THE FIRE OF DESERT FOLK
STORMS OF THE SEA—AND OF HATE
IN the little Spanish port of Almeria we climbed the gang-plank to the deck of the uninviting shell of a thousand tons that flaunted the name of Balcar across the Mediterranean waves and was to carry us behind its tossing letters to French Oran over the first stage of our journey to the north of the Dark Continent Though it was still summer, the chill of an evening wind that lashed the sea beyond the breakwater kept us moving on the deck as the sailors slipped the lines that held us to the pier. With a sigh my wife remarked:
"That one tiny cable is our only link with Europe."
Then, as this final hawser splashed, Zofiette took one last look at the breakers beyond the harbor, sighed and sought refuge In a steamer-chair, resigned to paying the price of travel by sea. The moment we passed outside the protecting wall, the gloating waves seized the old Spanish hull and tossed It back and forth like a shuttlecock the whole night through. Zofiette was ill, tragically ill, little comforted by the thought that practically all the other passengers were no better sailors than she. After a solitary dinner I went back up on deck to join my wife and look out across the foaming sea.
Immense waves, wild steeds of a wilder wind, charged and threw themselves upon the lunging hulk, causing it to quiver and heel to port, with the groans and plaints of an old rheumatic man. The white manes of the waves wreathed at times the after deck and streamed down the sides of the black, wet body. The wind tore through the rigging and rocked the life-boats in prophetic mockery over what it would do with them, once it were given a free hand on the open sea.
As Zofiette fell asleep for a moment, I lighted a cigarette and leaned over the rail, captivated by the wild abandon of the racing waves. Meanwhile two figures had appeared on deck. They stood apart from each other, observing the mad struggle between the sea and the ship and the swift coursings of the sky.
It was the middle of August, and the moon was full. Under its pale rays the sea scintillated with thousands of shafts and points of silvery light, ever changing, disappearing in a flash in the gulf of some dark trough only to reappear on the slopes and crest of a following wave. Everything was in a great, cyclonic whirl, in the midst of which one could feel the unyielding struggle of palpable and titanic forces that brooked no peace nor mild repose.
The slcy seemed also bent on joining the sea to add weirdness and an additional sense of struggle to the night, for there above we watched the never-ending battle between the forces of light and darkness. Tattered rags of clouds, torn into shreds, came hurrying down the wind as harbingers of strife, while here and there denser bits of purest white recalled to one's mind the forms of drifting swans, slipping swiftly down a rapid stream. Only one higher and heavier cloud, darker than the others, seemingly almost black, opposed itself to the wind and moved but slowly, stretching out and rolling up again its tentacle-like feelers of the atmosphere beyond its rim. Soon it reached the empty field around the moon and began to stretch itself across it just as the moon itself began to darken, taking on a scarlet hue as of fresh blood and then changing again to a somber gray, until finally it faded out to a mere black ring in a blacker sky.
"It is a full eclipse," remarked one of the passengers I had noticed forward, as he approached and offered me his excellent Zeiss glass to observe the phenomenon more closely. As I watched through the glass, the moon began to emerge ever so little from behind the dark cover which our planet had drawn over it First there was but a curve of thin, white-hot wire suspended on the black gulf of the sky; then it glowed brighter and fuller until it swelled to a sickle, to a crescent, a half-moon and eventually to the brilliantly polished silver shield—the pallid face of the sad corpse, the inseparable companion, the memento mori of earth.
"A very beautiful total eclipse," observed my neighbor, as I thanked him for the glasses.
His remark gave me a second in which to scrutinize his features and observe his dress. He was an officer of the Spanish Navy, young, good looking, strong of build, with dark complexion and with bold eyes which surely had seen death—for I know such eyes and would recognize them among thousands of others that had not seen the Reaper at his work.
"You are on your way to the war?" I asked, pointing toward the south.
"Yes, I am rejoining my ship. We are going to bombard the left wing of the army of these banditti from the Rif, who have had the impudence to challenge the rights of Spain in Morocco and to initiate a war against us."
