twinkling as though in
welcome.

It is hopeless to wait for wild boar now. One or two pariah dogs, hailing
from nowhere, have been attracted to the camp, Salam has given them the
waste food, and they have installed themselves as our protectors, whether
out of a feeling of gratitude or in hope of favours to come I cannot tell,
but probably from a mixture of wise motives. They are alert, savage
beasts, of a hopelessly mixed breed, but no wild boar will come rooting
near the camp now, nor will any thief, however light-footed, yield to the
temptation our tents afford.

[Illustration: THE ROAD TO THE KASBAH, TANGIER]

We have but one visitor after the last curtain has been drawn, a strange
bird with a harsh yet melancholy note, that reminds me of the night-jar of
the fen lands in our own country. The hills make a semicircle round the
camp, and the visitor seems to arrive at the corner nearest Spartel about
one o'clock in the morning. It cries persistently awhile, and then flies
to the middle of the semicircle, just at the back of the tents, where the
note is very weird and distinct. Finally it goes to the other horn of the
crescent and resumes the call--this time, happily, a much more subdued
affair. What is it? Why does it come to complain to the silence night
after night? One of the men says it is a djin, and wants to go back to
Tangier, but Salam, whose loyalty outweighs his fears, declares that
even though it be indeed a devil and eager to devour us, it cannot come
within the charmed range of my revolver. Hence its regret, expressed so
unpleasantly. I have had to confess to Salam that I have no proof that he
is wrong.

Now and again in the afternoon the tribesmen call to one another from the
hill tops. They possess an extraordinary power of carrying their voices
over a space that no European could span. I wonder whether the real secret
of the powers ascribed to the half-civilised tribes of Africa has its
origin in this gift. Certain it is that news passes from village to
village across the hills, and that no courier can keep pace with it. In
this way rumours of great events travel from one end of the Dark Continent
to the other, and if the tales told me of the passage of news from South
to North Africa during the recent war were not so extravagant as they seem
at first hearing, I would set them down here, well assured that they would
startle if they could not convince. In the south of Morocco, during the
latter days