Thehotel paper had a somewhat misguiding “Comfort” as its telegraphic address. Upon the walls were reproductions of sporting prints by Leech, depicting scions of the British aristocracy taking their pleasures not so very sadly after all, and easily demonstrating their superiority to several smock-frocked rustics by galloping close past them, and shouting “Tally-ho,” holding their left ear between their thumb and finger to emphasize the note. Apollinaris and whisky splits, Fritz Rupprecht’s “Special,” with other advertisements of a like nature, filled up the blanks between the oleographs.Iron and Commerce, with theCook’s Excursionist and Engineering, lay untouched upon the tables, serving to show that if some books be not real books at all, there are newspapers which are, as it were, but dummies, holding no police news, football specials, murders, assaults on women, divorce cases, and other items which the educated public naturally expects within their sheets. Slipshod and futile, but attentive German waiters, went about bringing hot whisky, whisky and soda, whisky and lemonade, and whisky neatto the belated customers. Upon the tables glasses had made great rings, commercial travellers had left their pigskin satchels in a heap, and, by the fire, a group of travellers sat silently drinking after the Scottish fashion, and spitting in the grate. Twelve o’clock, half-past twelve, then one by one they dropped away murmuring good-night, and setting down their glasses with an air of having worked manfully for a good night’s repose.
Still I sat on gazing into the fire, and almost unaware that on the other side sat a companion of my vigil, till at last he said, “Do you know Yambo, sir?” and to my vague assent rejoined, “Yambo on the Arabian coast, just opposite Hodeida, where vessels in the pilgrim trade discharge their ‘niggers.’ It’s the port for Mecca, that is, the ‘Sambaks’ used to put in there, but now we do the traffic right from Mogador.” I looked with interest at the man, liking his Demosthenic style of opening remarks. Tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in navy blue, boots like small packing-cases, and a green necktie in which was stuck a cairngorm pin; he wore a silver watch-chain with a small steering-wheel attached to it; not quite a sailor, yet a look of the sea about his clothes; he had a face open and innocent, yet wrinkled round the eyes like a young elephant, and struck me as being, perhaps not foolish, certainly not wise, but with a tinge of worldly wisdom gathered in seaport towns, at music-halls, and other places where those who go downto the sea in ships gain their experience of life. “Yambo,” I said; “I thought that Jeddah was the port the pilgrims landed at.” “Well, so it is,” he said, “but I was thinking about Yambo, been there a many times, used to run arms for the tribes to fight the Turks, when I was fourth engineer in the oldPyramus. Yes, yes, I’ve been at sea most all my life, though my old dad keeps a slap-up hotel at Weston-super-Mare. No need to go to sea, no, but you know some folks would go to hell for pleasure, and I suppose I’m one. Dad, you know—now were you ever at Weston-super-Mare?—is fond of literature, does a bit himself, Chambers you know; mostly upon the conchology and the fossils of the South Devon coast; awfully fond of it, and so am I, nothing I like better than, after getting out of the engine-room, to lie on deck and read one of Bulwer’s books or Dickens’s, both of them stunning. No, I never write myself. Can’t make out what set me thinking about Yambo. What! you won’t? Well, waiter, waiter, Garçong, as we used to say at Suez, another whisky, slippy, you know. I’ve always been a temperate man, but like a nightcap before turning in. Perim ain’t so far off from Yambo; ah yes, now I remember what it was I had to say. You know them Galla girls? prime, ain’t they? But Perim, I remember being Shanghaied there, nothing to do, a beastly hole; sand, beastly, gets in your socks, gets in your hair, makes you feel dirty, no matter how you wash.Well, you know, there were about two hundred of us there, some kind of Government work was going on, and I was left there out of my ship, kind of loaned off, you see, to help the Johnnies at the condensing works. I’ve been at Suez, Yambo as I told