But it was shouted out from a safe distance, on account of the double muscles.
Oh, the fragility of Tarascon’s fads!
The great object himself feigned to see and hear nothing; but, under the surface, this sullen and venomous petty warfare much afflicted him. He felt aware that Tarascon was slipping out of his grip, and that popular favour was going to others; and this made him suffer horribly.
Ah, the huge bowl of popularity! it’s all very well to have a seat in front of it, but what a scalding you catch when it is overturned!
Notwithstanding his pain, Tartarin smiled and peacefully jogged on in the same life as if nothing untoward had happened. Still, the mask of jovial heedlessness glued by pride on his face would sometimes be suddenly detached. Then, in lieu of laughter, one saw grief and indignation. Thus it was that one morning, when the little blackguards yelped “Muster Jarvey’s Roifle” beneath his window, the wretches’ voices rose even into the poor great man’s room, where he was shaving before the glass. (Tartarin wore a full beard, but as it grew very thick, he was obliged to keep it trimmed orderly.)
All at once the window was violently opened, and Tartarin appeared in shirt-sleeves and nightcap, smothered in lather, flourishing his razor and shaving-brush, and roaring with a formidable voice:
“Let’s have it out with swords, gentlemen, not pins!”
Fine words, worthy of history’s record, with only the blemish that they were addressed to little scamps not higher than their boot-boxes, and who were quite incapable of holding a smallsword.
XII. A memorable Dialogue in the little Baobab Villa.
AMID the general falling off, the army alone stuck out firmly for Tartarin. Brave Commandant Bravida (the former captain in the Army Clothing Department) continued to show him the same esteem as ever. “He’s game!” he persisted in saying—an assertion, I beg to believe, fully worth the chemist Bezuquet’s. Not once did the brave officer let out any allusion to the trip to Africa; but when the public clamour grew too loud, he determined to have his say.
One evening the luckless Tartarin was in his study, in a brown study himself, when he saw the commandant stride in, stern, wearing black gloves, buttoned up to his ears.
“Tartarin,” said the ex-captain authoritatively, “Tartarin, you’ll have to go!”
And there he dwelt, erect in the doorway frame, grand and rigid as embodied Duty. Tartarin of Tarascon comprehended all the sense in “Tartarin, you’ll have to ago!”
Very pale, he rose and looked around with a softened eye upon the cosy snuggery, tightly closed in, full of warmth and tender light—upon the commodious easy chair, his books, the carpet, the white blinds of the windows, beyond which trembled the slender twigs of the little garden. Then, advancing towards the brave officer, he took his hand, grasped it energetically, and said in a voice somewhat tearful, but stoical for all that:
“I am going, Bravida.”
And go he did, as he said he would. Not straight off though, for it takes time to get the paraphernalia together.
To begin with, he ordered of Bompard two large boxes bound with brass, and an inscription to be on them:
The binding in brass and the lettering took much time. He also ordered at Tastavin’s a showy album, in which to keep a diary and his impressions of travel; for a man cannot help having an idea or two strike him even when he is busy lion-hunting.
Next, he had over from Marseilles a downright cargo of tinned eatables, pemmican compressed in cakes for making soup, a new pattern shelter-tent, opening out and packing up in a minute, sea-boots, a couple of umbrellas, a waterproof coat, and blue spectacles to ward off ophthalmia. To conclude, Bezuquet the chemist made him up a miniature portable medicine chest stuffed with diachylon plaister, arnica, camphor, and medicated vinegar.
Poor Tartarin! he did not take these safeguards on his own behalf; but he hoped, by dint of precaution and delicate attentions, to allay Sancho-Tartarin’s fury, who, since the start was fixed, never left off raging day or night.
XIII. The Departure.
EFTSOON arrived the great and solemn day. From dawn all Tarascon had been on foot, encumbering the Avignon road and the approaches to Baobab Villa. People were up at the windows, on the roofs, and in the trees; the Rhone bargees, porters, dredgers, shoeblacks, gentry, tradesfolk, warpers and weavers, taffety-workers, the club members, in short the whole town; moreover, people from Beaucaire had come over the bridge, market-gardeners from the environs, carters in their huge carts with ample tilts, vinedressers upon handsome mules, tricked out with ribbons, streamers, bells, rosettes, and jingles, and even, here and there, a few pretty maids from Arles, come on the pillion behind their sweethearts, with bonny blue ribbons round the head, upon little iron-grey Camargue horses.
