THE ARABS IN TRIPOLI

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THE ARABS IN TRIPOLI

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ALAN OSTLER. Sketched by H. Seppings Wright, at Ain Zara, November, IQU.

THE ARABS IN TRIPOLI

By ALAN OSTLER

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS SPECIALLY DRAWN BY H. SEPPINGS WRIGHT

LONDON : JOHN MURRAV. ALBE?vIARLE STREET, W.

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THE ARABS IN TRIPOLI

By ALAN ! OSTLER

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

SPECIALLY DRAWN BY H. SEPPINGS WRIGHT

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LONDON :

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1912

aiPT OP

LIST OF aLUSTRATIONS

ALAN OSTLER Frontispiece

RETREAT FROM AIN ZARA to face page 80

TUAREG MEHARI-RIDERS COME IN FROM

THE SOUTH „ „ 90

ARAB CASTLE, GHARIEN „ „ 164

IZAAK BEY'S CHARGE AT GARGARESH . . „ „ 206

SPOILS OF WAR „ „ 21S

A NIGHT HALT IN THE DESERT , „ 252

A MOUNTAIN ROAD „ ,,292

PREFACE

In writing this account of events in the Turkish and Arab camps, during the first five or six months of the TripoH campaign, I have in no way attempted a mihtary critic's report of the fighting that took place. I do not wish this to be considered in any sense a history of the Turkish-Itahan war, or even of a part of it. It is simply an attempt to give a picture of a strange people amongst whom I have lived for some time. The Italian campaign in Tripoli, having attracted some notice — but not much — in this country, serves me better than any other background for my attempts to portray Arabs amongst whom I have lived. Had I not gone through a part of the Tripoli campaign with the Arab and Turkish forces, I might have chosen, as a thread on which to string my beads, Mulai Hafid's revolt against his half-brother, Abdul-Aziz, four years ago ; or Bu Hamara's rebellion against Hafid, with its terrible ending ; or the general uprising during which Fez was besieged, and relieved by the French troops last year.

M204638

vi PREFACE

In none of these cases should I have been attempting a history of a war, but only seeking an excuse to try my hand at describing strange people and strange lands. And that alone has been my aim in writing about and around the resistance offered by the Arabs and Turks to the Italian army invading Tripoli.

To picture Oriental life to an English reader so vividly that the reader can see the bare-foot, hooded people^ hear their harsh accents, smell the reek of their camel-trains and foul courtyard fonduks, and feel the stinging desert wind, the lash of the rain, the beating of the sun's heat on his head ; and yet not have a misconception of the febrile Arab temper ; that is a task, I fear, beyond most writers. Of all that have attempted it, one only, who has known the Arab to the bone, has contrived to impart his know- ledge. I do not know the Arab as Doughty knew him ; and if I did, I have not the pen that wrote " Wanderings in Arabia Deserta." Mine is, at best, only an attempt to draw in outline. I cannot hope to fill in shades and colours.

Had I not been so absorbed in the attempt to depict the Arab life of the camps, I should have dealt more elaborately with the Turkish officers to whose kindness I owe so much ; and must have introduced as well some of the Europeans — ^there were a few — who came as

PREFACE vii

artists, volunteers and correspondents to the Turkish side. Chief of these was Mr. Seppings Wright— Hadji Wright, the Turkish staff affectionately named him. For thirty years he had seen war in every corner of the earth. On packing-cases, knapsacks, drumheads, up- turned buckets, he made rough outlines and sketches which afterwards became the pictures in this book. We travelled much together ; each trying, in a different way, to picture what he saw. I should like to think that my attempt has been even half as faithful and convincing as has his.

Alan Ostler.

September, 1912,

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

PAGB.

The Frontier of Tripoli and Tunis— A desolate spot — Spahis at the fort — My travelling companion — Dangers of the road — Leave Ben Ghardan — Spahi escort — Arabic dialects — The interpreter Ibrahim — France and Italy — An equivocal permit — " But Monsieur is free " . . . i-io

CHAPTER II.

I determine to outwit my opponents — No man's land — Desert diplomacy — A suspicious-looking company — The greed of the Semites — I join a caravan 11-16

CHAPTER III.

Camels in mud — Arabs and their animals — ** Zahn " — Silent places — A miserable night — ^An Arab breakfast — Attempts at blackmail — ^The quarrel — Rigdalin — A cunning boy . 17-24

CHAPTER IV.

Reception at Rigdalin — A Greek doctor — Bimbashi Musa Mehemet — The Arab officer of to-day — The spirit of war — Desire to kill Italians — A scientific soldier . . . 25-30

CHAPTER V.

Interview with the Bimbashi — I am presented with a Turkish uniform — *' It is not safe to wear a hat " — Four days at Zuara — A steamer reported — An attempted Italian landing seven months later 31-35

CHAPTER VI.

My sorry steed — " This is thy ferrash " — Palm groves — Ladies' decorations — The time of full market — Zawia — Arab rustics and their goods — Turkish officers — The Kaimakam ......... 36-41

CHAPTER VII.

My Turkish companions — Mahmoud Bey and Zechni — Slow progress — Turkish outposts — Pleasant companions — Fon- duk Touar — An accident befals Fahret Din Effendi — The sound of cannon ........ 42-47

CHAPTER VIII.

PAGE.

The camp of Ain Zara — Italian sports — Turkish officers — Abdullah Bey — Tahar Bey — A hospitable welcome — " Our noble England " — Not war, but brigandage — The Indian Mutiny — " Et de bellare superbos " .... 48-53

CHAPTER IX.

Turkish fare—" We do not eat rats "—The little fights— We see the Italian searchlights — Experiences of fighting — A captured piano — The night raid — Contempt for the Italians — Tripoli besieged by Turks — Italian heroes — Hearts of hare — Fake accusations — Opinion of a Texan barkeeper — No English — My despatches and the Censor — A free hand — Ferhat Bey — Neshat Bey — Arab discontent — Fethi Bey— A " Young Turk " 53-67

CHAPTER X.

Inactivity of Italians — The shelling of the hospital — Italian gunners — " Bombardement d'Enjer " — The explanation — Italian vigilance — The cost of broadsides .... 68-72

CHAPTER XI.

The sortie of December 4th — Real fighting now — Battle at dawn — ^A Syrian camp follower — " Plenty big fight to-day, Sah " — Camp followers' market — Sheikh Barouni — War Lord of the mountain Arabs — Strike the tents — The Turks give back — The fight draws nearer — Fugitives from Ain Zara — Beshir Bey stays behind — The retreat — To Fonduk Bu Geshir — Supper 73-84

CHAPTER XII.

A solitary hill — Soldiers' graves — Prowling dogs — Azizia — Neshat Bey's plans — The Arabs long to attack — Arabs content with vi'ar — Courtyard of the Caserne — Fezzanis come in — The hosts of Africa — Malice of Camels — Horse stealers — Of the Beyt-es-Shaar — In the Fezzani camp — Eastern music — Dancing women — Beauty of Nomad women — Profitable traffic — Italian notes not understood — The camp followers' market — A warlock — Sand-divining — The human fowl . 85-103

CHAPTER XIII.

A sandstorm — Night in the desert — The desert a mighty sounding board — Loneliness and fear — ^A challenge — A visit to Ferhat Bey — Thaif Ullah — Arab tea drinkers — Ferhat Bey speaks French — " Mish " is a cat — Arabic slang — Shakespeare's slang 104-112

CHAPTER XIV.

FAGX.

In search of a horse — Senati Beni Adhem — Greed of the Zeptir — Bargaining — The horse of Nazmi Bey — Horse-dealing — '* The stallion is vicious " — *' Not a good war-horse " — I purchase Bimbashi 113-119

CHAPTER XV.

A war party under Tahar Bey — Strange weapons — The Rou6 — Miracles are common things — The Italians will not fight —Hanged 120-130

CHAPTER XVI.

Talaat Bey enlists as a trooper — The halt — The crowded Fonduk — Horses climb well — Smiling country — Under- ground houses — Non-Semitic architecture . . . 131-143

CHAPTER XVII.

The Berber problems — Who are the Berbers? — A prehistoric war — Philology misleading — Matriarchy — A Berber hostess — Forgotten mysteries — Tuareg Monoliths — The Firbolgs — Hereditary memory 144-162

CHAPTER XVIII.

A mediaeval Arab castle — Courtyard and battlements — Arabs are meddlesome folk — The Tobchi's prayers — Fating a prisoner — Children follow the Roumi .... 163-173

CHAPTER XIX.

f

Life in Gharien — Interesting excursions— An ** Antica " — — Trackless woods — The ruined castle — a Roman arch 174-182

CHAPTER XX.

Sheikh Abdullah — An invitation — The English pistol —

Barouni's woman in Fairyland — The Sheikh's son . 183-189

CHAPTER XXI.

Emin, the Syrian Arab — His reckless bravery — To capture Tripoli — Emin kept his temper — Tales of war — A desert ambush 190-198

CHAPTER XXII,

Emin Bey's night enterprise — Riding to battle — Arabs waste

powder — Arab horsemen charge — Italians routed . 199-208

CHAPTER XXIII.

PAGE.

A Fezzani camp — Dogs — The heroine — Goddess of battle —

Battle-song 209-215

CHAPTER XXIV.

Collecting the spoil — Quarrelsome companies — The " spy- glass " — Time is not money 216-222

CHAPTER XXV.

A council — Sheikh Barouni — A gift — English opinion courted

— Enthusiasts now — To rouse the camp . . . 223-229

CHAPTER XXVI.

The arrival of the deputies — " Oulad 'bu zin " — Horses broken too young — Mehari riders — Ferhat Bey's harangue — Italy cannot win — Lab-el-Barod — At the tents of the Turks 230-233

CHAPTER XXVII.

The German medical mission — Great equipment — Untravelled men — The Captain of the escort — Wait for moonlight — Eastern life changes little — Strange singing — The road is hard — Two waggons lost — Adventures with a filter . 244-262

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Back in Azizia — A wretched Arab woman — A prowler of the night — The little bint — Starving wives and children — The cripple — Money from England — The Arab poor . . 263-275

CHAPTER XXIX.

In camp at 'Bu Geshir — " Sons of the Sword " — The cloud- face — Arabs do not believe — Clever parable . . 276-282

CHAPTER XXX.

Memories of Ferhat Bey — Ferhat and the atheists — Ferhat 's religion 283-287

CHAPTER XXXI.

Islam's recruiting ground — Strange traveller — The Afghan

knife 288-292

CHAPTER XXXII. " Migraine "— Rifaat Bey ill— The aged beggar— Wasted brilliance — Cupping — Delirium — The British mission — The English hospital — Turks ashamed of illness — By the high road .......... 293-309

CHAPTER XXXIII.

At Ajellak — Italians bombard Zuara — Air-ships — Who shall

pay? — Would-be recruits 310-314

THE ARABS IN TRIPOLI

A BITTER wind blows unceasingly over the barren belt of desert-land where the frontiers of Tunis and Tripoli meet. It piles the drifting sand against the wall of the little stone fortress of the Spahis, who guard the French side of the frontier ; and moans through the lean whin- bushes and scanty scrub of box and myrtle^ on whose thorns grey butcher-birds impale big beetles and little lizards. Save for the stunted growth of scrub, the land is bare on either side as far as the eye can see ; a brown expanse of windy wilderness, streaked here and there with the yellow of the desert sand. Yet these nearly featureless wilds are clearly and unmistakably divided. You can see the boundary line that marks off the territory of France from that of Turkey as surely as though a barbed wire fence extended its menacing ugliness from north to south between the two. For, westward from the gate-way of the wind-scoured fort, there

2 DESERT HIGHWAYS

runs a level high-road, straight and broad to Ben Ghardan and thence to Medenine, Gabes, Sfax and Soussa. By this road, motor cars scour across the plains, carrying French officers in uniform from post to post ; and the desert people, travelling on camels, horses, asses, or afoot, make way at the sound of their horns almost without alarm. And by the roadside here and there are fields of maize and wheat and barley, with straight-lined boundaries, neat and orderly. This is the country under the sway of people civilised after the European fashion.

But Eastward of the Spahi frontier post, the world is bare of any evidence of the handiwork of man. The very caravan road ceases to be one broad and beaten highway. It frays out into a maze of devious narrow tracks, aimlessly wan- dering now eastward, now due south. It is a road fashioned by the appetites of beasts of burden, browsing as they go ; not drawn from point to point by human need of haste. Through- out North Africa — in all the camel lands, in- deed— such desert highways tell the tale of a people whose travel is never hurried, who have no need for the hard, straight, rapid path of European commerce. There are no straight roads in the East ; not even over sandy wastes where nothing grows at all.

Over the ways of civilised speed, by steamer, railway train and motor car, I had travelled

SPAHIS AT THE FORT 3

from England to the frontier of Tripoli in seven days. I had crossed the Channel, the whole of France, the Mediterranean Sea and all the coast of Tunis, from Tunis town to Ben Ghar- dan, with hardly a halt ; and from Ben Ghardan a two-wheeled cart had brought me to the frontier. Now — it was a bitter cold November morning — I was at the threshold of the land of many unavoidable delays. Hereafter, I should travel hardly more in seven days than hitherto in one.

I sat upon my boxes outside the fort, and the wind scourged me with stinging sand. The half-Europeanised . Arab lad who had driven me thus far in the little waggon, and had been hired by me to take me over the frontier as far as the nearest outpost of the Turks, was dis- appearing in the yellow dimness of whirling sand along the road to Ben Ghardan. A little group of Spahi guards sat not far away, their backs against the wall of the courtyard. Their blue cloaks shrouded them to the eyes against the flying sand. They eyed me askance, mut- tering together in Arabic, and spitting. Under the lee of the wall, their horses stood with trailing bridles, and scarlet, high-peaked saddles loosely girthed. They were not good horses save for one, a mouse-coloured stallion almost too young for riding, whose flanks were scarred by the cutting-edge of the great shovel stirrups.

4 THE HIRED WAGGON

The men were surly and half-defiant. Their leader had cast off the mantle of Arab courtesy which he had worn the night before, on my arrival. He was angry with me because he had played a trick upon me, and because my way of taking it puzzled him. I had, so far as I could, imitated the manner of an Arab in the business, and he had looked for the behaviour of a European.

It had been late when I had left Ben Ghar- dan the night before. There was an Algerian Frenchman newly settled there, and I had arranged with him for the hire of the little waggon and the Arab lad to drive me in it to the Turkish outposts in Tripoli. Because of the badness of the road, which was watched by bands of marauders (who sought to profit by the confusion of the war in harrying weak caravans that might cross the frontier), this Frenchman was at first unwilling to hire his waggon to me at all. He was none the more ready when I could not tell him whither I wished to go, beyond that I must travel east- ward till I should fall in with a Turkish force, which would, (I hoped), escort me to the head- quarter camp. I did not know, nor could anyone tell me, how many days I must travel before falling in with such a force. But in the end, having paid in advance a sum such as would cover the loss of the waggon, I per-

FROM BEN GHARDAN 5

suaded the French colonist to a bargain ; and he very kindly undertook to hire for me as driver an Arab youth who was in his debt, and otherwise would not for any consideration have taken the risk of accompanying one dressed in European clothes across the desert beyond the frontier. He took with him a bell-mouthed horse pistol made in Milan a hundred and fifty years ago.

At about the hour of sunset I set off from Ben Ghardan and travelled in the little spring- less waggon for five hours, down the road to the frontier. The stars came out, not feeble points of light, but brilliant blazing suns in a sky of the blackness of polished steel. Mars, low on the horizon, glowed like a camp fire. From time to time we passed real camp-fires, and caught the keen smell of aromatic brush- wood mixed with dried camels' dung. Voices cried to us from the darkness, asking in a dialect of Arabic new to me, who we were and whither we were going.

The clear black sky and silvery wastes of sand, my heavy wrappings, and above all, the jolting car and jangling bells upon the horse's collar, made it seem impossible that I should be travelling over an African desert. Never, until then, though I had travelled for months with Arabs in another part of North Africa, had I seen the desert people use a cart of any kind. Their burdens are always heaped upon the

6 DESERT GUARDS

backs of their beasts. The creaking wheels and jangling bells made me imagine that I was not in Africa at all, but in some part of Southern Russia, crossing an unpeopled, snow-dusted steppe.

The Spahis who suddenly galloped up out of the darkness and formed a half circle before me might have been Cossack riders. Their high, rope-bound turbans looked like huge fur caps, and their cloaks were wrapped close about them. Their horses, standing dead still, with hanging heads and steaming, long-haired flanks, were very like Tartar ponies. The stonewalls of the fort showed palely behind them in the starlight.

By now I had been travelling for about five hours, and the sorry little horse that drew the cart was tired. I was not indisposed to halt for the night, and hardly needed the Spahi troop- leader's appeal to go no further.

We spoke together in French, for amongst his men was an orderly who spoke that lan- guage well, being employed as body servant to the French officers who visit the fort at certain times. I could understand very little of the dialect of these Tunisian Arabs, because I learnt what Arabic I have in Morocco. The difference between Moghreby Arabic and the dialect of Tunis and Tripoli is greater than the difference between those, say, of Devonshire and

THE INTERPRETER 7

the West Riding of Yorkshire, but not so great as that between Spanish and Itahan. So we spoke in French through the medium of Ibra- him, the interpreter.

Ibrahim was young and palhd, with servile manners and abounding tact. I fancied that the muffled troop-leader of the Spahis begged me to forgive him for detaining me, but said that he could not let me cross the frontier until next day. But Ibrahim translated this into a purely hospitable invitation ; saying that my horse was tired and my driver sleepy, and that marau- ders were in the neighbourhood, so that it would be dangerous to travel further before dawn.

I accepted the version of Ibrahim, and my horse was unharnessed. The Arab lad who drove me — I forget his name — curled down at once in the cold sand under the waggon, and slept, wrapping his head in his cloak.

Near to the fort stands an old hut of mud and wattle. It was lighted by the burning of strips of ravelled rag floating in a bowl of melted grease. A rough, untrimmed pole upheld the roof, and, like the house-tree of Ulysses' house, made a comerpost for a great raised bed. Here I lay all night, fully dressed.

And when I rose early to go on my way, I found that the interpreter, at the order of the Spahi leader, had telegraphed from the fort to

8 "THE ARAB MUST RETURN"

the French Chef de Bureau at Ben Ghardan, saying that a man had been stopped on the frontier last night, and had given no explana- tion of his presence there beyond saying that he was English and meant to travel in Tripoli. Now Italy was already snarling at France because Turkish officers coming from Europe into Tunis had got across the frontier into the theatre of the war. The Chef de Bureau at Ben Ghardan, not knowing anything of me, and thinking it possible that I might be of the Turkish army, nevertheless did not wish to be drawn into what might seem to be mere officious meddling with a harmless traveller, as I might prove after all to be. So perhaps he was pleased with the plan he hit upon.

Hearing that I brought a cartload of baggage with me, and was dependent for guidance upon a Tunisian Arab, he gave order by telegraph that " on no account must the English traveller be molested. He was free to go where he might choose. But his servant, a French subject, must not cross the frontier without a special permit." This was to force me to return to Ben Ghardan in order to take out such a permit, and in doing so, submit myself to tactful scrutiny from the eyes of the proper authorities. And so sure were the Spahis of the success of their ruse that my horse was harnessed and all ready for my return.

"BUT MONSIEUR IS FREE" 9

'* It means only the delay of a day, or per- haps two," said Ibrahim, watching me from the corner of his eye.

I was very angry, but kept my anger hidden, except that I complimented the troop-leader somewhat bitterly on his knavish cleverness in beguiling me to stay the night. At that he smiled indulgently, and said that I had only to return to Ben Ghardan, where all would no doubt be made easy for me.

" And," I said, "if I do not choose to go back, what shall you do ? Will you hinder me from going on ? "

" By no means," said he, smiling in a jeering way. " Monsieur is free to go where he likes. But Monsieur's servant and the horse and cart must return to Ben Ghardan."

He was confident that I could not take my baggage and would not leave it behind. Also he knew that I had no horse to ride, and did not know the roads. It was impossible that I should go on alone.

I said to the Arab lad, " Take out all my baggage from your cart " — ^which he did, and dumped it in the sand — "and go back to Ben Ghardan. I shall stay here."

