Page:Algeria from Within.pdf/317

He looked anxiously about and, finally, seeing the large brass tray on which the mechoui had been served, he took it up and dropped it with a crash on the part of the floor which was uncarpeted. Then he fled out on to the plain.

The bash agha opened one eve, then the other, then seemed about to sleep again. However, at that moment a diversion was caused by the entry of the aged agha with the statement that there was a man with a petition to make.

The bash agha came to and, sitting up, settled his turban and became at once the "Emperor."

The caïds became "princes," and squatted down in a semicircle on the carpet; the chauffeur ventured back and started mending a tire. The petitioner marched in and, after kissing the old man’s shoulder, went and sat at a distance. For ten minutes he said "How-do-you-do" in different poses and accents. For a moment there was a lull, and then all of a sudden the storm burst, as in a torrent of words he poured out, his story.

He talked so rapidly that I only understood vaguely, but I gathered that his flock had been stolen by nomads of the bash agha who had come up from the south. The bash agha was silent for a time, then he too burst into a flood of verbiage.

It was a most extraordinary group. The bash agha at one end of the room, sitting on a heap of cushions, his whole attention riveted on the man before him who squatted, speaking rapidly, but with practically no gestures.

Occasionally one of the caïds would throw in a remark, but otherwise one would have supposed that the matter was quite indifferent to them. And yet it was a question which to these Arabs was one of the greatest Importance.

The complaint was of the tribe of the district who