All this swarm squeezed and jostled before our good Tartarin’s door, who was going to slaughter lions in the land of the Turks.
For Tarascon, Algeria, Africa, Greece, Persia, Turkey, and Mesopotamia, all form one great hazy country, almost a myth, called the land of the Turks. They say “Tur’s,” but that’s a linguistic digression.
In the midst of all this throng, the cap-poppers bustled to and fro, proud of their captain’s triumph, leaving glorious wakes where they had passed.
In front of the Indian fig-tree house were two large trucks. From time to time the door would open, and allow several persons to be spied, gravely lounging about the little garden. At every new box the throng started and trembled. The articles were named in a loud voice:
“That there’s the shelter-tent; these the potted meats; that’s the physic-chest; these the gun-cases,”—the cap-poppers giving explanations.
All of a sudden, about ten o’clock, there was a great stir in the multitude, for the garden gate banged open.
“Here he is! here he is!” they shouted.
It was he indeed. When he appeared upon the threshold, two outcries of stupefaction burst from the assemblage:
“He’s a Turk!” “He’s got on spectacles!”
In truth, Tartarin of Tarascon had deemed it his duty, on going to Algeria, to don the Algerian costume. Full white linen trousers, small tight vest with metal buttons, a red sash two feet wide around the waist, the neck bare and the forehead shaven, and a vast red fez, or chechia, on his head, with something like a long blue tassel thereto. Together with this, two heavy guns, one on each shoulder, a broad hunting-knife in the girdle, a bandolier across the breast, a revolver on the hip, swinging in its patent leather case—that is all. No, I cry your pardon, I was forgetting the spectacles—a pantomimically large pair of azure barnacles, which came in partly to temper what was rather too fierce in the bearing of our hero.
“Long life to Tartarin! hip, hip, hurrah for Tartarin!” roared the populace.
The great man smiled, but did not salute, on account of the firearms hindering him. Moreover, he knew now on what popular favour depends; it may even be that in the depths of his soul he cursed his terrible fellow-townsfolk, who obliged him to go away and leave his pretty little pleasure-house with whitened walls and green venetians. But there was no show of this.
Calm and proud, although a little pallid, he stepped out on the footway, glanced at the hand-carts, and, seeing all was right, lustily took the road to the railway-station, without even once looking back towards Baobab Villa. Behind him marched the brave Commandant Bravida, Ladevese the Chief Judge, Costecalde the gunsmith next, and then all the sportsmen who pop at caps, preceding the hand-carts and the rag, tag, and bobtail.
Before the station the station-master awaited them, an old African veteran of 1830, who shook Tartarin’s hand many times with fervency.
The Paris-to-Marseilles express was not yet in, so Tartarin and his staff went into the waiting-rooms. To prevent the place being overrun, the station-master ordered the gates to be closed.
During a quarter of an hour, Tartarin promenaded up and down in the rooms in the midst of his brother marksmen, speaking to them of his journey and his hunting, and promising to send them skins; they put their names down in his memorandum-book for a lionskin apiece, as waltzers book for a dance.
Gentle and placid as Socrates on the point of quaffing the hemlock, the intrepid Tarasconian had a word and a smile for each. He spoke simply, with an affable mien; it looked as if, before departing, he meant to leave behind him a wake of charms, regrets, and pleasant memories. On hearing their leader speak in this way, all the sportsmen felt tears well up, and some were stung with remorse, to wit, Chief Judge Ladevese and the chemist Bezuquet. The railway employees blubbered in the corners, whilst the outer public squinted through the bars and bellowed: “Long live Tartarin!”
At length the bell rang. A dull rumble was heard, and a piercing whistle shook the vault.
“The Marseilles express, gen’lemen!”
“Good-bye, Tartarin! Good luck, old fellow!”
“Good-bye to you all!” murmured the great man, as, with his arms around the brave Commandant Bravida, he embraced his dear native place collectively in him. Then he leaped out upon the platform, and clambered into a carriage full of Parisian ladies, who were ready to die with fright at sight of this stranger with so many pistols and rifles.
XIV. The Port of Marseilles—“All aboard, all aboard!”
UPON the 1st of December 18—, in clear, brilliant, splendid weather, under a south winter sun, the startled inhabitants of Marseilles beheld a Turk come down the Canebiere, or their Regent Street. A Turk, a regular Turk—never had such a one been seen; and yet, Heaven knows, there is no lack of Turks at Marseilles.