you, Rangoon, down at Talcahuano on the Chilean coast, wrecked in Smythe’s Channel, and been about a bit, but Perim fairly takes the cake, not even a sheet of blotting-paper between it and hell. As I was saying, then, we were cooped up, and not a woman in the place; even the Government saw it at last, thought maybe worse would happen if they did nothing, and sent and got six of them Galla girls. Leastwise, if they didn’t send for them, they let a Levantine, Mirandy was his name, introduce them on the strict Q.T. Well, you know, the thing was like this, sir—you know them Galla girls, black as a boot and skins always as cool as ice, even in a khamsin; some people says they are better than white girls; but not in mine; but anyhow they’ve got no ‘Bookay d’Afreek’ about them, it always turns me sick. As I was saying, I thought I’d have a ‘pasear’ one evening, so I lemonaded up to the ‘Mansion,’ and began talking to one of them girls, sort of to pass the time. Serpent upon the rocks, eh? well, that old Solomon knew something about girls. Now here comes in the curious thing, it always strikes me just as if I’d read it in a book; Dickens now or Thackeray could have ’andled it, Bulwer would ’ave made it a littleloosious. Just as the gal was taking off her things—oh, no offence, captain, I’m telling you the thing just as it happened—I saw she had a crucifix a-hanging round her neck. Papist? Oh no, not much; father, he sat under Rev. Hiles Hitchens, light of the Congregationalists. No, no, nothing to do with Rome, never could bear the influence of the confessor in a family. A little free myself, especially below latitude forty, but at ’ome and in the family I like things ship-shape. Well, as I said, round her black neck she had a silver crucifix, contrast of colour made the thing stand out double the size. Ses I, ‘What’s that?’ and she says, ‘Klistian girl, Johnny, me Klistian all the same you.’ That was a stopper over all, and I just reached for my hat, says, ‘Klistian are yer,’ and I gave her two of them Spanish dollars and a kiss, and quit the place. What did she say? Why, nothing, looked at me and laughed, and says, ‘You Klistian, Johnny, plenty much damn fool.’ No, I don’t know what she meant, I done my duty, and that’s all I am concerned about.
“Another half, just a split whisky and Apollinaris. Well, if you won’t, good-night;” and the door slammed, leaving me gazing at the fast-blackening fire.
Sohailis the Arabic name of the star Canopus, to which a curious belief belongs. It appears that in some fashion, known alone to Allah, the fate of the Arab race is bound up with the star. Where it sheds its light their empire flourishes, and there alone. Wherefore or why the thing is so, no true believer seems to know, but that it is so he is well aware, and that suffices him.
Questionings and doubts, changes of costume and religion, striving for ideals, improvements, telegraphs and telephones, are well enough for Christians, whose lives are passed in hurry and in hunting after gold. For those who have changed but little for the last two thousand years, in dress, in faith and customs, it is enough to know it is a talismanic star. Let star-gazers and those who deal in books, dub the star Alpha (or Beta) Argo, it is all one to Arabs. If you question knowledge, say the Easterns, it falls from its estate. If this is so the empiric method has much to answer for. Knowledge and virtue and a horse’s mouth should not pass through too many hands. Knowledge is absolute, and even argument but dulls it, and stripsit of its authenticity, as the bloom of a ripe peach is lost, almost by looking on it.
Of one thing there can be no doubt. When in the Yemen, ages before the first historian penned the fable known as history, the Arabs, watching their flocks, observed Sohail, it seems to have struck them as a star differing from all the rest.
Al-Makkari writes of it on several occasions. The Dervish Abderahman Sufi of Rai, in hisIntroduction to the Starry Heavens, remarks that, at the feet of Sohail is seen, in the neighbourhood of Bagdad, a “curious white spot.” The “curious white spot” astronomers have thought to be the greater of the two Magellan clouds. Perhaps it is so, but I doubt if the Arabs, as a race, were concerned about the matter, so that they saw the star.
