Whilst we were so occupied, a little urchin of five years, utterly naked, ran out of the tent close by and stood still, as much amused with us as we were with him. All laughed aloud, but the father who looked a little ashamed, and I think it was because he had been to Mascara or some other town, and knew that nakedness was not quite the thing in the great world. The women were like big children, and giggled, showing their white teeth, if you but held up a finger.
When we had done we shook hands all round, and returned to the auberge to see a pitiful sight. It was a little Arab child of fourteen months old sick of the fever; he was riding on the shoulder of his grandfather, a patriarchal-looking old man, with silky white hair and beard. I don’t think I ever saw anything more touching than his care of the little suffering thing. Its poor little face was perfectly livid, its eyes leaden, its limbs shrunken. What could we do for it?
The mistress of the auberge came out and questioned the old man in Arabic a little, then turned to us.
“Ah!” she said, “think of it--that poor baby has neither father nor mother, no one to tend it but that old man, and it has been ill of fever for months; but then we all suffer alike! Three of my five children are ill now; that is, ill every other day with shivering fits and sickness, and there is nothing to do but try quinine. But quinine is very dear, and we have to do without it.”
“_Voyez-vous, madame_, the Arabs are poorer than we. We must buy bread before quinine.”
We gave the poor old man a little money, and recollecting that I had brought a small bottle of quinine from England, fearing these marsh fevers myself, I got it out of my travelling-bag and gave it to the woman. She promised to give the poor baby a dose, but I fear he was past all help, and I looked sadly after the old man as he stalked away in his tattered burnouse, bearing his poor little burden on his shoulders.
Farther on, we stopped to see some hot springs which lie within a few leagues of Saïda. Following a small path that wound through labyrinthine thickets of tuya, palmetto, and lentisk, we came suddenly upon a scene, that with very little idealization might make as poetic a picture as one could see.