her
ships, signaling and directing the evolutions, would only have to graze
the _Garbosa_ to reduce her to kindling wood! And those black pipes
sticking out of the turrets! One sneeze from those snouts, and it would
be all day with the Rector's outfit and part of to-morrow! The smugglers
studied the fleet with the uneasy respect a pickpocket has for a squad
of policemen marching by.

About three o'clock, a dark irregularity, something like the arched back
of a whale, rose on the horizon ahead! Land! And Tonet, who remembered
having seen it before, called it the _Cabo de la Mala Dona_, the
farthest outpost of the coast. Algiers was more to port! The breeze was
freshening every moment. The swelling lateen sail, as the boat heeled,
described a saucy curve on the tilted mast The prow went merrily up and
down, throwing a lively spray from the chop. The _Garbosa_, old horse,
was smelling her oats, and bolting along the last lap to the stable,
though every bone in her strained!

They were heading East-Southeast now; and by evening-fall, on the flanks
of the _Mala Dona_, indistinct still in the haze to starboard, could
nevertheless be seen the rolling tops of hills, and white blotches that
meant villages. Then, as the boat continued its rapid flight, these
faded from view, but the coast itself was up, ahead. The _Garbosa_
hugged the shore. With night, the saw-toothed crest of a ridge of
mountains, climbed up against the sky; and the wind veered to southward,
blowing off the land, warm, and fragrant with the perfume of an
enchanted country. Low in the west hung the new moon, a real Oriental
crescent, fine drawn with curving points--just as you saw it embroidered
on the standards of the Prophet, or shining from the weathervanes of
Mahometan minarets! That was what you called being in Africa! The beat
of the surf was audible from the _Garbosa's_ decks, and even calls from
Moors ashore there in the fields. Clusters of lights could be made out
along the coast--towns off there! Then, the sky above the end of the
mountain chain to the Eastward began to grow ruddy; the sea broke inland
in a capricious curve; and soon many, many lights began to glow.
Algiers!

In three hours they were in the roadstead. Now there were lights, of
varied grouping and intensity, everywhere, hundreds of them, winding
along in a serpentine course to mark a seashore boulevard. The
_Garbosa_, luffing slightly, shot round a promontory, and the city
itself, i