Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/26

10 Now that the pitching and rolling had ceased, Zofiette rose from her deck-chair of unhallowed memories and went to the cabin, from where she soon emerged freshly gowned and quite herself again. As we had three hours in port, we went off in search of a good restaurant, found what we were seeking, enjoyed our breakfast with that inimitable gusto of a first meal on shore and then sallied forth to visit the town.

The city is made up of two distinct sections, the old town, built in the sixteenth century, where we found fortified houses clustered together without order along the top of the cliff and enclosed within a powerful wall; and the new town, stretching away from the foot of the cliff, built also without form or plan but indicating wealth and a spirit of enterprise. This new town of Melilla is one of the principal centers of the military power of Spain in Africa and a place of much commercial importance.

Officers and soldiers swarmed the numerous restaurants, cafés and bars, eating and drinking, smoking and talking loudly, revealing clearly by their manner that we were in the war zone. Arabs, swathed in bournouses, threaded their way through this crowd of uniformed men, looking into every corner, observing and listening to everything that was going on. Surely Abd el-Krim, the mad chieftain of the Rif, had here in the streets of Melilla many of his spies and intelligence officers. A great contrast to these Arabs in their desert costume was blatantly present in the sumptuous cars that rolled up before the houses of the local industrial potentates.

Centuries ago the Phoenicians, lured by the riches of