampment, moving his arms slowly from east to
west to indicate the circuit of the horizon.
"That is the Sahara," he added, and Owen could see that for the
bedouin there was nothing in the world more beautiful than empty
space and low horizons. It was his intention to ask what were the
pleasures of the Sahara, but he had come to the end of his Arabic
and turned to his dragoman reluctantly. Dragoman and Saharian
engaged in conversation, and presently Owen learned that the birds in
the desert were sand grouse and blue pigeons, and when the Saharian
gathered that these did not afford sufficient sport he added, not
wishing a stranger should think his country wanting in anything:
"There are gazelles."
"But one cannot catch gazelles with hawks."
"No," the Saharian answered, "but one can catch them with eagles."
"Eagles!" Owen repeated. "Eagles flying after gazelles!" And he
looked into the Arab's face, lost in wonderment, seeing a
picturesque cavalcade going forth, all the horses beautiful,
champing at their bits.
"But the Arab is too picturesque," he thought; for Owen, always
captious, was at that moment uncertain whether he should admire or
criticise; and the Arabs sat grandly upright in their high-pummelled
saddles of red leather or blue velvet their slippered feet thrust
into great stirrups. He liked the high-pummelled saddles; they were
comfortable to ride long distances in, and it was doubtless on these
high pummels that the Arabs carried the eagles (it would be
impossible to carry so large a bird on a gloved hand); and criticism
melted into admiration. He could see them riding out with the eagles
tied to the pummels of their saddles, looking into the yellow
desert; the adjective seemed to him vulgar--afterwards he discovered
the desert to be tawny. "It must be a wonderful sight... the gazelle
pursued by the eagle!" So he spoke at once to his dragoman,
telling him that he must prepare for a long march to the desert.
"To the desert!" the dragoman repeated.
"Yes, I want to see gazelles hunted by eagles," and the grave Arab
looked into Owen's blonde face, evidently thinking him a petulant
child.
"But your Excellency--" He began to talk to Owen of the length of the
journey--twenty days at least; they would require seven, eight, or
ten camels; and Owen pointed to the camels of the bedouins from the
Sahara. The dragoman felt sure that his Excellency had not examined
the animals carefully; if his Excellency was as good a judge of
camels as he was of horses, he would see that these poor beasts
required rest; nor were they the kind suited to his Excellency. So
did he talk, making it plain that he did not wish to travel so far,
and when Owen admitted that he had not fixed a time to return to
Tunis the dragoman appeared more unwilling than ever.
"Well, I must look out for another dragoman"; and remembering that
one of his escort spoke French, and that himself had learned a
little Arabic, he told the dragoman he might return to Tunis.
"Well, my good man, what do you want me to do?" And seeing that the
matter would be arranged with or without him, the Arab offered his
assistance, which was accepted by Owen, and it now remained for the
new dragoman to pay commission to the last, and for both to arrange
with the Saharians for the purchase of their camels and their
guidance. Laghouat was Owen's destination; from thence he could
proceed farther into the desert and wander among the different
archipelagoes until the summer drove him northward.
The sale of the camels--if not their sale, their hire--for so many
months was the subject of a long dispute in which Owen was advised
not to interfere. It would be beneath his dignity to offer any
opinion, so under the tamarisks he sat smoking, watching the Arabs
taking each other by the shoulders and talking with an extraordinary
volubility. It amused him to watch two who appeared to have come to
an understanding. "They're saying, 'Was there ever any one so
unreasonable? So-and-so, did you hear what he said?'" Drawing long
pipes from their girdles, these two would sit and smoke in silence
till from the seething crowd a word would reach them, and both would
rush back and engage in the discussion as violently as before.
Sometimes everything seemed to have been arranged and the dragoman
approached Owen with a proposal, but before the proposal could be
put into words the discussion was renewed.
"In England such a matter as the sale of a few camels would not
occupy more than half a dozen minutes."
