was the look of _Celestine_ under
the mountains of Bougie; and Bougie, if you have a memory for the
coloured posters, is in the blue Mediterranean. But do I grumble? I do
not. With all the world but slops, cold iron, and squalls of sleet, I
prefer _Celestine_ to Algiers.

Most likely you have never heard of the black Mediterranean. It is
usual to go there in winter, and write about it with a date-palm in
every paragraph, till you have got all the health and enjoyment there
is in the satisfaction of telling others that while they are choosing
cough cures you are under a sunshade on the coral strand. The truth is,
the Middle Sea in December can be as ugly as the Dogger Bank. There
were some Arab deck passengers on our coaster. One of them sat looking
at a deck rivet as motionless as a fakir, and his face had the
complexion of a half-ripe watermelon. His fellow-sufferers were only
heaps of wet and dirty linen dumped in the lee alley-way. It was bad
enough in a bunk, where you could brace your knees against the side,
and keep moderately still till you dozed off, when naturally you were
shot out sprawling into the lost drainage wandering on the erratic
floor. What those Arabs suffered on deck I cannot tell you. I never
went up to find out. At Bougie they seemed to have left it all to
Allah, with the usual result. It was clear, from a glance at those
piles of rags, that the Arab is no more native to Algeria than the
Esquimaux. I was much nearer home than the Arabs. That shining coast
which occasionally I had surprised from Oran, which seemed afloat on
the sea, was no longer a vision of magic, the unsubstantial work of
Iris, an illusionary cloud of coral, amber, and amethyst. It was the
bare bones of this old earth, as sombre and foreboding as any ruin of
granite under the wrack of the bleak north.

As for Bougie, these African villages are built but for bright
sunlight. They change to miserable and filthy ruins in the rain, their
white walls blotched and scabrous, and their paths mud tracks between
the styes. Their lissom and statuesque inhabitants become softened and
bent, and pad dejectedly through the muck as though they were ashamed
to live, but had to go on with it. The palms which look so well in
sunny pictures are besoms up-ended in a drizzle. They have not that
equality with the storm which makes the Sussex beech and oak, heavily
based and strong-armed, stand with a look of might and roar at the
charges of the Chan