Read Ebook: Four Months Afoot in Spain by Franck Harry Alverson

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Ebook has 713 lines and 72995 words, and 15 pages

Before I could reply there swarmed down the companionway a host of cabin passengers, in port-of-call array, whom the Englishman greeted with bared head and his broadest welcome-to-our-city smile; then bowed to the launch ladder. As he resumed his chair I laid my passport before him.

"For what purpose do you desire to land in Gibraltar?" he demanded.

"I am bound for Spain--" I began.

"Spain!" shouted the Briton, with such emphasis as if that land lay at the far ends of the earth. "Indeed! Where are you going from Gibraltar, and how soon?"

"Until I get ashore I can hardly say; in a day or so, at least; to Granada, perhaps, or M?laga."

"Out of respect for the American passport," replied the Englishman grandiloquently, "I am going to let you land. But see you stick to this story."

Suddenly, a furlong beyond the gate, a signboard flashed down upon me, and I turned instinctively in at the open door of the "Seaman's Institute." I found myself in a sort of restaurant, with here and there a pair of England's soldiers at table, and a towsled youth of darker tint hanging over the bar. I commanded ham and eggs; when they were served the youth dropped into the chair opposite and, leaning on his elbows, smiled speechlessly upon me, as if the sight of an unfamiliar face brought him extraordinary pleasure.

"Room to put me up?" I asked.

"Nothin' much else but room," sighed the youth, in the slurring speech of the Anglo-Spanish half-cast, "but the super 's not up yet, an' I 'm only the skittles."

I left my baggage in his keeping and, roaming on through the rapidly warming city to the Alameda Gardens, clambered away the day on the blistered face of the great Rock above.

The "super," a flabby-muscled tank of an Englishman, was lolling out the evening among his clients when I re?ntered the Institute. My request for lodging roused him but momentarily from his lethargy.

"Sign off here?" he drawled.

"A.B., eh?"

"All right. A bob a night is our tax. But no smoking aloft," he added, as I dropped a coin on the table before him.

"'Ow ye like Gib?" asked the half-cast, leading the way up a narrow stairway.

"Like it," I replied.

"Yes, they all does," he mourned, "for one day. But 'ow if you 'ad always to bask on the stewin' old Rock, like a bally lizard? Saint Patrick! If only some toff 'ud pay me a ticket to America!"

FOOTPATHS OF ANDALUSIA

Gibraltar rises early. Proof of the assertion may be lacking, but certainly not even a "Rock lizard" could recompose himself for another nap after the passing of the crashing military band that snatched me at daybreak back to the waking world. With one bound I sprang from cot to window. But there was no ground for alarm; in gorge-like Waterport street below, Thomas Atkins, a regiment strong, was marching briskly barrackward, sweeping the flotsam of civilian life into the nooks and crannies of the flanking buildings.

According to the Hoyle of travelers a glimpse of Morocco was next in order. But with the absurdity of things inanimate and Oriental both the Tangiers steamers were scheduled to loll out the day in harbor. When "Skittles" had again stowed away my chattels, I drifted aimlessly out into the city. But the old eagerness to tread Spanish soil was soon upon me, heightened now by the sight of Algeciras gleaming across the bay. The harbor steamer would have landed me there a mere peseta poorer. Instead, I sauntered through the Landport gate and away along the shifting highway which the Holder of the Rock has dubbed, in his insular tongue, the "Road to Spain."

It led me past the double rank of sentry boxes between which soldiers of England tramp everlastingly, and into bandit-famed La Linea. A Spaniard in rumpled uniform scowled out upon me from the first stone hovel, but, finding me empty-handed, as silently withdrew. I turned westward through the disjointed town and out upon the curving shore of the bay.

Here was neither highway nor path. Indeed, were each Spanish minute tagged with a Broadway price-mark, the peseta would have been dearly saved, for the apparent proximity of Algeciras had been but a tricking of the eye. Hour after hour I waded on through seashore sand, halting now and then in the shadow of some time-gnawed watch-tower of the departed Moor, before me such a survey of the shimmering sea to the very base of the hazy African coast as amply to justify the setting of an outlook on this jutting headland.

"If you had listened," I said, when we had reached a conversational distance, "you would not have lost your fortune."

"What fortune!" he panted. "All I have lost, se?or, is one peseta, and had an evening of a lifetime."

It was while we were skirting the calcined town of Tarifa that I made the acquaintance of Aghmed Shat. The introduction was not of my seeking--but of the ingratiating ways of Aghmed I need say nothing, known as he is by every resident of our land. At least I can recall no fellow-countryman whose visiting-card he did not dig up from the abysmal confusion of his inner garments.

At sight of me, however, he brightened visibly. With outstretched hand and a wan smile he minuetted forward and seated himself on the hatch beside me with the unobtrusive greeting:

"Why for you travel third-class?"

"Si el se?or"--for his hamstrung English had not far endured the journey--"if the gentleman has never taken a guide, this will be a new experience."

