with striking abruptness immediately after the green of the oasis, a sparrow now flew from a thorn-bush. Ibrahim wheeled his pony and called out, ‘Bind! Bird!’
‘He says there is a bird,’ said Jacob.
‘It is unreasonable to expect him to know what is common to Arklow and Algiers,’ said Stephen. ‘Could you perhaps desire him to take notice only of reptiles, quadrupeds, and their tracks?’
This Jacob did, but very kindly: and before they were ten minutes from the oasis, young Ibrahim had shown them the footprints of several jackals, a hyena, and the trace of a very considerable serpent, five to six feet long. ‘I am almost certain that it was malpolon monspessulanus. I had one as a pet when I was a boy.’
‘Was it a satisfactory pet?’
‘There was a degree of recognition, and a certain tolerance: nothing more.’
The road grew steeper, winding up in curves laboriously cut into the rock and embanked: as the sun climbed the men and their horses tired, and at one particular left-handed corner pointed out by Ibrahim they were happy to turn off the road to a small platform where one of those improbable springs sometimes found in limestone flowed from a cleft, its water making a green stripe down the slope for a hundred yards and more. As they rested they saw another horseman, very well-mounted, toiling up where they had toiled; and while they were still staring, eating dates as they did so, they heard the sound of hoofs on the road higher up. The two riders passed the corner at almost the same moment: they shouted a greeting but did not draw rein. It was evident that they were the Dey’s messengers.
On. Up and up, this time to the very top of the ridge, where the forest began, a fine open forest, and although the trees were somewhat wind-stunted on the brow itself, the road had not descended five minutes before it was winding through noble oaks, with beeches here and there, and chestnuts and sometimes an incongruous yew. And presently,where the path narrowed to thread between tall crags on either side there was a gate with huts for soldiers right and left: a small open plain beyond it.
Ibrahim rode forward and showed the Vizier’s pass. The guards opened the gate, saluting in the elegant Muslim fashion. On the little plain - ten acres or so of grass - the riders stopped to gaze down over the sea of tree-tops to the vast expanse of the Shatt el Khadna. The valley of the stream that fed it was hidden from view by the mountain range, rising and falling in irregular waves; but the lake itself was a noble sight, and its splendour was increased by the presence of birds quite close at hand and overhead, which added a great deal to the sense of height, distance and immobility on the one hand, and to that of a totally different essence on the other. The birds - vultures for the most part, with two more distant eagles and some trifling black kites - were far above, wholly free in the limitless sky; and the nearer group (all griffons) were in constant smooth motion, mounting and mounting in spirals on a current rising from the warm mountain-side.
‘Ibrahim says that these are the stakes used for impaling,’ said Jacob.
‘Certainly,’ replied Stephen. ‘And since vultures are in general very faithful to their sources of supply, I have been wondering whether any of those wheeling above us will drop down for leavings. Not the griffons, I think: they are too cautious. But there is a bearded vulture, a friend of my boyhood, and very glad I am to see him here, together with two black vultures, those bold rapacious creatures. Do you see them?’
‘They all look much the same to me,’ said Jacob. ‘Huge dark creatures sailing round and round.’
‘The bearded vulture is the one on the far right-hand side of the round,’ said Stephen. ‘See, he scratches his head. In Spanish he is called the bone-breaker.’
‘You have an unfair advantage with your perspectiveglass.’
‘He is considering. Yes, yes. He loses height. He drops, he drops!’
And indeed the great bird settled among the scattered bones beneath the stakes, pulled some bare ribs aside, seized a battered sacrum, grasped it in its powerful claws and took off with a leap, wings beating strongly, with the clear intent of dropping it from a great height onto a rock. But he was not fairly airborne before the two black vultures were upon him, one striking his back and the other brushing across his face. The sacrum dropped into an impenetrable thicket, hopelessly and entirely lost.
‘That is perfectly typical of your black vulture: greedy, precipitate, grasping,’ cried Stephen. ‘And stupid. A bird with as much sense as a pea-hen would have hit him fifty feet up, and a handy mate would have caught the bone in mid-air.’
Ibrahim understood not a word, but he did catch Stephen’s disappointment and frustration, and pointing away and away to the north-east he showed another highcircling flight a great way off. Jacob translated: ‘He says there are two or three score mothers of filth over there, waiting for the Dey’s men to finish skinning what he shot yesterday evening: but first he will show you the Shatt, which has countless red birds on it. We
