compassionately. The heat is intense, thirst is coming back, a dark pool
is forming by his side, but this is not water. High up in the air a
vulture is looking at him; it descends very slowly.
Two bright eyes shine for a moment from the grass; the jackal is
investigating the case. He meets Maami's eye and cannot face it, so he
slinks away to a safe distance and howls to his heart's content.
"Blood!" he cries; "meat for one and all!" And to far corners of the
plain, to rocky holes that form a day refuge for carrion, the shrill cry
penetrates. If there are any lions near by they are sleeping after a
successful night's hunting, for never an answering cry follows the
jackal's summons.
Maami is conscious of a strange gathering of ugly birds and foul beasts,
but it does not concern him now. He is growing so cold that even the
tropical sun above his head is powerless to warm him; his eyes are being
veiled, the landscape is very blurred, the herd has passed from sight.
His head droops slowly--he does not feel the teeth of the old hyæna
that, mad with hunger, has flung herself upon him.
-----
Footnote 2:
Though the giraffe is perhaps the only large animal that never makes a
sound, travellers and hunters are agreed that these animals can
communicate many thoughts to each other.
THE WHITE STORK
In the afternoon little Tsamani would go in the company of Fatima, his
mother, to the flat roof of his father's house, but in the morning he
was allowed to go up there by himself, with only the little slave girl
Ayesha to guard him.
The happiest hours of Tsamani's young life were passed upon the flat
house-top, where he could see the Tensift river winding its way among
the palms, and the Atlas mountains with their peaks covered in snow, and
the wonderful tower called Kutubia, that flanks the Mosque of the
Library. He could see one of the markets, crowded with heavily laden
camels and noisy tribesmen from the South; and at times when the Sultan
was in the city he would watch him riding in state under the green
umbrella that is Morocco's symbol of sovereignty. These sights pleased
Tsamani, and delighted the little slave-girl, who was at once his
guardian and his playmate; but Father and Mother Stork pleased him most
of all.
When the warm spring weather came, and most of the storks in Marrakesh
took their long flight oversea to cooler climes, Father Stork and Mother
Stork remained behind. She sat in her rough nest upon three white eggs
and he stood on one leg by her side, with his neck bent, and his bill
resting on his breast. They both looked at Tsamani with great interest,
perhaps because he was the son of a powerful governor--more likely
because they were sorry for him on account of his loneliness. For,
though Tsamani had a very soft white djellaba and bright yellow
slippers, he was a lonely boy enough--not half so happy as many of the
little beggars who ran all over the streets in the bazaars, as merry as
they were hungry.
Father Stork made a great rattling noise with his bill, and his mate
responded rather more quietly.
"That's a funny noise, O Father of the Red Legs," said Tsamani. "I can't
make it with my mouth."
"No," said Father Stork, "I don't suppose you can. And you can't fly,
and you can't catch frogs and fish, and you can't build a nest or hatch
eggs--can you, little Tsamani? But don't let that worry you, for
grown-up men can't do these things either, and never think how foolish
they are."
"You are very clever, I know," said little Tsamani, wondering. "And my
father has told me you are very good too. Where do you come from, and
where have the other storks gone?"
"I must tell you," replied Father Stork rather pompously, "for it is
impossible to know too much about us. We are, perhaps, the most
interesting, the most highly honoured of all birds that fly. Our wisdom,
our virtue have been the talk of all ages. We have been favoured by
every nation, but the followers of Mohammed have always treated us more
kindly than the others. You are a Mohammedan, and this house was built
by your great-great-grandfather. Since he built it some of my family
have always lived in this corner of the roof. We remain here when our
children have joined the great procession to the North, and give up our
place to one or other of the children only when we have gone on the
still greater journey from which there is no return. Some day you will
be a man and the friend of our family, so it is right that I should tell
you all you want to know."
"Why do you sit so closely by your nest?" asked the little boy.
"Because all storks are not honest," replied the Father of the Red Legs.
"These sticks that make the nest are collected with great difficulty and
hard work. A dishonest stork--and there are such birds, I'm sorry to
say--waits for the parent to leave his nest, and then steals his best
twigs. So one has to be very careful."