The Turk in question—have I any necessity of telling you it was the great Tartarin of Tarascon?—waddled along the quays, followed by his gun-cases, medicine-chest, and tinned comestibles, to reach the landing-stage of the Touache Company and the mail steamer the Zouave, which was to transport him over the sea.
With his ears still ringing with the home applause, intoxicated by the glare of the heavens and the reek of the sea, Tartarin fairly beamed as he stepped out with a lofty head, and between his guns on his shoulders, looking with all his eyes upon that wondrous, dazzling harbour of Marseilles, which he saw for the first time. The poor fellow believed he was dreaming. He fancied his name was Sinbad the Sailor, and that he was roaming in one of those fantastic cities abundant in the “Arabian Nights.” As far as eye could reach there spread a forest of masts and spars, cris-crossing in every way.
Flags of all countries floated—English, American, Russian, Swedish, Greek and Tunisian.
The vessels lay alongside the wharves—ay, head on, so that their bowsprits stuck up out over the strand like rows of bayonets. Over it, too, sprawled the mermaids, goddesses, madonnas, and other figure-heads in carved and painted wood which gave names to the ships—all worn by sea-water, split, mildewed, and dripping. Ever and anon, between the hulls, a patch of harbour like watered silk splashed with oil. In the intervals of the yards and booms, what seemed swarms of flies prettily spotted the blue sky. These were the shipboys, hailing one another in all languages.
On the waterside, amidst thick green or black rivulets coming down from the soap factories loaded with oil and soda, bustled a mass of custom-house officers, messengers, porters, and truckmen with their bogheys, or trolleys, drawn by Corsican ponies.
There were shops selling quaint articles, smoky shanties where sailors were cooking their own queer messes, dealers in pipes, monkeys, parrots, ropes, sailcloth, fanciful curios, amongst which were mingled higgledy-piggledy old culverins, huge gilded lanterns, worn-out pulley-blocks, rusty flukeless anchors, chafed cordage, battered speaking-trumpets, and marine glasses almost contemporary with the Ark. Sellers of mussels and clams squatted beside their heaps of shellfish and yawped their goods. Seamen rolled by with tar-pots, smoking soup-bowls, and big baskets full of cuttlefish, from which they went to wash the ink in the milky waters of the fountains.
Everywhere a prodigious collection of all kinds of goods: silks, minerals, wood in stacks, lead in pigs, cloths, sugars, caruba wood logs, colza seed, liquorice sticks, sugar-canes. The East and the West cheek by jowl, even to pyramids of Dutch cheeses which the Genoese were dyeing red by contact with their hands.
Yonder was the corn market: porters discharging sacks down the shoots of lofty elevators upon the pier, and loose grain rolling as a golden torrent through a blonde dust. Men in red skullcaps were sifting it as they caught it in large asses’-skin sieves, and loading it upon carts which took their millward way, followed by a regiment of women and youngsters with wisps and gleaning baskets. Farther on, the dry docks, where large vessels were laid low on their sides till their yards dipped in the water; they were singed with thorn-bushes to free them of sea weed; there rose an odour of pitch, and the deafening clatter of the sheathers coppering the bottoms with broad sheets of yellow metal.
At whiles a gap in between the masts, in which Tartarin could see the haven mouth, where the vessels came and went: a British frigate off for Malta, dainty and thoroughly washed down, with the officer in primrose gloves, or a large home-port brig hauling out in the midst of uproar and oaths, whilst the fat captain, in a high silk hat and frockcoat, ordered the operations in Provencal dialect. Other craft were making forth under all sail, and, still farther out, more were slowly looming up in the sunshine as if they were sailing in the air.
All the time a frightful riot, the rumbling of carts, the “Haul all, haul away!” of the shipmen, oaths, songs, steamboat whistles, the bugles and drums in Forts Saint Jean and Saint Nicolas, the bells of the Major, the Accoules, and Saint Victor; with the mistral atop of all, catching up the noises and clamour, and rolling them up together with a furious shaking, till confounded with its own voice, which intoned a mad, wild, heroic melody like a grand charging tune—one that filled hearers with a longing to be off, and the farther the better—a craving for wings.
It was to the sound of this splendid blast that the intrepid Tartarin Tarasco of Tarascon embarked for the land of lions.
