‘About how many guns took part, do you suppose?’ asked Stephen.
‘Something between eight hundred and a thousand,’ said the consul. ‘I was having a count made some time ago, but my man was stopped just before the Half-Moon battery,
which was just as well for him, since lions and leopards are kept there on chains which the gunners know how to work but nobody else. He had reached about eight hundred and forty, as my recollection goes. I could let you have a copy of his list, if it would interest you.’
‘Thank you, sir: you are very good, but I had rather not run the risk of being found with such a paper – an almost certain prelude to being impaled and then fed to the lions and leopards. Above all on such a journey as we contemplate, to view the lions on their native heath. If you are not too tired, sir, after that cruel bout of what resembled sciatica but which may prove to be something I shall not say benign but at least more transitory and less malignant – if you are not too tired, may we speak of means, destination, mules, even God preserve us camels, guards, equipment, and of anything else that occurs to your far greater experience?’
‘I am not at all tired now, I thank you, after your wonderful draught, your capital poultice – which is still charmingly warm – and above all your comfortable words. But I do not think you mentioned a dragoman?’
‘No. Dr Jacob has spoken Arabic and Turkish from his childhood.’
‘Oh, very good,’ said the consul, bowing. ‘Indeed, far better. As for means, you may certainly draw on the consulate for a thousand pounds, if you think it safe to travel with so much gold. Where destination is concerned – and of course the necessary guide – we must look at a map. Horses, pack-mules, and for some stretches I believe camels, can undoubtedly be hired: I shall speak to my head groom. Guards may not be absolutely necessary, the Dey and his escort having so recently passed that way; but I should be sorry to see you set off without them.’
‘May I put in a word for Turks?’ asked Jacob, speaking for almost the first time.
‘They may not shine as rulers, but your medium Turk seems to me a very fine fellow. I have often travelled with them in the Levant.’
‘I quite agree with you, sir,’ said the consul. ‘According to my experience the Turk is a man of his word. Most of my guards are Turks. And now that I come to think of it, one of our people knows the nearer Atlas intimately well. When he was not working on the reports, records and correspondence here, he pursued the great wild boar, and various other creatures. And he was particularly well acquainted with the country round the Shatt el Khadna, where I believe the Dey intends to go.’
‘Do you refer to the young man who received us today?’
‘Oh Lord, no. The gentleman in question was secretary to the consulate. I am so sorry you had to see that youth:
most of the Algerine clerks are absent, taking their families out of the city, and I had to put him at the desk. He is the son of an intimate friend, a late friend I am very sorry to say. He is nothing remotely like his father, he was sent away from school as a drunken, stupid, pragmatical ass – sent away although his father and grandfather had been there. So as his family intended him for a diplomatic career – his father had been ambassador in Berlin and Petersburg – they begged me to have him here for a while, so that he might at least learn the rudiments of the business: his mother, God bless her, had been given to understand that in Mahometan countries neither wine nor spirits were allowed, nor even beer. No, no: the former secretary of whom I was speaking was a scholar as well as a hunter and a botanist.’
‘Would he come with us at least part of the way, do you think?’
‘He would certainly go with you in spirit, I am sure. But a huge wild boar that he had wounded so mangled and ploughed up his leg that it mortified and had to be cut off. But he will certainly tell you of a wholly reliable guide.’
Chapter Seven
‘How homely it is, how agreeably familiar,’ said Stephen Maturin. They were sitting in a row on a high, grass-covered slope overlooking the range of country they had already traversed with Stephen on the left, Jacob in the middle and then the wholly reliable guide.
‘The same species of cistus, thyme, rosemary, various brooms, the same sweet-scented peonies here and there among them on the screes, the same homely rock-thrushes, wheatears and chats.’
‘Did the gentleman say homely?’ asked the guide in a discontented voice. He had long frequented the consulate and his English was remarkably good; but he was so used to astonishing foreigners with the wonders of his country that a lack of amazement angered him.
‘I believe he did,’ said Jacob.
‘In his home do they have those huge birds?’ He pointed to a group of griffon vultures circling on an upward current.
‘Oh yes,’ said Stephen. ‘We have many vultures, bearded, black, fulvous and Egyptian.’
‘Eagles?’
‘Certainly: several kinds.’
‘Bears?’
‘Of
course.’
‘Boars?’
‘Only too many, alas.’
‘Apes?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Scorpions?’
‘Under every flat stone.’
‘Where is the gentleman’s home?’ asked the indignant
guide.
‘Spain.’
‘Ah, Spain! My fourth great grandfather came from Spain, from a little village just outside Cordova. He had nearly sixteen acres of watered land and several date-palms: a second paradise.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Stephen, ‘and in Cordova itself the mosque of Abd-ar-Rahman still stands, the glory of the western world.’
‘Tomorrow, sir,’ said the guide, leaning forward and speaking across Jacob, ‘I hope to show you a lion or a leopard
– perhaps with God’s blessing both: or at least their tracks by the stream Arpad that flows into the Shatt, where the Dey is sure to have his quarters.’
‘We must be getting along,’ said Jacob. ‘The sun is very near the mountain-tops.’
They rejoined their company and, when the camels’ reluctance to get up could be overcome, they moved on, following the now quite well beaten track up and over a cold pass and down to Khadna and its fields, the last village before the oasis, then the Shatt and the wilderness. Dusk was falling before they reached it and they hardly noticed the blue-clad figure of a little girl waiting outside the thorn-hedge; but clearly she could see them, and as they came out on to the straight she called out, ‘Sara!’
At this a tall, gaunt camel, a particularly ugly, awkward and ill-tempered creature that had carried Stephen over a broad stretch of shale and sand, broke into a lumbering run and on reaching the child lowered its great head to be embraced. These were camels that belonged to the village and they moved off to their usual place even before their trifling return-loads were unstrapped, while the guards and attendants set up tents.
Stephen and Jacob were taken to the chief man’s house, where they were regaled with coffee and biscuits sopped in warm honey, extremely difficult to keep from dripping on to the beautiful rugs upon which they sat.
Jacob was perfectly at home; he spoke for the right length of time, drank the proper number of minute cups, and distributed the customary little presents, blessing the house as he left it, followed by Stephen. As they crossed the dark enclosure to their tent they heard a hyena, not without satisfaction. ‘I used to imitate them when I was a boy,’ said Jacob. ‘And sometimes they would answer.’
The next day was hard going, up and down, but very much more of the up, more and more stony and barren:
quite often they had to lead their horses. Now there were more unfamiliar plants, a wheatear that Stephen could not certainly identify, some tortoises, and a surprising number of birds of prey, shrikes and the smaller falcons, almost one to every moderate bush or tree in an exceptionally desolate region.
At the top of this barren rise, while the Turks made a fire for their coffee, Stephen watched a brown-necked African raven fly right across the vast pure expanse of sky, talking in its harsh deep voice all the way, addressing his mate at least a mile ahead. ‘That is a bird I have always wished to see,’ he said to the guide, ‘a bird that does not exist in Spain.’ This pleased the guide more than Stephen had expected, and he led his charges fifty yards or so along the track to a point where the rock tell precipitously and the path wound down and down to a dry valley with one green spot in it – an oasis with a solitary spring that never spread beyond those limits. Beyond the dry valley the ground rose again, yet beyond it and to the left there shone a fine great sheet of water, the Shatt el Khadna, fed by a stream that could just be made out on the right, before the mountain hid it.