by Dean King
As dark fell on Agadir, Moulay Ibrahim, bel Cossim, Sheik Ali, the sailors of the Commerce, and the company of camel guides and servants quietly entered the lower town, a fishing port at the base of a mountain. A square-walled casbah on a conical hill dominated the bay. The sweet reek of bacalao, or codfish, assailed their nostrils, reminding Riley of previous visits to the Canary Islands, not far to the west of Agadir, where the fishermen sun-dried the catch on their decks. Locals were impervious to the stench, while foreign vessels, unable to bear it, anchored well away. Still, even foreign sailors prized the cod, which Riley praised as "extremely fat and delicate."
Fishing boats and nets sprawled on the beach, along a bay considered the southernmost anchorage on Morocco's Atlantic coast, with shelter from the east and northeast winds, though Riley quickly perceived that it was too open for a good winter harbor, when the winds would embay ships and drive them on shore. Masts of shipwrecks littered the beach in various stages of being consumed by the rising sand.
The town itself had a long history of boom and bust. The Portuguese had founded it three centuries earlier to tap into the riches of the Saharan caravans and had been driven from its shores by the Moroccans, who later abandoned it, moving many of its merchants north to Swearah. William Lempriere, who visited Agadir around 1790, observed that this former center of European habitation and international trade was then "a deserted town, with only a few houses, which are almost hourly mouldering to decay" (p. 714).
Lempriere might have exaggerated the town's decline. While the sailors took heart in reaching another milestone on the journey, Sheik Ali and Rais bel Cossim planned their next moves. Despite the cover of dark, the large company of men, including foreigners, could hardly go unnoticed, and the streets soon teemed with curious residents, fishermen and fishmongers, and the sons of fishermen and fishmongers, eager to see the Christian slaves or anything that would break the monotony of their daily lives. The Souassa, as people from the Souss region are known, spat on the sailors, heaved sticks and stones at them, and cursed them in Spanish. The greeting "ĄCarajo a la mierda le sara, perro y bestias!"— You are lower than the dung of beasts!— stuck in Riley's mind. Bel Cossim, who was born near Agadir, spotted a man he knew. Taking advantage of the maelstrom of unwanted attention, he greeted him warmly in the Arab fashion and spoke to him in furtive tones.
Bel Cossim and the rest of the party made their way from the beach to the back of the town, where they pitched camp by a smithy. Some Souassa prepared baked and boiled fish and couscous for the Arab visitors and gave the leftovers to the sailors; the camels and mules were fed barley. Afterward, bel Cossim discreetly warned Riley to remain alert and told him that he would watch Ali, who he was sure was still plotting against them, and get information from his own allies in town. Despite bel Cossim's concerns, Riley calmly reassured his edgy men that they were now safe in the sultan's territory, just days away from liberation, and urged them to rest up for the final push. They lay down on the ground, curled up in the blankets they had been given, and went to sleep. Riley remained awake.
Just after midnight the Moor returned with bad news. "Sheik Ali has made a deal with the governor," he whispered to the captain. "They will seize you in the morning and make you pay the ransom Ali demands. If you cannot, he will be allowed to make off with you and return to his stronghold near the desert.
"You must get up now and ride out of town. If you are at least four leagues [about fourteen miles] out of Agadir by sunrise, I believe you will be safe," he said. "If not, the governor's men will overtake you and bring you back." Bel Cossim roused the cameleers, who were nearby, and instructed them to prepare the camels.
"The drivers know the road," he told Riley. "It is very rocky. Tell your men to hold on tight and to use their utmost exertions. In three more days you will be in Swearah with your friend, inshallah. I will join you as soon as I can."
The sailors mounted the camels, and the guides led them through the town, whispering soothing words to the animals to keep them calm. As they edged their way up along the northward path, the group had to pass right beside the fortress's lower batteries and the old Portuguese fort. For such large beasts, the camels were remarkably quiet on their padded feet. Often noisy growlers, none so much as bellowed or snorted now. Meanwhile, bel Cossim lay down in front of the door to the room where Sheik Ali slept. If the sheik stirred, he would know. Before drifting off, bel Cossim scripted the impending confrontation with Ali.
The sailors and the guides, now in the pay of bel Cossim, rounded Pointe Arhesdis, and rode north above a rocky beach, the crash of the surf below covering their escape. In a transcendent moment, the roar of the waves caused Riley to reflect on the "direful shipwrecks" that were sure to succeed his "and the consequent miseries of the poor mariner driven on this inhospitable coast." They traveled in silence for two hours, passing Oued Tamrhaght (the Wife's River, in the Tachelhit Berber dialect), a channel that when flowing carries water through a fertile valley and marks what is today the northern border of Souss. About nine miles outside Agadir, they heard the noise that they dreaded, the iron-on-stone clinking of horse or mule riders. While they were at an advantage in that their camels could not be heard at a distance, the hills had blocked out the sound of the approaching riders until they were very close. They had no time and no place to hide.
Suddenly, a large party of men appeared. Riley was momentarily confused, then relieved, then wary: these men were not pursuing them from Agadir but rushing toward it.
Riders at night meant urgency, usually trouble of one sort or another, men prepared to act first and ask questions later. It was too dark for either party to make out the faces of the other. Neither group wished to acknowledge or to be acknowledged by the other. The situation was so tense that a stumble, a sudden move, a glimmer of metal in the starlight could have started a fight. Every man with a weapon gripped it. But Riley, high on his tall camel, perceived something in the passing silhouettes.