I. The Passage—The Five Positions of the Fez—The Third Evening Out—Mercy upon us!
JOYFUL would I be, my dear readers, if I were a painter—a great artist, I mean—in order to set under your eyes, at the head of this second episode, the various positions taken by Tartarin’s red cap in the three days’ passage it made on board of the Zouave, between France and Algeria.
First would I show you it at the steaming out, upon deck, arrogant and heroic as it was, forming a glory round that handsome Tarasconian head. Next would I show you it at the harbour-mouth, when the bark began to caper upon the waves; I would depict it for you all of a quake in astonishment, and as though already experiencing the preliminary qualms of sea-sickness. Then, in the Gulf of the Lion, proportionably to the nearing the open sea, where the white caps heaved harder, I would make you behold it wrestling with the tempest, and standing on end upon the hero’s cranium, with its mighty mane of blue wool bristling out in the spray and breeze. Position Fourth: at six in the afternoon, with the Corsican coast in view; the unfortunate chechia hangs over the ship’s side, and lamentably stares down as though to plumb the depths of ocean. Finally and lastly, the Fifth Position: at the back of a narrow state-room, in a box-bed so small it seemed one drawer in a nest of them, something shapeless rolled on the pillow with moans of desolation. This was the fez—the fez so defiant at the sailing, now reduced to the vulgar condition of a nightcap, and pulled down over the very ears of the head of a pallid and convulsed sufferer.
How the people of Tarascon would have kicked themselves for having constrained the great Tartarin to leave home, if they had but seen him stretched in the bunk in the dull, wan gleam through the dead-light, amid the sickly odour of cooking and wet wood—the heart-heaving perfume of mail-boats; if they had but heard him gurgle at every turn of the screw, wail for tea every five minutes, and swear at the steward in a childish treble!
On my word of honour as a story-teller, the poor Turk would have made a paste-board dummy pity him. Suddenly, overcome by the nausea, the hapless victim had not even the power to undo the Algerian girdle-cloth, or lay aside his armoury; the lumpy-handled hunting-sword pounded his ribs, and the leather revolver-case made his thigh raw. To finish him arose the taunts of Sancho-Tartarin, who never ceased to groan and inveigh:
“Well, for the biggest kind of imbecile, you are the finest specimen! I told you truly how it would be. Ha, ha! you were bound to go to Africa, of course! Well, old merriman, now you are going to Africa, how do you like it?”
The cruellest part of it was that, from the retreat where he was moaning, the hapless invalid could hear the passengers in the grand saloon laughing, munching, singing, and playing at cards. On board the Zouave the company was as jolly as numerous, composed of officers going back to join their regiments, ladies from the Marseilles Alcazar Music Hall, strolling-players, a rich Mussulman returning from Mecca, and a very jocular Montenegrin prince, who favoured them with imitations of the low comedians of Paris. Not one of these jokers felt the sea-sickness, and their time was passed in quaffing champagne with the steamer captain, a good fat born Marseillais, who had a wife and family as well at Algiers as at home, and who answered to the merry name of Barbassou.
Tartarin of Tarascon hated this pack of wretches; their mirthfulness deepened his ails.
At length, on the third afternoon, there was such an extraordinary hullabaloo on the deck that our hero was roused out of his long torpor. The ship’s bell was ringing and the seamen’s heavy boots ran over the planks.
“Go ahead! Stop her! Turn astern!” barked the hoarse voice of Captain Barbassou; and then, “Stop her dead!”
There was an abrupt check of movement, a shock, and no more, save the silent rolling of the boat from side to side like a balloon in the air. This strange stillness alarmed the Tarasconian.
“Heaven ha’ mercy upon us!” he yelled in a terrifying voice, as, recovering his strength by magic, he bounded out of his berth, and rushed upon deck with his arsenal.
II. “To arms! to arms”
ONLY the arrival, not a foundering.
The Zouave was just gliding into the roadstead—a fine one of black, deep water, but dull and still, almost deserted. On elevated ground ahead rose Algiers, the White City, with its little houses of a dead cream-colour huddling against one another lest they slid into the sea. It was like Meudon slope with a laundress’s washing hung out to dry. Over it a vast blue satin sky—and such a blue!
A little restored from his fright, the illustrious Tartarin gazed on the landscape, and listened with respect to the Montenegrin prince, who stood by his side, as he named the different parts of the capital, the Kasbah, the upper town, and the Rue Bab-Azoon. A very finely-brought-up prince was this Montenegrin; moreover, knowing Algeria thoroughly, and fluently speaking Arabic. Hence Tartarin thought of cultivating his acquaintance.
