‘Would a devout Muslim eat wild boar?’ asked Stephen as they rode on.
‘Oh dear me, yes,’ said Jacob. ‘The Beni Mzab have no hesitation whatsoever in eating him: many the exquisite civet de sanglier have I eaten among them. But he must be wild, you know, wild and hairy, otherwise he would certainly be unclean. And for that matter they do not observe Ramadan, either, or . .
‘There is a Barbary falcon!’ cried Stephen.
‘Very well,’ said Jacob, not quite pleased at having his account of the Beni Mzab neglected for the sake of a bird; and not at all pleased either by the way his saddle kept pinching the inside of his thighs.
They rode for a while in silence, always going downhill, which aggravated Jacob’s discomfort. But abruptly Ibrahim stopped, and with one finger to his lips, pointed silently at two fresh round footprints on the muddy edge. He whispered into Jacob’s ear; and Jacob, leaning over to Stephen, murmured, ‘Leopard.’
And there indeed he was, the lovely spotted creature, sprawling insolently along a horizontal mossy branch: he watched them with a fine unconcern for quite a time, but when Stephen made a motion, a very cautious motion, towards his telescope, the leopard slipped off his branch on the far side without a sound, and wholly vanished.
On: and now that the slope was easier by far Jacob’s saddle hurt him less: his good humour returned, at least in part.
– Yet he could still say, ‘My dear colleague, you may think me crass, but where birds, beasts and flowers are concerned all I mind about is are they dangerous, are they useful, are they good to eat.’
‘My dear colleague,’ cried Stephen, ‘I do most sincerely ask your pardon. I fear I must have been an everlasting bore.’
‘Not at all,’ said Jacob, ashamed of himself. And away on the left hand, at a distance they could not determine, a lion uttered what might be called a roar – a very deep lowing repeated four or perhaps five times before dying away – which gave the impression not indeed of menace, but of enormous power.
‘That is what I mean,’ said Jacob, after a moment’s silence. ‘I like to know about him, rather than a curious and possibly nondescript nuthatch.’
The ground was now levelling, and shortly after this they wound through a grove of high, well-grown tamarisks to the shore of the lake. And when they had pushed through the last of this screen there before them, quite close to, were countless flamingos, most of them up to their knees in the water with their long-necked heads deeply immerged, but others staring about or gossiping with a sound like geese. Those within twenty yards of the horsemen rose into the air with a most glorious show of black and above all scarlet, and flew, heads and legs stretched out, to the middle. Those that remained – the majority –
carried on sieving nourishment from the Shatt. Stephen was entranced. With his glass, far over, he made out the mounds of their innumerable nests, raised mounds of mud sometimes with sitting bird, and a crowd of awkward, long-legged, pale fledglings. He also saw some crested coots and a cruising marsh-harrier – a hen bird
– and a few egrets; but he was uneasily aware of having prated away interminably about his treecreeper earlier in the day, and now he said no more.
But Jacob turned a beaming face towards him and cried, ‘If that unspeakably glorious spectacle is ornithology, then I am an ornithologist. I had no idea that such splendour existed. You must tell me much, much more.’
Ibrahim asked Jacob whether the gentleman had seen the red birds; and when this was relayed, Stephen smiled at the youth, made appropriate gestures, and after some fumbling produced one of the few guineas he kept in a waistcoat pocket.
When Stephen had finished his disquisition on the anatomy of the flamingo’s bill, on the intricate processes that enabled the bird to gain its living – its very exact requirements where salinity and temperature were concerned – its apparent neglect of its offspring, herded in groups looked after and fed by the entire community – the need for much more work, for much more information, exact information – when he had finished, Ibrahim came closer and spoke to Jacob, pointing towards the head of the lake with great earnestness.
‘He says that if we do not mind making a rather muddy detour he will show you a sight that you will appreciate: he very rightly looks upon you as a creature of a finer essence.’
‘Long may he live. Let us by all means see his sight.’
Its probable nature became evident as they approached the part of the lake where it received the river, a little delta of mud and sand that retained footmarks with admirable clarity on either side: and footmarks there were in extraordinary numbers, this being so convenient a fresh-water drinking place – jackals, deer of various sizes, hyenas, leopards, a single bear, but above all those of lions, large and even very large tracks from different directions all converging towards the deep pool where the stream ran fast between bare rocky sides to plunge into the Shatt. Here the tracks were almost wholly lions’, in great profusion, mingling and crossing.
‘Ibrahim says that on some evenings the lions from our side of the river come down here to drink and to meet the lions from the other side, those that live in the plain country southwards. And when they are all assembled, each side roars at the other: all of one side, then all of the other. He has watched them from that tree. He says it is extraordinarily moving.’
‘I can well believe it,’ said Stephen. ‘About how many lions a side?’
‘Sometimes as many as eight.’
‘Lionesses
too?’
‘No, no, no. Dear me, no,’ said Jacob. Ibrahim shook his head with great disapproval, but then spoke for some minutes. ‘He says that sometimes a strange lioness, a lioness from away, comes roving into our part: the lionesses from here will join and attack her, roaring very like the true lions. And he says we should hurry: we are late already, which the Dey cannot bear.’
They regained the path, and as they rode Stephen observed, ‘So that is what the Vizier meant by le club des
lions. I presume lions do not climb trees, but I should be obliged if you would confirm it with this amiable youth.’
‘He confirms it. Leopard, yes: lions, no.’
‘Then I believe I must see this club, if time can possibly be found.’
There seemed to be time and to spare in the Dey’s hunting camp, a number of small tents tucked into an unexpected and almost invisible deli some way from the river-bank and the natural road along the stream, the highway for all the creatures of the region.
There were different human paths leading from it to the camp, one for each day of the week, so that the place should not become too notorious; and today being Tuesday, Ibrahim led them up through a stand of oaks, where in spite of the presence of men no great way off, wild boars had been ploughing the ground for acorns and tubers over a stretch of between fifteen and twenty acres so that it looked like a well pioughed and harrowed field.
At the guarded descent into the deli Ibrahim showed his pass again and they were led to a tent with a small heap of rugs in it, the topmost being of an enchanting diapered pattern whose colours glowed like jewels when the sun touched them.
Amos Jacob and Stephen passed their time discussing chronic diseases they had personally encountered and the measures they had taken to alleviate them at least in
some degree, with estimates of their success, usually very slight or even non-existent, but on one or two occasions most gratifying and spectacular. They were deep in two extraordinary, unaccountable and lasting cases of remission in phthisis and tetraplegia when the chief huntsman came to say that Omar Pasha would now receive them.
They found the Dey in a fairly high state of grease and good humour. Stephen bowed and said, ‘May I present His Britannic Majesty’s government’s greetings and good wishes to His Highness Omar Pasha?’
Jacob translated, but in Stephen’s opinion not quite literally, since the name of God occurred several times.
Omar rose, bowed – they all bowed – and said he was most gratified by his English cousin’s friendly message, the first he had received from a European ruler: he desired them to sit down and called for coffee and a hookah. ‘I have just succeeded in putting these together,’ he said, observing that Stephen’s eye was keenly turned upon a beautiful pair of guns, of double-barrelled, rifled guns. ‘I took the plates off to look at the sear, but for a great while I was puzzled to get them and the sear-spring back again. However, with God’s help it is done now, ha ha! Blessed be the Name of God.’ Jacob made the ritual response and Stephen a murmur: the Pasha looked so pleased at his success that Stephen asked whether he might look at the nearer gun.