When the moon comes out and the Great Bear constellation is shining above our heads as though its sole duty in heaven were to light the camp, there is a strong temptation to ramble.  I am always sure that I can find the track, or that Salam will be within hail should it be lost.  How quickly the tents pass out of sight.  The path to the hills lies by way of little pools where the frogs have a croaking chorus that Aristophanes might have envied.  On the approach of strange footsteps they hurry off the flat rocks by the pool, and one hears a musical plash as they reach water.  Very soon the silence is resumed, and presently becomes so oppressive that it is a relief to turn again and see our modest lights 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