All at once, along the bulwark against which they were leaning, the Tarasconian perceived a row of large black hands clinging to it from over the side. Almost instantly a Negro’s woolly head shot up before him, and, ere he had time to open his mouth, the deck was overwhelmed on every side by a hundred black or yellow desperadoes, half naked, hideous, and fearsome. Tartarin knew who these pirates were—“they,” of course, the celebrated “they” who had too often been hunted after by him in the by-ways of Tarascon. At last they had decided to meet him face to face. At the outset surprise nailed him to the spot. But when he saw the outlaws fall upon the luggage, tear off the tarpaulin covering, and actually commence the pillage of the ship, then the hero awoke. Whipping out his hunting-sword, “To arms! to arms!” he roared to the passengers; and away he flew, the foremost of all, upon the buccaneers. “Ques aco? What’s the stir? What’s the matter with you?” exclaimed Captain Barbassou, coming out of the ‘tweendecks.
“About time you did turn up, captain! Quick, quick, arm your men!”
“Eh, what for? dash it all!”
“Why, can’t you see?”
“See what?”
“There, before you, the corsairs”
Captain Barbassou stared, bewildered. At this juncture a tall blackamoor tore by with our hero’s medicine-chest upon his back.
“You cut-throat! just wait for me!” yelled the Tarasconer as he ran after, with the knife uplifted.
But Barbassou caught him in the spring, and holding him by the waist-sash, bade him be quiet.
“Tron de ler! by the throne on high! they’re no pirates. It’s long since there were any pirates hereabout. Those dark porters are light porters. Ha, ha!”
“P—p-porters?”
“Rather, only come after the luggage to carry it ashore. So put up your cook’s galley knife, give me your ticket, and walk off behind that nigger—an honest dog, who will see you to land, and even into a hotel, if you like.”
A little abashed, Tartarin handed over his ticket, and falling in behind the representative of the Dark Continent, clambered down by the hanging-ladder into a big skiff dancing alongside. All his effects were already there—boxes, trunks, gun-cases, tinned food,—so cramming up the boat that there was no need to wait for any other passengers. The African scrambled upon the boxes, and squatted there like a baboon, with his knees clutched by his hands. Another Negro took the oars. Both laughingly eyed Tartarin, and showed their white teeth.
Standing in the stern-sheets, making that terrifying face which had daunted his fellow-countrymen, the great Tarasconian feverishly fumbled with his hunting-knife haft; for, despite what Barbassou had told him, he was only half at ease as regarded the intention of these ebony-skinned porters, who so little resembled their honest mates of Tarascon.
Five minutes afterwards the skiff landed Tartarin, and he set foot upon the little Barbary wharf, where, three hundred years before, a Spanish galley-slave yclept Miguel Cervantes devised, under the cane of the Algerian taskmaster, a sublime romance which was to bear the title of “Don Quixote.”
III. An Invocation to Cervantes—The Disembarkation—Where are the Turks?—Not a sign of them—Disenchantment
O MIGUEL CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, if what is asserted be true, to wit, that wherever great men have dwelt some emanation of their spirits wanderingly hovers until the end of ages, then what remained of your essence on the Barbary coast must have quivered with glee on beholding Tartarin of Tarascon disembark, that marvellous type of the French Southerner, in whom was embodied both heroes of your work, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
The air was sultry on this occasion. On the wharf, ablaze with sunshine, were half a dozen revenue officers, some Algerians expecting news from France, several squatting Moors who drew at long pipes, and some Maltese mariners dragging large nets, between the meshes of which thousands of sardines glittered like small silver coins.
But hardly had Tartarin set foot on earth before the quay sprang into life and changed its aspect. A horde of savages, still more hideous than the pirates upon the steamer, rose between the stones on the strand and rushed upon the new-comer. Tall Arabs were there, nude under woollen blankets, little Moors in tatters, Negroes, Tunisians, Port Mahonese, M’zabites, hotel servants in white aprons, all yelling and shouting, hooking on his clothes, fighting over his luggage, one carrying away the provender, another his medicine-chest, and pelting him in one fantastic medley with the names of preposterously-entitled hotels.