"All countries have their manners and all have their faults," the
dragoman answered, an answer which irritated Owen; but he had to
conceal his irritation, for to show it would only delay his
departure, and he was tired of hawking, tired of the lake and
anxious to see the great desert and its oases. And he felt it to be
shameful to curse the camels. Poor animals! they had come a long way
and required a few days' rest before beginning their journey
homewards.
Three days after they were judged to be sufficiently rested; this did
not seem to be their opinion, for they bleated piteously when they
were called upon to kneel down, so that their packs might be put
upon them, and upon inquiring as to the meaning of their bleats Owen
was told they were asking for a cushion--"Put a cushion on my back
to save me from being skinned."
"Hail to all!"
And the different caravans turned north and south, Owen riding at the
head of his so that he might think undisturbed, for now that
everything had been decided, he was uncertain if the pleasure he
would get from seeing gazelles torn by eagles, would recompense him
for the trouble, expense, and fatigue of this long journey. He
turned his horse to the right, and moved round in his saddle, so
that he might observe the humps and the long, bird-like necks and the
shuffling gait of the camels. They never seemed to become ordinary to
him, and he liked them for their picturesqueness, deciding that the
word "picturesque" was as applicable to them as the word "beautiful"
is applicable to the horse. He liked to see these Arab horses
champing at their cruel bits, arching their crests; he liked their
shining quarters, his own horse a most beautiful, courageous, and
faithful animal, who would wait for him for hours, standing like a
wooden horse; Owen might let him wander at will: for he would answer
his whistle like a dog and present the left side for him to mount,
from long habit no doubt. And the moment Owen was in the saddle his
horse would draw up his neck and shake all the jingling
accoutrements with which he was covered, arch his neck, and spring
forward; and when he did this Owen always felt like an equestrian
statue. And he admired the camel-drivers, gaunt men so supple at the
knee that they could walk for miles, and when the camel broke into a
trot the camel-driver would trot with him. And the temperance of
these men was equal to that of their beasts, at least on the march;
a handful of flour which the camel-driver would work into a sort of
paste, and a drink from a skin was sufficient for a meal. Running by
the side of their beasts, they urged them forward with strange
cries; and they beguiled the march with songs. His musical instincts
were often awakened by these and by the chants which reached him
through the woof of his tent at night. He fell to dreaming of what a
musician might do with these rhythms until his thoughts faded into a
faint sleep, from which he was awakened suddenly by the neighing of
a horse: one had suddenly taken fire at the scent of a mare which a
breeze had carried through the darkness.
The first bivouacs were the pleasantest part of his journey, despite
the fact that he could find no answer to the question why. he had
undertaken it, or why he was learning Arabic; all the same, these
days would never be forgotten; and he looked round... especially
these nights, every one distinct in his mind, the place where
yesterday's tent had been pitched, and the place where he had laid
his head a week ago, the stones which three nights ago had prevented
him from sleeping.
"These experiences will form part of my life, a background, an
escapement from civilisation when I return to it. We must think a
little of the future--lay by a store like the bees"; and next
morning he looked round, his eyes delighting in the beauty of the
light. Truly a light sent from beyond skies in which during the
course of the day every shade of blue could be distinguished. A thin,
white cloud would appear towards evening, stretch like a skein of
white silk across the sky, to gather as the day declined into one
white cloud, which would disappear, little by little, into the
sunset. As Owen rode at the head of his cavalcade he watched this
cloud, growing smaller, and its diminishing often inspired the
thought of a ship entering into a harbour, sail dropping over sail.
The pale autumn weather continued day after day; everything in the
landscape seemed fixed; and it seemed impossible to believe that
very soon dark clouds would roll overhead, and wind tear the trees,
and floods dangerous to man and horse rush down the peaceful river
beds, now nearly dry, only a trickle of water, losing itself among
sandy reaches.