In the end the sole survivor won. What, after all, is travel but a seeking after new experience? Here, in truth, was one; and I might find out for myself whether a full-grown man tagging through the streets of a foreign city on the heels of a twaddle-spouting native feels as ridiculous as he looks.

We anchored toward noon in the churning harbor of Tangiers and were soon pitched into the pandemonium of all that goes to make up an Oriental mob lying in wait for touring Europeans. In a twinkling, Aghmed had engaged donkeys to carry us to the principal hotel. I paused on the outskirts of the riot to inform him that our sight-seeing would be afoot; and with a scream of astonishment he reeled and would, perhaps, have fallen had not the street been paved in that which would have made such stage-business unpleasant.

"Pero, se?or!" he gasped. "You do not--you--why, people will say you have no money!"

"Horrible!" I cried, dodging a slaughtered sheep on the head of a black urchin in scanty night-shirt that dashed suddenly out of a slit between two buildings. Aghmed, myopic with excitement, failed to side-step, and it was some distance beyond that his wail again fell on my ear:

"O se?or! Americano gentlemen never go by this street. I cannot guide without donkeys--"

"You can perhaps run along home to dinner?" I suggested; but he merely fell silent and pattered on at my heels, now and again heaving a plaintive sigh.

For the better part of the day we roamed in and out through the tangled city. In the confusion of donkeys, bare legs, and immodesty, the narcotic smell of hashish, the sound of the harsh guttural tongue once so familiar, memories of more distant Mohammedan lands surged upon me. Yet by comparison Tangiers seemed only a faded segment of the swarming Arab world set aside to overawe European tourists, Arabic enough in its way, but only a little, mild-mannered sample.

Late in the afternoon I rounded the beach and, falling upon the highway to Fez, strolled away out of sight and sound of the seaport. Aghmed still languished at my heels. To him also the day had brought a new experience. As we leaned back against a grassy slope to watch the setting of the red sun, he broke a long hour's silence.

"Se?or," he said, "never have I walked so much. When we had come to the Socco I was tired. When we had seen all the city my legs were as two stone pillars. Yet I must keep walking."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you must be protected! Ah, se?or, you do not know how dangerous is Tangiers; and here in the country alone you would before now be dead, or carried off by bandits. Perhaps this much walking will make me sick. Or if I have been seen by my friends or a gentleman tourist! Allah meskeen! They will say I am no longer a gentleman guide, but a donkey boy."

To my infinite relief, Aghmed was on hand in full health next morning to bid me farewell at the end of the pier and to receive his specified "souvenir." He was profuse, too, with the hope that I might soon revisit his land; but I caught no hint of a desire to add my card to his collection.

The steamer plowed her way back to Europe, and by mid-afternoon I emerged from the Sailor's Institute face to face with a serious problem. The most patient of men, which I am not, would hardly set off on a tramp across the Iberian peninsula carrying a forty-pound suitcase, even of unread classics. To have dumped the books in the first alleyway would have been easy, yet painful, for there runs a strain of Scotch in my veins. I dropped in on the nearest bookseller to inquire whether he could see his way clear to accept at a bargain a batch of novels newly imported from New York. But the eager glow quickly faded from his features as I laid the volumes before him.

In which attitude his two rivals also dismissed me, even though I sought the good will of the last by squandering the bulk of a bright gold sovereign for Baedeker's "Spain." As I turned down to the harbor, a thought, or more exactly the sight of a sergeant's uniform under the fortress gate, struck me. The wearer stiffened like a ramrod when I halted before him.

"Have you a library in the barracks?"

"Ah--certainly, garrison library. But I hardly fawncy the commander would allow--"

"Of course not," I interrupted, tossing the books into his arms; "but I am off for Spain and if you have any use for a few novels--"

"Ah--er--well, thank you most kindly, sir!" bawled the officer after me.

Though the fact may never be called to his attention, the sergeant had heard the last phrase of English that passed my lips in many a week. As a personal experiment I had resolved not to speak a word of my native tongue within the kingdom of Spain, even to myself; though this latter proviso, to be sure, necessitated the early acquisition of a few Spanish terms of double voltage.

The forerunner of evening was descending upon Algeciras as I mounted through her now all but voiceless fiesta and struck away over a grass-patched hillock. The further slope was skirted by a dusty highway that wound off through a billowy country pregnant with the promise of greater heights to come. But the trend of the road was west rather than north. Over the hills ahead two male voices were bawling a sort of dialogue of song. I mended my pace and had soon overtaken two peasants rollicking homeward from the festival. When I inquired if this were the highway to Madrid they fell suddenly silent, after a word of greeting, and strode along beside me exchanging puzzled glances.

"Well, then, to Honda, se?ores?" I asked. "Poresta carretera?"

"No, no, se?or!" they answered quickly. "Por aqu? no! You must go on the railroad."

"No, I am traveling on foot."

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