From far afield came the unceasing murmur of the
market-place and the bazaars, and the occasional cries of the priests
from the minarets; the dark blue sea danced and flashed beyond the
white margin of the town and its protecting reef of rocks where the
sea-weed rose and fell, and above his head the buzzards swept heavily,
and called to one another with harsh, frightened cries. At his side
lay the dusty road, hemmed in by walls of cactus, and along its narrow
length came lines of patient little donkeys with jangling necklaces,
led by wild-looking men from the farm-lands and the desert, and women
muffled and shapeless, with only their bare feet showing, who looked
at him curiously or meaningly from over the protecting cloth, and
passed on, leaving him startled and wondering. He began to find that
the books he had brought wearied him. The sight of the type alone was
enough to make him close the covers and start up restlessly to look
for something less absorbing. He found this on every hand, in the lazy
patience of the bazaars and of the markets, where the chief service of
all was that of only standing and waiting, and in the farm-lands
behind Tangier, where half-naked slaves drove great horned buffalo,
and turned back the soft, chocolate-colored sod with a wooden plough.
But it was a solitary, selfish holiday, and Holcombe found himself
wanting certain ones at home to bear him company, and was surprised to
find that of these none were the men nor the women with whom his
interests in the city of New York were the most closely connected.
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