During the long march of twenty days the caravan passed through
almost every kind of scenery--long plains in which there was nothing
but reeds and tussocked grass, and these plains were succeeded by
stony hills covered with scrub. Again they caught sight of Arab
fires in the morning like a mist, at night lighting up the horizon;
and a few days afterwards they were riding through an oak forest
whose interspaces were surprisingly like the tapestries at
Riversdale, only no archer came forward to shoot the stag; and he
listened vainly, for the sounds of hunting horns.
On debouching from the forest they passed through pleasantly watered
valleys, the hillsides of which were cultivated. It was pleasant to
see fields again, though they were but meagre Arab fields. All the
same Owen was glad to see the blue shadows of the woods marking the
edge of these fields, for they carried his thoughts back to England,
to his own fields, and in his mood of mind every remembrance of
England was agreeable. He was beginning to weary of wild nature, so
it was pleasant to see an Arab shepherd emerge from the scrub and
come forward to watch for a moment and then go away to the edge of a
ravine where his goats were browsing, and sit upon a rock, followed
by a yellow dog with a pointed face like a fox. It was pleasant,
too, to discover the tents of the tribe at a little distance, and
the next day to catch sight of a town, climbing a hill so steep that
it was matter for wonderment how camels could be driven through the
streets.
The same beautiful weather continued--blue skies in which every shade
of blue could be studied; skies filled with larks, the true English
variety, the lark which goes about in couples, mounting the blue
air, singing, as they mounted, a passionate medley of notes,
interrupted by a still more passionate cry of two notes repeated
three or four times, followed again by the same disordered cadenzas.
The robin sings in autumn, and it seemed strange to Owen to hear this
bird singing a solitary little tune just as he sings it in England--a
melancholy little tune, quite different from the lark's passionate
outpouring, just its own quaint little avowal, somewhat
autobiographical, a human little admission that life, after all, is
a very sad thing even to the robin? Why shouldn't it be? for he is a
domestic bird of sedentary habits, and not at all suited to this
African landscape. All the same, it was nice to meet him there. A
blackbird started out of the scrub, chattered, and dived into a
thicket, just as he would in Riversdale.
"The same things," Owen said, "all the world over." On passing
through a ravine an eagle rose from a jutting scarp; and looking up
the rocks, two or three hundred feet in height, Owen wondered if it
was among these cliffs the bird built its eerie, and how the young
birds were taken by the Arabs. Crows followed the caravan in great
numbers, and these reminded Owen of his gamekeeper, a solid man, six
feet high, with reddish whiskers, the most opaque Englishman Owen had
ever seen. "'We must get rid of some of them,'" Owen muttered,
quoting Burton. "'Terrible destructive, them birds,'"
Among these remembrances of England, a jackal running across the
path, just as a fox would in England, reminded Owen that he was in
Africa; and though occasionally one meets an adder in England, one
meets them much more frequently in the North of Africa. It was
impossible to say how many Owen had not seen lying in front of his
horse like dead sticks. As the cavalcade passed they would twist
themselves down a hole. As for rats, they seemed to be everywhere,
and at home everywhere, with the adders and with the rabbits; any
hole was good enough for the rat. The lizards were larger and uglier
than the English variety, and Owen never could bring himself to look
upon them with anything but disgust--their blunt head, the viscous
jaws exuding some sort of scum; and he left them to continue their
eternal siesta in the warm sand.
That evening, after passing through a succession of hills and narrow
valleys, the caravan entered the southern plain, an immense
perspective of twenty or thirty miles; and Owen reined up his horse
and sat at gaze, watching the dim greenness of the alfa-grass
striped with long rays of pale light and grey shadows. But the
extent of the plain could not be properly measured, for the sky was
darkening above the horizon.