Bewildered by all this tumult, poor Tartarin wandered to and fro, swore and stormed, went mad, ran after his property, and not knowing how to make these barbarians understand him, speechified them in French, Provencal, and even in dog Latin: “Rosa, the rose; bonus, bona, bonum!”—all that he knew—but to no purpose. He was not heeded. Happily, like a god in Homer, intervened a little fellow in a yellow-collared tunic, and armed with a long running-footman’s cane, who dispersed the whole riff-raff with cudgel-play. He was a policeman of the Algerian capital. Very politely, he suggested Tartarin should put up at the Hotel de l’Europe, and he confided him to its waiters, who carted him and his impedimenta thither in several barrows.
At the first steps he took in Algiers, Tartarin of Tarascon opened his eyes widely. Beforehand he had pictured it as an Oriental city—a fairy one, mythological, something between Constantinople and Zanzibar; but it was back into Tarascon he fell. Cafes, restaurants, wide streets, four-storey houses, a little market-place, macadamised, where the infantry band played Offenbachian polkas, whilst fashionably clad gentlemen occupied chairs, drinking beer and eating pancakes, some brilliant ladies, some shady ones, and soldiers—more soldiers—no end of soldiers, but not a solitary Turk, or, better to say, there was a solitary Turk, and that was he.
Hence he felt a little abashed about crossing the square, for everybody looked at him. The musicians stopped, the Offenbachian polka halting with one foot in the air.
With both guns on his shoulders, and the revolver flapping on his hip, as fierce and stately as Robinson Crusoe, Tartarin gravely passed through the groups; but on arriving at the hotel his powers failed him. All spun and mingled in his head: the departure from Tarascon, the harbour of Marseilles, the voyage, the Montenegrin prince, the corsairs. They had to help him up into a room and disarm and undress him. They began to talk of sending for a medical adviser; but hardly was our hero’s head upon the pillow than he set to snoring, so loudly and so heartily that the landlord judged the succour of science useless, and everybody considerately withdrew.
IV. The First Lying in Wait.
THREE o’clock was striking by the Government clock when Tartarin awoke. He had slept all the evening, night, and morning, and even a goodish piece of the afternoon. It must be granted, though, that in the last three days the red fez had caught it pretty hot and lively!
Our hero’s first thought on opening his eyes was, “I am in the land of the lions!” And—well, why should we not say it?—at the idea that lions were nigh hereabouts, within a couple of steps, almost at hand’s reach, and that he would have to disentangle a snarled skein with them, ugh! a deadly chill struck him, and he dived intrepidly under the coverlet.
But, before a moment was over, the outward gaiety, the blue sky, the glowing sun that streamed into the bedchamber, a nice little breakfast that he ate in bed, his window wide open upon the sea, the whole flavoured with an uncommonly good bottle of Crescia wine—it very speedily restored him his former pluckiness.
“Let’s out and at the lion!” he exclaimed, throwing off the clothes and briskly dressing himself.
His plan was as follows: he would go forth from the city without saying a word to a soul, plunge into the great desert, await nightfall to ambush himself, and bang away at the first lion who walked up. Then would he return to breakfast in the morning at the hotel, receive the felicitations of the natives, and hire a cart to bring in the quarry.
So he hurriedly armed himself, attached upright on his back the shelter-tent (which, when rolled up, left its centre pole sticking out a clear foot above his head), and descended to the street as stiffly as though he had swallowed it. Not caring to ask the way of anybody, from fear of letting out his project, he turned fairly to the right, and threaded the Bab-Azoon arcade to the very end, where swarms of Algerian Jews watched him pass from their corner ambushes like so many spiders; crossing the Theatre place, he entered the outer ward, and lastly came upon the dusty Mustapha highway.
Upon this was a quaint conglomeration: omnibuses, hackney coaches, corricolos, the army service waggons, huge hay-carts drawn by bullocks, squads of Chasseurs d’Afrique, droves of microscopic asses, trucks of Alsatian emigrants, spahis in scarlet cloaks—all filed by in a whirlwind cloud of dust, amidst shouts, songs, and trumpetcalls, between two rows of vile-looking booths, at the doors of which lanky Mahonnais women might be seen doing their hair, drinking-dens filled with soldiers, and shops of butchers and knackers.
“What rubbish, to din me about the Orient!” grumbled the great Tartarin; “there are not even as many Turks here as at Marseilles.”
All of a sudden he saw a splendid camel strut by him quite closely, stretching its long legs and puffing out its throat like a turkey-cock, and that made his heart throb. Camels already, eh? Lions could not be far Off now; and, indeed, in five minutes’ time he did see a whole band of lion-hunters coming his way under arms.