I was silent, for I knew from the papers that the army of the Arab chief, Abd el-Krim, was successfully pushing the Spaniards northward out of their Moroccan territory, a fact that was greatly troubling the Madrid government.
"Look upon this sea," the officer tragically whispered, as his eyes traveled out across the ranks of the whitecrested waves that were hurrying on as though for some great attack. "Look and reflect Formerly the galleys of black pirates and adventurers rode this wind to our shores, where the Moors cut down our people, burned our hamlets and towns and carried off many prisoners. The men among these mostly perished, chained to the rowing-benches of galleys and brigantines, groaning under the lash of slave-drivers and the scorching rays of a burning sun; while the women languished, wept and died in Moslem harems, forgotten, abandoned and degraded. And now in this twentieth century the Arabs dream of renewing again this Moslem domination. We know it and we realize that now we must once more, once for all put an end to such barbarous dreams."
He pronounced this with force and conviction, was silent for a moment and then, with a "good night," turned and went to his cabin, for at dawn he was to land at Melilla, where his ship was lying.
Left alone and finding my wife was still asleep, I lighted another cigarette and sat down on a bench near the entrance to the saloon. In a few moments the second of the passengers I had seen came and took a place beside me. He was obviously an Arab, a fact which European dress could not disguise and which was soon confirmed by the Arab inscriptions tattooed on his forearm, that were revealed as he raised his hand to light a cigarette.
"Where are you bound?" I asked.
"To Oran," he answered, politely raising his hat. The greeting over, he began to laugh softly and, seeing the question in my eyes, observed significantly:
"I can well surmise what the officer who just left you has been saying." Following this, he duplicated the Spaniard's ideas with extraordinary accuracy and continued:
"We men from Maghreb think in another wise and we are all of the same mind. We gave the Spaniards civilization; we infused new and vigorous blood into their race; we were worthy adversaries on the sea and on land. Later they penetrated to the heart of our country and took a great part of it. With an iron hand, much harder and more merciless than had been the hands of the Moorish kings of Granada, Cordova and Seville, they gripped our throats, throttled and persecuted us and now despise us as dogs, as slaves from the most despicable and untutored tribes. This cannot last longer! We must have our rights, our liberty and our creed everywhere in Africa, where at each dawn and sunset the Faithful call upon the name of the Prophet."
Hearing my wife's voice, I excused myself and went to her. When I returned the bench was empty. I sat down, however, and began to reflect upon the great human tragedy, the eternal, historic tragedy whose author is Hate, whose leading roles are played by tribes, peoples, races, cults, merchants, diplomats, parliaments and kings, and the performances of which have continued without interruption through the centuries from the dawn of communal life in the dens of the cavemen down to the days of magnificent palaces of powerful dynasties.
I have come to know intimately wild and half-wild tribes of various colors on three continents. I know their dreams of liberty and independence and, although I realize full well that these, if immediately achieved, would bring them degeneration and death, from which the engrafted European civilization, though often fostered by unwarranted measures, protects them, I thought, in spite of this conviction, that there ought to be some means of saving civilization other than these old and accepted ones, which yield many a full harvest of results but contaminate them with the poisonous weeds of hate.
These thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a short, sharp blast of a ship's whistle, followed by the answering roar from the brass cylinder of the Balear. On the bridge the Captain shouted a command, and I heard the noise of running sailors. The engines stopped, and in a moment the ship rolled helplessly in the troughs and over the racing waves. Out of the darkness to port the form of a Spanish scouting torpedo-boat without lights slid abreast of us and, after a short exchange of electric signals, disappeared again into the night. The engines were started, and the Balear continued her journey.
Sitting in a deck-chair near my wife, I remained awake throughout the night and watched all that was happening now within our range. At intervals before the dawn I followed long moving shafts of light which, with a sort of timorous curiosity, seemed to be searching for something in the sky and on the sea. They were the rays from huge searchlights located on the mountains above Melilla, the Spanish port in Morocco where we were to lower anchor in the early morning.