between the market and the quarter of the Welad
Nayl dancing girls, to the shop of an old nigger,
whom he assured me was the best coffee-roaster in
Biskra, adding as a further recommendation that
not only he himself, but that the whole of his family
besides, never patronised any other establishment.
This, of course, was an unanswerable argument in
its favour.
Though the coffee turned out to be good, the
place in which it was prepared was by no means
prepossessing. It was a dark, windowless hovel,
overrun with pigeons and fowls. Several huge
stone mortars, furnished with iron pestles which
must have weighed nearly twenty pounds apiece,
were let into a sort of settle which ran all round
the sides of the room. These were all more or less
filled with the coffee already pounded.
Having bought the amount which we required
and left it with the remainder of our belongings in
the shop of the Mozabite, our preparations were for
the time complete, and I packed Alssa off down into
the desert to fetch his camel, which was grazing
under the care of an Arab herdsman, some distance
away to the south.
The first intimation that I received of his return
was on the third morning after his departure, when
I awoke at the unearthly hour of half-past five to
find him and a very sleepy, unshaved, and dis-
hevelled-looking waiter standing by my bedside. I
was told that the camel was waiting below, and
that it was time for me to get up.
Aissa cast an experienced eye over my various
belongings scattered picturesquely over the floor,
lifted each of them in turn to try the weight, and
then he and the waiter between them carried them
downstairs.
Through the open window I could hear the
camel snarling and growling in the road below as my
guide and a little crowd of loafers loaded him up.
Then came the final grunt of contentment as the
great beast rose to his feet and was driven off to
Aissa’s house, where I had arranged to meet it.
My guide lived close at hand, and on reaching
his house I found the camel, a dyspeptic gouty-
looking beast, with his load on his back, kneeling
down in the road contentedly snarling and chewing
the cud, with a stalwart young cousin of Aissa’s,
whom I afterwards found to be named El Haj,
standing over him, and keeping off, with curses and
blows from a thick stick, a crowd of ‘street Arabs,’
who surrounded him and were anxious to inspect,
and if possible to appropriate, some of my belongings.
I had not engaged and, in fact, had heard no
mention of El Haj until then, and as he was evidently
intended to form one of our party I thought
it as well to inquire into the reason of his coming.
Aissa explained that he had brought him on his own
account to keep him company and to help him in
his work. His reason for bringing him was not a
very complimentary one, but as his cousin was a
great strapping fellow who looked as though he
might be useful in a row, I raised no objections to
the arrangement.