Then I sat down on my boxes in the wind ; and the Arab boy drove off ; and the Spahis, puzzled and angry, talked and spat together, eyeing me askance.

II

I HAD no better plan in my mind than to join the first caravan passing eastward ; and neither the anger at the trick played upon me, nor the determination to outwit the tricksters, quite blinded me to the danger of this course.

Ordinarily, I am somewhat contemptuous of those silly scaremongers who are forever harp- ing upon the " fanaticism " of the desert people, and have succeeded in portraying the Arab as a kind of murderous bigot whose hand is against all who are not of his persuasion. That he has small love for the ordinary run of Europeans I cannot but admit. Indeed, partly from tradition and partly from the unalterable contempt for all people whose speech and cus- toms are not his own — (that same spirit in which the Semite has always viewed the Gentile and has kept stubbornly aloof) — the feverish Arab mind is, beyond doubt, readily inflamed against all Christians.

And there exists in the mind of every igno- rant Arab a preconceived notion of what a

NO MAN'S LAND 11

Christian is like. It is a fancy portrait, as unlike the original as the inhumanly ferocious desperadoes of a solitary spinster's imagination are unlike the burglars of real life. Yet it seems to be against Christianity in the abstract, rather than against individual Christians, that the religious intolerance of the Arabs is directed; and I have always found that the individual, walking circumspectly, and knowing certain points of Eastern etiquette which must be observed, can dwell or travel safely with most Arabs.

Nevertheless, to cross the Tripoli frontier at this time, in the company of a chance-met caravan was beyond question a dangerous thing to do. To begin with, I did not properly understand the speech of the people, and had no interpreter. And at that time, the massacre of Arab non- combatants, women and children, by the Italian troops in Tripoli had embittered the Arabs beyond the ordinary against all Christ- ians. Worst of all, this desert belt divided by the frontier is at all times a notably baa land, the refuge of outlaws and robber bands and home- less men. The camel men themselves, who crossed almost daily with wheat and barley for the Turkish camp, bore the reputation of des- perate, wicked fellows. I had been gravely warned against their company.

But there was now no help for it, if I was to

12 A GIPSY COMPANY

go on. So there I sat and endured the buffet- tings of the dry storm as patiently as I could, until at last there came in sight a caravan of thirteen camels, bearing sacks of grain ; and five men striding at their tails.

One of the men hailed me as they come up ; and I answered him, " And to you the peace ! " in a condescending tone of voice, as though I thought him and his gipsy company a little beneath my notice. He asked me who I was, and whither I was bound — questions which I understood easily enough, because they are the first upon the lips of all wayfaring Arabs after the Salaam has been given and returned. Then I waved my hand toward the Spahis, telling him to find out from them what he wanted to know, and saying that I was English, and did not understand Arabic. All the camels halted at the fort, and the men chatted with the Spahis. I do not know what the Spahis told them about me, beyond that I was going into Tripoli ; but this they must have learnt, for presently coming to me, the man who had greeted me asked whether I was bound for the camp of the Sul- tan's soldiers. " Well," I said, " if God please, I shall go there. I go into Tripoli . I am English, ' ' I added, " and I am not a friend of the Itahans." " The Italians are Jews, dogs, children of damned fathers," he answered readily, when he had understood me. '* But," said he, laying

DESERT DIPLOMACY 18

his two forefingers side by side, " the Inglees and the Sultan are friends as close as that. The Inglees are little uncles of the Sultan."

I said, " Yes."

" By my God and thy head " (" Wullahi wa rasek !"), he cried, " if the Inglees should come to govern Tripoli as they have Egypt, no Arab would rise against them. They would be welcome."

" And if it were the French ? " I said.

" You talk like a Moghreby," he answered. '' How is that ? "

" Because I learnt to speak Arabic in Morocco. But how if theFrench were trying to takeTripoli ? ' '

He glanced at the Spahis, and did not answer. One of his companions said that the French were good.

" In Morocco," I said, " the Arabs hate them and fight against them."

" Aye, by God," said this second, " the Fransis are all dogs, too. They shall be driven From El Moghrib as the Italians from Trablis, in sh' Allah ! "

"The French are good friends of the English," I observed.

" True. They are both good. But the Inglees are best," said he. For a Frenchman he would have damned the fathers of the English and lauded the French ; such is the rude dip- lomacy of the desert.

14 KHALIL AND HAMMO

I made no answer. Presently they questioned me. How did I mean to reach the camp of the Turks ? Where were my horses and my servants ?

" They will come," I answered carelessly.

The man with whom I had spoken at first began to talk in an undertone ; but I did not understand clearly what he said. He was in some way warning me that few men could be trusted to guide and serve a stranger in that desert.

He said that four camels of the thirteen be- longed to himself and his brother. The other three men were perhaps servants of some mer- chant whose camels they drove.

Khalil (the man who spoke with me) showed me his weapons, and drew attention to those of his companions. They meant to join themselves to another small caravan bound for Rigdalin, where the Turks had made a refuge camp for the fugitives from Zuara, after the bombard- ment. Thus, travelling with them, I should have the escort of half a score of honest, well-armed fellows; and my baggage could be packed upon the camels.

I did not at all like the look of Khalil ; nor of Hammo, his dirty brother ; nor of any of the company. Khalil was tall and young and strong, with a wry mouth and scabby, ill-shaved head. He fidgetted, and his fingers twitched, while he

THE GREED OF THE SEMITES 15

spoke, opening his eyes wide and hushing his screaming voice as he said that for a little money, a very little, they would conduct me safely to the Turks.

For thirty francs — an exorbitant fee — I was to accompany them. I made the Spahis take note of Khalil, and write down his name. Then came the business of paying in advance a part of the sum.

This is inevitable in any money-dealings with the Arabs. No matter what their bargain, their greedy hearts must be comforted by the pay- ment of some of the money before any of it has been earned, and they have a thousand dirty and aggravating tricks for getting the best of the deal. They will agree upon the price and receive their moiety in advance ; but then, thinking it easily got, and wishing that they had asked for more, they will refuse to start until more be given. Thus they hope to trade upon the Roumi impatience of delay ; and I have known them, after being well started upon a journey, halt their beasts and swear to go no further unless a greater price than that agreed upon should be forthcoming. Khalil now said that only on receiving twenty francs would he make a start. But to this I dared not agree, because I was afraid that having so much in hand he would in case of danger, or of a quarrel, be content to leave me alone half-way upon the

16 "AATI 'L FLUS"

road. I would give him no more than ten francs at the start. And when I had won this point and was ready to pay over a gold piece, there was a fierce quarrel between the brothers as to which should carry the money.

Like so many greedy birds the ragged desert men screamed and clawed the air before me with avaricious hands. If you have never seen it you cannot conceive the ecstasy of shrieking greed that consumes the poor Arabs in all matters of money. Money ! " Flus ! " They cannot name it without emphasis. "Aaf, aat', aati '1 flus ! " (Give, give, give me the money !) — that was the cry of a shop-keeper lad of whom later I bought an earthen fire-pot ; and he danced impatient- ly, clenching and unclenching his hands in a fever to be handling his pennyworth of greasy flus. So now these two knavish brothers, neither trusting the other, jigged and screamed before me in the whistling wind, and reviled their common ancestors ; and their companions, hoping ultimately to share the spoil, now held them apart, now cursed amongst themselves.

But at last, my boxes upon one camel, and myself perched on a sack borne by another, we went forward into the teeth of the wind, and crossed the frontier.

Ill

Presently the little fort was out of sight and we came to the shores of a desolate, marshy shott, a lagoon whose salt waters are so shallow you may cross in places dry-footed, over a bed of dry, cracked mud encrusted with white salt- crystals. But now the winter rains had swelled its bitter waters, and though in its narrow places the shott would still be fordable by horses, the Arabs would not risk their camels over the mud. For the spongy feet of camels that bear the awkward beasts so well across the sand, are almost helpless upon mud. I have seen a whole caravan slip and slither over clayey ground when rain has softened the track, like drunken monsters in a nightmare pageant. And so we went northward along the marshy shore, over a narrow desert strip between the shott and the sea ; and presently the wind dropped a little and a dismal rain began to fall. Travel is slow with pack camels. The many tracks of the mazy road meander hither and thither, now parallel, now interlacing ; and the

17

18 BEAST SPEECH

slow brutes follow them at will, browsing as they go. The men urge them on with strange cries, but seldom with blows, only beating off now and then some greedy laggard that stays to browse too long upon a thorny tuft. It is the dry and withered herbage on which the camels choose to feed ; they pass the green stuff by, unless it be the juicy cactus, turning their slow heads from side to side in search of sapless twigs and dried-up spiny scrub.

Arabs have di ff erent words for the exhortations of different beasts. They will urge a horse on with one word and a mule with another, and have a strange gasping cluck for the encourage- ment of donkeys. But strangest of all are the cries of the camel-men. " Zahn ! " they cry, " Zahn, Zahn ! " with a singular pectoral ac- centuation ; and sometimes they snore at the camel, inhaling through the nostrils. To make them kneel, they cry "Akh-kh" and " Ksh-sh! " with a sound like clearing the throat, pulling downwards at the camel's neck, and kicking his knees. They will curse an animal, or expostu- late and argue with it, as though it understood their speech ; and indeed, they do believe that all beasts understand Arabic, and can speak it if they choose. Much of the Arabic tongue, particularly as spoken by poor wild country people, is so harsh and rough that the snarl of a dog, the bitter groaning of a camel, or the noise

SILENT PLACES 19

made by a horse blowing out his nostrils, would pass amongst them for almojst intelligible human speech. I have known a Moor who heard in the lowing of cattle a chorus of super-human voices caUing upon " Ullah, UUah, Ullah ! "

The rain pattered steadily down, filling the desert with the faint noises of a multiplicity of little plashings. Rarely even on a summer's noon, or at night, is the void wilderness entirely silent. There is a wavering, sussurrant shrillness in the ears, faintly audible as the flickering of hot air above the sand is faintly visible. When rain falls, sounds carry less clearly through the moisture-laden air, but in dry times the voices of men talking equably together can be heard at incredible distances. The cries of goat-herds, and the yapping of dogs are audible when no living thing is in sight.

Our company moved generally in silence through the veils of rain. We overtook and joined the other caravan, of which Khalil had told me, and there were greetings, and some questions asked about myself. The men would have asked me a great many things about the war — ^whether the English meant to come to the help of the Turks ; if it were true that English soldiers were already on the way, and whether I myself were not one of them. But I felt very little inclined to talk, and professed hardly to understand a word of what was said.

20 NIGHT OF RAIN

Amongst the men of the caravan to which ours was now joined was a child of perhaps twelve years, girt with a leathern belt and pistol- holster. There was no pistol in the holster, which was worked with faded scarlet thread ; but he had the haft and half the blade of an old knife in his belt ; and carried also a little bag of shot. He was akin to Khalil, and viewed me with shy curiosity, keeping always by the side of my camel.

This boy, with Khalil and Hammo and my- self, camped a little apart from the rest that night. We had no shelter, save that we piled the sodden sacks of grain in the form of a low rampart, crescent shape, and cowered within its curve. As night came on, the rain fell faster. It lashed upon us in torrents, soaking all to the very bone. I had no tent with me ; and though I set up a folding bed on which ta sleep, I soon abandoned it ; for the canvas was water-proof and held the rain ; so that shortly I was lying in a shallow bath. I wrapped a thick white woollen haik about me, and crept in amongst the Arabs for warmth. Never have I suffered more from cold than in an African desert. The ground beneath us was cold and soft and wet, like the primeval slime.

I gave out cigarettes, and we smoked them held in the hollows of our hands against the rain, shivering. The boy coughed pitifully.

THE MORNING FIRE 21

From time to time we dozed a little, and now and then a moist, uncomfortable warmth crept over us ; and sometimes cramp seized us Morning came at last, with little gusts of chill wind, and the rain ceased. The light came quickly , as light always comes or goes in that latitude. With its coming my companions broke into light chatter. They rose, lithely enough, and set about making a fire from drenched brushwood. Like the gipsies, these people are clever at making a fire of twigs and bits of broken branch, no matter how sodden the wood may be ; and their fires, burning hotly, with furious crackle and (in the desert) with the pleasant pungency of aromatic wood, leave only a small grey circle of wood-ash when all is over.

The Arabs dried their clothing over this fire, standing against the flame as the wind blew it, and holding their loose robes wide. It was now that I envied them their light voluminous garments, for they were quickly dried ; but my civilised attire could only dry when taken off.

Khalil had a little wheat-flour, and there was water in plenty in the pools. He mixed a fair- sized lump of dough, and kneaded it in a skin bag, which he twisted and rolled and pounded on the ground. He spread the dough out into flat cakes and burned them awhile in the red

22 ILL MEN TO MEET

embers. We ate them hot, and drank cold rain-water from the pools. I had biscuits and wine with me, but did not touch them.

We started late, for the rotten canvas of the barley sacks was sodden in the rain, and two of them burst. Hammo stitched them with a great iron needle that he carried in his belt.

We met that day six men driving seven camels that carried no packs, and they did not answer our greeting civilly. I do not know what passed between them and my companions ; but the boy, Khalil's kinsman, made it clear to me that they were evil people. But that we were more numerous than they, and all armed, said he, they might have attacked us.

It seemed that even now that danger was not past ; for Khalil came presently and said that he risked his life in travelling with a Nasrany. He feared that these men whom we had passed might get help and return to fall upon us. Our caravans must now hurry forward, and all his mates cursed Khalil.

" For this," said he to me, '' thou'lt pay me more than thirty francs, eh ? See, Ingleesi, what danger I run. The lads all quarrel with me on thy account. By God, if I were not here to stand by thee, I think they would cut off thy head for thee. Ah yes, indeed, I am thy only good friend. Say now, how much more shall I have ? "

THE QUARREL 28

" Ma 'anarf," said I. " I do not under- stand."

" El flus, el flus ! " cried he. " What money shall I have ? "

" That which you have already, and what I have promised beside."

" So little, then ? No, I must have more. I am thy good friend."

" Ma 'anarf," said I again.

" Ma 'tarf ! " he said bitterly. " Thou dost not understand ! But thou dost. Thou under- standest very well, wuUahi ! Say then, how much more ? "

We quarrelled upon this. We woke during the wet night that followed to discuss the matter.

" What if we kill thee and say the robbers did it? Who could know?" said Khalil. His mates gibed at him because he could drive no harder bargain with the Nasrany.

At noon on the third day we came in sight of the palm-groves of Rigdalin. Khalil came to my camel's side, hand in hand with his little kinsman.

" Speak well of us to the Turki Bimbashi," said he. " We brought you safely, and would have fought in your defence if need be ; and did we not give our bread to you ? And the boy loves you, too. Give me as much as you can, for his sake."

24 FRIEND TO THE ENGLISH

The lad said : " Give me money to buy a six- cartridge little gun like thine, dear friend. When I am a man I shall be a good friend to all the English. Give, dearest, in God's name, give a little."

IV

Hammo went ahead to the refuge-camp in the Rigdahn palm-groves. He was to announce my coming and exaggerate my importance, after the Eastern fashion. I have learnt that it is profitable to be heralded in this manner in any Arab town or village in which one means to stay. For thus curiosity is aroused, and a great crowd of people will assemble to see the stranger's arrival ; and the sheikh of the place, and all the notables, will be on their mettle, knowing that their people are there to see, and to say after- wards, if the matter has gone off well, "Wullahi, but So-and-So is well fitted to give welcome ; aye, even if an Emir should come amongst us. Didn't you see that the stranger took note how he bore himself ? " And these things tickle the vanity of the grave elders ; so that they are pleased with themselves, and pleasant to deal with.

It was not, however, by Arab elders that I was received at Rigdalin ; but by a Greek

26 THE GREEK DOCTOR

doctor, who was apparently in charge of the camp. The square courtyard of the old caserne was in a state of extraordinary confusion ; for there were bales of goods, chairs, a bedstead or so, sacks of barley, saddles and all manner of household goods, amongst which sat the women and children from Zuara. There were a few stolid Turkish soldiers on guard, but no officers other than this military doctor; and no one who understood English. The doctor spoke a little French and Italian. I drank coffee with him, and showed him two letters which I had from the Turkish Embassy — one a general letter of introduction, and the other addressed to Neshat Bey, the commander-in-chief. He furnished me straightway with a horse to ride, and an escort of two soldiers, to take me on to Zuara. It would hardly have been possible for me to have stayed in Rigdalin ; and indeed, I was anxious to go forward as soon as possible. Zuara is only a few miles away from Rigdalin ; and it was to the commanding officer there that I must apply for an escort to take me to the head- quarter camp outside Tripoli.

I rode through a wood of date-palms, whose pale yellow fruit was hard to bite, and acid, not being ripe ; but I flicked down some of the low-growing sprays with a whip-lash, and found them good against thirst. The Arab gardeners mount the scaly palm trunks as one climbs a

THE NEW ARAB 27

stairway, stepping from one excrescence to another ; and prune their tops with long thin saws. But nearly all these fertile gardens were deserted ; and here and there the ground was torn, and fragments of shell lay half-buried in the sand. Khalil came running to me with such as he found, chattering in monkey-like excite- ment. He saw in every neglected tumble-down hut the work of the Italian gunners. His lively Arab mind reconstructed a score of bloody battles where no Italians had yet set foot. In strong contrast with the febrile vivacity of the Arab was the ox-like stolidity of the Turkish soldiers. They trudged ahead of us, neither interested nor amused, exchanging queer, cluck- ing monosyllables from time to time.

They led me to the barracks which stand among the sand dunes just outside the now deserted village of Zuara ; and here I was taken into the presence of the Bimbashi, Musa Mehemet.

The Arab officers of the Ottoman Army, educated in the Turkish military colleges, were a type quite new to me ; and this Musa Bim- bashi was the first of them I ever met. He looks at you with sombre eyes out of a dark, high- featured face, and the face is that of autocrat and aristocrat both. An aristocrat, for Musa Bimbashi is of the oldest and purest blood of the Yemen ; and an autocrat in the high bred

28 MUSA BIMBASHI

Arab manner. I could describe in this man al- most every Arab gentleman I have ever known; yet he was unlike any of them. He was arrogant yet infinitely courteous, full of restless energy, never sleeping, yet generally seeming to be half asleep ; for he had all the languid, blase air of his kind. In his moments of ease one would have thought that nothing would ever rouse him to action. Then he reminded me of Eastern chieftains such as I have sat with in their painted tents, seeing them finger their rosaries and dreamily watch the ascending smoke of cigarettes, while the moment for decisive action passed unnoticed by. And in his stressful times one could not picture him as ever being calm. Not that he gave rein to curses or gestures, but his whole bearing, the harsh curt accents that replaced his ordinary gentle speech, and the general aspect of a hawk suddenly unhooded, made one doubt that such a man could ever sit in idleness, regarding the world through half- shut eyes.

This mask of indolence is general in the East amongst the well-born, who thus conceal the ex- citability of their real nature. What marked off the Bimbashi from others that I had known was that, though Oriental enough in other respects, he was in military matters a scientific modern soldier. And yet he was more than that. He was not as other Arabs, to whom war is still a

THE SPIRIT OF WAR 29

purely emotional business ; a mixture of reli- gious exaltation and glorious pageantry. Nor was he as our modern military scientists of Europe, to whom the conduct of a war may be as void of any sentiment as the solving of a quadratic equation. Musa Bimbashi stands between these two extremes ; or, perhaps, he includes them both. I mean that, while his brain can view the war merely as so much strategy and tactics, his soul still burns with merciless hatred of the enemy against whom he fights. I think that spirit has been dead a hundred years or more amongst our soldiers. I doubt if, even in the days of Napoleon, when our soldiers and sailors were bred up to hate a Frenchman as the devil, there existed so fierce an animosity against their foemen.

Certainly, no modern English gentleman would thirst after the blood of his foe as does the Arab. Musa Bimbashi wants to kill Italians — many of them. He would almost sooner slay a hundred than out-manoeuvre ten thousand. It is the spirit of Elizabeth's seamen who fought the cruel Spaniard, and has been the Arab spirit in war from time immemorial. In the past it has cost the Arab many battles ; for battles are won by the ability to kill, not by the desire to do it. But in the future it shall win him many ; for Musa is one of a great number of men who strongly and honestly desire to kill, and yet

30 ROUTINE

have the patience and restraint to learn how to do it by other methods than those of flinging hordes of recklessly brave men against quick- firing guns.

