They Instantly Recognized In The Stranger A
Fraudulent Tax-Dodger, And When He Attempted Tardily To Purchase
Immunity They Poured Upon Him; In Front, Behind, On Both Sides, All
Round, They Boiled Up And Bubbled About Him; And The Exhaustion Of His
Riches Alone Saved Him Alive.
It must have been a wonderful spectacle,
and I do not suppose the like of it was ever seen
In Algeciras before.
It was a triumph over charity, and left quite out of comparison the
organized onsets of the infant gang which always beset the way to the
hotel under a leader whose battle-cry, at once a demand and a promise,
was "Penny-go-way, Penny-go-way!"
Along that pleasant shore bare-legged fishermen spread their nets, and
going and coming by the Gibraltar boats were sometimes white-hosed,
brown-cloaked, white-turbaned Moors, who occasionally wore Christian
boots, but otherwise looked just such Moslems as landed at Algeciras in
the eighth century; people do not change much in Africa. They were
probably hucksters from the Moorish market in Gibraltar, where they had
given their geese and turkeys the holiday they were taking themselves.
They were handsome men, tall and vigorous, but they did not win me to
sympathy with their architecture or religion, and I am not sure but, if
there had been any concerted movement against them on the landing at
Algeciras, I should have joined in driving them out of Spain. As it was
I made as much Africa as I could of them in defect of crossing to
Tangier, which we had firmly meant to do, but which we forbore doing
till the plague had ceased to rage there.
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