CHAPTER XII

TO THE GATE OF THE PICTURE CITY

    Is it Pan’s breath, fierce in the tremulous maiden-hair,
      That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt
    In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air,
      In the stress of the sun?

    A Nympholept.

By the time the little camp was astir and the charcoal fires had done their duty to eggs, coffee, and porridge, Pepe Ratto, accompanied by two of his Berber trackers, rode into the valley, and dismounted on the level ground where our tent was pitched.  At first sight the sportsman stood revealed in our welcome visitor.  The man whose name will be handed down to future generations in the annals of Morocco’s sport would attract attention anywhere.  Tall, straight, sunburnt, grizzled, with keen grey eyes and an alert expression, suggesting the easy and instantaneous change from thought to action, Pepe Ratto is in every inch of him a sportsman.  Knowing South Morocco as few Europeans know it, and having an acquaintance with the forest that is scarcely exceeded by either Moor or Berber, he gives as much of his life as he can spare to the pursuit of the boar, and he had ridden out with his hunters this morning from his forest home, the Palm Tree House, to meet us before we left the Argans behind, so that we might turn awhile on the track of a “solitaire” tusker.

So the mules were left to enjoy an unexpected rest while their owners enjoyed an uninterrupted breakfast, and the kaid was given ample time in which to groom his horse and prepare it and himself for sufficiently imposing entrance into the Picture City[53] that evening.  Salam was instructed to pack tents and boxes at his leisure, before he took one of my sporting guns and went to pursue fur and feather in parts of the forest immediately adjacent to the camp.  A straight shot and a keen sportsman, I knew that Salam would not bother about the hares that might cross his path, or birds that rose in sudden flight away from it.  His is the Moorish method of shooting, and he is wont to stalk his quarry and fire before it rises.  I protested once that this procedure was unsportsmanlike.

“Yes, sir,” he replied simply.  “If I wait for bird to fly may be I miss him, an’ waste cartridge.”

[Illustration:  A NARROW STREET IN MOGADOR]

This argument was, of course, unanswerable.  He would follow birds slowly and deliberately, taking advantage of wind and cover, patient in pursuit and deadly in aim.  Our points of view were different.  I shot for sport, and he, and all Moors, for the bag.  In this I felt he was my superior.  But, barring storks, all creatures were game that came within Salam’s range.