CHAPTER II NIGHTS ON A ROOF

I did not stop long on this occasion at Tangier, because, from a newspaper point of view, Casablanca was a place of more immediate interest. The night before I sailed there arrived an old Harvard friend travelling for pleasure, and he proposed to accompany me. Johnny Weare was a young man to all appearances accustomed to good living, and friends of an evening—easy to acquire at Tangier—advised him to take a supply of food. But I unwisely protested and dissuaded John, and we went down laden with little unnecessary luggage, travelling by a French torpedo-boat conveying despatches.

Here I must break my story in order to make it complete, and anticipate our arrival at Casablanca with an account of how the French army happened to be lodged in this Moorish town. In 1906 a French company obtained a contract from the Moorish Government to construct a harbour at Casablanca; and beginning work they found it expedient, in order to bring up the necessary stone and gravel, to lay a narrow-gauge railway to a quarry a few miles down the coast. In those Mohammedan countries where the dead are protected from ‘Infidel’ tread the fact that the tracks bordered close on a cemetery, in fact passed over several graves, would have been cause perhaps for a conflict; but this—though enemies of France have tried to proclaim it—was not a serious matter in Morocco, where the Moslems are done with their dead when they bury them and anyone may walk on the graves. The French were opposed solely because they were Christian invaders to whom the Sultan had ‘sold out.’ They had bought the High Shereef with their machines and their money, but the tribes did not intend to tolerate them.

After many threats the Arabs of the country came to town one market-day prepared for war. Gathering the local Moors, including those labouring on the railway, they surrounded and killed in brutal fashion, with sticks and knives and the butts of guns, the engineer of the locomotive and eight other French and Italian workmen. The French cruiser Galilée was despatched to the scene, and arriving two days later lay in harbour apparently awaiting instructions from home. By this delay the Moors, though quiet, were encouraged, hourly becoming more convinced that if the French could land they would have done so. They were thoroughly confident, as their resistance demonstrated, when, after three days, a hundred marines were put ashore. As the marines passed through the ‘Water Port’ they were fired upon by a single Moor, and thereupon they shot at every cloaked man that showed his head on their march of half-a-mile to the French consulate. At the sound of rifles the Galilée began bombarding the Moslem quarters of the town; and the stupid Moorish garrison, with guns perhaps brought out of Spain, essayed to reply, and lasted for about ten minutes.

But the landing force of the French was altogether too small to do more than protect the French consulate and neighbouring European houses. Town Moors and Arabs turned out to kill and rape and loot, as they do whenever opportunity offers, and for three days they plundered the places of Europeans and Jews and at last fought among themselves for the spoils until driven from the town by reinforcements of French and Spanish troops.

The fighting and the shells from French ships had laid many bodies in the streets and had wrecked many houses and some mosques. Certain Moors, less ignorant of the French power, had asked the French to spare the mosques and the ‘Saint Houses,’ domed tombs of dead shereefs, and when the fighting began the Arabs, seeing these places were untouched, concluded, of course, that the protection came from Allah, until they entered them and drew the French fire.

Casablanca, or, as the Arabs call it, Dar el Baida, ‘White House,’ was a desolate-looking place when we arrived three weeks after the bombardment. Hardly a male Moor was to be seen. The whole Moslem population, with the exception of a few men of wealth who enjoy European protection, and some servants of consulates, had deserted the town and had not yet begun to return. Jews in black caps and baggy trousers were the only labourers, and they worked with a will recovering damaged property at good pay, and grinning at their good fortune. In the attack the Moors had driven them to the boats, but now the Moors themselves had had to go. Native Spaniards did the lighter work.

A Spaniard and a Jewish boy took our luggage to an hotel, of which all the rooms were already occupied, even to the bathroom and the wine closet, as the long zinc tub in the courtyard, filled with bottles, testified. The proprietor told us that for ten francs a day we might have the dining-room to sleep in, but on investigation we decided to hunt further. Speaking Spanish with a grand manner, for he was a cavalier fellow, the hotel-keeper then informed us through an interpreter that he wanted to do what he could for us because he too was an American. The explanation (for which we asked) was that in New York he had a brother whom he had once visited for a few months, and that at that time, ‘to favour an American gentleman,’ he had taken out naturalisation papers and voted for the mayor.