"The rainy season is at hand," Owen said; and he watched the clouds
gathering rapidly into storm in the middle of the sky. Now and
again, when the clouds divided, a glimpse was gotten of a range of
mountains, seven crests--"seven heads," the dragoman called them,
and he told Owen the name in Arabic. These mountains were reached
the following day, and, after passing through numberless defiles,
the caravan debouched on a plain covered with stones, bright as if
they had been polished by hand--a naked country torn by the sun, in
which nothing grew, not even a thistle. In the distance were hills
whose outline zigzagged, now into points like a saw, and now into
long sweeping curves like a scythe; and these hills were full of
narrow valleys, bare as threshing-floors. The heat hung in these
valleys, and Owen rode through them, choking, for the space of a long
windless day, in which nothing was heard except the sound of the
horses' hooves and the caw of a crow flying through the vague
immensity.
But the ugliness of these valleys was exceeded by the ugliness of the
marsh at whose edge they encamped next day--a black, evil-smelling
marsh full of reeds and nothing more. The question arose whether
potable water would be found, and they all went out, Owen included,
to search for a spring.
After searching for some time one was found in possession of a number
of grey vultures and enormous crows, ranged in a line along the
edges, and in the distance these seemed like men stooping in a hurry
to drink. It was necessary to fire a gun to disperse these sinister
pilgrims. But in the Sahara a spring is always welcome, even when it
carries a taste of magnesia; and there was one in the water they had
discovered, not sufficient to discourage the camels, who drank
freely enough, but enough to cause Owen to make a wry face after
drinking. All the same, it was better than the water they carried in
the skins. The silence was extraordinary, and, hearing the teeth of
the camels shearing the low bushes of their leaves, Owen looked
round, surprised by the strange resonance of the air and the
peculiar tone of blue in the sky, trivial signs in themselves, but
recognisable after the long drought. He remembered how he had
experienced for the last few days a presentiment that rain was not
far off, a presentiment which he could not attribute to his
imagination, and which was now about to be verified. A large cloud
was coming up, a few heavy drops fell, and during the night the rain
pattered on the canvas; and he fell asleep, hoping that the morning
would be fine, though he had been told the rain would not cease for
days; and they were still several days' journey from Laghouat, where
they would get certain news of eagles and gazelles, for the Arab who
had first told Owen about the gazelle-hunters admitted (Owen cursed
him for not having admitted it before) that the gazelles did not
come down from the hills until after the rains and the new grass
began to spring up.
All the next day the rain continued. Owen watched it falling into the
yellow sand blown into endless hillocks; "Very drie, very drie," he
said, recalling a phrase of his own north country. Overhead a low
grey sky stooped, with hardly any movement in it, the grey moving
slowly as the caravan struggled on through grey and yellow colour--
the colour of emptiness, of the very void. It seemed to him that he
could not get any wetter; but there is no end to the amount of
moisture clothes can absorb, a bournous especially, and soon the rain
was pouring down Owen's neck; but he would not be better off if he
ordered the caravan to stop and his servants to pitch his tent under
a sand-dune. Besides, it would be dangerous to do this, for the wind
was rising, and their hope was to reach a caravansary before
nightfall.
"And it is not yet mid-day," Owen said to himself, thinking of the
endless hours that lay before him, and of his wonderful horse, so
courageous and so patient in adversity, never complaining, though he
sank at every step to over his fetlocks in the sand. Owen wondered
what the animal was thinking about, for he seemed quite cheerful,
neighing when Owen leaned forward and petted him. To lean forward
and stroke his horse's neck, and speak a few words of encouragement
to one who needed no encouragement, was all there was for him to do
during that long day's march.
"If he could only speak to me," Owen said, feeling he needed
encouragement; and he tried to take refuge in the past, trying to
memorise his life, what it had been from the beginning, just as if
he were going to write a book. When his memory failed him he called
his dragoman and began an Arabic lesson. It is hard to learn Arabic
at any time, and impossible to learn it in the rain; and after
acquiring a few words he would ride up and down, trying the new
phrases upon the camel-drivers, admirable men who never complained,
running alongside of their animals, urging them forward with strange
cries. Owen admired their patience; but their cries in the end
jarred his highly-strong nerves, and he asked himself if it were not
possible for them to drive camels without uttering such horrible
sounds, and appealed to the dragoman, who advised him to allow the
drivers to do their business as they were in the habit of doing it,
for it was imperative they should reach the caravansary that night.
