es of
the merchants and privateers of other centuries. On these narrow and
filthy slopes lived the bedizened and dismal prostitutes of the entire
maritime city.

In this district were huddled together the warriors of the
French-African colonies, impelled by their ardor of race and by their
desire to free themselves gluttonously from the restrictions of their
Mahommedan country where the women live in jealous seclusion. On every
corner were groups of Moroccan infantry, recently disembarked or
convalescing from wounds, young soldiers with red caps and long cloaks
of mustard yellow. The Zouaves of Algiers conversed with them in a
Spanish spattered with Arabian and French. Negro youths who worked as
stokers in the vessels, came up the steep, narrow streets with eyes
sparkling restlessly as though contemplating wholesale rapine. Under
the doorways disappeared grave Moorish horsemen, trailing long garments
fastened at the head in a ball of whiteness, or garbed in purplish
mantles, with sharp pointed hoods that gave them the aspect of bearded,
crimson-clad monks.

The captain went through the upper end of these streets, stopping
appreciatively to note the rude contrast which they made with their
terminal vista. Almost all descended to the old harbor with a ditch of
dirty water in the middle of the gutter that dribbled from stone to
stone. They were dark as the tubes of a telescope, and at the end of
these evil smelling ditches occupied by abandoned womanhood, there
opened out a great space of light and blue color where could be seen
little white sailboats, anchored at the foot of the hill, a sheet of
sparkling water and the houses of the opposite wharf diminished
by the distance. Through other gaps appeared the mountain of
_Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde_ with its sharp pointed Basilica topped by its
gleaming statue, like an immovable, twisted tongue of flame. Sometimes
a torpedo destroyer entering the old harbor could be seen slipping by
the mouth of one of these passageways as shadowy as though passing
before the glass of a telescope.

Feeling fatigued by the bad smells and vicious misery of the old
district, the sailor returned to the center of the city, strolling
among the trees and flower stands of the avenues....

One evening while awaiting with others a street car in the Cannebiere,
he turned his head with a presentiment that some one was looking at his
back.

Sure enough! He saw behind him on the edge of the sidewalk an