But this man’s breach of the law in New York was his mildest sin, as we came later to hear. He had many robberies to his credit and a murder or two. For his latest crime he was now wanted by the French consul and military authorities, but being an American citizen they could not lay hold of him except with the consent of the American consul, who happened to be a German, and, disliking the French, would let them do nothing that he could help. Rodrigues (this was the name of the Spanish caballero) had defended his place against the Arab attack with the aid only of his servants. The little arsenal which he kept (he was a fancier of good guns and pistols) had been of splendid service. It is said that when the fight was over forty dead Moors lay before the hotel door, half-a-dozen horses were in Rodrigues’s stable, and bundles of plunder in his yard. It was a case of looting the looters. On tinned foods taken from the shops of other Europeans (whom he had plundered when the Arabs were gone from the town) he was now feeding the host of newspaper correspondents who crowded his establishment. But we were not to be looted likewise by this genial fellow-countryman, and our salvation lay at hand as we bade him au revoir.

Leaving the Hôtel Américain we turned into the main street, and proceeding towards the Hôtel Continental came upon a party of French officers, who had just hailed and were shaking hands with a man unmistakably either English or American. Beside him, even in their military uniforms the Frenchmen were insignificant. The other man was tall and splendid and brave, as the writer of Western fiction would say. He wore a khaki jacket, white duck riding trousers, English leggings, and a cowboy hat; and over one shoulder were slung a rifle, a kodak, and a water-bottle. To lend reality to the figure—he was dusty, and his collar was undone; and as we passed the group we heard him tell the Frenchmen he had just returned from the ‘outer lines.’ How often had we seen the picture of this man, the war correspondent of fiction and of kodak advertisements!

Both Weare and I were glad to meet the old familiar friend in the flesh and wanted to speak to him, but we refrained for fear he might be English and might resent American effrontery. As we passed him, however, we noticed his name across the flat side of the water-bottle. In big, bold letters was the inscription: ‘Captain Squall, Special War Correspondent of “The Morning Press.”’ This was characteristic of Squall, as we came to know; neither ‘special correspondent’ nor ‘war correspondent’ was a sufficient title for him; he must be ‘special war correspondent.’

We had heard of Squall at Tangier and thought we could stop and speak to him, and accordingly waited a moment till he had left the Frenchmen. ‘How-do-you-do, Captain?’ I said. ‘I have an introduction to you in my bag from the correspondent of your paper at Tangier.’

‘You’re an American,’ was the Captain’s first remark, not a very novel observation; ‘I’ve been in America a good deal myself.’ He adjusted a monocle and explained with customary originality that he had one bad eye. ‘What do you think of my “stuff” in the Press?’ was his next remark.

‘A little personal, isn’t it? I read that despatch about your being unable to get any washing done at the hotel because of scarcity of water, and your leaving it for that reason.’

‘Yes, that’s what the British public like to read, personal touches, don’t you think?’

‘Where are you living now? We have to find a place.’

‘Come with me. You know the Americans were always very hospitable to me, and I like to have a chance to do them a good turn. I’m living on a roof and getting my own grub. You know I’m an old campaigner—I mean to say, I’ve been in South Africa, and on the Canadian border, and I got my chest smashed in by a Russian in the Japanese war,—I mean a hand to hand conflict, you know, using the butts of our guns.’

‘Were you a correspondent out there?’

‘No, I was fighting for the Japs; I’m a soldier of fortune, you know.’

‘But the Japanese Government did not allow Europeans to enlist.’

‘I was the only one they would enlist; I mean to say, my father had some influence with the Japanese minister in London.’

‘But you’re very young; how old are you?’

‘Well, I don’t like to say; I mean there’s a reason I can’t tell my age,—I mean, I went to South Africa when I was sixteen; you see that’s under age for military service in the British Army.’ The Captain waited a moment, then started off again. ‘I’ve got medals from five campaigns.’

‘I’d like to see them.’

Indifferently he opened his jacket.

‘There are six,’ I remarked.

‘Oh, that’s not a campaign medal; that’s a medal of the Legion of Frontiersmen. I mean to say, I was one of the organisers of that.’

Weare and I recognised the type. There are many of them abroad and some wear little American flags. But, of course, to us they are more grotesque when they affect the monocle. We knew Squall would not be insulted if we turned the conversation to the matter of most interest to us at that moment.

‘For my part,’ said Weare, ‘I could do well with something to eat just now. One doesn’t eat much on a torpedo-boat.’

With the prospects of our companionship—for Squall was boycotted by most of the correspondents—he led us away to his roof to get us a meal; and, for what the town provided, a good meal he served us. He did his own cooking, but he did it because he liked to cook,—he meant to say, he had money coming to him from the sale of a motor-car in London, and he had just lost fifteen or twenty thousand pounds—the exact amount did not matter either to us or to him.