But until I met this officer I could not have believed the Arab nature so capable of self- discipline and steady application to the drudg- ery of military routine. Seeing the Bimbashi at work organising drilled troops from the raw Arabs of the country-side ; receiving the reports of his scouts from every quarter of the area under his control (he had so perfect a network of pickets and patrols that not a stray camel could cross the frontier without his knowing it) ; deciding upon the affairs of the refuge camp ; organising a constant supply of provi- sions for the headquarter camp ; and keeping an unfailing outlook for Italian cruisers along eighty miles of coast-line — seeing all this, I should have thought Musa Mehemet an excep- tion to the rule of Arab intolerance of routine : but that afterwards I met others like him.

The Bimbashi took my hand in both of his, after the caressing manner of Arab courtesy, and led me to a room in which were a settee and cane chairs and a square table. There was a cheap colour-print portrait of the Sultan on the wall ; also a print of a Turkish battleship ; and one or two grass fans, such as the Arabs use for fanning charcoal in their braziers. Coffee was brought in delicate small cups, and the Bimbashi pro- duced a box of good cigarettes, tipped with long cardboard tubes. We sat exchanging compli- ments awhile, though with difficulty. He spoke the pure Arabic of the Yemen, and also Turkish, but no French ; so we conversed together in Arabic much as an English aristocrat and an East End foreigner knowing only our Cockney dialect might converse in English.

First, I must tell him of my journey across the frontier ; and at mention of the nights spent in the wind and rain he sprang up at once, with some appearance of satisfaction, declaring that I should change my clothes forthwith.

82 FINE ATTIRE

This I was ready enough to do, and also to wash, though I was rather surprised that he should stand a little way off from me, eyeing me in a strange, calculating way, as he spoke. He led me to his own sleeping room, and gave some instructions in Turkish to his orderly, who pre- sently brought me a stiff, starched dress-shirt, and a complete Turkish uniform.

" But," said I, " I have other clothes of my

own."

The Bimbashi came to me, holding out the shirt.

" I beg of you," said he, " wear these,' and keep them — a gift."

I was bewildered, unwilling to offend by refusing, but feeling a keen disinclination to prison that horrible shirt-front next my bosom beneath a tight khaki tunic, or to encase my legs in those rasping, tubular trousers. I thought longingly of a soft shirt and loose, easy Norfolk suit that lay in one of my boxes.

The Bimbashi's face fell a little.

" Look — English ! " said he. Sure enough, there was an Englishman's name in marking ink on the collar of the dress shirt.

" Then I must wear a black coat with tails," I said, and began to get out my dress suit. But he would not have it.

" Nay," he said, " wear the dress of a Turkish soldier. I give it you, for your own."

IT IS NOT SAFE TO WEAR A HAT 33

I gave up thoughts of comfort. The orderly fell to work at once, pulling off my mud-stif- fened riding boots ; and then both he and the Bimbashi turned away, with the delicacy of Orientals, while I disrobed. I could not but remark the relief with which the Bimbashi viewed me clad in that most ill-fitting and un- comfortable uniform. He gave me a tarbiish trimmed with imitation astrachan, and a dove- coloured military great coat. But soon he saw that I was ill at ease, and began at last, some- what diffidently, to explain.

" The Arabs here," said he, "are many of them poor and ignorant people, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes. No one knowing you to be English would raise a hand against you, or speak an unkind word. Only, wearing the clothes of a Christian, and, above all, a hat or a helmet, you run a great risk of being taken for an Italian, and so, for your safety "

I assured him that I felt it an honour that I should be allowed to wear the Turkish uniform ; and thenceforward, for many weeks, I did wear it, and, to the end of my stay in Tripoli, never wore again a wide-brimmed hat or helmet.

Whether the wearing of hats be forbidden in the Koran I do not know ; but certainly throughout North Africa there is a strong pre- judice against all hats of felt, or cloth, or can- vas ; though the soil-tilling Arab and Berber

34 ZUARA IS WELL DEFENDED

peasants wear huge straw hats, hke those of Mexican peons. No true Moslem will wear the headgear of a European ; he would regard it as the final badge of a renegade.

"Ai, billah!" said an old sheikh of Dukala once to me. " Our men of the coast towns are no longer true Moslemin. Another five years and you may bring them all Roumi hats for their pates."

I stayed for four days at Zuara, whilst the Bimbashi, having telegraphed news of my arrival to headquarters, awaited a reply that would permit me to go forward. On one of the days there was a great assembly of the Arab levies, about two thousand of whom, well armed, albeit without uniform, drilled and marched well. And on another day, early in the morning, Tewfik Effendi, chief of Scouts, pulled up his chestnut stallion in a flurry of dust in the sunlit courtyard, and reported that a steamer, pos- sibly an Italian cruiser, had been sighted, head- ing west along the coast for Zuara. Whereat the whole fighting force doubled out and took up their positions among the sand-dunes, ready to repel any possible landing of the Italians.

The belt of dunes between the barracks and the sea afforded a beautiful theatre for any fighting of this kind. Nothing will stop shells better than loose sand, and among these yellow, breast- high hillocks, the Turkish soldiers would have

ZUARA IS WELL DEFENDED 35

been almost as safe, in case of bombardment, as though they were a score of miles inland. Yet they commanded all points at which it would have been possible to disembark troops ; and (though on this occasion there was no fight, for the vessel happened to be one of the Messageries Maritimes) they proved afterwards again and again that they were able to hold their ground in face of overwhelming odds. Indeed, nearly seven months later, when sixteen or seventeen transports, with four warships, lay off Zuara, Musa Bimbashi and his men defeated every attempt at landing, and the Italians were forced to disembark their men full thirty miles away.

VI

There came to me a dusty, grizzled Arab guide in the early hours of the morning, and bade me hasten, for " The bed," said he excitedly, " is ready for thee this hour past."

And I, being somewhat short of temper, because the loading of my goods on pack-camels had been a long and very noisy business, an- swered him shortly.

" Fool ! Do you think I ride in a bed ? Away with you ; saddle me the horse."

" There is no horse " (he used the word " hasan," meaning a stallion). " Come now, there are no stallions to be had. You must ride a ' bed ' ; and first, pay me the money for the hiring of it."

" I tell thee I will ride on the back of a beast or not at all," said I ; whereat he stared at me in perplexity.

" Why, sure," he broke out, " it is a beast I

speak of — a ferrash, and a good one. Come and

see."

So I went out, and there, saddled and bridled 36

THE MISERABLE NAG 37

in gaudy Arab gear, stood a pitiful, bony little mare.

" That is thy ferrash," said he. " It shall be thine for four days, when I have the flus in my hand."

Then I understood. The man, either because he lisped, or because of a peculiarity of his dialect, had pronounced the word " feras," which means " mare," as though it were " ferrash," which means a bed. I told him so.

" Shall an Arab learn his own tongue from a Nasrany ? " he scoffed. " Call the beast feras or ferrash as you will ; only give me my money and let us go. The camels have started."

So I mounted the miserable nag and started on my four days' ride from Zuara to Ain Zara, the desert headquarters of the Turks.

And now, for the greater part of my journey, I rode, not across barren wilderness, but through grove after grove of glorious palms, with short, sweet grass as smooth as on an English lawn between their stems ; and here and there a shallow pool in which their slender beauties were reflected. Here and there the tall white shafts of draw-wells gleamed amongst the trees, and we passed the fig gardens of rich men, and the tiny plots of poor ones, set about with banks and walls of cactus. The whining of the pulley- wheels above the wells made constant dreamy music ; and ever and anon one came upon groups

88 FORGOTTEN FAITHS

of women, clad in robes of blue and brown and russet, each with her shapely jars of red earth supported on her head by a brown arm gleaming with bangles, or bound with ropes of twisted grass about her shoulders. Even the poorest Arab lass must have her crude jewellery of the desert — a circlet of white metal, roughly graven, set about her wrist ; or a necklet of beads and tiny charms round her throat. And in these charms I have often seen what I take to be evidence of the pre-Islamite religion of North Africa; for there is not only the Hand of Fatima (a tiny piece of metal fashioned in the shape of a palm with five fingers outspread), but also, on every torque and chaplet, the secret symbol of the Christian faith — the fish. I think this emblem must date from the days of Nestorian monks and desert hermits, who took it as the badge of their faith because the Greek word lx6vs gives, letter by letter, the title of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. The Christian hermits, even in the time of Mahomet, still had their cells and austere monasteries in these deserts, and carved the Sign of the Fish on rocks and on the rims of wells ; and thus, perhaps, it is that to this day the token survives ; as, amongst the Berbers of the Sus and of Morocco, many relics of a long-forgotten pagan- ism live in the speech and dress and customs of the people.

THE TIME OF FULL MARKET 89

Such survivals linger almost imperishably in the unchanging life of the desert.

" God send thee to Malta ! " screamed a withered beldame after me, because my horse in passing overset her jar of water ; and it took me some time to understand that her curse had reference to the days when the Knights of Malta bore a name wherewith to frighten naughty children in the Moslem harem.

I passed through Zawia, the greatest town- ship of this fertile belt, at about the hour of full market on the second day of my journey ; and, riding through amongst the crowd, saw all the commerce of the busy Arab world laid out beneath my eyes. Here sat the travelling blacksmith — a Jew — his head enveloped in a birdseye kerchief of blue and white. A little lad worked the forge, blowing two tiny bellows alternately one with either hand, whilst the smith, a fairy anvil on his knees, hammered out shoes for horses and asses, or made a make- shift lantern from a biscuit box of tin.

The butchers sat apart in their own quarter, with sheep and goats ready killed, and others, drawn and quartered, hanging upon posts and much beset by flies. The sellers of sweatmeats and bread sat with their wares disposed upon handkerchiefs spread before them ; and from group to group of these there skulked a thievish, lean, young pig, to steal flat loaves from

40 ARAB MARKETTERS

those who did not keep a keen look-out. There were fruits and spices, leaves of dried tobacco, cloths, earthenware, salt and nails and tea and coffee, and sugar in great pointed cones, whereof the merchant would chip off small bits for those who could not buy the whole.

The Arab rustics come in twos and threes to buy, holding each other by the hand, and prof- fering chickens, eggs and garden produce against such luxuries as coffee and tobacco. They go in fear of the sharp tongues of the salesmen, and will blubber at the scoffing railleries of the waggish townsmen. Yet once away from the Suk, with all their purchases slung on the shoulders of their wives and asses, they go their ways homeward boasting of how they outfaced such-and-such a seller of tea, and got, in return for seven eggs, as much sugar, wuUahi! as would suffice for more than seven days.

I fell in with two Turkish officers from Stamboul hastening to rejoin their regiments outside Tripoli ; and at this town, Zawia, we three were feasted by the Kaimakam (the chief civil authority) in a cool darkened room ; drinking coffee and eating spiced fish, eggs in oil, and gobbets of stewed meat, while our horses, tethered to the prison window-bars, snuffed at the hands of the poor prisoners and made their hoofs ring upon the paved courtyard as they stamped at the flies.

THE CRY FOR JUSTICE 41

The Kaimakam must try some question of the removing of landmarks whilst we sat over our coffee ; so that for a time the room was full of the noise of cursing and shouting. I said to him, when judgment had been given and all was quiet again, " If, in my country, one who came to a magistrate should so raise his voice in the presence of his judge, he would be sent from the room at once, and made to wish that he had behaved more soberly."

" Ah, but we have hearts," the Kaimakam replied, laying his hand upon his own. "See now, that poor fellow has suffered a great wrong. How should he hush his voice in speak- ing of it ? If he would have justice he must surely cry aloud for it, or justice may be deaf and never hear."

VII

It had been my intention on leaving Zouara to ride hard, with as few stoppages as possible, until I should reach the main Turkish camp at Ain Zara. But for two reasons I could not do this. For one thing my mount was the weediest, poorest little screw, and though two changes of horse were arranged for me at different stages, these arrangements fell through, and I had to ride the same horse all the way. Indeed, that she should have carried me so well as she did was more than one would have expected from her looks. She must have averaged nearly thirty- five miles a day for four successive days.

The weakness of my horse, then, was one cause of delay. The other was my companion- ship with the two Turkish officers. They were Mahmoud Bey, a long, loose-limbed captain of cavalry, and a little gipsy-like lieutenant of artillery, whose name, I suppose, one should spell in our character as Zechni.

Now these two, though they were the most

42

MAHMOUD AND ZECHNI 43

charming fellow-travellers imaginable, were very thoroughly Turkish, in that they could no more hurry to arrive at the theatre of fighting than they would have run to get out of it. They were riding to join their regiments on active service, and they were young men both, full of high hopes of glory, eager to take the field by the side of those comrades of theirs whose names were already on the lips of the country- side Arabs. They had made a difficult journey, having been, I think, twice turned back by the French authorities on the Tunisian frontiers. When I fell in with them, and heard their pro- posal that we should leave our baggage to follow us at the pack-camels' pace, while we pushed on as fast as might be, I conceived a vision of all-night rides, of meals eaten in the saddle, and of an arrival in camp on spent horses from whose backs we should be lifted, cramped and torpid with fatigue.

And yet, though we started early, and at first rode hard while the wintry sun rose over the rim of the desert; though we took it by turn to set the pace, now trotting, now ambling — (and the ambling gait of Eastern steeds is fast) — now breaking into a swinging canter, yet by nightfall we were never more than two hours, or perhaps three, ahead of our baggage caravan. Finally we reached camp a bare half day before it, for that which we gained by riding fast, we

44 COMPLEAT GENTLEMEN

lost by tarrying on the road ; and such delays were not to be avoided. At Zawia, Zanzour, Fonduk Touar, were Turkish outposts whose officers were old comrades of my two com- panions ; and they would by no means let us pass with a hasty word of greeting. So that at every station, camp and outpost, we must dis- mount, give news of the road and hear it, drink hot coffee, and, on rising to depart, learn that a meal had been prepared, to leave which untasted were a slur upon good fellowship.

How many hours we spent in this way on the road I do not know ; but I know right well that they were very pleasant hours, for they gave me the acquaintance of the most courteous and hospitable men alive. I think there can be no more gracious host in all the world than the Turkish gentleman, be he soldier or civilian. The Turk has all the politeness of manner of the high-bred Japanese ; and beneath it all a greater warmth of heart. His manner is that of the best type of Englishman, but with a more alert and attentive courtesy. His hospitality is royal, no matter what his circumstance. At this time, in the early days of the war, the ordinary necessities of life, such as mutton, chicken, flour and eggs and rice, were plentiful enough ; but delicacies beyond these were scarce and often hardly to be had. For tobacco and for cigarettes, indeed, one might offer monstrous

FONDUK TOUAR 45

prices and might hardly buy one mildewed packet. Yet on our arrival amongst any Turkish company, the place would be ransacked for every bean of coffee and every shred of tobacco; and men would be sent to scour the markets for fine dates — then very rare — citrons and oranges and the tenderest meats ; and of these we must partake as heartily as though the land were abounding in plenty. And at parting, after the company that rode out to see us well upon our way had turned back, we would often find that generous gifts had been furtively thrust into our saddle-bags — now packets of tobacco, now oranges, now sweetmeats wrapped in cool, green leaves.

The last stage of our journey was a short one — some twenty-five kilometres of utterly barren sand, lying between Fonduk Touar and the great camp. We had lain overnight at Fonduk Touar, eight or nine of us sleeping fully dressed upon sheepskins in a small bell tent, after a meal of rice and mutton eaten with our fingers from a huge iron bowl, round which we sat upon the ground. We rose early, drank the Turkish morning-cup of coffee (but ate nothing) and were escorted on our way by three of the officers from the outpost. I remember that I rode ahead with Mahmoud Bey, and was telling him of aeroplanes and of a flight in one which I had once experienced. And suddenly, as we talked.

46 THE EARTH OPENED

there came a thunderous crash behind us, and a frantic drumming of hoofs. On looking behind us we saw the half of Fahret Din Effendi's iron- grey stallion protruding from the earth, with himself still firmly in the saddle. The horse had crashed through the top of an old well, covered in by drifting sand, and now strained wildly, with beating forefeet, widening the chasm at every movement. Fahret Din's teeth showed in his beard as he smiled grimly at us, and his face was a little grey, for he could not dismount. We heard the sand dislodged by the horse's hind feet rumbling down into the abyss. We dismounted and approached warily, for no one could tell where next the earth might open beneath him.

Fahret Din sank a little lower, and his horse began to scream. Then someone gripped it by the bridle and mane, and another gave a hand to the rider and dragged hin headlong on to safer ground. The horse, freed of his weight, and aided by a firm pull, gave a mighty bound and came up from the gulf in a cloud of flying yellow sand.

It stood trembling awhile ; and the Arab guide, patting its withers, said, " Did They tell thee of any treasure hidden below, then ? "

Fahret Din walked to the edge of the hole and stared down fixedly for a moment. Then he

AIN ZARA CAMP 47

spat contemptuously, swung himself into the saddle, and we rode on.

By noon we heard the thunder of guns, and saw, far away, Turkish cannon debouching from a dried water-course. And a little later we rode over the crest of a little hill, and saw beneath us the tents and fires of the Ain Zara camp.

VIII

There was a short street of tents along the side of a sandy hollow. Horses, tethered in a line behind the tents, snuffed the ground for stray- grains of barley. Most of them were saddled, with the saddles twisted awry from rolling ; and there were patches of yellow sand upon the hides of many.

At the bottom of the hollow, disposed in a sort of square, were barley sacks and camel- saddles, boxes of cartridges, and three light waggons taken from the Bersaglieri only a few days ago. They were commissariat waggons, with the numbers of their companies and the name of the regiment stencilled in white upon their sides.

A group of officers in rather worn khaki stood chatting in Turkish outside one of the tents. Most of them wore short beards, though it is a common fashion with the modern Turk to shave the chin. The head of one was enveloped in bandages, none too clean ; and another carried his arm in a sling. A slender, dark little man was

48

WELCOME 49

talking excitedly, apparently relating some ex- perience to a handsome young dandy, who stood with one hand on his hip, contemplating a passably well cleaned pair of boots. From within the tent came sounds of laughter, and presently a most jovial-looking old man, with a huge grey beard that hid half his chest, issued forth, swinging a white woollen Arab haik across his shoulders as he walked.

At sight of him Zechni Effendi gave a glad shout, and the grey-beard, looking up, saw us as we topped the rise of the hill. For a moment he stared hard, and then came running, with outstretched arms, and his jolly face all creased with smiles.

Zechni dismounted with one movement, and the two clasped hands amid a hail of greetings.

At the same time the little knot of officers caught sight of us, and in a moment had sur- rounded us, shaking us by the hand, patting our shoulders, helping us to dismount, and ques- tioning us all the while in — ^to me — ^unintel- ligible Turkish. Mahmoud Bey introduced me. His comrades stepped forward one by one and saluted as he named them.

" Abdullah Bey " — ^the handsome young staff -captain bowed — " can speak with you in German, if you like. He has studied in Berlin."

"It is unfortunate," said I, " that I cannot speak German."

50 STAFF OFFICERS

" By no means," said Abdullah Bey, in French, " for I may now learn English."

" Doubtless monsieur will soon learn Turk- ish," put in the dark little man.

" Already, Tahar Bey, he speaks Arabic," said Mahmoud, " having learnt it in a city well known to yourself — in Fez, indeed."

" How, then," cried Tahar Bey in Moghreby Arabic, " you have been in Fez ? This is wonderful. Have you friends there ? In whose house did you live ? "

Tahar Bey had himself been an instructor in the Moorish Sultan's army. We found that we had many friends in common.

" Come now," said he, taking me by the hand, " sit in the shade of the tent, and give me news."

The others cried out laughingly that he must not take the stranger all to himself. We went into the tent and sat upon camp-beds, laughing and chatting ; and — how it came there I cannot guess — a bottle half full of excellent Irish whisky was produced for me.