The little slave-girl came across the roof-top, but she only heard
Father Stork clapping his beak--she could not understand anything of the
words he spoke. She was not a "True Believer," only a little girl stolen
by slave-raiders from the Western Sudan, and brought across the terrible
desert to the slave-market in Marrakesh, where Tsamani's father had
bought her for a little pile of silver Moorish dollars, amounting in
value to about twelve English pounds. It was no part of her business to
interfere if her little charge stood by the storks' nest and Father
Stork made that rattling noise with his bill. She was content to stroll
round the roof, listening to the tinkle of the camels' bells, looking
down at the people in the streets beyond, or at her master's other
slaves who worked in the patio below, and passed the hours singing,
shouting or quarrelling as fancy urged them.
"We have been a long time in the world," began the stork. "Even in the
Bible--which is as the Koran to people in the far countries whither my
relatives go--there is a reference to us. A prophet, Jeremiah by name,
testified to our wisdom as he watched us in Palestine gathering for our
yearly flight. 'Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth his appointed
times,' he said, realising, as he did, that we followed the seasons with
never a mistake or approach to hesitation. His people, the Jews,
ancestors of the Hudis who live to-day in the Mellah, called us
Chassidim, which means the pious ones, because they understood something
of our great love for our children. Can you wonder, then, if we storks
are proud? Yet storks were not always birds."
"What were you?" asked the astonished Tsamani.
"The first stork was born a Sultan," replied the bird solemnly. "He was
a merry soul, but had no fear of Allah. He sat at the head of his high
staircase and received his wazeers and subjects. One day, to make them
ridiculous, he had the stairs greased; and when grave, pious men were
about to salute him, they slipped and fell upon those behind, and all
were sorely hurt and confused. Among those hurt was a very great saint
whose groans were heard in heaven. Then Allah was wrath with the Sultan,
who sat back on his throne convulsed with laughter, moving his head so
that his long beard fell and rose from his breast. In an instant the
beard became a bill--the Sultan was turned to a stork, and in place of
his laughter one heard the chatter of his bill. But happily, on account
of our high descent, and our great love for our children, we are set
above all other birds."
"Are you as fond of your three white eggs as my mother is fond of me?"
asked Tsamani in astonishment.
"Every bit," replied Father Stork; and Mother Stork repeated the words
after him in a lower tone. "They are to us more than all the wealth of
Marrakesh, and when, in the fulness of time, the shells open and the
three little babies are given to us they will be dearer still. You must
wait patiently until their day arrives, and then you will be able to see
for yourself."
"O, little master," said the slave-girl, "it is time to descend. The sun
is hot, and thy lady mother will await thee."
So Tsamani went down to the hareem of his father's house, where his
mother passed most of her day lying on soft cushions and eating sweets
and contradicting his father's other wives and favourites because she
was above them all. And when he went upon the roof with her in the
afternoon the voices of the storks were no more to him than they were to
her--no more than the click-clack of their long heavy bills. But on the
following morning the sound had a meaning for him--to his great delight.
Sometimes Father Stork would relieve Mother Stork in the performance of
her duties, for, as he said: "Our love is equal, why then should the
service not be divided?" And in the course of a few days there were
three little storks in the nest, with down for feathers, and such
awkward bodies and ugly heads on them that you and I, not knowing
better, would have laughed. Tsamani was rather disappointed when he saw
them for the first time, but Father Stork reassured him.
"Look at me," he said, putting his second leg firmly on the ground, and
lifting the heavy bill off his breast. "I am a big, fine bird--nearer
four feet long than three. See how beautifully my bright red bill
contrasts with the black of my great wing-coverts and the chief quill
feathers, and the pure white of the rest of my body. Look at my bright
red legs and toes; think what an effective finish they give to me. Two
of my children will grow to be like me, as they are males; the third
will be like her mother--not quite as large and not so brightly coloured
as the others. And all the big feathers will be brown before they are
black."