“Cowards!” thought our hero as he skirted them; “downright cowards, to go at a lion in companies and with dogs!”
For it never could occur to him that anything but lions were objects of the chase in Algeria. For all that, these Nimrods wore such complacent phizzes of retired tradesmen, and their style of lion-hunting with dogs and game-bags was so patriarchal, that the Tarasconian, a little perplexed, deemed it incumbent to question one of the gentlemen.
“And furthermore, comrade, is the sport good?”
“Not bad,” responded the other, regarding the speaker’s imposing warlike equipment with a scared eye.
“Killed any?”
“Rather! Not so bad—only look.” Whereupon the Algerian sportsman showed that it was rabbits and woodcock stuffing out the bag.
“What! do you call that your bag? Do you put such-like in your bag?”
“Where else should I put ‘em?”
“But it’s such little game.”
“Some run small and some run large,” observed the hunter.
In haste to catch up with his companions, he joined them with several long strides. The dauntless Tartarin remained rooted in the middle of the road with stupefaction. “Pooh!” he ejaculated, after a moment’s reflection, “these are jokers. They haven’t killed anything whatever,” and he went his way.
Already the houses became scarcer, and so did the passengers. Dark came on and objects were blurred, though Tartarin walked on for half an hour more, when he stopped, for it was night. A moonless night, too, but sprinkled with stars. On the highroad there was nobody. The hero concluded that lions are not stage-coaches, and would not of their own choice travel the main ways. So he wheeled into the fields, where there were brambles and ditches and bushes at every step, but he kept on nevertheless.
But suddenly he halted.
“I smell lions about here!” said our friend, sniffing right and left.
V. Bang, bang!
CERTAINLY a great wilderness, bristling with odd plants of that Oriental kind which look like wicked creatures. Under the feeble starlight their magnified shadows barred the ground in every way. On the right loomed up confusedly the heavy mass of a mountain—perhaps the Atlas range. On the heart-hand, the invisible sea hollowly rolling. The very spot to attract wild beasts.
With one gun laid before him and the other in his grasp, Tartarin of Tarascon went down on one knee and waited an hour, ay, a good couple, and nothing turned up. Then he bethought him how, in his books, the great lion-slayers never went out hunting without having a lamb or a kid along with them, which they tied up a space before them, and set bleating or baa-ing by jerking its foot with a string. Not having any goat, the Tarasconer had the idea of employing an imitation, and he set to crying in a tremulous voice:
“Baa-a-a!”
At first it was done very softly, because at bottom he was a little alarmed lest the lion should hear him; but as nothing came, he baa-ed more loudly. Still nothing. Losing patience, he resumed many times running at the top of his voice, till the “Baa, baa, baa!” came out with so much power that the goat began to be mistakable for a bull.
Unexpectedly, a few steps in front, some gigantic black thing appeared. He was hushed. This thing lowered its head, sniffed the ground, bounded up, rolled over, and darted off at the gallop, but returned and stopped short. Who could doubt it was the lion? for now its four short legs could plainly be seen, its formidable mane and its large eyes gleaming in the gloom.
Up went his gun into position. Fire’s the word! and bang, bang! it was done. And immediately there was a leap back and the drawing of the hunting-knife. To the Tarasconian’s shot a terrible roaring replied.
“He’s got it!” cried our good Tartarin as, steadying himself on his sturdy supporters, he prepared to receive the brute’s charge.
But it had more than its fill, and galloped off; howling. He did not budge, for he expected to see the female mate appear, as the story-books always lay it down she should.
Unhappily, no female came. After two or three hours’ waiting the Tarasconian grew tired. The ground was damp, the night was getting cool, and the sea-breeze pricked sharply.
“I have a good mind to take a nap till daylight,” he said to himself.
To avoid catching rheumatism, he had recourse to his patent tent. But here’s where Old Nick interfered! This tent was of so very ingenious a construction that he could not manage to open it. In vain did he toil over it and perspire an hour through—the confounded apparatus would not come unfolded. There are some umbrellas which amuse themselves under torrential rains with just such tricks upon you. Fairly tired out with the struggle, the victim dashed down the machine and lay upon it, swearing like the regular Southron he was. “Tar, tar, rar, tar! tar, rar, tar!”
“What on earth’s that?” wondered Tartarin, suddenly aroused.