" In Paris," commented the wounded lieu- tenant, Seyyid, " the English drink only whiski- soda."

He peeled an orange for me, and passed it across.

" Here are good dry dates," said another, and, " I have tobacco for a pipe," said Ab- dullah Bey.

OUR NOBLE ENGLAND 51

The jovial grey-bearded commander of artillery came in and was introduced.

" They take an interest, then, in England, in this war of ours ? " said he. " And which side will England favour ? "

" Why," said I, "it seems to me that the people for the most part favour the Turks ; because they are making a brave stand against great odds. But I think the government of England means to favour neither side."

The chorus of remarks and questions which followed this statement showed plainly that most of the officers confidently expected active intervention on Turkey's behalf by England. They were already aware of the wave of pro- Turkish sympathy which was at that time sweeping over England as a result of the news which had been published of the massacres perpetrated in Tripoli by the Italians only a short time since. They knew that practically all the English correspondents on the Italian side had withdrawn or been expelled ; and had even got some inkling — through Constantinople, I suppose — of the protests and stop-the-war meetings which had been held in England.

" And then," urged Tahar Bey, " we are not sentimentalists, nor do we suppose that senti- ment alone would make England risk a war ; but think how easy it will be, without fighting, for England to stop this — ^this act of brigandage.

52 CHAMPION OF THE WEAK

For I don't call this a war. And think of her many sound reasons for doing so. England has how many Moslem subjects ? Egypt and India, they say, are just now somewhat dis- turbed. What a fine stroke of policy for England to favour the co-religionists of her Moham- medan peoples in those countries. Such a policy would turn the sourest grumblers into the wildest of enthusiasts."

" Besides," added another, " England owes something, doesn't she, to the Mohammedans ? It was they, in India, who remained faithful, and stood by the English during the days of the Indian Mutiny."

The Tobchi — ^that was the title of the old artillery officer — stroked his long beard and smiled.

" Aye," said he, in Arabic, for he spoke no French, " and we know the temper of the English. They are not ungrateful, and they will never permit the strong to beat down the weak. Look now, haven't they always stood up for the feeble when our old Sultan (to hell with his soul ! ) butchered them in Armenia and burnt their houses in Macedonia ? Allah ! The English are champions of all the world ! They are good friends of the Turks, too ; for though they rebuked the Turk when he was proud and did evil, they have stood by him in his time of need. Didn't they save us from the

" ET DEBELLARE SUPERBOS " 53

Russ ? Aye, and they'll save us again, in sh'Allah ! "

And so confident were they all that the noble indignation of England would be loosed upon Italy, that I forebore to point out that chivalry is a card not to be played by party politicians unless it is absolutely certain to take a trick without involving risk. I was made more than a little uncomfortable by the remarks with which the Tobchi improved upon his speech.

" See now," said he, " if our armies landed in Italy and set about shooting down old men unarmed ; if they bound the hands of women and cut off their breasts ; and filled the mosques and holy places of the Italians with the bodies of young girls and babies cut in two at the middle, as the Italians have filled our mosque yonder " — he pointed in the direction of Bu Meliana — " why then, wouldn't the English, aye, and all other peoples of Europe, become sharp swords in the hands of God to cut us all off ? Well then, the English are just. They will punish bad Italians no less readily than they would punish bad Turks."

He glanced round upon an audience that obviously agreed with him ; and I was not sorry when an orderly appeared, and told me that the Commander-in-Chief, who, on my arrival, had been deciphering a message from Constantinople, would now be pleased to receive me.

IX

" As you see," observed Fethi Bey, the Chief of Staff, " we Hve hard at present, and though we have plenty of food, it is possibly more nourishing than palatable, monsieur."

He raised a rib of mutton to his lips with his fingers as he spoke, and regarded me whim- sically.

" But at least," said I, '' the story that you live upon rats and lizards in this camp is not altogether true."

Neshat Bey, the burly, bearded commander of the Turkish forces, wiped his fingers on a piece of thin camp-bread, and drank water from an earthen pitcher.

"No," said he gravely. "Those stories are not true. We do not eat rats. I never ate a rat in my life, nor yet a lizard. We have food in plenty, el hamdu Villah, though certainly we lack the sweetmeats."

We were sitting at dinner in the Commander's tent, squatting cross-legged on the ground, and eating as the Arabs eat, and as the ancient Romans did, with the fingers of our right hands

54

THE LITTLE FIGHTS 55

alone. Save for a few roughly fashioned wooden spoons, there were hardly any table-implements in camp at that time.

" No doubt it pleases the Italians to picture us as starving in the desert," continued Fethi Bey. " But before they bring us to that stage, they must cut off our line of communication. And, as yet, they have not ventured inland be- yond the range of their own naval guns."

Indeed, as we sat at dinner, we were barely five miles from the walls of Tripoli itself, and at night the rays of the great Italian searchlights played full upon our tents. At one time an Italian outpost had occupied this very hollow; but the Turks had driven them back three weeks ago, and now held ground still further in, towards the East, at Sok el Juma.

The fighting had been for many days mere garden skirmishing amongst the groves and palm-plantations on the landward side of the town ; and strange to say, the Turks and Arabs were always the aggressors in these little fights. For the Italians would not come out from behind their trenches and breastworks ; and the raw Arab levies, bitterly contemptuous of such foes, made continual raids upon their outposts in the gardens of the suburbs.

On the very day of my arrival, a chipped and battered cottage piano came into the camp at Sok el Juma. Fethi Bey had told me the

56 ADVENTURE OF A PIANO

story of its capture. Under cover of the dusk, some thirty of Sheikh Barouni's hill-folk — they are Berber stock with a strong admixture of Arab blood from the foot-hills — had crept through the narrow, high-banked lanes upon the outskirts of the town, until their ears were offended by the barbaric sound of Roumi music in a garden. The night-raiders divided their band, and, crawling on their bellies in the dust, went forward by two and threes, and surroun- ded that garden upon three sides.

The garden was that of a small white villa that had been turned into an outpost station. The slender muzzle of a quick-firer peeped out of the drawing-room window on to the lawn, where sat a little party of officers, drinking wine and eating biscuits, and listening to one of their number who played upon a piano, and sang.

From time to time all beat upon the little tables with their glasses, and sang loudly, all together. The garden was lighted by lanterns of coloured paper that hung in front of the house, and also upon bushes in the garden ; and at a gap in the cactus-hedge stood a sentry, with a bunch of feathers in his hat — (" like those we killed at Bu Meliana ") — but his face was towards the singers, and he heard only the sound of the loud " musica." His rifle was leaning against the hedge ; and he did not live to pick it up.

THE NIGHT RAID 5

Some of the Arabs went a little back, to a clump of date-palms, and climbing, with their guns slung at their backs, esconced themselves amongst the feathery tops and fired from thence. But most of them, hot for plunder, dashed in at the gap in the hedge, trampling the body of the heedless sentry underfoot ; and others, having soaked their heavy woollen haiks in a pool, used them as shields against the cactus-spines — an ancient trick of Arab warfare — and thus burst through the hedge in other places, shoot- ing as they charged, and raising the name of their God in a deafening shout.

They fell upon the revellers and slew seven, according to one report ; half a score, so others said. (" Probably," commented Fethi Bey, " they killed three or four in the first onset.") The rest of the Italians fled, taking with them the Maxim, which, had not the Arabs stayed to rifle the dead in the garden, should have been captured. But the " musica " was too heavy a thing for the Italians to take, and so the Arabs had it, and dragged it painfully to camp, unpursued.

They had the utmost contempt for their enemy, these Arabs. As yet, though there were rumours of their coming, the main bodies of re- inforcements from Fezzan and the inner deserts had not arrived to swell the numbers of those who fought for the Sultan, I may not say, of

58 ITALIANS BESIEGED

course, how many men were under the com- mand of Neshat Bey, though there can be no harm now in admitting that, until the rein- forcements came up, and the hollows of the desert swarmed with Arab camps, his forces were astonishingly small. When Europe knows how few were the men who for months kept the great and splendidly equipped Italian army cooped up, so that it hardly dared to venture forth from the town of Tripoli, and is even now confined to a very few miles of coast-line, the standing of Italy as a military power must surely be for ever lost.

At this time, and for some weeks previously, the garrison of Turks which had evacuated Tripoli, aided by only a few hundred ill-trained and undisciplined Arabs, had literally laid siege to the town to such an extent that even drink- ing water had to be brought in ships from Italy. Italian reinforcements, too, were constantly arriving, as we knew by the uniforms and caps taken by the Arabs. The Italian soldiers in the trenches were apparently spiritless, taking no interest in a war which had turned out so differently from their expectations ; and when a sortie was finally made, the advance guards, at least, were entirely composed of new men. Those who had lain for many days in the trenches were broken in nerve and weary in body.

Sometimes we read letters — pitiful things

ITALIAN HEROES 59

taken from the pockets of the dead — which told us how the peasants from Piedmont, and town lads from Milan and Brescia, and gangers and plate-layers, waiters and street hawkers, come back from foreign countries to fight for Italy, found this business of war by no means to their taste.

How many a poor Italian, I wonder, has set out to this war with hopes of achieving a glory that was to compensate him for a life of igno- miny amongst the unimaginative, brutal races of the North and West (who have contemp- tuously denied the gallant son of Italy the standing of a man) ; has pictured his Italy taking her place amongst the mighty nations, and himself leaving behind the derision of street- boys and the inhumanity of overseers and ships- officers and customers of restaurants, to ride, with flashing eyes and bright sword, with a thousand ineffably gallant comrades, in the wake of scuttling Turks and fleeing Arabs. And then to find the sunlit, golden sands, and grace- ful palms of his fancy represented by a bleak, dull grey waste, scourged by bitter winds and lashed by merciless rain, with here and there dark groves of branchless, evil trees, that sheltered Turks who stolidly refused to scuttle, and pitiless, hawk-faced desert men, who ran like greyhounds upon their enemy, and laughed aloud as they cut him down. No wonder that

60 HEARTS OF HARE

as they lay in their sodden trenches, the ItaHan soldiery prayed that the war might soon be over, and that they might spend il giorni di Natale in their native land ; or that they were driven into action more than once by officers who beat them with the flat of the sword.

" It's all very well for our officers," said one of the prisoners whom I saw afterwards at Gharien. " They are gentlemen and nobles, so of course they're brave. O yes, our officers are as brave as lions " — this, by the way, was generally admitted by the Arabs — " but we are only poor devils and we think of our lives, and of the father and mother at home. And if they knew how well the Turks treat us, instead of believing the officers, who say they roast their prisoners and eat them, like chestnuts, why then, half the army would come to be made prisoners."

As for the accusation of cruelty and bloody- mindedness which certain humanitarians have seen fit to make against the entire Italian race on account of the massacre in Tripoli, it is probably as untrue as most statements of that nature are. Neither the Turks, nor yet the Arabs, after the first indignation died away, accused them of anything but pitiful, ecstatic cowardice. It was because they were mad with terror that the Italian soldiers (and sailors) ran amok and butchered every defenceless person

NO ENGLISH 61

on whom they could lay hands. In ordinary moments the average Italian soldier seemed to me, judging from the prisoners, to be a merry, goodnatured creature — but chicken-hearted.

But one must admit that, of a brave man and a coward, the coward is the more dangerous.

A Texan ex-bar-keeper of the bad old days of the Panhandle told me once that " It wasn't the bad man as made the wust trouble ; not by chalks. The man to be skeered of was the yelpin' sort o' cuss that drew on ye if ye tapped him on the shoulder to offer him a drink. When a coward's got a gun in his hand, you can bet there'll be innocent citizens buried, just 'cos his nerves is jumpy."

We sat chatting over the coffee after dinner, and Fethi Bey discussed with me the difficulties of establishing a press censorship. For many reasons, this was not an easy matter. In the first place, no one in the camp understood English, though most of the Turkish officers spoke French very well. There was, indeed, a military surgeon named Orhan, who had taught himself a little English from books ; but for him to censorise one of my dispatches would have been the work of a whole day. Also, he was not at Ain Zara, but in the barracks at Azizia, a day's journey inland.

We finally agreed that I must be put on hon- our to translate faithfully what I had written

62 DIFFICULTIES OF CENSORSHIP

into French, and give a copy of it either to Fethi Bey himself, or to Tahar Bey. Of course a censorship was highly necessary. Even if only from ignorance, I might have easily given in- formation concerning the Turkish numbers and positions which would have been valuable to the other side. But this peculiar method of censorising did not work very long. For me it was irksome to have to copy and translate into French every message and letter, whether private or for the press, which I wished to send from the camp ; and also, neither Fethi Bey nor Tahar Bey could always spare time to listen to my translations. For a short time, this delayed my despatches very considerably.

Also the postal service was naturally rather erratic — sometimes one could only send letters once in ten days. And there was a serious diffi- culty, too, in the actual transmission of my telegrams. Not only did none of the telegra- phists understand English ; only a few had any knowledge of French, and consequently did not recognise Roman characters except when they were printed in large, plain capital letters. I had to print every telegram I sent ; and even then, many of them were hardly decipherable when they reached London.

From Ain Zara one telegraphed to Nalout, the nearest Turkish post to the French line across the Tunisian frontier ; and from Nalout mounted

A FREE HAND 63

dispatch riders galloped over the frontier and put the messages on the wires at Dehibat, whence they were transmitted via Paris to London.

As I say, the censorship on which we had agreed did not continue for long. When I had got some understanding of the position of affairs, and knew what it would be safe and what it would be unsafe to say, Fethi Bey apparently decided that, if I could be trusted to translate faithfully, I might be trusted farther. My private letters were no longer in- spected, and I was asked only to give the substance of my press messages. Before I had been two months in camp, even this restric- tion had been removed. Some of my articles were translated from the Daily Express and reappeared in the Turkish papers. Evidently they made a favourable impression. I was given an entirely free hand.

And they never even hinted that my dis- patches should be favourably coloured on their behalf. The Turks had everything to gain by European sympathy ; and they are, I think, even hyper-sensitive in their appreciation of friendly comment, or their distress at hostile criticism. Yet I was never once asked to make any report on hearsay ; nor were messages in which I frankly stated that what I said might possibly be unpalatable, in any way tampered

64 PERSONALITIES

with. In particular, when I subsequently wrote of sickness in the camp, and of the famine brought about by the war, there was no sugges- tion that it would be politic to conceal such matters as far as possible.

While we were talking about these things, there came into the commander's tent a tall, red-haired man, with high cheek bones and small, kindly eyes. He had the physiognomy of a Scottish crofter, and wore a black frock-coat and long riding boots. This was Ferhat Bey, the Arab deputy of the Zawia department ; and, though I did not then know it, this man, with Sheikh Suliman Barouni, whom I had yet to meet, was almost entirely responsible for the resistance offered by the Arabs. Turkey owes much to these two patriots. But for them the Italian occupation of Tripoli would have been accomplished within three months of the declaration of war.

It seemed to me, even then, that each of those men, Neshat Bey, Fethi Bey, and the Arab deputy, Mehemet Ferhat Bey, was representa- tive of a widely different type, but it was not on my first meeting with them that I understood how wide the differences between them really were.

Neshat Bey is a brave and courteous gentle- man of the old Turkish school ; religious, dignified, leisurely in speech and in thought,

NESHAT BEY 65

and not much influenced by the European spirit. Of his mihtary abihties I cannot say much, because, during all the time I was his guest, I never knew him to take action independently of the counsels of Fethi Bey. He was ordered from Constantinople to evacuate the town of Tripoli at the beginning of the war, and he did so. And if he had been ordered to hold the town in face of the Italian bombardment, Neshat Bey would be in Tripoli or under its ruins at this moment. Like most of his breed, he would suffer from a false impression of himself sooner than take the trouble to remove it ; and con- sequently for some time relations between him- self and some of the Arab leaders were strained. The Turk is in many respects like the traditional Briton — undemonstrative, slow-moving, and disdainful of self -justification ; and Neshat Bey is essentially Turkish. When a word of explanation might have satisfied the querulous Arabs, he would probably withhold that word. As an instance, it was at one time rumoured through the camp that a quantity of tea had been bought for the Turkish soldiers, at a time when the Arabs were subsisting for the most part on flour-and-oil paste. How the rumour got about I don't know ; there are grumblers in every camp, and no doubt some discontented camel-driver turned soldier had set it afloat, as he cursed the hard fare which fell to his lot.

66 ARAB DISCONTENT

" WuUahi, lads, we must stay our bellies with beasts' meat, eh ? The very horses of the Tur- cha cannon have better fare. Aye, and the Turcha themselves, who doubts, can gorge on the best, and swill their cursed necks with tea. Didn't I see the fat chaoush (sergeant) yonder boiling water on the fire ? Tea he was making, I doubt it not. Ha ! M'hammed, why dost thou sup foul water ? I'll warrant they have good tea for all in the cook-tent."

Doubtless in some such way the rumours got about. At any rate, it was wholly false. And yet, the eager Arabs who came to beg for tea, and their leaders, upbraiding staff officers with favouring the Turkish above the Arab soldiers, were given only the bald statement : " There is no tea."

There was no attempt at a soothing explana- tion.

Neshat Bey, had he been of the type that makes soothing explanations upon all occasions, might possibly, by words, have won over the grumblers amongst the Arabs much sooner than he did . As it was he seemed content to go his own way, make short replies when accused of in- action (the Arabs could not at first relish the Fabian policy which he was forced to pursue), and suffer time to justify him in their eyes. At least, when I first joined the camp, there was a considerable breach between the Turks and

FETHI BEY 67

the Arabs ; and when I left, they were the closest brothers.

Fethi Bey is a young Turk, one of the prime instigators of the Young Turk movement ; a military attache in Paris ; and, I believe, a brilliant soldier. It was commonly said that, though Neshat Bey was nominally commander- in-chief, Fethi Bey was actually so. Whatever may have been the case, there was never the slightest sign that the elder man resented the position, or that the younger presumed upon it. They seemed always to be upon the most cor- dial terms of friendship, and to act in perfect harmony together.

Fethi Bey is an Albanian, tall, dark, with a grave, melancholy manner and a remarkably sweet voice. Almost alone of the Turkish officers, he seemed to have no illusion whatever as to the chance of any European intervention favourable to Turkey, and seemed to find a certain quietly ironical pleasure in the reliance of some of his colleagues on the chivalry of the Christian Powers.

During my first few days in camp I saw little of him, for he spent most of his time directing operations from the Sok-el-Juma camp, and by utterly disregarding his own health — his orderly told me that for two weeks he neither undressed at night nor removed his boots — laying the foundation of the serious illness that came upon him shortly after.

X

For many days the Italians lay inactive in their trenches, waiting, apparently, until the constant booming of their heavy guns from fort and fleet should have frightened the Arabs away. I was at first convinced that fighting was afoot in some quarter or another, which I was not allowed to see ; for, often, from dawn till past midday there would be a ceaseless thunder of the heaviest artillery, such as, thought I, could only have been accounted for by the bombardment of our camp, or by Italian artillery repelling such charging hordes as Kitchener's guns cut down at Omdurman.

Yet I saw no newly wounded men ; nor did any shells, during the heaviest cannonades, fall within a mile of the headquarter camp at Ain Zara. Those which came nearest to us fell persistently in the neighbourhood of the hospital, just beyond our cavalry outposts, a good three kilometres to the north. The white walls of this old building offered a good mark to the Italian gunners ; and, though a white flag

6S

THE SHELLING OF THE HOSPITAL 69

with the sign of the Red Crescent flew above it, it was shelled frequently. Twice, I think, an aeroplane circled above it, dropping bombs on one occasion whilst the wounded and sick were hurried out in stretchers to find a safer retreat. Fragments of shell, with quantities of shrapnel bullets, were picked up in the court-yard.

I was inclined to think at first that this bom- bardment of the hospital was accidental, and that the shells which came that way were originally directed upon the Turkish batteries. But this could hardly have been. The hospital for one thing was in full view of at least one of the forts held by the Italians on the outskirts of Tripoli ; whereas the dunes amongst which the Turkish batteries were esconced, and whence the old Tobchi, placidly seated on a broken-backed cane chair, directed the bombardment, were very much further to the north-west, so that the firing on the hospital was manifestly inten- tional.