Each bird in turn would fly from the roof to the pools in the gardens of
the Moorish grandees, and would come back with food for the little ones.
If the father went, the mother stayed; if the father stayed, the mother
went; the nestlings were never left alone by night or day. It was hard
work, for the three babies were anxious to grow and to have feathers in
place of down, and to be able to fly or flutter to the ponds and feed
themselves. "Sometimes," said Father Stork, "they try too soon, and
tumble down into the street and are killed; at other times they must
stop half-way because of exhaustion--but then every Moslem picks them up
and returns them to their nest, for it would be a terrible misfortune to
harm one of us. If some were hurt we should all leave the country."
"Far away to the north-west," continued Father Stork, "there is a
country called Great Britain, and we used to go there every year; but
when men saw us they would say that we were very rare, and would shoot
us, without pausing to think that that would make us rarer still. So for
fifty years we have not been to those islands, and I do not think we
shall ever go there again, though one or two stray birds may alight
there, blown out of their course by a gale. Though we are kind to all
who treat us well, we can fight when it is necessary to do so. We aim at
the head and eyes of those who ill-use us; but against men who carry
guns no fighting avails, so we leave them--and now on all the myriad
roofs of Great Britain no stork builds its nest."
"Are the Mohammedans the only people who are good to you, O Father of
the Red Legs?" asked Tsamani.
"They are our best friends," said the Stork; "though in parts of Europe
we are welcomed, particularly in Holland, where the people respect us
for the love we bear our little ones. They tell the story of a great
fire in one of their cities called Delft, where some storks, unable to
remove their nestlings, died with them. We thought nothing of it--any
storks would have done the same; but the good people of Delft were very
impressed and told all the Dutch folk far and wide, and increased our
welcome from that day. They even put up cart-wheels on poles for us to
build our nests on in districts where the house-roofs have no flat
surface that will help us. As a rule, when we go to a town where the
inhabitants are of mixed race and religion, we find out where the
Mohammedan quarter is, and build there. Uneducated people think it is
because we prefer one faith to another; but the truth, of course, is
that the Mohammedans respect us, welcome our arrival, regret our
departure and never disturb our nests. They even say that we bring good
luck to the dwellers in the house we choose for our building."
"To-day," said Father Stork, a week or two after the last conversation,
"we are taking our young to the marshes. Ask your mother to let you walk
in the Sultan's garden near the great pomegranate orchards by the
Spanish gate."
So Tsamani hurried down to the hareem and the room where his mother lay
upon soft cushions, with her gimbri for company; and she gave her
permission readily enough, and called the old lady who had charge of the
women's quarter, and bade her go to the main courtyard and summon two
men slaves to accompany Tsamani and his little nurse to see that no harm
befell them.
So the little party went out to the gardens that lie round the great
green-tiled palace of the Sultan, and when they came to the marsh by the
orchard of pomegranates Tsamani cried to his little companion: "O
Ayesha, let us stay here and play." He had seen Father and Mother Stork
with their family on the marsh. Then the two men slaves sat in the shade
of the red-blossomed pomegranate trees, and little Ayesha picked wild
flowers, while Tsamani went up to the stork family and saw the little
ones that had only just as many feathers as enabled them to fly feebly
for short distances. They splashed about in the shallow waters of the
marsh, and tried to catch frogs and little fishes; but they were not
skilful enough to do so; they could secure nothing better than a few
worms, and would have fared ill but for Father and Mother Stork, from
whom no frogs or fishes could escape. When the parent birds caught
anything they washed it very carefully in the water before giving it to
their young to eat, and no trouble seemed too much for them in
satisfying the hunger of their little ones. Tsamani watched them while
the two slaves slept under the pomegranate trees; and Ayesha, picking
more flowers than she could carry, forgot that the sun's heat was
growing greater.
"You must go home soon," said Father Stork at last, "or you will be hurt
by the sun, and you will have to go to the hospital, just as our family
has to go when it is sick or ailing."
"Is there a hospital for storks?" said Tsamani, very much astonished.
