The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise. Paine Albert Bigelow
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the moment's event that one might believe they had sat always thus, sipping and contemplating, and would so sit through time – how can I convey to the reader even a faint reflection of that unreal, half-awake world or conjure again the spell which, beholding it for the first time, one is bound to feel?
Everywhere was humanity which belonged only to the East – had always belonged there – had remained unchanged in feature and dress and mode of life since the beginning. The prophets looked and dressed just as these people look and dress, and their cities were as this city, built into steep hillsides, with streets a few feet wide, shops six feet square or less, the dreaming shopkeeper in easy reach of every article of his paltry trade.
I do not think it is a very clean place. Of course the matter of being clean is more or less a comparative condition, and what one nation or one family considers clean another nation or family might not be satisfied with at all. But judged by any standards I have happened to meet heretofore I should say the Arab quarter of Algiers was not overclean.
But it was picturesque. In whatever direction you looked was a picture. It was like nature untouched by civilization – it could not be unpicturesque if it tried. It was, in fact, just that – nature unspoiled by what we choose to call civilization because it means bustle, responsibility, office hours, and, now and then, clean clothes. And being nature, even the dirt was not unbeautiful.
Somebody has defined dirt as matter out of place. It was not out of place here. Nor rags. Some of these creatures were literally a mass of rags – rag upon rag – sewed on, tacked on, tied on, hung on – but they were fascinating. What is the use trying to convey all the marvel of it in words? One must see for himself to realize, and even then he will believe he has been dreaming as soon as he turns away.
In a little recess, about half-way down the hill, heeding nothing – wholly lost in reverie it would seem – sat two venerable, turbaned men. They had long beards and their faces were fine and dignified. These were holy men, the guides told us, and very sacred. I did not understand just why they were holy – a mere trip to Mecca would hardly have made them as holy as that, I should think – and nobody seemed to know the answer when I asked about it. Then I asked if I might photograph them, but I could see by the way our guide grabbed at something firm to sustain himself that it would be just as well not to press the suggestion.
I was not entirely subdued, however, and pretty soon hunted up further trouble. A boy came along with one of the copper water-jars – a small one – probably children's size. I made a dive for him and proposed buying it; that is, I held out money and reached for the jar. He probably thought I wanted a drink, and handed it to me, little suspecting my base design. But when he saw me admiring the jar itself and discussing it with Laura, who was waiting rather impatiently while our party was drifting away, he reached for it himself, and my money did not seem to impress him.
Now I suspect that those jars are not for sale. This one had a sort of brass seal with a number and certain cryptic words on it which would suggest some kind of record. As likely as not those jars are all licensed, and for that boy to have parted with his would have landed us both in a donjon keep. I don't know in the least what a donjon keep is, but it sounds like a place to put people for a good while, and I had no time then for experimental knowledge. Our friends had already turned a corner when we started on and we hurried to catch up, not knowing whether or not we should ever find them again.
We came upon them at last peering into an Arab school. The teacher, who wore a turban, sat cross-legged on a raised dais, and the boys, who wore fezzes – there were no girls – were grouped on either side – on a rug – their pointed shoes standing in a row along the floor. They were reciting in a chorus from some large cards – the Koran, according to the guide – and it made a queer clatter.
It must have struck their dinner-hour, just then, for suddenly they all rose, and each in turn made an obeisance to the teacher, kissed his hand, slipped on a pair of little pointed shoes and swarmed out just as any school-boy in any land might do. Only they were not so noisy or impudent. They were rather grave, and their curiosity concerning us was not of a frantic kind. They were training for the life of contemplation, no doubt; perhaps even to be holy men.
We passed little recesses where artizans of all kinds were at work with crude implements on what seemed unimportant things. We passed a cubby-hole where a man was writing letters in the curious Arabic characters for men who squatted about and waited their turn. We saw the pettiest merchants in the world – men with half a dozen little heaps of fruit and vegetables on the ground, not more than three or four poor-looking items in each heap. In a land where fruit and vegetables are the most plentiful of all products, a whole stock in trade like that could not be worth above three or four cents. I wonder what sort of a change they make when they sell only a part of one of those pitiful heaps.
We were at the foot of the hill and out of that delightful Arab quarter all too soon. But we could not stay. Our carriages were waiting there, and we were in and off and going gaily through very beautiful streets to reach the hotel where we were to lunch.
Neither shall I dwell on the governor's palace which we visited, though it is set in a fair garden; nor on the museum, with the exception of just one thing. That one item is, I believe, unique in the world's list of curiosities. It is a plaster cast of the martyr Geronimo in the agony of death. The Algerines put Geronimo alive into a soft mass of concrete which presently hardened into a block, and was built into a fort. This was in 1569, and about forty years later a Spanish writer described the event and told exactly how that particular block could be located.
The fort stood for nearly three hundred years. Then in 1853 it was torn down, the block was identified and broken open, and an almost perfect mould of the dead martyr was found within. They filled the mould with plaster, and the result – a wonderful cast – lies there in the museum to-day, his face down as he died, hands and feet bound and straining, head twisted to one side in the supreme torture of that terrible martyrdom. It is a gruesome, fascinating thing, and you go back to look at it more than once, and you slip out betweentimes for a breath of fresh air.
Remembering the story and looking at that straining figure, you realize a little of the need he must have known, and your lungs contract and you smother and hurry out to the sky and sun and God-given oxygen of life. He could not have lived long, but every second of consciousness must have been an eternity of horror, for there is no such thing as time except as to mode of measurement, and a measurement such as that would compass ages unthinkable. If I lived in Algiers and at any time should sprout a little bud of discontent with the present state of affairs – a little sympathy with the subjugated population – I would go and take a look at Geronimo, and forthwith all the discontent and the sympathy would pass away, and I would come out gloating in the fact that France can crack the whip and that we of the West can ride them down.
We drove through the suburbs, the most beautiful suburbs I have ever seen in any country, and here and there beggars sprang up by the roadside and pursued us up hill and down, though we were going helter-skelter with fine horses over perfect roads. How these children could keep up with us I shall never know, or how a girl of not more than ten could carry a big baby and run full speed down hill, crying out "Sou-penny" at every step, never stumbling or falling behind. Of course, nobody could stand that. We flung her sou-pennies and she gathered them up like lightning and was after the rear carriages, unsatisfied and unabated in speed.
We passed a little lake with two frogs in it. They called to us, but they spoke only French or Algerian, so we did not catch the point of their remarks.
And now we drove home – that is, back to the fine streets near the water-front where we were to leave the carriages and wander about for a while, at will. That was a wild, splendid drive. We were all principals in a gorgeous procession that went dashing down boulevards and through villages, our drivers cracking their whips at the scattering people who woke up long enough to make a fairly spry dash for safety.
Oh, but it was grand! The open barouches, the racing teams, the cracking whips! Let the Arab horde have a care. They sank unoffending vessels; they reddened the sea with blood; they enslaved thousands; they martyred Geronimo. Let the whips crack – drive us fast over them!
Still, I wasn't quite so savage as I sound. I didn't really wish to damage any of those Orientals.