Still, even the bombardment of the hospital could only account for a very small part of the continual thunder of the Italian guns, and so I came to the conclusion that fighting was in progress somewhere of which I had been told nothing.

I said as much to Tahar Bey ; and Tahar Bey laughed.

" Come to-morrow with me," he said, " and

70 ITALIAN GUNNERS

I will show you what the Italian gunners fire at."

And so next day, having borrowed a mighty iron-grey artillery wheeler (for I had as yet no horse of my own), I rode out with Tahar Bey and two staff officers, and two orderlies. We passed the cavalry outpost, where the horses stood picketted at the bottom of a pretty palm- fringed hollow ; and splashed through a reedy marsh, till we came upon a belt of yellow sand- hills, and looked across a vast dry ocean of motionless billows to where the white walls and towers of Tripoli town showed palely through green trees against the sea.

Tahar Bey, who had led the way with the mysterious air of one about to make wondrous revelations, cocked a leg over the pommel of his saddle, and sat sideways, rolling a cigarette and regarding me amusedly.

'^Voila, monsieur," said he, "the explana- tion."

" I don't understand," I told him. " There seems to be no one there."

" Exactly, monsieur. There seems to be no one there. But if, from the camp, you heard a furious bombardment " — " bombardement d^enfer'' was the expression he used — "you

would then suppose "

" I should naturally suppose, Tahar Bey, that fighting was going on in that place."

THE EXPLANATION 71

" Exactly, monsieur," He seemed to be enjoying my mystification immensely.

" But," I continued, " since there is no bombardment, and since there are neither Turks nor Arabs here besides ourselves, I don't quite see why you have come here. For instance, there is heavy firing over there." I pointed eastward, whence a dull rumble of cannon was borne on the wind from the direction of Sok-el-Juma. " Why don't you take me there ? "

"O, that," carelessly, "that is nothing. Perhaps the Italians have seen one of our scouts on the skyline."

I was angry that he should expect me to believe that the Italians would open fire from their batteries upon a single man seen on the skyline.

" But it is so," said Tahar Bey, more seriously. " Now you shall see for yourself."

He galloped his horse up a steep hillock, and we followed him, sitting in full view of the nearest Italian forts, of which that into which the old Ecole d'Agriculture had been made was barely five kilometres away.

And hardly had we shown ourselves, when puffs of white smoke came shooting from behind the Ecole d'Agriculture, and presently we heard the dull booming of the report ; and a shower of sand skipped up from the face of the desert three hundred yards away.

72 ITALIAN VIGILANCE

" They are bad shots, but very vigilant," remarked Tahar Bey, hghting his cigarette. " We will now descend, before they get our range. The bombardment will continue."

And it did. From time to time, when the firing slackened, we galloped on to other ridges on the skyline. "Powr les encourager,^' as Tahar Bey put it. There were five of us in all, and they blazed away at us till dusk. They spent enough powder on us to wreck a city.

" You see," Tahar Bey explained, as we cantered home through the hollows, " to the imagination of the Italian gunners, the desert is alive with terrible enemies, constantly trying to approach the walls. If they see anyone, they fire. If they don't see anyone, they get nervous. They feel sure that we are getting nearer, so they fire again, to let us know they are on the alert, or to frighten us away."

" If we had stayed a little longer," said one of the other officers regretfully, " the big guns of the fleet would have joined in. And it costs thousands of francs every time a big gun is fired."

XI

I HAD been for some three weeks amongst the Turks before the Italians ventured out into the open.

It was on the fourth of December, and, as yet, hardly daylight, when I awoke to the sound of a furious cannonade, which seemed to me to have some special import.

How it comes about I do not know ; but certain it is that, at the appointed time, sounds often heard, sights often seen, are suddenly infused with a great significance. Night after night you may lie asleep in camp, and almost hourly the drumming of galloping hoofs will be borne to your brain without disturbing your consciousness. There is nothing strange in the sound of hard riding by night in time of war. And yet there will come at last some rider, the bearer perhaps of weighty news, or a galloper sent to bring help to a beleaguered outpost ; and the message beaten out by the feet of his horse will penetrate the inmost chambers of your mind, and bring you out of sleep with a certain knowledge of great things toward.

73

74 REAL FIGHTING NOW

There is no mathematical scale whereby you may distinguish the rhythm and cadence of his hoof -beats from those of the sounds made by the rider's horse who galloped in last night to say that all was well.

And as with hoof-beats, so for me it proved with cannon-sounds. For many a night the noise of heavy firing had reached my ears and not disturbed my sleep ; but now they bore a sharp significance, and urgent assurance that now, at last, there was a purpose in the roar of the Italian guns.

I sat up in my creaking camp-bed, struck a light and listened.

At first — nothing, save the confusion of dull sounds that bewilders the ears of the newlv- awakened. Then the light patter of rain upon the canvas of the tent, and faint, innumerable scratchings, as the slow, huge beetles and creeping sand-beasts that sought shelter in my tent scurried from the light into their crevices and hiding-holes.

Then—" Boom ! " And again, " Boom ! Bang ! Boom ! "

Then a muffled noise of voices, and the distant sound of horses, ridden hard, and the creak and rumble of waggon-wheels on sodden sand, making cacophonous grace notes to a contrapuntal accompaniment of deep-voiced guns far away.

BATTLE AT DAWN 75

Through the wetted canvas of the tent I saw faint gleams of hght ; and shapeless shadows moved upon its inner surface, as men without swung lanterns to and fro. Now and then, when the gusty wind dropped, there came, faintly, a rapid crackling noise, as of a walking- stick drawn sharply across a wooden paling, many miles away — the sound of some far- distant quickfirer.

The staff were gone. I dressed and hurried to their tent, but not a man was there. Up on the top of the ridge behind the tents a few dim forms worked in the streaming rain with spades and shovels, scooping out entrenchments, and piling up embrasures, breast high. And here and there stood groups of men peering through glasses into the silver haze of rain and the grey mists of morning towards the north, whence came the sound of guns.

A vagabond Syrian Arab, a camp-follower speaking broken fragments of many tongues, came down the hill-side past me, seeking for shelter. His wet rags clung to his thin brown shanks, and his slippers were shapeless bags of sodden leather, caked with yellow mud. I hailed him in Arabic.

" Oh, Selim, hast thou any news ? "

" Much fight. Plenty big fight to-day, sah," he answered in English, and passed on to the tents.

76 CAMP FOLLOWERS' MARKET

Daylight came abruptly, and the rain ceased. I went back to my tent, and ate as much as ever I could. I ate eggs fried in oil, and potatoes and half-cooked meat ; and made thick soup from a tablet to drink instead of coffee. I crammed my wallets with the thin pancake-like bread of the camp, with chocolate, dried dates and bro- ken biscuits. Also I made a roll of blankets and some little underclothing, and strapped it on to my saddle. And after that I saddled the big artillery horse that had been lent to me — the Turks, of their generous hospitality, would not suffer me at first to buy a horse — and rode northward to see the fight.

Beyond the ridge that shelters the greatest of the many scattered villages of tents, I came to the straggling encampment of the Arab women, children, and camp-followers. Here were the markets that supplied the army with fodder, meat and flour, and milk and eggs. Already the market was afoot, and the thought- less Arabs chattered and haggled and brawled, heedless as ever of the rumbling guns ; though here and there upon the crests of the rolling dunes sat groups of men intently watching clouds and rings of smoke far to the north. At little distances, too, upon the ridges, sentinels in Turkish uniform kept watch upon the fight ; but in the hollows noisy Arab commerce ruled the day.

WAR LORD OF THE MOUNTAINS 77

There appeared a little cloud of horsemen galloping hard, and at their head rode Sheikh Barouni, deputy in Stamboul, and war-lord of the mountain Arabs. Two days before he was Barouni Bey, in neat frock-coat and formal high tarbush. To-day Sheikh Barouni, he flaunted the battle gear of the desert warrior, with snowy burnoose floating wide over the green and gold of his kaftan. His saddle glowed with scarlet and silver, and his bridle was broad with blood-red fringes. He carried a carbine, and at his wrist there hung a bull's- hide quirt. Into the market rode Sheikh Barouni, and reined his spume-flecked stallion back on his haunches ; and without a word he fell to laying about him with his quirt. He backed his nervous beast into a stack of earthen pottery and sent the red dust flying up in clouds. '' Must I give my orders twice ? " he cried at last. " Where is the sheikh of the Sok ? " And when the trembling elder of the market was brought, " Did I not tell you all two hours since to cease your peddling and begone ? " roared Barouni, bending from the saddle and glaring round. "Away with you all, fools that you

are."

((

A little, a little, lord," quavered the sheikh-es-sok, " and we have sold our wares."

" A little, a little, uncle, and thou hast sold thy life for the worth of a broken pot," retorted

78 STRIKE THE TENTS

Barouni angrily. He struck with his kourbash on the sounding sides of a black hair-cloth booth, and a woman came out holding a corner of her shift between her teeth to screen her face, and with two children clinging to her knees.

" O shameless ! " she began shrilly ; and

stopped on seeing who had called her out.

" Strike the beyt-es-shaar (the " house of hair") woman, and begone," cried the Sheikh. **0r will you have your children eaten by the ItaUan askar ; and yourself, maybe, given to their captains ? Though, wullah ! " he chuckled, " I think they'll not quarrel for thee, mother of many."

There was a laugh, and the harridan dared some sharp retort that seemed to tickle the Sheikh.

"Away, now, away," said he, more good- humouredly. " And leave the road clear for the coming of the Turks."

" Do the Turks give back then, Barouni Bey ? " I asked him.

" Needs must, on the left," said he. " Stay here awhile, I pray you, and you shall see. The Italians have come against our left in thousands ; but on the right we still hold them back. I go to S6k-el-Juma."

He spurred his horse with the corner of his great silver-plated stirrups, and it bounded forward, snorting.

THE TURKS GIVE BACK 70

The Arab market broke up, and I, riding to a little eminence some way off, watched from thence the progress of the battle.

The Italians had come out in great force, in roughly crescent-shaped formation ; and the right horn of their crescent, being opposed to the Turkish batteries, was evidently by far stronger than the left. There were battalions which we had thought to be engaged at Derna and at Khoms ; and from the booty taken by the Arabs in and after the fight, we figured later that the following regiments, 15th, 18th, 40th, 50th, 52nd, 80th, 85th, 93rd, and a regiment of Grenadiers, were all new blood, used on that day for the first time against the Turks.

Our men gave back slowly during the morning. They could not drag the guns across the loose sand ; and so they buried them deeply ; and afterwards, when we recovered Ain Zara, some at least were discovered, though I believe the place where two were cached was betrayed to the Italians by spies.

Nearer and nearer came the fight. Now one could see through glasses brown lines of tiny men, like ants, as they moved from hollow to hollow, fighting desperately in the billow-like dunes. The crackle of the rifle fire grew more and more insistent ; and the explosions of the big guns, growing ever louder, shook the air. The pliant stems of the young palms above the

80 FUGITIVES FROM AIN ZARA

old cavalry pickets quivered with the incessant concussions. Overhead, the bursting Italian shells rained metal splinters almost on the tents of the Turkish staff. They burst in the sky like scarlet-yoked eggs flung against a sapphire wall.

By mid-day the little hollow was become a channel for wounded men and fugitive Arab women and children — their departure had been long delayed. Some Turkish artillerymen came through, their horses still drawing the captured waggons of the Bersaglieri ; and the head- quarter camp was struck.

I was quick to hire a camel, and to have my baggage loaded on him. Beasts of burden were scarce that day, and had I waited half an hour longer my tent and kit must have been left behind, as were so many more.

The staff came last of all. First Tahar Bey rode in, on a rampant young chestnut, white with lather. He gave a curt nod to me, swung out of the saddle and dived into his tent, whence he presently emerged, stuffing a tin of sardines into his pockets, and biscuits into his mouth. It was his first meal that day.

" Whither now, Tahar Bey ? " I called to him.

" To Azizia," he answered, with his mouth full. " But we halt by the way at Fonduk Bu Geshir. Be there at midnight for the supper."

Neshat Bey, sedate and unconcerned as ever,

RETREAT FROM AIN ZARA.

BESHIR BEY STAYS BEHIND 81

sat on his horse and watched the striking of the camp. He glanced now and again at the shell- starred northern sky with an air of tolerant good-humour.

" They will not follow far," was all he said.

I stayed awhile, to watch the setting up of hospital tents for those wounded who could go no further. Poles with white flags were set up before them, and the Red Crescent floated over them; "Though," said Beshir Bey, the doctor who voluntarily stayed behind, " I think, truly, those flags will be a target rather than a safe- guard."

Beshir Bey was a volunteer from Beyrout, and not a military doctor at all. He was a sturdy, shock-headed little man, strong as a bear, and had the sunniest smile I ever saw. The Arabs worshipped Beshir Bey, for it was he who, when their wounded would not come to him, would find time (when he should have slept) to go amongst the Arab tents, and enter those from which he heard the stifled groans and mutterings of men who would have con- cealed their hurts. These men, regardless of their protests (" Nay, sidi, it is nothing. A scratch only, b'illah!"), he roundly scolded for their heroism. It was he, too, who raged, as none other would have been permitted to do, amongst the butcher's market, when fly-blown meat and filthy offal were exposed, in the dust,

82 THE RETREAT

for sale ; and beat with a cleaning rod such butchers as did not hang their wares on bushes or on posts.

I said " good-bye " to him, half sure that I should not see him again ; and, indeed, though he got away with his life he lost all else that he possessed that day.

The retreating columns marched across sands now glowing rosy in the sunset. Belated Arabs straggled beside the ranks of marching Turks. Arab women, carrying huge loads, staggered wearily through the loose sand,but would not bate a whit of their burdens. One passed me bearing on her head a shallow wooden dish of mighty size, inverted, hat- wise. There were tiny child- ren, hardly old enough to walk. I saw a pair of new-born calves, yoked together at the neck. Frail as they were they must bear some household burden ; and even sheep and goats had packs and nets of fruit on their backs. A fainting rabble followed in the army's wake, and the desert way for close on twenty miles was strewn with discarded horse-gear, cooking pots, a chair or two, and miscellaneous litter from the Arab tents. ^ And overhead, against the golden sunset, there hovered always a whirring speck of black, no greater than a swallow.

It was one of the Italian aeroplanes, hanging over the retreating army, watching it as vul-

TO FONDUK BU GESHIR 83

tures watch a wounded beast trail itself to its . lair to die.

Night came on, with a brilliantly clear moon that silvered the desert's face, and threw our shadows black as ebony upon it. Never have I known such brilliant nights as those of Northern Africa, where the moon, no longer a fiat white disc, hangs like a globe of old ivory, a little cracked and discoloured, but calmly, steadily luminous.

It seemed as though a hush came over the ebon and silver pageant marching in an endless column towards the dim line of mountains in the south. Now and then hoarse cries flitted up and down the line ; now there was muffled jingling of harness; and ever the soft pad-pad of camels' spongy feet. A rider, holding a lantern on high, came seeking someone in the ranks; and shadows danced grotesquely to hide from the yellow flare as he came.

We came, near midnight, to the Fonduk Bu Geshir. Already many hundreds of horses and camels stood or couched on the plain, and men slept amongst them, wrapped in coat and blankets.

The officers of the Turks, and some of the Arab notables, were sheltered in a line of narrow hovels built about three sides of a dirty courtyard. Entering one low and narrow room I found it lighted at one end by a solitary candle.

84 SUPPER

Round it sat the commandant and Fethi Bey, with many of the staff, writing dispatches and poring, in that forlorn Hght, upon a map.

A Httle while later food was found, and we ate sardines with our fingers from the box, and stale dry bread. And those who still had water in their flasks drank it, sharing with the rest.

Scouts went back towards Ain Zara, and I, having rested for an hour, and having trans- ferred my saddle to a fresher horse than that which had carried me all day, set out in the wake of the army which had already started on the road to Azizia, and riding hard, came in before dawn, at five o'clock.

XII

One solitary sugar-loaf hill rises abruptly from the desert, crowned by the white dome of a n'sala — the tomb of a saint — that forms the only landmark in that mournful wilderness. The hill is of volcanic origin. From its crest a broad, uneven, black pavement that was once a stream of boiling rock, runs down the eastern face, and is engulfed in sand. Asphodel and thorny box- wood shrubs with glossy leaves, grow sparsely on the slopes. There is a stunted, wind-writhed tree close to the old n'sala ; and on its branches Turkish sentries, posted to keep watch over the desert from the hill-top, were wont to hang their tattered shirts, new- washed, to dry them in the wind. And now, all the upper slopes are thickly terraced with rough graves of those who died of typhoid, cholera and unten- ded wounds. They are low, oblong mounds of fresher earth, with piles of stone upon them ; and every one that marks the burial-place of an Arab has a broken potsherd, an oil-cruse or a lamp laid on it.

85

86 THE LONELY HILL

By day the ceaseless wind piles drifting sand upon these sorrowful terraces ; and the sand is figured with the delicate tracery left by the feet of beetles, lizards, and the smaller desert birds. The pied wagtail leaves a clear-cut cuneiform inscription on the sand. The passage of the beetles is marked by parallel lines of dots and tiny dashes ; and where you see two lines of fairy hand-prints, one upon either side of a sharp-drawn line, you may know that a lizard has scurried fitfully across the open, and you may track him if you please to the foot of some bush, or to a cranny in the rock.

By night lean dogs, white, bushy-tailed, and indescribably stealthy, prowl warily amongst the graves, snuffing the ground near those most lately made, and, if undisturbed, falling to swift diggings and disgusting meals.

There is a large white building, once, I think, a school, and now a hospital, standing a little way from the foot of the hill upon its western slope. Opposite to that, a large barracks, with battlements, and rooms built round three sides of an open square, A compound for horses adjoins the barracks, and the rickety, small, foul shops ranged under its outer wall form one side of a wide, uneven street, whose opposite side is a mass of sand-mud hovels, tunnel-shaped and roofed with domes of dirty white.

And that is Azizia, for long to be the head-

NESHAT BEY'S PLANS 87

quarters of the Turkish army in TripoH. The outposts and the greater Arab camps lay far out in a fan-shaped hne towards the north ; and from these there still rode out small raiding bands to skirmish with the Italian outposts. Save that they had occupied Ain Zara, and had there established a camp of tents and wooden sheds, with a palisade and trenches round it, the Italians advanced no further into the desert than at first.

Neshat Bey, to draw them on, would have made his headquarters in the mountains, at Gharien. From that inaccessible stronghold he could have harried the Italian advance into the desert with perfect safety, and, since the fleet could give no help, and to transport big guns over the shifting sands even to the foot of the first mountain pass would have been a work of enormous difficulty, he might in time have faced the Italians on almost equal terms.

But the Arabs would not have it so. Even to have retired so far as Azizia was galling to them. Their impatient minds could hardly conceive a policy of waiting for the enemy to come on. They must attack, and ever attack. From the innumerable petty skirmishes their raiding parties won booty enough to make them well content with the progress of the war. Little they cared for ultimate issues or for big decisive fights. Each thriftless nomad that now had food

88 ARABS CONTENT WITH WAR

in plenty for his horse and self, cartridges doled out to him, and the promise of pay at the rate of a piastre daily, was satisfied that war was good. Their leaders knew well that, more even than a desire to keep their land inviolate, or to avenge the murder of their kinsfolk, it was the hope of booty that kept the Arabs together. A ring from a dead Italian finger, a purse of money or a cloak stripped from the slain and brought to camp, bred stories of rich plunder that would fetch men up from Egypt and the Barbary coast ; from Tunis and Lake Chad.

Fethi Bey went up to Gharien. Cannon were posted at the heads of those awful mountain passes, and some little baggage of the army was already sent. But Arab vehemence over- bore the general's design. It was but too evident that, should he withdraw, to await an opportu- nity of harrying the Italians in the desert, the army that was now increasing daily would melt away like breath from the face of a mirror.

Certainly the army grew apace, and all day caravans came in from Tunis and the south to feed it. By all the roads converging on the lonely little hill came flocks of sheep and herds of goats, lean, dusty cattle, men on asses bringing poultry, eggs, and garden-stuffs, and camels, camels, camels, laden high with sacks of barley, wheat, and flour, dried Fezzan dates, rice, fodder, and dripping skins of water from

COURTYARD OF THE CASERNE 89

the desert wells near by. The oven fires blazed day and night, and the flat, hot loaves passed from the bakehouses in endless streams.