For a fortnight, till an old American resident of Casablanca invited us to his house, we suffered Squall. We three slept on the roof while a decrepit, dirty Spaniard, the owner of the place, slept below. It was a modest, one-storey house, built in Moorish style. There were rooms on four sides of a paved courtyard, under a slab in the centre of which was the customary well. Overhead a covering of glass, now much broken, was intended to keep out the rain. The place had been looted by the Moors, who took away the few things of any value and destroyed the rest, leaving the room littered with torn clothes and bedding and broken furniture, if I might dignify the stuff by these names; nor had the old man (whose family had escaped to Tangier) cleared out any place but the kitchen and the courtyard.

There was a little slave boy whose master had been killed, and who now served a ‘Mister Peto’ and came to us for water every day. As our old Spaniard would not keep the place clean and saved all the food that we left from meals (which filled the place with flies) we hired the boy for a peseta, about a franc, a day to keep it clean. He was to get nothing at all if he allowed in more than twenty-five flies, and for one day he worked well and got the money. But the reason of his success was the presence all that day of one or the other of us engaged at writing, protecting him from the wrath of the old man, who resented being deprived of both stench and flies. The next day when we returned from the French camp there was no more black boy, and we never saw him again, nor could we ascertain from the old man what had happened to him. Thereafter we never drew a bucket of drinking water from the well without the fear of bringing up a piece of poor ‘Sandy.’

As candles were scarce and bad we went to bed early. Weare and I generally retiring first. We climbed the rickety, ladder-like stairs and walked round the glass square over the courtyard to the side of the roof where cooling breezes blew from the Atlantic. There undressing, we rolled our clothes in tight bundles and put them under our heads for pillows. To lie on we had only sacking, for our rain-coats had to be used as covering to keep off the heavy dews of the early morning. Only Squall had a hammock.

Before retiring every evening Squall had the task of examining and testing his weapons, of which he had enough for us all. A ‘Webley’ and ‘Colt’ were not sufficient, he must also bring to the roof his rifle, on the butt of which were fourteen notches, one for each Moor he had shot. He clanked up the steps like Long John, the pirate, coming from ‘below,’ in ‘Treasure Island.’ When he had got into the hammock, lying comfortably on revolvers and cartridge belts, his gun within reach against the wall, he would begin to talk. ‘You chaps think I bring all these “shooting-irons” up here because I’m afraid of something. Only look at what I’ve been through. I’ve got over being afraid. The reason I bring them all up with me is that I don’t want them stolen,—I mean to say there isn’t any lock on the door, you know.’

‘Go to sleep, Squall.’

‘I mean you chaps haven’t got any business talking about me being afraid.’

‘Can’t you tell us about it at breakfast, Squall?’

One night Squall wanted to borrow a knife; his, he said, was not very sharp. He had been out ‘on the lines’ that day, and he wanted it, he explained, to put another notch in his gun.

Sometimes a patrol would pass in the night, and we would hear the three pistols and the gun click. Once the gun went off.

At daybreak we would rouse old Squall to go and make coffee, and while he was thus employed we were entertained by the occupants of a ‘kraal’ (I can think of no better description) next door. In a little, low hut, built of reeds and brush, directly under our roof, lived a dusky mother and her daughter. The one (I imagine) was a widow, the other an unmarried though mature maid. They were among the score of Moors who had not fled, and there being no men of their own race about they were not afraid to show their faces to us. The mother was a hag, but the younger woman was splendid, big and broad-shouldered, with a deep chest. Her colour was that of an Eastern gipsy, bronze as if sunburned, with a slight red in her cheeks; she was black-haired, and she always wore a flower. From her lower lip to her chin was a double line tattooed in blue, and about her ankles and arms, likewise tattooed, were broad blue bangles, one above her elbow. The clothes that she wore, though of common cotton, were brilliant in colour, generally bright green or blue or orange-yellow, sometimes a combination; they were not made into garments but rather draped about her, as is the way in Morocco, and held together with gaudy metal ornaments. Two bare feet, slippered in red, and one bare arm and shoulder were always visible. While this younger woman cooked in the open yard, and the old crone lean and haggard watched, they would look up from their kettle from time to time and speak to us in language we could not understand. We threw them small coins and they offered us tea. But we did not visit the ladies, to run the risk, perhaps, of dissipating an illusion.

‘Coffee, you chaps,’ sounded from below, and we went down to breakfast with good old ‘Blood-stained Bill.’