"Certainly there is," replied Father Stork. "It is in the old northern
city of Fez, home of pious and learned Moors, and was founded many
generations ago by a good Moslem. All sick or wounded storks are brought
there and put in the charge of the pious men who conduct the hospital.
The ailing ones are doctored, the hungry ones are fed, the dead are
buried. It is not for nothing that we serve Moorish cities."
"Serve Moorish cities," repeated Tsamani curiously. "How do you do
that?"
"We are the scavengers," said Father Stork. "In the western countries
men are employed to remove the rubbish and refuse from the houses, but
here and all over the East we take their places. To be sure, we cannot
eat the offal, as the vultures do; but we eat a great deal that would
spread sickness through any city if left lying on the ground under the
hot sun. If there were no gardens and river-shallows here we could live
in the city itself, and would thrive there. Very many of my family keep
in the city of Fez, although there is a river and they can go out to the
marshes if they felt inclined."
The summer, and the rainy season that takes the place of winter passed,
bringing another spring in their train; and still Tsamani spoke to the
storks when the weather permitted him to go upon the roof, and learned a
great deal of their lives and ways. With the completion of their
feathers and the change of colour in their wing quills from brown to
black the young birds had gone afield, and were to be seen in the
well-watered meadows by the tomb of Sidi Bel Abbas, the saint who
wrought so nobly for the poor in his days on earth that he has become
the patron of all the beggars in the white-walled city. One sat on a
corner of the tomb itself, the others on the flat housetops near the
gardens.
"They will go away with this summer," said Father Stork. "They will join
the hundreds of others that came back from the North before the cold
weather sets in. Did you not notice how full the gardens became at the
beginning of the winter, and how the streets and the market places were
full of birds? They do not like the cold weather of Holland and Denmark
and Poland, and other countries of Europe, where they go to rear their
young. At a given season of the year the desire for home takes them. In
spring they seek a milder clime and leave Africa, so that the people of
the countries they favour may know that the summer has come."
"The swallow and the nightingale go with them. Indeed, they go into
countries that my family will not visit. Think what those countries have
lost. There is France, and there is Britain, for example; no stork
builds in either."
"Do you all come back and go away at the same time from all countries?"
asked Tsamani. "And if you do how do you manage it, O Father of the Red
Legs?"
"You ask more than I can answer," replied Father Stork. "I can only tell
you that within three days of the start for the North there is not one
stork in Morocco that intends to take the journey, and within a week of
the time the first stork comes southward from oversea the entire
migration is accomplished. It is one of Nature's secrets that she has
chosen to tell to all the birds of passage but has not given to you and
your fellow-creatures, and consequently nothing I can say would make the
reason clear to you.
"We know when to go and when to return as well as you know when to go to
sleep and when to rise. It is bird law. At times the summons comes to us
to fly earlier than usual, even before all the eggs are hatched, or the
young ones have learned to fly. Then we must forget our love. We must
destroy the eggs that are not yet hatched; we must kill the little ones
that cannot face the journey. Nothing could be more terrible to us. We
would prefer to die for our little ones, but we have no choice but to
obey the law. For generations uncounted we have done so, and now it is
no more strange to us than the regulation of our day--the morning search
for food, the long rest for digestion and contemplation that follows,
the evening search for another meal, the following sleep. In a day or
two now we shall commence our love-flights, and my wife will fill our
nest with eggs once more."
"What are your love-flights?" said Tsamani.
"Wait a little while, and you will see," replied Father Stork.
Some two or three mornings later, when Tsamani and Ayesha climbed to the
roof-top, Father Stork was no longer to be seen. It was then too late
for him to be eating. He should have been standing by the nest, in
accordance with custom; but there were no signs of him. Mother Stork sat
looking skywards, as though in an ecstasy of happiness.
"I am not lost, Tsamani," said Father Stork's voice. It sounded far away
up in the sky; but when the boy looked up into the blue his eyes could
hardly pierce the dazzling light. He saw nothing for a few minutes, and
then Father Stork descended slowly, apparently from the heavens. He was
singing a strange new song, such as Tsamani had never heard in all his
life before--the song that had lighted so much happiness in the eyes of
Mother Stork.