The arched entry to the courtyard of the barracks was thronged by shouting men and groaning, jostling beasts. Horses, half -wild with terror in that narrow entry, reared madly, screaming, and struck at the ever-pressing throng of camels with fore-feet plastered thick with mud and garbage. The stamped earth of the courtyard softened into knee-deep mud, that caked the hairy flanks of camels. Beasts that had lain there overnight rose with a smack- ing noise, as bisons from their wallows, and the clinging mud dried hard in pellets that fringed their bellies. Horses, from contact with the camels, caught a mangey disease of the skin, and the hair fell from them, leaving raw red patches that grew and grew, and must be rubbed with paraffin, then all too precious for such use.

And every day came more and more new fighters for the Sultan's cause. There were lean, ascetic shepherds from the foot-hills, bearing six-foot fire-locks bound about the stock with wire. Some carried horse-pistols, bell-mouthed and wonderfully inlaid with silver. There were many who came with knives lashed to the end of staffs of polished olive-wood, and some had sickles in their belts.

Soon men began to come from further south.

90 FEZZANIS COME IN

I remember the arrival of the vanguard of those from Fezzan, men who had been a month upon the road. They came in chanting to a savage roll of desert drums and the squealing of a goat- skin bagpipe. There were negroes with them, with shocks of fuzzy hair outstanding from their temples ; and their corded legs, coated with dust, were grey and silver in the sunlight.

At their head a huge Arab sheikh sat a white stallion, singing as he rode, and brandishing a little lance. He threw his hood back from a savage, war-scarred countenance, broad-nosed, full-lipped and with a sparse and curling grizzled beard ; and gazed from under heavy lids with an incomparable haughtiness. A minstrel in the ranks broke into quavering song, and the men, shaking their weapons in the air and stamping till the earth shook, broke into a mighty chorus.

" Oulad ^bu zin ! " they shouted, " Oulad ^bu zin ! "

And the cry, meaning, roughly, "We are sons of mighty fathers ! " — (" Chips of the old block " would be a sound equivalent in English of this desert slang) — ran through the camp like fire, and became the catch-word of the army.

There were Berbers, viper-faced, with broad cheek-bones and narrow, pointed chins, and cold, pale eyes with an intolerable glitter in them. There were Shamba Arabs, and slave-

THE HOSTS OF AFRICA 91

raiders from far south of the Libyan deserts ; Kabyles from the Algerian mountains, and a few Hoggar Tuaregs — forbidding giants, swathed in black, and veiled till only their long cruel eyes were seen. They rode the splendid mehari camels, the racers of the desert, that can cover seventy miles a day, unwatered and unfed for a week. These men sat upon iron-framed saddles covered with stamped leather, and having cruciform supports on pommel and cantle. Their saddle wallets swung at the camel's withers, red barred with black, and fringed with leathern strips and tassels of dyed wood. The camels were branded with the letters of the Tamahaq, the ancient (Phoenician ?) desert script. Some were daubed with tar against the mange. I saw one with blood-red eyes painted on its cheeks. Many, upon arrival, were weak and ill-nourished, their lips and gums pale amber colour from lack of food, and their feet torn by the sharp stones of the moun- tain paths. Yet, such is their recuperative power, two days of rest and good feeding had restored them again to their full strength.

There is often a curious, deliberate malice in their attacks upon one another. You may see one walking behind another on the march slowly inspect the quarters of the beast before it, and, picking out the place, bite carefully but with the utmost force.

92 CAMELS

Once, finding the tucked-up legs of a camel in my path, I nudged the creature under the knee with my foot to make it move. It pressed its leg down on my foot, pinning me, and chewing the cud without in the least re- garding me, seemed scornfully to enjoy my predicament.

By day the square re-echoed with the shouts of drivers and the roaring of the camels. At times some great love-mad male would pace the yard on three legs (for they are hobbled by the doubling up of one fore-leg tied with thongs), gurgling savage challenges to all the rest. A bloated, swollen mass like the wattles of a turkey cock would bubble from his mouth, and as he limped to and fro he shook white foam continually from his lips.

The stallions fought and screamed in their compound at night. Sometimes the clatter of hoofs, the dull thud of blows, and protracted angry squealing told how some beast had slip- ped his shackles and raged amongst his helpless fellows. The horses were fed on barley and on straw. For those that had no torbahs (the striped nosebag carried on the saddle) the feed was piled before them on the ground. They strained and fought to rob one another. Many horses of new arrivals, finding no place in the compounds, were picketed in the open. Such as

OF THE BEYT-ES-SHAAR 93

were not close by their owner's tents were stolen — by Italian spies, it was said.

In a few weeks a population had arrived that overflowed the tiny village and spread strange dwelling-places in the desert round about. The sheikhs and kaids and greater Arab leaders set up their painted pavilions in the asphodels beside the road. Black hair-cloth tents, the nomad beyyut-es-shaar, were ranged here and there among the sandhills . Some were fringed and broadly striped in lines of black and dull grey, and had curtains shutting off the quarters of the harem ; and others, tattered and patched, were stretched on chance-found branches — mere shelters from the wind and rain. The coarsely woven fabric of the beyt-es-shaar leaks to the sunlight. Fine beams spilling through the sides and roof draw fairy lines of light across the gloom and make a dim shifting pattern on the shoulders of those who sit within. The " house of hair " is low and long. One does not stand within, but sits or lies on carpets spread on mats of grass. Forked pegs and heavy stones hold down the sides against the wind ; and, insecure though they may seem, the strongest gusts will not avail to tear them from their moorings on the loose, soft sand.

Some of those who came from the farthest south built huts of palm leaf wattle daubed with mud, and cowered in their lee; and there

94 IN THE FEZZANI CAMPMENT

were scores who scooped out hollows in the sand dunes' sides, and slept there covered only in their ragged mantles.

By night the glow of innumerable tiny fires lit up the desert, and wild strains of Eastern music mingled with the harsh, rattling mono- syllables of Turkish orders, the groanings of camels, and the yelp of dogs. One night, when a company of Fezzanis had just come in, I rode into their new encampment, drawn irresistibly by the rapid monotone of pulsing drums and the shrilling of the pipes.

The men squatted, many deep, in a great half-circle before a fire of thorns that threw a flickering light upon their white teeth and rolling eyes. Two negro lads beat with thumbs and finger-tips on little egg-shaped drums that hung from their necks. As they thrummed they sang in high, whining voices, throwing back their heads like howling dogs, and sending forth the long-drawn notes quaveringly. Between them sat the player of the pipes. He wore a plaited cap of grass, like those of the western Saharawin, who came in sometimes from the desert to the Southern Gate at Marrakesh. He blew lustily, frowning, with fixed eyes and dis- tended cheeks, and his fingers flew over the stops of the pipe. The mouthpiece was of carven bone set with silver ; and the kid-skin bladder of the instrument was decked with coins and metal

EASTERN MUSIC 95

charms. Ceaselessly, rapidly he played, now loud, now soft, now with a slightly changed accentuation, but ever the same odd, jerky trill, with unfamiliar intervals and unexpected breaks. He leaned his shoulders against the wall of a wattle cabin, and his face, as the fire- light waxed and waned, shone and grew dim like an incandescent mask.

Suddenly a woman stepped into the fire-light from the hut and began to dance, slowly at first, with stampings and balancings to and fro. The Arab dancers, like the Spanish, hardly lift their feet from off the ground. Slowly as her body moved, her feet spun faster and still faster. Her anklets of white metal, coarsely graven, flashed and tinkled as she moved. There is something mesmeric in the Eastern dance. The swiftly moving feet on which the body seems to float almost without motion, the slow, strange writhings of the arm and bust, the shifting, shining flecks of light on wrist and ankle, and the ceaseless monotone of rhythmic music, have a purpose hardly known to us in Europe. Our music is emotional— designed to thrill and rouse us, to lift us for a time beyond ourselves. We look, in spectacular dances, for grace and lithe- ness, and the expression of a sense of joy and vivid beauty. To the Arab and the Turk music is largely a narcotic ; its insistent cadence beats against his brain, and overwhelms his

96 THE DESERT DANCER

consciousness in its reiteration. The shifting feet and floating henna-dyed hands hold him as the passes of the hypnotist hold feeble wills. And as a hen or a canary bird, once held beak-down upon a chalk-line, stays there motionless, so sits the Eastern, his mind bemused by many- twinkling feet, his understanding stunned by the merciless, unending monotone of flute and drum.

Eastern music stops sharply, unexpectedly. One has a strange, dazed feeling of returning consciousness, as when a train emerges from a tunnel. It is as though the world has stood still and all ears were filled with the watery roaring of a mighty cataract; when suddenly the sound of rushing water ceases, accustomed noises take their place again, moveless figures come to life, and the busy world goes forward as before.

The dancer sank in a heap upon the ground as the music ceased ; then, rising, lifted her arms above her head, stepped quickly backward in the darkness and was gone. She was one of many who came up from beyond the desert with their men — women of slightly negroid face, and of a richer hue of brown than the northern desert folk. Some wore the skins of leopards, and had collars of panther's teeth. Afterwards, many went into battle with the men. One led the first attack at Gargaresh.

BEAUTY OF NOMAD WOMEN 97

Some of the nomad women have a shy, wild beauty ; but the most of them, save that they have very lovely eyes, are not well favoured. They dye their finger-nails with henna — red astringent stuff that gives their slender hands a bloody look. They tattoo their chins and brows with Hues of blue, and rub dark pigments un- derneath their eyes. Many paint their eyebrows longer, holding that, for true beauty, they should meet above the nose.

Commonly, their type is gipsy-like, or rather, Jewish (for, indeed, the Arab is nothing but the untamed brother of the Jew) ; but I have often seen, too, faces of strangely European expres- sion. Passing the camp of some nomad herds- men once, I halted, and cried out to know if they had leban (sour milk) in the tents. And, bearing in her hands a wooden bowl, there came out from the beyt-es-shaar a woman at whose face I stared astonished. For she was ruddy- haired, grey-eyed, with a tilted nose and clever well-cut mouth. It was the face of a well-bred, delicate lady, with a sense of fun in her, and a ready but not a sentimental sympathy ; cer- tainly not that of a savage goat-herd's wife. Miss Ellen Terry, garbed in blue baft, might look much like this Arab woman. I half expected from her face a witty, charming con- versation. But instead she rated me because I tendered her a Turkish coin, and scolded

98 PROFITABLE TRAFFIC

shrilly when I could not give her copper flus instead.

The poorest sort of country Arabs will hardly accept silver coins of more than a half -franc's worth, even though it be in good Turkish money. Such pieces are often hard to change in the market place, and the poor man gone to buy a pennyworth of ground coffee, or a pinch or two of tea, knows that the sight of a silver mejidieh knotted in his handkerchief will raise all prices against him. Then, too, he must lose some fraction in the changing, as like as not ; for the merchant will cast a doubt on the value of the coin, and hold back perhaps a half-piastre.

In changing gold money — whether French or English — I have had often to suffer a loss of one and a half, or even two francs in twenty, though the Tunisian Arabs with whom I dealt knew well enough the value of the coin, and had no fear of losing when they should return to spend it in Sfax of Ben Ghardan.

Tunisians and Algerian Arabs, better in- structed, from contact with the French, than the ignorant Tripolitans, reaped great harvests during the war. Some — but this was not at first — ^brought caravans across the frontier, laden with biscuits, conserves, shirts, hosiery, chocolate, paraffin lamps, glassware and crock- ery, canned goods, small mirrors, knives, and handkerchiefs, which they sold in the needy

ITALIAN NOTES NOT UNDERSTOOD 99

camp at huge profits. But even greater were the gains of certain Tunisians during the early weeks of the war. For their more ignorant brethren of TripoH, finding in the pockets of dead Itahans thin sheets of paper, coloured green and blue and pink, and curiously inscribed, took them to the Tunisians, wondering what they might be. Thus it came about that one fat fellow from Gabes, who had left the shaving and hair- dressing of French officers for more profitable gleanings in the war-area, bought notes worth 1,500 lira for a few coppers ; and others, I was told, did even more.

And when this kind of news came to the ears of Ferhat Bey, and other Arab chiefs, they warned their countrymen that such papers were Christian money. The news spread fast. I have often been pestered by Arab soldiers who have sought to sell me pornographic post cards, and even cigarette papers taken from Italian pock- ets, under the impression that they were worth gold.

Once, too (this, I think, was after the fight at Gargaresh), some Arabs came to Beshir Bey, carrying tins of preserved meat and fish.

"What is this?" they wanted to know, " and what is it worth ? "

Beshir Bey grinned roguishly at me. We had been living on rice and stringy mutton for many days. He turned a severe face to the Arabs.

100 THE CAMP FOLLOWERS' MARKET

"That," said he, "is swines' flesh, such as the Christians eat. Its value to a Moslem is — that ! " He sent a tin of salmon bowling over the ground to where some mangy dogs were hungrily prospecting.

" Wullah ! " cried one, "it is pig-meat in- deed. Look ! " He pointed to a label, whereon the head of a boar was painted. They flung their booty contemptuously down, and went off, shaking their polluted mantles.

Beshir Bey supped well that night.

The market of the army was now held in open desert behind the barracks, and was, of course, a greater one by far than that of Ain Zara had been. Now, too, there were sometimes chances to buy strange Arab and Berber wares from the hills, and from the southern deserts. For often volunteers from a great distance would sell or exchange goods brought from their own coun- tries— ^leopard skins, strange crooked knives, stamped leather wallets, or tufts of mewed ostrich feathers. So that, in the idle days, I frequented the sok in the early mornings, partly in hopes of buying some rare thing, and partly because I had nothing better to do.

Behind the booths of the sellers of onions and garden stuffs, I came one day upon a soothsayer squatting by his tray of silvery fine sand, whereon with his forefinger he drew strange signs. By his knee, and kept from the wind by

A WARLOCK 101

a great stone placed upon it, he had a sheaf of closely- written papers. Other paper, blank, and ready for the inscriptions of charms against ill-luck, ill-health, devils, wounds, and all man- ner of evil, lay beside him.

For tenpence he would tell my fortune ; and having paid greater sums to less likely-looking seers in drawing rooms and church bazaars at home, I gave half the money in advance.

" Ask, then, some question," he began ; and so I asked him.

" Tell me when I am to return to my own country."

The warlock swept his hand across the tray of sand, and wiped out all the signs upon it. When it was smooth and blank, he drew a pen- tacle upon it, flanked on either side with lines and dots.

Now he took up a handful of sand, and put it in my palm, and closed my fingers on it.

" Grip," said he, " and meanwhile fix your thoughts upon your home. Think of your return."

It was about Christmas time. I thought I should perhaps spend Easter in England.

The old man took the sand from me, and scattered it over what he had drawn. Then, with his two forefingers, he filled the tray with paral- lel lines and dots, and immediately afterwards began, apparently at hazard, to join together

102 ' S AND-DIVINING

certain of those dots by short lines, so that soon he had a singular pattern of dots and dashes on the sand before him ; and fell to studying it intently.

"Well, now," said he, "you must go away for a little while, to walk about and distract your mind. Come again in the half of an hour."

So I did ; and when I got back he had a new scratch or so on the sand, and a rapt expression.

"Your mind is full of many mixed hopes," he told me. " You will not be able to go back yet awhile to your country. Your country is far away. You are not Turk, nor French — no, you are English." (Any of the hangers-on of the army might have told him that much ; and no doubt ojie had.)

"Well, then," pursued the warlock, "don't look to go home yet. But don't fret either. All goes well in your fine house. You think much of a young boy who is beginning his travels in the world. All is well with him. Also, a girl-child is much in your mind. Be happy, All your children " — (I have none) — " are well. A great joy concerning the boy will come soon to your house. Your friends think often of you, and your wife " — (I have no wife) — "looks well after your affairs, and is faithful. There is a tall man, very pale, who works much in your interest. Yes, he is tall, and very pale. He has light hair, I think."

THE HUMAN FOWL 103

Then he paused a Httle and fingered his beard reflectively.

" Ah ! " he broke out, " a letter comes for you. It is opened by another. I see him tear it. But be easy. Yours is a future that may well be left to God. Do not trouble your heart because you cannot go soon to your country. The waiting is full of profit."

On the outskirts of the market I came upon a ragged woman picking scattered grains of wheat and barley, grain by grain, out of the dust, with the rapid dexterity of a fowl. Beyond marvel- ling at her Arab thrift, I paid scant heed to her then. But before very long the memory came to have a significance for me.

XIII

I AWOKE one morning to see the sun rise, lemon and vermilion, over the rim of the desert, while the full moon, in a ghostly halo of pearl grey, was setting. That day a thick dun-coloured fog of sand hid all the horizon and shut out the blue- ness of the sky. Such furious sandstorms seem to come with the first few days of every month, lasting for three or four days together. At the end of January there set in the Kurret-el-Anss (the Tempest of the Goats), which coated all the world with flying sand. Riding out, one became enveloped in a fine mail of stone dust, so that to rub the skin of one^s face, even, became painful. Sand filled the eyes, and trickled in tiny streams from the folds of men's clothes as they moved. The ears of horses became filled and caked. When the beasts sweated they were streaked with thin mud.

On such days I stirred abroad as little as might be, waiting until nightfall, when the winds would generally drop. I would go out on

horseback or afoot to enjoy the calmer air of

104

NIGHT IN THE DESERT 105

the desert by moonlight. Once far from the camp the stillness of the night was almost fearful. I walked one night along the many- ribboned track towards the mountains. In the moonlight the tangled thorn-bushes and clumps of flowering asphodel looked like the copses and thickets of an English woodland. Walking towards them, I could fancy myself approach- ing the fringes of some silent park ; but at night distance and dimensions are confused. What looked like thick tree-growths a good way off would quickly turn into some meagre scrub or tangle of thorny, leafless twigs only a few score yards away.

The desert is a mighty sounding-board. Three miles away from camp I could hear faint shrill- nesses, as though the ants above whose for- tresses I walked bickered in their subterranean tunnellings. Only when I had more than doubled the distance, and had come upon a wilderness of stone and sand where nothing grew, was there the uttermost silence. It seemed, in that chill, fantastic landscape, as though I walked the deserts of the moon, amongst the gullies and craters of a disused world.

For a time there was complete stillness. I could hear the coursing of my blood, and the rasping trickle of fine sand-streams set in mo- tion by my footsteps.

After awhile the silence was broken. Very,

106 LONELINESS AND FEAR

very far away, I heard a hoarse, disjointed murmuring. A train of camel-men was coming from the hills. Long before I saw them I could hear the words they said. Lest I should startle them, which might be dangerous, I walked smartly towards them. They loomed at last before me, high, fantastic shapes upon their slow-going camels, and at sight of me one unslung his gun, and called hoarsely to the man nearest me, " ^Sh kain hua ? "

The rider near me sat a fine white she-camel. He craned down and looked at me as he passed.

'' Askari,'^ he said briefly, and wished me peace. I gave him the customary answer, and they passed on. After they had passed out of hearing, the silence of immense space settled over the desert once again, so that at last I be- came afraid of it, and turning back, made for the asphodels and Azizia. One can become afraid of silence, if one remains in it too long, as children are afraid of darkness. The least sociable of men, I fancy, straying into one of the vast empty rooms of this great House we live in, must stand appalled at its bare floor and naked walls, and the dust-laden quiet of its solitude. Then he will think kindly of the little crowded chambers where his kind sit by the fire, and chat or quarrel in companionship, and back he must go.

As I neared the village and passed among the camp fires of the Arabs in the desert, I felt

THAIF ULLAH 107

thirsty ; and decided, first, to buy tea at a hair-cloth booth of the camp-followers ; then to call upon some friend, and have both tea and talk more pleasantly.