From wandering warring tribes Mohammed made a nation of them. Mohammed died and joined the wife in paradise, of whom he said, “By Allah, she shall sit at my right hand, because when all men laughed she clave to me.” Then came Othman, Ali, and the rest, and led them into other lands, to Irak, Damascus, El Hind, to Ifrikia, lastly to Spain, and still their empire waxed, even across the “black waters” of the seas, and still Sohail was there to shine upon them. In the great adventure, one of the few in which a people has engaged; when first Tarik landed his Berbers on the rock which bears his name; at the battle onthe Guadalete where the king, Don Roderick, disappeared from the eyes of men, leaving his golden sandals by a stream; to Seville, Cordoba, and Murcia, the land of Teodmir ben Gobdos, to which the Arabs gave the name of Masr, right up to Zaragoza, Sohail accompanied the host. A curious host it must have been with Muza riding on a mule, and with but two-and-twenty camels to carry all its baggage. From Jativa to Huesca of the Bell, where King Ramiro, at the instigation of Abbot Frotardo (a learned man), cut off his nobles’ heads as they were poppies in a field, they followed it across the Pyrenees, halting at the spot where from his “Camp in Aquitaine” Muza dispatched a messenger to Rome to tell the Pope that he was coming to take him by the beard if he refused Islam. Then the wise men (who always march with armies), looking aloft at night, declared the star was lost. Although they smote the Christian dogs, taking their lands, their daughters, horses, and their gold, on several occasions as Allah willed it, yet victory was not so stable as in Spain. Perhaps beyond the mountains their spirits fell from lack of sun, or their horses sickened in the fat plains of France.
Then the conquering tide had spent itself and flowed back into Spain; at Zaragoza the first Moorish kingdom rose. Al-Makkari writes that at that time Sohail was visible in Upper Aragon, but low on the horizon. Again the Christiansconquered, and the royal race of Aben Hud fled from the city. Ibn Jaldun relates that, shortly afterwards, Sohail became invisible from Aragon. The Cid, Rodrigo Diaz, he of Vivar (may God remember him), prevailed against Valencia, and from thence the star, indignant, took its departure. And so of Jativa, Beni Carlo, and Alpuixech.
Little by little Elche, with its palm-woods, and even Murcia bade it good-bye, as one by one, in the centuries of strife, the Christians in succession conquered each one of them. At last the belief gained ground that, only at one place in Spain, called from the circumstance Sohail, could the star be seen. At Fuengirola, between Malaga and Marbella, still stands the little town the Arabs called Sohail, lost amongst sand-hills, looking across at Africa, of which it seems to form a part; cactus and olive, cane-brake and date palms, its chiefest vegetation; in summer, hot as Bagdad, in winter, sheltered from the winds which come from Christendom by the Sierras of the Alpujarra and Segura. Surely there the star would stop, and let the Arab power flourish under its influence, and there for centuries it did stand stationary. The City of the Pomegranate was founded, the Alhambra, with its brilliant court, the Generalife; and poets, travellers, and men of science gathered at Granada, Cordoba, and at Isbilieh. Ab-Motacim, the poet king of Cordoba, planted the hills with almond trees, to give the effect of snow, which Romaiquia longedfor. He wrote hisKasidas, and filled the courtyard full of spices and sugar for his queen to trample on, when she saw the women of the brick-makers kneading the clay with naked feet, and found her riches but a burden to her. Averroes and Avicenna, the doctors of medicine and of law, laid down their foolish rules of practice and of conduct, and all went well. Medina-el-Azahra, now a pile of stones where shepherds sleep or make believe to watch their sheep, where once the Caliph entertained the ambassador from Constantinople, showing him the golden basin full of quicksilver, “like a great ocean,” rose from the arid hills, and seemed eternal. Allah appeared to smile upon his people, and in proof of it let his star shine. Jehovah though was jealous. A jealous God, evolved by Jews and taken upon trust by Christians, could not endure the empire of Islam. Again town after town was conquered, Baeza, Loja, Antequera, Guadix and Velez-Malaga, even Alhama (Woe is me, Alhama), lastly Granada. Then came the kingdom of the Alpujarra, with the persecutions and the rebellions, Arabs and Christians fighting like wolves and torturing one another for the love of their respective Gods. Yet the star lingered on at Fuengirola, and whilst it still was seen hope was not lost. A century elapsed, and from Gibraltar—from the spot where first they landed—the last Moors embarked. In Spain, where once they ruled from Jaca to Tarifa, no Moorwas left. Perhaps about the mountain villages of Ronda a few remained, but christianized by force, the sword and faggot ever the best spurs to the true faith. But they were not the folk to think of stars or legends, so that no one (of the true faith) could say whether Sohail still lingered over Spain.
