Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/31

 by the Prophet's law. The coffee money being handed over, the boatmen quite leisurely pile our belongings on a little push-*cart, and we hopefully prepare to ascend from the port to the city overhead. But again, the pirate spirit intervenes; our moving-contractors, encouraged by our weakness in yielding to their first demand for tribute, inform us that the contract with them is now and forever null and void; that the sum agreed to on board the ship is not the sum that they intend to accept. In vain we plead with them, exhorting them to mercy. They are as relentless with the Christian stranded on their shore as were their cut-throat ancestors, save that they find it more profitable to cut purse-strings than to sever jugular veins. This second attempt at extortion is as successful as the first, in spite of the presence of a French policeman whose sole idea of duty is to call the thieves "canaille"! and offer us his sympathy.

PAY, PAY, PAY!

IMPEDIMENTA

However, our troubles are now over. The men who have collected all the money disappear, leaving one poor perspiring Arab, who has received only a few pennies from them, to haul the heavily laden cart up the long inclined roadway from the landing-*place to the level of the business quarter of Algiers. As we follow our belongings up the long zigzag roadways, we pass the arched habitations of the "Algerian Cliff Dwellers";