Ferhat Bey was awake. I went to his house ; and as I passed beneath the dark arch and told my name to the sentry, I realised quite suddenly that this alone, to those who know only the customs of Europe, would almost be adventure — to turn from the high-road, into a narrow archway, stepping amongst kneeling camels and picketed horses ; to beat with flat hands softly on an iron-sheathed door, and, being told to enter, pass into a dimly lighted room, where men in robes of white sat on the floor before a charcoal brazier on which was simmering a pot of tea. I thought, as Mehemet Ferhat rose and took my hand in both of his, and as I mechani- cally saluted him, how, to untravelled friends at home, the whole of this everyday performance would seem like showing off some strange theatrical accomplishment. And those friends I had often wished to have with me, that I might show them a strange and wonderful life, so different from their own ; yet, I knew sud- denly, that, could they have come, their presence would, indeed, have much embarrassed me. I should have to be forever apologising for their rude and ignorant behaviour — apologising for them to men who ate their dinners with their

108 ARAB TEA DRINKERS

fingers, and spat with less compunction than we cough.

We talked of horses : about a thin, brown filly I had seen in the outpost camp at Senati Beni Adhem ; and about a splendid iron-grey from the district of Nalout. Ferhat told me of a wonderful young horse at Zawia — a chestnut colt, as yet unbroken. We sent word to have it brought that I might buy it ; for I was now determined to have a horse of my own.

We put chips of sweet-smelling wood upon the fire from time to time ; and tea was handed round in tiny glasses. Green tea, made syrupy with many lumps of sugar in the pot, is the commonest refreshment of North Africa. The people of Morocco put green mint in it, and sometimes leaves of verbena. It must be drunk in noisy sips ; and courtesy commands the emptying of three glasses.

Squatting on the floor, or on cushions, the guests form a circle about the brazier. The tea-maker, cleansing first his pot and every glass with scalding water, puts in his pinches of leaves, with solicitous care that enough shall go in to colour the fluid to a delicate amber-hue, but not so much as shall give a bitter taste. Then the sugar, brayed with a little mallet or a lump of stone, is put in till the pot be nearly filled.

With his left hand he has fanned the charcoal.

FERHAT WILL SPEAK FRENCH 109

or has blown it to a glow with his mouth, until the water-kettle gives off threads of steam from spout and lid-hole ; and now the boiling water is poured into the pot, and poured straight out with a high action of the hand. Only one glass- ful is at first poured out, which the tea-maker sips, to try its quality, and then pours back into the pot. Then, having shaken well the pot with a rotating motion, he will stand it for awhile upon the brazier and at last pour out for all. But he himself takes none ; or at least, not until strongly urged. The greatest worthies take their glasses first, with many protests — " Nay, billah, drink first, my uncle. Thine the first cup." — " No, no, to thee the first, I pray."

And often some great one, passing his un- tasted glass out into the circle of humbler ones who sit behind, enjoys the whispered praises and ejaculations at his graciousness ; sitting with downcast eyes and very open ears.

Ferhat Bey would talk with me in French, being anxious to improve his knowledge of that tongue, and doubtless having a harmless pride that his Arab friends should take note of their deputy's accomplishment. Having chatted awhile in French he would translate into Arabic what we had said ; and listening closely, I learned much of the difficult Arab language thus.

As we talked, Sheikh Mohammed El Sof

110 '^MISH'' IS A CAT

struck in, asking me, "Do the Inglees, then, use the speech of the Fransis ? Or have they, too, their own tongue ? "

" Surely," I answered, "and not in the least like the speech of the Fransis."

" Say then, some words in Inglees. How do you greet or thank a man — what words have you for that ? "

They began to ask the English names of animals and common things.

" * Cat,' then, is the same with the Inglees as the Arab ? " said the Sheikh. " We too call the creature ' Kat ' and ' Keti,' which has much the same sound."

" We also call him ' puss,' " I said. " We call ' ernub ' (the hare) ' puss,' too."

" Well, ' puss ' is good for the cat," he replied. " But it is not a good name for a hare, I think. And, for the cat, we have another word, ' mish.^ *Mish' is good. It sounds more like a cat than ' puss ' does, eh ? "

Somehow or other, that syllable, ^mish ' does seem to me just the right word for a cat. I don't know why.

I find it hard to render the phrases of the Arabs into English. I do not like the barbarous pseudo-Elizabethan jargon so commonly put into the mouths of Orientals by the English writers. It so happens that the finest translation into English from an Oriental language was

ARABIC SLANG 111

made at a time when Elizabethan was the speech of England ; and so well did its stately periods accord with the phrasing of the ancient Hebrew, so glorious a vehicle was it made for Eastern thoughts and phrases, that almost every writer dealing since with Semitic spoken words, has thought he could not set them into better English language than that of the Bible.

But there are drawbacks.

It is not everyone who can write the English of the Bible. Nor, even were that possible, is the English of the Bible suitable as a transla- tion of all forms of Eastern speech. The Arabs, despite a tendency (much exaggerated in the portraits drawn by Western scribes) to the use of metaphor and imagery, no more employ the stilted verbiage ascribed to them than English labourers employ the periods of Shakespeare's Hotspur, or of Henry V. at Agincourt.

The desert speech is full of slang and catch- phrases. It is quick, flexible and vivid. To translate it into English form that shall give a real idea of its original character is very hard. One must use the obsolete second person singu- lar ; yet the employment of "thee" and "thou" and " ye," has been so misused that, save in dialect, it stamps all speech as theatrical or sham-archaic.

One might, indeed, render the speech of the Arabs into an English dialect, such as those of

112 HARD TO RENDER

Lancashire and Yorkshire, where " thee " and "thou" are used famiharly; but then one would imply that Arabs are like the people of Lanca- shire and Yorkshire in thought and turn of mind ; whereas they are not so in the least.

Shakespeare's slang — ^the slang of Falstaff and Prince Hal ; the homely speech of Dog- berry and the Grave-diggers, would be better. Better still would be the language of Sir Thomas Urquhart's translation of Rabelais, with its rollicking, rolling tide of words, its coarse virility and bubbling repetition. At any rate, it would give a finer conception of Arabic turns of speech than the Babylonish dialects commonly employed.

XIV

" Ride with us to the Arab camp at Senati Beni Adhem," said Ferhat Bey, " and we shall surely find a good horse there at a cheap price."

Senati Ben Adhem is perhaps twenty miles to the north of Azizia. We rode thither next morning. I took with me a camp-bed and some clothing. Ferhat brought a camel-load of goods. He had a splendid painted tent, with carpets for its floor ; and a negro lad on an ass carried cushions and a huquah. Two servants came to cook, and camel-men, and lads to see to the horses.

We halted at the first well to water our beasts.

The well stands in an old, disordered garden.

Two upright shafts of whitened stone go up from

the mouth of the hole, and between them is an

axle with a pulley-wheel upon it. And so deep

is the well, as many in that desert are, that those

who pull the rope must run down a cutting in

the earth for almost eighty yards. Oxen are

often harnessed to these well-ropes ; but for the

most part, the impatient Arab spirit will not

113

114 GREED OF THE ZEPTIR

tolerate the slow movements of these beasts ; and men, women, and children catching at the line, run headlong with it. The pulling makes a loud and rather musical whine as the ropes come up with the buckets, and full, dripping skins at their ends. Troughs of stone and hollowed palm-trunks lie by the mouth of the well. The soil all round is poached and trampled into mud for many yards about.

The Turkish soldiers, guardians of this well, filled up the troughs for us, and our horses drank, with bridles off and girths unloosed. For a good while afterwards we went at a slow pace. Ferhat Bey told me of yet another good horse that might be bought. It was the property said he, of a zeptir — an Arab gendarme — and such was its pace that, chased by a posse of Italian cavalry, its rider had made a circuit, and com- ing in on his pursuers from behind, had fired on them, and after got easily away.

" A good beast," said Ferhat, " but the man will ask a high price."

I saw the horse when we arrived. It had a jaded look, because in four days it had not been unsaddled. Yet it was a splendid creature, with fine clean legs and a good head well set on. I would have bought it, but the zeptir's greed annoyed me. For, when I had consented to the price he asked at first, he thought he might with a little trouble have more from me. And so, on

THE HORSE OF NAZMI BEY 115

the morning after I had spoken with him, he went away on his horse to Zanzour, and left a message that he could not sell it for so little after all. He must have twenty francs more. This, of course, he said because he knew I wanted to have the horse. He thought I should not get another.

But that day I had gone into the cavalry camp of the Turks ; and at the door of the commander's tent I saw a splendid stallion. He was a bay, tall and of a very Irish look. He stood well over sixteen hands, and his shoulders and his quarters had strength in every line. Save that his chest was a little narrow, he showed no noticeable defect.

Nazmi Bey, the Turkish cavalry leader, made me very welcome in his tent. He told war- stories of campaigns in Albania, and many officers came in to chat. Nazmi Bey had coffee for us all, and cigarettes and fruit and Turkish sweet-meats. Of all the hospitable Turks, this long-limbed, narrow-waisted cavalryman was the most vigilantly hospitable. Neither sup nor bite would he touch till every guest was well supplied. His tent was always filled with friends; and new arrivals in the camp, whether Arab chief or Turkish officer, must taste the best that Nazmi Bey could give.

He had heard that I was seeking a horse.

*' But why, my friend ? " he cried. " Are you

116 HORSEDEALING

not our guest ? While there are horses in our camp there is always one for you."

I told him that I felt ashamed to borrow always from my hosts.

" And," I added frankly, " to ride another man's horse is a little better than to kiss his wife. I want a horse that shall be mine, to take back with me, if I choose to England."

He nodded, being a man with a passion for horses himself.

" I have a horse," said he thoughtfully, " and I will sell him cheaply ; but not to you."

" If it is the bay stallion outside the tent — "

" Yes that is the horse. I want to sell him.

But " he hesitated, "he is not a horse that

I should like a friend to buy."

"O," said I, "as to that, there are no friends in horse-dealing. If I may try the horse, I will tell you what I think him worth."

He questioned me directly.

"Are you a good rider? Are you clever with a horse ? "

A Turk would have answered him as frankly as he asked the question. They are singularly frank in some matters. Thus one young officer told me once, without in the least boasting, " I am very brave by nature, only I am stupid, and on that account not a good officer." He said " I am brave " as naturally as he might have said " I am five feet eight inches in height." So, if I

THE STALLION IS VICIOUS 117

had been a Turk, I should have answered Nazmi Bey by saying either that I rode extremely well, or that I could not ride well. As it was, how- ever, knowing that I cut no such figure on a horse as himself (I never saw a more graceful rider), and yet being conscious that I ride well enough, I answered him : " I can ride quiet horses."

" Ah," said he, " but can you mount wild ones ? For my horse will not let you mount if he can help it. He is vicious. He both kicks and bites. Before I had him, he blinded a soldier with his fore-foot ; and he has bitten a great many."

"Let us go and look at him," said I — and we went out to the horse.

" Has he any other fault, besides his bad temper ? " I asked ; and Nazmi Bey said ''No."

The stallion stood very still, looking wicked. But he let me catch him by the nostrils and look at his teeth. I saddled him. He winced and kicked at the pull of the girth ; but his shackles held him.

Then I unhobbled him and went to mount. Instantly the horse became a raging devil. He reared on end, and struck out like a boxer. His yellow fangs were bare ; he screamed horridly. I think no beast has a more terrifying air than an angry stallion.

When I ceased trying to mount, the horse

118 NOT A GOOD WAR HORSE

quieted. Gradually he let me pat his neck and pull his ears, but he misliked my caresses. He knew that I was trying to lull his suspicions to sleep : and when again I dived for the stirrup he was ready for me.

At last I mounted while an orderly held the brute fast by the head : and once I bestrode him he accepted defeat. Never had I ridden a more comfortable mount. He had a lovely stride. He could trot, canter, or gallop with perfect motion ; and turn at as sharp an angle as his rider pleased.

I dismounted and asked Nazmi Bey to ride him that I might watch; but Nazmi Bey said, " Since I know the horse I may show him off a little too well. I do not wish to make you think I am trying to sell him to you."

So a Turkish trooper mounted and put the horse through its paces ; and I became deter- mined to buy it, if Nazmi Bey would sell it at a proper figure.

Nazmi Bey named a low sum enough — far less than that demanded by the zeptir for his chestnut.

" He is a good horse," said Nazmi Bey, " but he is not much good to me. I see myself killed because of him. We go out scouting, and perhaps I dismount a while. The Italians come upon us, and I cannot leap into the saddle and ride because I must first wrestle with that devil. He

BIMBASHI 119

is not a good war-horse, so I will sell him cheaply."

So I bought that horse, and called him Bimbashi, which means Major ; and I spent quite a lot of time in trying to tame him. I fed and watered him myself ; and after many weeks I found that if he were loose he would follow me like a dog — with intent to bite.

XV

The Arabs made up a great war-party and rode out under Tahar Bey. Tahar Bey had ten Turkish troopers with him ; all the rest of the party were Arabs. It was an expedition that pictured a vanishing phase of war. Only in North Africa and on the desert hills of Eastern countries do the hosts ride forth to war with lance and sword, with scarlet saddle-cloth and deep fringed rein, with neighings and prancings of war-horses, loud shouts and savage song. As we went out I could have thought I rode with Saracens against the mail-clad warriors of the West. Bright pennons danced overhead, and the tails and manes of horses streamed in the wind. I saw men armed with straight two- handed swords, such as were taken from the dead Crusaders near a thousand years ago. To this day, in the deserts of Africa where hide so many lost things of the past, men fight in hau- berks, helms and corselets wrought by the armourers of knights whose hearts were stirred by Peter the Hermit.

STRANGE WEAPONS 121

And long, straight swords, maces and battle- axes are still forged by desert smiths upon the model of the arms of mediaeval Europe. There were even lances in our party — not the fine, wavering shelfa of the Arabs of the Yemen, but strong, short, stabbing spears, with leaf-shaped, fluted blades. One, carried by a Shamba chief, was inlaid upon the haft with gold, and was, in some sort, sacred. I offered him a Spanish sword against his lance, but could not get it. He would not give it, so he said, even for a setashra, by which he meant a magazine-rifle firing sixteen shots; "But give the Spanish sword, dear one, for love of me ; and thou shalt be like my son to me in my own house for as long as thou wilt."

The morning was keen and bright, and all horses full of spirit. We rode out past the butchers' market, and the horses leapt and bounded sideways at the smell of fresh blood. One, that had little whistles in his nostrils, made a noise like that of an exhaust-whistle upon a motor-car.

Women came out of the tent-doors as we passed, and sent up shrill, wild ululation ; and at that moment, as my feverish stallion footed it like a dancer amongst the pools of blood, I understood with every fibre of my being the maddening exaltation of that cry. I understood the frenzy that stirs in the souls of the desert

122 WAR-CRIES OF THE WOMEN

fighting men. Never, surely, do their women- kind seem more desirable to the Arabs than when, at the opening of the beyt-es-shaar, they stand with slender, outstretched arms, on which the bangles gleam, and send forth their pas- sionate exhortations ; for their cry is exultation for the victory to come, and keening for those who are to die, and a hint of raillery for any whose courage may falter ; and in smiles and shy glances lurks promise of a tender welcome for those who shall come back wet with the enemy's blood, and heavy with the plunder of his tents.

" Stamp out their hearts into the earth. Bring back their women that we may beat them and have them for our slaves, and their children that we may rear them up to spit upon their fathers' names. And see no such fate shall fall on us, nor on your children."

I said to the old Shamba at my side, " If I were really thy nephew, little uncle, I would try to do big deeds to-day."

" Ai, ai, to be young, as thou art, O my soul," he returned. " Ai, the beard-strokings and soft words after the fight ; the whispers under the tent-curtain and the sidelong looks ! God twist thy legs and rack thy belly with pains." (This to his horse.) " Hast not learned yet that a soberer gait better suits my old body ? "

THE ROUE 128

" Old like an old mountain," I quoted, from a Tunisian love-ballad. " Old as the rocks grow old, and stronger every year."

The sheikh chuckled gleefully at the compli- ment, shaking his head in mock reproach that I should know that song, which, in truth, is none of the daintiest. He began to tell me stories of a pronounced naughtiness as we rode along. I have heard some of them in London club-rooms, and one, at least, was known to the Athenians who applauded the " Ecclesi-

azusae."

I in my turn put on that air of deprecation which, in such circumstances, everyone assumes and nobody sincerely feels; and the old man laughed.

" Eh, I'm a bad old dog, that I am," he con- fessed, " but I fast through Ramadan, wuUah bullah, like a starving camel, and utter more than a hundred pious words a day beside my prayers. What of it, then ? "

An Arab on foot, with two guns at his back, trotted at my stirrup, and, looking up, asked : " What says the old goat to make thee laugh so, Nasrany ? "

The sheikh bent upon him a glance of cold severity.

" Away, dust-scratcher," said he. " Thou Tail-in-the-Sand, thou ; matters of religion, such as we discuss, are above thy unclean mind.

124 MONOPLANES NOT TOO WONDERUL

Shuffle away, lad." Then, as the other only laughed, " Loathly beast," said he, " thou hast pig's ears."

A minstrel in the ranks began to sing, as Taillefer sang at Senlac to the Normans, and the war-party chorussed his whining chant with harsh, staccato shouts, brandishing their weapons the while. Presently we halted in a dried up water-course, whose steep banks hid our band entirely. The dried mud underfoot was cracked in flakes that curled up at the edges, like scales on a crocodile's back.

Tahar Bey sent scouts to ride out wide on either wing. We turned a little to the east, and rode up past Fonduk Magoussa, where an > outpost of the Turks is stationed. Then, far ahead of us, a black speck showed against the sky. Slowly it grew and mounted in the sky, until at last it was black no longer. It was a scouting monoplane of the Italians, and passed over our heads high up, the sunlight gilding its broad vanes, far out of reach of the spattering volleys of the Arabs.

The Arabs called an aeroplane " tiara " in their camp slang. The word means " flier " simply ; and they did not, in any special sense, look upon flying machines as devil-work. Or at least they made no more of them than coast Arabs do of steamships. Very wonderful things, no doubt; but then, it is permitted to

MIRACLES ARE COMMON THINGS 125

the Christian to work many miracles in this world, as an offset to the torments he must suffer in the next. And after all, what is a miracle more or less ? You cannot expect men who know that black devils with the snouts of swine live in the earth ; who see enchanted cities and palm-groves fade at the approach of mortals ; who hear their pack-beasts talking Arabic in low tones, furtively, yet articulately — you cannot expect men, to whom wonders such as these are things as commonplace as the delivery of the morning milk, to be lost in astonishment because they see men as birds flying. Their very ignorance prevents them from surprise. Familiarity with wonders not understood blunts any man's ability to see a miracle. For instance, I, myself, understanding nothing of mechanics, yet familiar with the sight of engines working and of motors running, might see a motor-driven sledge on runners (supposing anyone could devise such a thing) without much comment, whereas an expert mechanic would be struck at once by the strangeness and the novelty of the thing.

The aeroplane circled awhile above us, and then turned northward, flying in a straight line (Jor the towers of Tripoli. We, too, drew nearer to the town, until at last we were scarce four miles from it. We lay in clumps of wiry bents, peering through glasses at the white walls and

126 ARAB IMPATIENCE

towers. The sea was rough : we saw no ships. After a little while of watching thus, the Arabs grew impatient. Riding from crest to crest among the dunes, they showed themselves purposely upon the sky-line, hoping to draw their unseen enemies out. But there was no sign at all from behind the Italian f oi tifications. We turned back, riding towards Ain Zara. Pre- sently we could see the wooden palisading and what looked like corrugated iron roofs of huts. And here at last we sighted some of the enemy's cavalry, whom our vanguard hotly followed, but in vain. For the Italians scampered off across the dunes and only halted safe inside their camp.

Let him see his enemy on the run, and the Arab can hardly contain his eagerness for battle. I do not mean that he shows no readiness to fight a foe that stands his ground ; but that his lust for fighting when he is in pursuit is a thing that overpowers him.

No sooner had the Italian squadron run from us than all the Arab leaders cried at once that now was the time to retake Ain Zara. The plan, with so few men, would have been mad- ness. Yet I did not envy Tahar Bey his task of saying so. I saw him in the centre of a knot of men who argued, shouted, taunted and screamed at him until their voices broke. He showed them that the enemy had cannon and

THE ITALIANS WILL NOT FIGHT 127

quick-firers, that they were well entrenched, and knew of our coming. Hardly one man in twenty could live through the fire that would belch from behind the palisades. Certainly not even five times as many men as had come out that day could hope to rush across the space of shelterless desert and retake the camp.