It was the bugles of the Chasseurs d’Afrique sounding the turn-out in the Mustapha barracks. The stupefied lion-slayer rubbed his eyes, for he had believed himself out in the boundless wilderness; and do you know where he really was?—in a field of artichokes, between a cabbage-garden and a patch of beets. His Sahara grew kitchen vegetables.
Close to him, on the pretty verdant slope of Upper Mustapha, the snowy villas glowed in the rosy rising sun: anybody would believe himself in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, amongst its bastides and bastidons.
The commonplace and kitchen-gardenish aspect of this sleep-steeped country much astonished the poor man, and put him in bad humour.
“These folk are crazy,” he reasoned, “to plant artichokes in the prowling-ground of lions; for, in short, I have not been dreaming. Lions have come here, and there’s the proof.”
What he called the proof was blood-spots left behind the beast in its flight. Bending over this ruddy trail with his eye on the lookout and his revolver in his fist, the valiant Tarasconian went from artichoke to artichoke up to a little field of oats. In the trampled grass was a pool of blood, and in the midst of the pool, lying on its flank, with a large wound in the head, was a—guess what?
“A lion, of course!”
Not a bit of it! An ass!—one of those little donkeys so common in Algeria, where they are called bourriquots.
VI. Arrival of the Female—A Terrible Combat—“Game Fellows Meet Here!”
LOOKING on his hapless victim, Tartarin’s first impulse was one of vexation. There is such a wide gap between a lion and poor Jack! His second feeling was one of pity. The poor bourriquot was so pretty and looked so kindly. The hide on his still warm sides heaved and fell like waves. Tartarin knelt down, and strove with the end of his Algerian sash to stanch the blood; and all you can imagine in the way of touchingness was offered by the picture of this great man tending this little ass.
At the touch of the silky cloth the donkey, who had not twopennyworth of life in him, opened his large grey eye and winked his long ears two or three times, as much as to say, “Oh, thank you!” before a final spasm shook it from head to tail, whereafter it stirred no more.
“Noiraud! Blackey!” suddenly screamed a voice, choking with anguish, as the branches in a thicket hard by moved at the same time.
Tartarin had no more than enough time to rise and stand upon guard. This was the female!
She rushed up, fearsome and roaring, under form of an old Alsatian woman, her hair in a kerchief, armed with large red umbrella, and calling for her ass, till all the echoes of Mustapha rang. It certainly would have been better for Tartarin to have had to deal with a lioness in fury than this old virago. In vain did the luckless sportsman try to make her understand how the blunder had occurred, and he had mistaken “Noiraud” for a lion. The harridan believed he was making fun of her, and uttering energetical “Der Teufels!” fell upon our hero to bang him with the gingham. A little bewildered, Tartarin defended himself as best he could, warding off the blows with his rifle, streaming with perspiration, panting, jumping about, and crying out:
“But, Madame, but”—
Much good his buts were! Madame was dull of hearing, and her blows continued hard as ever.
Fortunately a third party arrived on the battlefield, the Alsatian’s husband, of the same race; a roadside innkeeper, as well as a very good ready-reckoner, which was better. When he saw what kind of a customer he had to deal with—a slaughterer who only wanted to pay the value of his victim—he disarmed his better-half, and they came to an understanding.
Tartarin gave two hundred francs, the donkey being worth about ten—at least that is the current price in the Arab markets. Then poor Blackey was laid to rest at the root of a fig-tree, and the Alsatian, raised to joviality by the colour of the Tarascon ducats, invited the hero to have a quencher with him in his wine-shop, which stood only a few steps off on the edge of the highway. Every Sunday the sportsmen from the city came there to regale of a morning, for the plain abounded with game, and there was no better place for rabbits for two leagues around.
“How about lions?” inquired Tartarin.
The Alsatian stared at him, greatly astounded.
“Lions!”
“Yes, lions. Don’t you see them sometimes?” resumed the poor fellow, with less confidence.
The Boniface burst out in laughter.
“Ho, ho! bless us! lions! What would we do with lions here?”
“Are there, then, none in Algeria?”
“‘Pon my faith, I never saw any, albeit I have been twenty years in the colony. Still, I believe I have heard tell of such a thing—leastwise, I fancy the newspapers said—but that is ever so much farther inland—down South, you know”—
At this point they reached the hostelry, a suburban pothouse, with a withered green bough over the door, crossed billiard-cues painted on the wall, and this harmless sign over a picture of wild rabbits, feeding: