They were most of them in the
vigor of youth, and they were waiting on a certain street for the
monthly dole with which a resident of Algeciras may buy immunity for all
the other days of the month. They instantly recognized in the stranger a
fraudulent tax-dodger, and when he attempted tardily to purchase
immunity they poured upon him; in front, behind, on both sides, all
round, they boiled up and bubbled about him; and the exhaustion of his
riches alone saved him alive. It must have been a wonderful spectacle,
and I do not suppose the like of it was ever seen in Algeciras before.
It was a triumph over charity, and left quite out of comparison the
organized onsets of the infant gang which always beset the way to the
hotel under a leader whose battle-cry, at once a demand and a promise,
was "Penny-go-way, Penny-go-way!"
Along that pleasant shore bare-legged fishermen spread their nets, and
going and coming by the Gibraltar boats were sometimes white-hosed,
brown-cloaked, white-turbaned Moors, who occasionally wore Christian
boots, but otherwise looked just such Moslems as landed at Algeciras in
the eighth century; people do not change much in Africa.
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