The Arabs, though convinced, were sulky still. Some few went obstinately forward, to take pot-shots at any heads that showed behind the fence ; but the majority, sitting on their horses on the tops of dunes and mounds, waited awhile in hopes that the enemy might come out and fight them.

But there was no sally. Perhaps the enemy feared a trap, thinking that greater numbers than the men they saw were lurking in the desert. So that at last, disappointed of a skirmish, we had to turn our horses' heads and ride back homeward to the camp at Senati Beni Adhem.

That evening I again went over to the tent of Nazmi Bey. As we sat chatting over coffee, a captive was brought in — a shaven Arab in the blue uniform of the zeptirs. This was a spy, who had been sent by the Italians to prowl amongst the Arab tents and offer bribes to the men, to make them desert the Turks. He stood between two Turkish soldiers, his arms bound with cords upon his back. Nazmi Bey and

128 THE PRISONER

other officers asked questions of him. Beshir Bey, the Httle doctor, took a candle and held it up before the prisoner as he scanned him. The man blinked at the candle light, and his nostrils twitched.

They hanged him to a telegraph pole at dawn. The Turkish soldiers formed a hollow square round the pole, and there was a barrel at the foot of it. The rope, dripping with black grease, hung in a double noose from the pulley.

The prisoner was brought, his arms still bound as I had seen them on the night before. His feet were bare. There were patches of sand upon his trousers, and there was sand on his nose and on his forehead, for he had been pray- ing, face pressed to earth, and could not wipe away the dust that clung to him.

Nazmi Bey stepped into the square, sad- looking and stern, and his voice rang out the clanging sentences of classical Arabic as he read aloud the death-sentence. The crowding Arabs round the Turkish square cheered when they heard the traitor's doom. Then the prisoner was pushed forward, moving clumsily. His legs were shaking, but he frowned stolidly at the telegraph pole, and his face showed no sign of fear.

They took off his blue uniform, and he stood in white shirt and under-trousers at the foot of the gallows. He shivered a little, wetting his

HANGED 129

lips with the tip of his tongue. Two soldiers lifted him on to the barrel, and placed the rope over his head.

Quite suddenly the barrel was knocked away. His eyebrows went up in a grimace as of aston- ishment, and streams of grease from the rope trickled thinly down his bulging neck and across his breast.

The jolly little doctor Beshir stood looking at him attentively, a cigarette between his strong, even teeth. Presently he smiled slightly and gave a sign. There was a dismal screech of the pulley, and the hanged man slowly ascended, and there hung against the pole, nostrils dis- tended, eyes blank lozenges of white, and mouth a little open, with saliva dropping from it. The Turkish soldier next to me trembled like a frightened horse. Suddenly the hanged man jerked and twisted in convulsions for a few seconds, and then was quite still. They pinned the death sentence on his bosom with a brass safety pin.

A woman on a little hill raised a shrill, mocking " Ululu." Then a draped Arab, having in his hand a short spear, walked into the square, and, facing the dead spy, shook his spear in the air. All the Arabs shouted. An old man followed this spear-bearer, and he too stood before the corpse, and began to sing as the minstrels sing upon the march.

130 FATE OF SPIES

" A-a-a-h ! what is done to our enemies ; to the Sultan's enemies ? They hang high. They are strangled with cords."

" Ullah, Ullah ! " chorused the crowd. The singer held a kerchief before his mouth, and modulated his long-drawn notes by removing and replacing it. He wagged his forefinger reprovingly at the dangling corpse, and cracked jokes at which the people laughed.

The dead man, head upon one side as though hearkening, grinned back derisively at the singer and at all the people.

XVI

There was a Circassian officer, Talaat Bey, son of a favourite of the old Sultan, and exiled by the Young Turkish party into Tripoli. And when the war broke out, this Talaat Bey, having been expelled from the army and degraded from his rank, re-enlisted as a common trooper to fight against the Italians. The fallen aristocrat lived amongst his mates, sleeping in a tent when there was one to be had, and in the open desert when no shelter could be got ; grooming his own horse, cleaning his own kit (for he was by nature somewhat of a dandy) ; singing plaintive Circassian tunes by the camp fire, riding with despatches, and in all things bearing himself as a contented and thoroughly efficient soldier. So that at last, having dis- tinguished himself in some outpost affair, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and came to be entrusted with matters of importance.

One morning he came and told me that he was to go into the mountains, up to Gharien.

" And if you would like to escape from this

132 WE GO TO THE HILLS

desert and see good country again," said he, " ride with me."

So I told Emin, the orderly assigned to me, to saddle the Bimbashi and his own horse, and to fill the torbahs with barley. And, having strapped blankets and a few clothes to the saddle, I mounted and rocketted out under the archway, as though clinging to the back of a heraldic lion rampant ; and went down the southward caravan road after Talaat Bey. Talaat Bey had with him two Arab zeptirs as guides, and his orderly. There was also a Tripolitan in European clothes, riding a fine ass, which, at an ambling gait, left all of us on horse- back far behind. This man was a civilian, somehow concerned with the organisation of the caravans. He said to me, "You travel, God bless you, like a soldier. Your cloak is to be your bed and your house, eh ? "

" Well, now," said Talaat, " take little, have little, lose little. The man is happiest who has all he may need in one wallet. If you would take your house and carpets and pots and pans, you must go at the gait of Him-in-the-Horn " (el fi-kariin, the tortoise). " You have food for your horse, food for yourself, a little tobacco and paper, doubtless, in your pocket, and a warm wrapping for the night. Who in all the world would need more ? "

" Ay, but, had you needed to bring your tent,

THE HALT 133

your boxes, and even a chair to sit on," said the other to me, " you had only to tell me, and camels, ay, by God, ten of them if need be, were at your service."

" No need." I said. " They say at Senati Beni Adhem that Fethi Bey has worn his boots for a week ; and slept under the lee of a well- rim. And I don't want to lie softer than the best among you."

They were pleased at this ; and Talaat Bey began to tell of campaigns in Armenia as we rode along. Towards the close of the afternoon we halted awhile at a mud-built fonduk to water our horses and drink tea. We sat upon our roUed-up blankets on the roof and looked across the desert.

" Soon," said Talaat Bey, *' the sun will set. Let us rest here for an hour after that, and then the moon will rise."

There was a patch of rank herbage fringing a shallow rain-pool wherein the sunset was reflected.

" Eh, for the spring to come," said he, pointing, '' and turn the bare world green again like that. I shall be glad indeed to be amongst the hills again."

He began to croon strange Circassian airs as he sat there clasping his knees, and staring absently at the line of purple mountains towards which we had been riding.

134 DOGS KENNELLED IN A PIT

I heard growls and snarlings that seemed to come from underground. I walked to the edge of the flat roof, and looking down, saw a deep pit near the house-wall; and in the pit were gaunt, savage dogs, that glared up with yellow eyes, and showed their fangs, and leaped up against the sides of their prison. Here they were kept all day, being lowered down with ropes ; and after nightfall they were drawn up and turned loose to guard the place. At sight of me they became frenzied, and made huge bounds to get out, till a lad ran to the edge of the pit and rated them. He threw stones down at them, and they, dodging hither and thither, growled, as in surly protest.

We rode on when the moon was up. The desert sand gave place to stony ground, and the mountain wall towards which we rode no longer stretched out flat and straight across our path. It seemed to throw out arms on either side of us. We crossed a boulder-covered watercourse, and saw in front of us a deep ravine whose sides were thickly fringed with date palms ; and there were houses among them. And now it seemed as though we were riding in the bottom of a vast black bowl, except when, looking back, we saw the wide, shadowless silver plain on which we had ridden all day. The ground sloped upwards, gently at first, and then abruptly towered like the face of a cliff ; and

THE CROWDED FONDUK 135

before us was a huge stairway of rock up which we were to cHmb.

There was a fonduk at the foot of the stair, at which we had thought to pass the remainder of the night. But, coming there, we found it filled. There was not even room enough for those already there ; for the enclosure was thronged with camels, and barley-sacks and heavy bales were piled high here and there. Many camels lay outside the enclosure, and we stumbled amongst them in the dim light. It was a great train come over the mountains from the greater desert beyond. Men squatted over braziers in the two small rooms of the building, and lay asleep on the banked earthen dais that ran round the walls.

" No night quarters here for us," said Talaat.

^here were loud protests from the hospitable folk.

*' Nay, nay ; but come in, my captain. Sit, then, sit, sit. Here is a carpet. See now, my dear, we have tea."

" Press, lads, press. Huddle your loutish bodies up and give a place for the soldiers. Eh, now, that such lubbers should fill the room, like toads in a mud-hole ! "

" Toads, billah ! And thou with thy great rump covering the half of a carpet ! Stir him with that sword of thine, little soldier."

"No, no," said Talaat. "We go higher. Tea?

136 MOUNTAIN STAIRWAY

Aye, and God bless the giver. But we sleep under the sky ; and only for an hour at that."

We drank tea, and the camel-drivers gave us news. Talaat told them of the war. They listened, with the constant ejaculations of the Arabs.

" Mashallah ! "

*' Allah, wullahi ! "

When we left, we decided to struggle as far up the ascent as we could, and then make camp until the dawn. The moon shone down now into the mighty bowl, and showed the road clear before us.

And what a road ! It zig-zags up the moun- tain face, with twists and turns and shelves of rock, and ledges whence one standing on the brink looks down and sees his follower's heads and horses' backs in plan beneath his very feet. In places, even a man must scramble with hands and feet ; for boulders bigger than a tram-car block the road. There are rocks of black basalt, and granite boulders, vast grey slabs of lime- stone, sandstone, and a world of pebbles, that slip and twist beneath the feet. Bushes with cruel thorns grow thick amongst innumerable crevices. Sage and wild thyme, crushed under- foot, fill the air with delicious fragrance, and everywhere are tiny, star-like blossoms peeping amongst the stones.

Our horses — even mine was docile now —

HORSES CLIMB WELL 137

stumbled and scrambled at our heels. Wonder- ful indeed are the beasts of burden of the Arabs. Even the pack-camels, if men walk beside them, bearing up the loads with their shoulders, make their painful way up and down this road, despite the fact that theirs are feet for sandy ground, and very ill-suited to climbing. And the horses truly climb like cats. I have ridden Arab horses up ascents which an English one could hardly face when led. And up this road, in places where to hold the bridle as one climbs is hard, one may gather it up on the horse's neck and leave him to himself. Then with ears pricked and wise eyes spying out the surest foothold, he will come after, treading as deli- cately as though on eggs.

Wherever you can climb unaided by your hands, your horse can follow you, if you will give him time.

We stopped at last, and made our horses fast, and fed them. We built a blazing fire of twigs whose burning smelt like incense ; and wrap- ping ourselves close in our blankets, slept with our saddles underneath our heads till dawn.

And when the day came, fresh and bright, and very cold, we rose, a little stiffly, and look- ing about us, found that we were already a great way up, and had little further to climb. Our path stretched sheerly down below us to the plain, and wound away, a strip of paler

138 ECHO

fawn colour across the desert into invisibility. The shadows of the mountains lay, deep purple on the level sands, as though a giant had flung his cloak there. And, still in shadow, at the stairway's foot, there lay the f onduk underneath our feet, and the pleasant palm groves, their greenery showing mistily through grey vapours. Wee, gnome-like men, clear and distinct like people seen through the wrong end of a tele- scope, were busy about the loading up of tiny goblin camels. Now and again a faint cry reached us on our ledge.

A pair of burnished ravens, glossy black in the sunlight, came flying slowly overhead, and one cried, with a deep, most musical note, to the other as they went by, tilting brilliant wings against the strong, fresh breeze.

As the light grew, the grey sides of the mountains showed streaks of tender green among the clefts and gorges. One peak, that looked very like an old crater, was still half- clad in steel-coloured clouds. The desert began to glow with a richer, warmer hue of orange ; and a white crumb far to the north was Azizia.

As we climbed upward, Talaat Bey halted once, and fired his revolver four times in the air. And at once the silence was shattered by a score of clangorous echoes. The sounds rang and rebounded from those cliffs and rocks as though a battle were in progress.

SMILING COUNTRY 139

" How will it sound," said Talaat Bey, "when the Italians, if ever they come so far, are trying to climb up here, with our mountain batteries firing from the top, and their big guns roaring like lions down below there, and every rock and bush and boulder sheltering an Arab with a rifle ? Though, indeed, almost without rifles we could defend this place, rolling down stones. A hundred men could keep back all the Italian army in this place ; and even should they ever reach the top, another climb, almost as hard as this, and longer, lies between them and Gharien."

At last we came to the top, and looked out from a lovely plateau thick with olive-groves, upon a world that seemed immense. Even in the deserts of North Africa, the vast uninter- rupted view gives an idea of the hugeness of this earth that overawes a lonely traveller. But high upon the mountain tops, with vistas stretching immeasurably out on every side, one is fascinated as though one viewed all space.

Amongst the hills it was as Talaat Bey had said : we were back again in a pleasant, habitable land after our sojourn in the empty desert wilds. There were groves and thickets, meadows blue and white with wild crocus ; deep gullies and channels sheltering silvery thread-like rivulets ; and little farms, where ploughing was toward. Men walked at the tail

140 WOMEN AT THE PLOUGH

of clumsy wooden ploughs — some a mere crooked branch to scratch the soil — to which were harnessed camels, women, asses, oxen. Camels take unkindly to this distasteful draught work, and, with their scornful heads raised high, blow out their sagging lips, and curse their drivers and their yoke-fellows in hollow, rumb- ling protests from the bottoms of their malig- nant hearts. The women go often laughingly about their work, calling to one another across the fields : " Pull, thou she-camel. Strain at the rope. Pull, naga, pull."

Flocks of goats go about amongst the olive trees. Leaping upon the squat, gnarled trunks, they climb out upon the branches where there is a foothold, to nibble at the green young shoots. Often you will see a circle banked about the roots of olive trees, and a depression made within it, to the end that water may accumu- late in plenty.

How strongly certain scenes of Arab life recall conceptions of the classic age of Greece ! There was a little hamlet whose whitened buildings showed amongst the olives by the roadside. Under a tree near by, a little goat- herd sat, his back against the knotted trunk. He had sandals on his thin brown feet, and his white woollen robe was belted with a belt of woven rope. And he was playing, fitfully, dreamily, as though trying to recall a forgotten

UNDERGROUND HOUSES 141

tune, upon a slender, two-stemmed pipe. A pair of black kids leaped and butted one another, with jerky friskings, fighting for possession of a boulder-top. And at my hail, a girl came out and brought an earthen am- phora of sour milk, and stood looking fearlessly and frankly at us while we drank, as women of the hills, where the Berber freedom for women prevails, are not afraid to do. At the top of the hill behind the village stood a ruined altar — a slab of roughly dressed stone that had been supported by pillars, relic of some pre- Islamic faith.

We rode by many hills that were crowned with strange stone towers, like those of the ancient Irish. And now, being come into the country of the Troglodytes, we began to see man}^ of the wonderful underground houses, with tunnels and galleries and cavernous chambers, in which the people live to this day.

Wonderful indeed are these subterranean towns, whose houses (mentioned by Herodotus, I think) are surely the oldest type of artificial dwelling known to man. I stabled my horse in one of them, near Gharien, and so came to know its construction thoroughly. And I often wondered whether the commonest type of Arab architecture is not directly evolved from the house of the Troglodytes. For the Arab house encloses a square courtyard, open to the heaven.

142 A TROGLODYTE DWELLING

Its rooms open upon this courtyard, and as the sunlight drenches one side with Hght and heat, the occupants of the house move over to the opposite side, and sit in the cool shade. The house is usually two-storied, with a gallery or balcony running round inside; and the roof is fiat. Folk come up and sit upon the roof in the early morning and in the cool evening, to enjoy the view and the pleasant freshness of the air.

And, save that it is dug out of the ground, instead of being built above it, the house of the earth-dwellers is just the same. The open courtyard is a great square pit, forty feet deep and often much more ; and of about the same length on every side. Its faces are smooth and straight, and often beautifully dressed, as though with small adzes. The entrance is a long, sloping tunnel, often carefully twisted and with ambush recesses at its sides ; and though you may walk erect down most of its length, it is sometimes so made that just before entering the central pit you have to crouch. Its outer entrance is shored with wood. Rude porches made of untrimmed boughs and having a drip-board roof are entries to the most pre- tentious. Others are merely holes in the earth.

There are chambers on every side of the main pit. The blackened walls of some show where fires have been built for cooking in wet weather. All round the walls are recesses and shelves, in

NON-SEMITIC ARCHITECTURE 143

which stand lamps and household implements.

It is astonishing how much light filters into these windowless caverns ; or rather, how quickly the eye becomes able to see through the dusk.

The floors are stamped hard, and sometimes crudely paved with flat stones. Sometimes the entrances are closed with doors, but these are mainly store-rooms wherein grain and fruits are kept ; or stables for horses and cattle. The sleeping rooms — one cannot call them living rooms, since they are hardly ever used except at night — are commonly left open to the square.

Only the greatest and most elaborate of these dwellings have two regular storeys; for the ceiling must be of such a thickness that not even the heaviest rains can percolate. But nearly all have one or two upper chambers.

In the greatest heat, these places are always cool. In winter, they are warmer by far than the houses standing on the surface of the earth.

Throughout the mountains these strange dwelling-places abound. There are even a few in the desert ; but these, for the most part, are store-houses only. The mountains, the strong- holds of the Berbers, are the true home of this non-Semitic fashion of architecture.

XVII

I AM much intrigued by the Berber problem. Who are these people ; whence did they come into the North African mountains and least fertile deserts ; why does their race, so scattered and so broken, still keep for the most part aloof and distinct from its Arab vanquishers ?

The position of the Arab population of Northern Africa is very like that of the Teutonic conquerors of Britain, when the Saxons held the fertile plains, and drove the Britons to the hills and fens. The Arab hordes, sweeping westward over Africa with the impetus of their faith, dispossessed the people who then held the land, and drove them up into the mountains and the heart of the Sahara. So that, to-day, the population of the great Atlas range is Berber ; Berbers (Kabyles) hold the mountains of Algeria and Tunis ; Berbers (Susi and Tuareg) are the scourge of the Sahara and southern Barbary states.

There is no doubt that all the scattered Berber branches — Riff, Djebala, Susi of

144

WHO ARE THE BERBERS? 145

Morocco, Kabyles of Algeria and Tunis, Tuareg of the Sahara, and the hill-folk of Tripoli — belong to one and the same family. Their social institutions, their physique, their arts and crafts, and their language, all point in the same direction. But how great a race was that of which these people seem to be the only remnants, and over what territories it was originally spread, it is hard to say.

I have lived a good deal amongst Berber peoples — in the Djebala district bordering on the Gharb province (North Morocco), in the Haha and Shiadma countries of South Morocco, and in the Tripolitan mountain country round about Gharien, in which I passed a good deal of time as the war in the desert dragged un- eventfully on. And I have had some dealings, also, with Riff mountaineers (in whom I suspect a strong admixture of late European blood), and with the Hoggar Tuaregs who joined the Turks at Azizia. And, in what I learnt of all these people, I have found always certain indications that lead me to think that their past history was not confined to Northern Africa.

What I know of the Berbers has so many points in common with what is known of the pre-Aryan population of Europe — or at least, of North- Western Europe — that I have come to believe it more than probable that it was against the ancestors of these very Berbers

146 AUTOCHTHONS OF EUROPE

that our Keltic forefathers fought for the posses- sion of western Gaul, of Spain, and of the British Isles.

I wish that some high British authority upon ethnology would turn his attention to the Berbers. The study of the autochthonous races of Northern Africa — or at least, the study of the immediately pre-Semitic inhabitants of that region— would be, I fancy, a comparatively simple affair ; for much of the material is still living and fairly free in many districts from the influences of the dominant population.

Compared with an investigation of the traces left by the aborigines of Europe it should be a very easy business ; for our knowledge of the people who held Europe before the arrival of our own racial stock is limited in the extreme. Except in the