Trains, telegraphs, and phonographs, elections and debates in parliament, with clothes unsuited to the people they deform, give a false air of Europe to the land. The palm-trees, cactus, canes, and olives, the tapia walls, the women’s walk and eyes, the horses’ paces, and the fatalistic air which hangs on everything, give them the lie direct. The empire of the Arabs, though departed, yet retains its hold. The hands that built the mosque at Cordoba, the Giralda, the Alhambra, and almost every parish church in Southern Spain, from ruined aqueduct and mosque, sign to the Christian half derisively. So all the land from the gaunt northern mountains to the hot swamps along the Guad-el-Kebir (stretching from Seville to San Lucar) is part of Africa. The reasons are set forth lengthily by the ethnographers, economists, and the grave foolish rout of those who write for people who know nothing, of what they do not understand themselves.
But the star’s lingering is the real cause, and whilst it lingers things can never really go on in Spain as they go on in England, where gloom obscures all stars. The Arabs, issuing from the desert like the khamsin, came, conquered, andpossessed, their star shone on them, and its rays sank deep into the land. Their empire waned, and they, retreating, disappeared into the sands from whence they sprang. Spain knows them not, but yet their influence remains. Only at Cadiz can the talisman be seen, shining low down on the horizon, and still waiting till the precession of the equinoxes takes it across the Straits. Let it recross, and shine upon the old wild life of the vast plains, upon the horsemen flying on the sands, whirling and circling like gulls, whilst the veiled women raise the joyous cry which pierces ears and soul; upon the solemn stately men who sit and look at nothing all a summer’s day, and above all upon the waveless inland sea men call the Sahara.
There may it shine for ever on the life unchanged since the Moalakat, when first the rude astronomers observed the talisman and framed the legend on some starry night, all seated on the ground.
THE END
Richard Clay & Sons,Limited,London & Bungay.
[20]A redomon is a half-tamed horse.
[26]Hydrochoerus capybara.
[32]The Gauchos often lay a deer-skin on their saddles, and wear boots made of deer-skin, alleging that serpents are afraid to touch them.
[46]Accustomed pasture.
[51]The Brazilians call the tapir “O gran besta.” The Guarani word is Mborebi.
[52]Potrero is a fenced pasture, from “potro,” a colt.
[54a]“Matto” is a wood in Portuguese, and at these two Mattos, tradition says, the rival armies had encamped.
[54b]Except for the Gaelic “larach,” I know no word in any language which exactly corresponds to “tapera,” as indicating the foundations of a house grassed over.
[56a]CalledSuperior de las misiones.
[56b]Feliz de Azara,Description y Historia del Paraguay.
[56c]Es menester convenir, en que aunque los padres manda ban alli en todo, usaron de su autoridad con una suavidad y moderacion que no puede menos de admirarse.—Azara,Historia del Paraguay, Tom. 1, p. 282: Madrid 1847.
[60a]Piptadenia communis.
[60b]Acacia maleolens.
[60c]Vitex Taruma.
[60d]Genipa Americana.
[62]“Estero” is the word used in Paraguay for a marsh. These marshes are generally hard at the bottom, so that you splash through them for leagues without danger, though the water is often up to the horse’s girths.
[63a]Alazan tostado antes muerto que cansado. The Arabs think highly of the dark chestnut. See the Emir Abdul Kader on Horsemanship.
[63b]The Yatai is a dwarf palm. It is the Cocos Yatais of botanists.
[63c]Cattle-farm.
[69]Cocos Australis.
[78]Guazu is big, in Guarani.
[131]It had a chorus reflecting upon convent discipline:
“For though the convent rule was strict and tight,She had her exits and her entrances by night.”
“For though the convent rule was strict and tight,She had her exits and her entrances by night.”
[170a]“Medias hasta la berijaCon cada ojo como un charco,Y cada ceja era un arcoPara correr la sortija.”
[170b]“En un overo rosao, fletel lindo y parejito,Cayo al bajo al trotecito, y lindamente sentao.Un paisano del Bragao, de apelativo Laguna,Mozo ginetazo ahijuna, como creo que no hay otroCapaz a llevar un potro a sofrenarlo en la luna.”