The great sea laid its hold
upon him, and the winds from the south thawed the cold in his bones,
and the sun cheered his tired spirit. He stretched himself at full
length reading those books which one puts off reading until illness
gives one the right to do so, and so far as in him lay obeyed his
doctor's first command, that he should forget New York and all that
pertained to it. By the time he had reached the Rock he was up and
ready to drift farther into the lazy, irresponsible life of the
Mediterranean coast, and he had forgotten his struggles against
municipal misrule, and was at times for hours together utterly
oblivious of his own personality.
A dumpy, fat little steamer rolled itself along like a sailor on shore
from Gibraltar to Tangier, and Holcombe, leaning over the rail of its
quarter-deck, smiled down at the chattering group of Arabs and Moors
stretched on their rugs beneath him. A half-naked negro, pulling at
the dates in the basket between his bare legs, held up a handful to
him with a laugh, and Holcombe laughed back and emptied the cigarettes
in his case on top of him, and laughed again as the ship's crew and
the deck passengers scrambled over one another and shook out their
voluminous robes in search of them. He felt at ease with the world and
with himself, and turned his eyes to the white walls of Tangier with a
pleasure so complete that it shut out even the thought that it was a
pleasure.
The town seemed one continuous mass of white stucco, with each flat,
low-lying roof so close to the other that the narrow streets left no
trace.
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