The wind was rising, and storms in the desert are not only
unpleasant, but dangerous. Owen tried to fall asleep in the saddle,
and he almost succeeded in dozing; anyhow, he seemed to wake from
some sort of stupor at the end of the day, just before nightfall,
for he started, and nearly fell, when his dragoman called to him,
telling him they were about to enter the ravine on the borders of
which the caravansary was situated.
The first thing he saw were three palm-trees, yellow trees torn and
broken, and there were two more a little farther on; and there was a
great noise in their crowns when the caravan drew up before the
walls of the caravansary--five palms, the wind turning their crowns
inside out like umbrellas, horrible and black, standing out in livid
lines upon a sky that was altogether black; four; great walls, and
on two sides of the square an open gallery, a shelter for horses; in
the corner rooms without windows, and open doorways. Owen chose one,
and the dragoman spoke of scorpions and vipers; and well he might do
so, for Owen drove a hissing serpent out of his room immediately
afterwards, killing it in the corridor. And then the question was,
could the doorway be barricaded in such a way as to prevent the
intrusion of further visitors?
The wind continued to rise, and he lay rolled in his blanket,
uncomfortable, frightened, listening to the wind raging among the
rocks and palms, and, between his short, starting sleeps, wondering
if it would not have been better to lie in the ravine, in some
crevice, rather than in this verminous and viperous place.
Next day he had an opportunity of contrasting the discomfort of the
caravansary with a bivouac under a rainy sky; for at nightfall,
within two days' journey of Laghouat, the caravan halted in a
desolate valley, shut in between two lines of reddish hills
seemingly as barren as the valley itself. After long searching in
the ravines a little brushwood was collected, and an attempt was made
to light a fire, which was unsuccessful. The only food they had that
night was a few dates and biscuits, and these were eaten under their
blankets in the rain, Owen having discovered that it was wetter in
his tent than without. This discomfort was the most serious he had
experienced, yet he felt it hardly at all, thinking that perhaps it
would have been very little use coming to the desert in a railway
train or in a mail coach. Only by such adventures is travel made
rememberable, and, looking out of his blankets, he was rewarded by a
sight which he felt would not be easily forgotten--the camels on
their knees about the drivers, who were feeding them from their
hands, the poor beasts leaning out their long necks to take what was
given to them--a wretched repast, yet their grunts were full of
satisfaction.
In the morning, however, they were irritable, and bleated angrily
when asked to kneel down so that their packs might be put upon them;
but in the end they submitted, and Owen noticed a certain strain of
cheerfulness in their demeanour all that day. Perhaps they scented
their destination. Owen's horse certainly scented a stable within a
day's journey of Laghouat, for he pricked up his ears, and there was
nothing else but the instinct of a stable that could have induced
him to do so, for on their left was a sinister mountain--sinister
always, Owen thought, even in the sunlight, but more sinister than
ever in the rainy season, wrapped in a cloud, showing here and there
a peak when the clouds lifted. And no mountain seemed harder to
leave behind than this one. Owen, who knew that Laghouat was not
many miles distant, rode on in front, impatient to see the oasis
rise out of the desert. The wind still raged, driving the sand; and
before him stretched endless hillocks of yellow sand; and he
wandered among these, uncertain whither lay the road, until he
happened upon a little convoy bringing grain to the town. The convoy
turned to the left.... His mistake was that he had been looking to
the right.
Laghouat, built among rocks, some of which were white, showed up high
above the plain; and, notwithstanding his desire for food and
shelter, he sat on his horse at gaze, interested in the ramparts of
this black town, defended by towers, outlined upon a grey sky.