“Just as you wish.”  Said his highness, and they set off for the market.

The market was held some distance away on the bank of the Cheliff.  There were five or six thousand Arabs milling around in the sun, trading noisily among piles of olives, pots of honey, sacks of spices and heaps of cigars.  There were fires at which whole sheep were roasting, dripping with butter.  There were open air butcheries where almost naked negroes, their feet paddling in blood and their arms red to the elbow, were cutting up the carcases of goats hanging from hooks...  In one corner, in a tent repaired in a thousand different colours, was a Moorish official with a big book and spectacles.  Over there is a crowd.  There are cries of rage.  It is a roulette game that has been set up on a corn bin and the tribesmen gathered about it have started fighting with knives.  Elsewhere, there are cheers, laughter and stamping of feet, a merchant and his mule have fallen into the river and are in danger of drowning....  There are scorpions, crows, dogs and flies, millions of flies, but no camels.

Eventually a camel was discovered which some nomads were trying to dispose of.  This was a real desert camel, with little hair, a sad expression and a hump which through long shortage of fodder hung flaccidly to one side.  Tartarin was so taken with it that he wanted the two partners to be mounted.  This proved to be a mistake.

The camel knelt, the trunks were strapped on, the prince installed himself on the creature’s neck and Tartarin was hoisted up to the top of the hump, between two cases, from where he proudly saluted the assembled market and gave the signal for departure....  Heavens above!....  If only Tarascon could see him now!

The camel rose, stretched out its long legs and took off.  Calamity!  The camel pitched and rolled like a frigate in a rough sea and the chechia responded to the motion as it had on the Zouave.  “Prince... prince” Murmured Tartarin, ashen-faced, and clutching the scanty hair of the hump, “Prince... let us get down, I feel...  I feel I am going to disgrace France.”  But the camel was in full flight and nothing was going to stop it.  Four thousand Arabs were running behind, bare-footed, waving, laughing like idiots, six hundred thousand white teeth glistening in the sun....  The great man of Tarascon had to resign himself to the inevitable, and France was disgraced.

Chapter 28.

Despite the picturesque nature of their new mode of transport our lion hunters were forced to dismount, out of regard for the chechia.  They continued their journey as before, on foot, and the caravan proceeded tranquilly toward the south with Tartarin in front, the prince in the rear and between them the camel with the baggage.