Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/28

12 of the officers that the next ship, leaving two days later, would bring them safely to Oran.

The wind had subsided and the weather was clear, so that the Balear lost her playful character of a shuttlecock of the waves and drove rapidly and proudly eastward with the seriousness and measured movements of a great liner, carrying us close to the sandy shores, behind which we saw for a moment Mar Chica, a small landlocked arm of the sea, separated from it by a long, sandy spit. Then we passed between Cabo del Agua, which is the most northerly flying buttress of the range of Jebel Kebdana, and the three islands of the Zaffarin group, which call to mind the terrible Turkish pirate, Jafar. According to one of the legends of the Kebdana tribe, Allah, whenpassing judgment upon Jafar after his death, sought to know how many tears the victims of the pirate had shed and asked the angel Azrael to give him some measure of these. To do this the angel separated Mar Chica from the sea and bade His Master look. As a sea it is not of great dimensions; but as a reservoir of tears it typifies ineffable grief and crimes enough to condemn the doer of them to endless hells of burning pitch and sulphur.

The Zaffarins have no water and consequently no vegetation. The supply for the inhabitants is brought out by a special tank-ship. The Spaniards have joined two of the islands by a sea-wall and have thus made an excellent harbor, well sheltered from the open sea and of great strategic importance, as it lies exactly opposite the mouth of the Muluya River, which is the frontier between the Moroccan territories of France and Spain. The house of the governor, the barracks of the garrison,