"Listen, Ayesha!" he cried. "Do you hear the white stork's song."
"No, no," laughed stupid Ayesha, showing her beautiful white teeth. "The
storks do not sing, my little lord; they chatter with their beaks, but
they have no song. The doves in the gardens have more song than storks."
Tsamani said no more; he was afraid to let the girl know that he could
hear things she did not dream about.
"Quite right, Tsamani," said Father Stork, gliding easily and gracefully
through the air to the roof's edge. "To Ayesha there is nothing to be
heard but the clattering of my mandibles. To my wife it is a beautiful
love-song. She thinks I brought it down from heaven, for I soared out of
her sight so high that even to my keen eyes Marrakesh was no more than a
dull speck on the ground. Now you shall see my lower love-flight." So
saying, he sprang into the air, and, reaching a point as far from the
roof as the roof was from the ground, went through a series of movements
that were like those of a great yacht with all her sails set to catch a
favouring wind. Tsamani never saw his wings flap, never saw him in any
difficulty to turn in an exact angle at a given point; the motion was
smooth, easy, graceful, and it thrilled Mother Stork with joy.
"We are great lovers," said Father Stork, when he had settled; "so well
known that all the lovesick youths of Moorish cities ask us to give
their messages to the well-beloved. They stand in the white street below
and sing to us."
Once again Mother Stork sat on three eggs, once again Father Stork stood
on one leg by the nest-side, his beak upon his breast, and helped in all
love and loyalty to fetch the food when the babies came. The weeks
hurried towards the summer, the birds were nearly fledged, and one
morning when they were feeding in the gardens Father Stork came back
hurriedly with another of his tribe. They talked vigorously upon the
roof-top and then the newcomer went his way, leaving Father Stork angry
and disturbed.
"What is the matter?" asked Tsamani uneasily. He felt sure that trouble
was brewing, that some disaster was at hand.
"Matter enough!" said Father Stork gravely. "My companion came to give
me and my wife notice that we must join in battle with the ravens on the
fourth day from now."
"Why are you ill friends?" asked the boy.
"That is a secret of stork and raven life that I cannot attempt to
explain," replied Father Stork. "We must fight them and prevail, or must
leave this city. The battle will be a few miles from the Dukala Gate. I
think we shall win and return. You will soon know."
* * * * *
All through the third day Tsamani watched and waited, seeing no grown
stork on roof or in street, straining eyes and ears in vain. Even the
townsfolk were alarmed, and crowded the Mosques, and prayed devoutly.[3]
On the following morning he rose when the Mueddin called for the first
prayer, and the guardian of the hareem allowed him to pass the door and
to climb the steep steps to the roof. He saw the sun come up from the
East and he heard the camels' bells as the caravan moved out to cross
the desert, carrying salt, that it might return with slaves. He was
listening to the earliest notes of stock-doves in the gardens, when with
swift flight a stork swept over the Dukala Gate. He was one of the
younger birds of that year's brood.
"We have won!" he cried. "We have won! The ravens are in full flight.
The storks will return to Marrakesh; and my parents sent me to bid you
good-bye."
"Are they well and safe?" cried Tsamani, sorely afraid, for he was old
enough to know that he had no other friends.
"They live," replied the young stork, "but are sorely wounded, and are
flying northward, slowly and carefully, to the City of the Sickle, the
place of the hospital, where their wounds may be healed. I must return
to them. Haply, we may all come back again."
"How the young stork chatters!" said Ayesha sleepily.
But Tsamani said no word as he went down the narrow stairs, for he felt
that he was alone in the world.
-----
Footnote 3:
This incident occurred when I was in Southern Morocco where some
reliable observers told me that fights between the storks and ravens
are of almost annual occurrence.
THE WILD BOAR
He trotted along happily enough through the great open spaces of the
Argan Forest,[4] parts well-nigh unknown to men. All around him the
giant Argan trees defied the sun. Stray goats climbed their broad
branches to eat the fruit, the tiny asphodel flowered in their shade,
and the stock-doves cooed.