On an impulse, he shouted out, "Sidi Hamet!"
"Escoon? Riley?" came the reply. Who is it? Riley?
Sidi Hamet had returned.
chapter 19
The Road to Swearah
The two parties lurched to a halt. Riley followed the sound of Hamet's voice, found him, took his hand, and kissed it. Hamet was equally glad to see the captain. He had spent many uneasy hours in Willshire's cluttered house and in the bustling streets of Swearah worrying about Riley, his son, and the other sailors. Nearby, Sidi Mohammed's ebullience indicated his satisfaction at reuniting with the men they had committed to saving.
As Riley recounted Sheik Ali's actions and warned of the current threat, Hamet shook his head.
"Ali is a bad man," he said. "He does not fear Allah."
Hamet told Riley that the sailors must continue on toward Swearah. He would settle affairs with his father-in-law either in Agadir or on the trail. At the least, he would do his best to slow down Ali's pursuit of the sailors. They wasted little time in conversation. Riley met Bel Mooden, another emissary of Willshire's, a short, stout, neatly dressed gray-bearded Moor, who spoke Spanish fluently and listened intently as Riley gave him news of bel Cossim. Without ceremony, Bel Mooden took possession of the sailors and in turn presented the ransom money, entrusted to him by Willshire, to Sidi Hamet.
The camel guides, uncertain of allegiances, remained on guard throughout the midnight meeting— even within these small parties, alliances could shift with the momentum. Under strict orders from bel Cossim, the cameleers urged the party to continue on. As they parted ways once more, Hamet promised Riley that he would see him again. Bel Mooden refused to return to Swearah while his colleague bel Cossim was still within the grasp of Shiek Ali and went with Hamet.
The sailors continued north with the camel guides and with the three muleteers and mules brought by Bel Mooden to help carry them back. Once again, they found themselves in the awkward position of having handlers who could not speak their language, no one who could
interpret their problems without a laborious conversation, no one to reassure or encourage them. Having had their hopes raised and dashed more than once, the sailors remained leery of their circumstances. Without Rais bel Cossim or Sidi Hamet, who would defend them if they were confronted by armed Moors or Arabs now?
Three of the sailors mounted the mules, whose shuffling gait they preferred to the pounding of the camels. Covered by straw-filled blankets, with bulky panniers made of palm leaves slung across their backs, the mules offered a broad seat best for sidesaddle riding. But the mules' easy pace lulled the exhausted sailors toward a sleep they could not afford. When Burns drifted off, he toppled from his mule, struck his head on the rocky path, and lay unconscious. It was the second time in a matter of days that he had been knocked out, and try as he might, Riley could not fully revive him this time. The muleteers lost patience. Burns, semiconscious, was hoisted onto a mule, and a muleteer mounted behind him to hold him on. They continued as fast as they could through the night.
Agadir marks the southern end of a coastal strip where the High Atlas joins the sea. Swearah, their destination, marks the northern end. In between lies a spiky stretch rougher than anything they had seen since the desert: gullies, boulder-strewn riverbeds, craggy mountainsides, cliffs. James Grey Jackson said it was a three-day journey from Swearah to Agadir. Lempriere commented wryly that while a seventy-six-mile journey generally should not take three days, the way was not over the "level turnpikes of England" (p. 413).
In the cold night mist rising from the sea, the Commerces and their guides traveled numbly toward Cape Ghir, only eighteen miles by sea northwest of Agadir but twice that on the tortuous land route. The path took them along the coast, sometimes dropping onto the beach. Where a strip of sand ended, they climbed nearly vertical faces on what Riley described as "a winding kind of zigzag road that seemed to have been cut in the rock in many places by art." The route descended into deep valleys with these broad natural stone stairs covered in tricky scree, demanding all the concentration of beast and rider. Rocky bluffs pinned them to the coast.1
Slowly up and slowly down, the sailors clung to their mules, thankful to no longer be pounded by the camels but now beaten by their own profound drowsiness. As their nodding heads jolted them awake again and again and their arms and legs flailed reflexively to help them regain equilibrium, they feared they might hit the ground like poor Burns or, worse, tumble to the sea.
Dawn broke on a dramatic panorama. The sailors could see the Atlas foothills on one side of them and the sea on the other. Towering inland, Jebel Tazenakht, nearly 4,430 feet high, fifteen miles east of Cape Ghir, marked the western end of the Atlas chain. They were northing another milestone.
At dawn, Sheik Ali nearly stumbled over Rais bel Cossim, asleep at his threshold. Unaware that he had been outmaneuvered, Ali suggested that they pay their respects to the governor. Bel Cossim insisted disingenuously that first he would have Riley make them coffee. Ali agreed.
When they entered the place where the sailors had slept and discovered them missing, bel Cossim feigned shock. He erupted in rage, accusing Ali of having stolen the slaves during the night. "I will have you arrested and sent before the governor," he shouted, "and you will be condemned by the laws of Islam."
Awakened by the shouting, Moulay Ibrahim, who knew of bel Cossim's deception and had, in fact, watched over the sleeping Ali the previous night as bel Cossim sent the sailors off, rushed in, and joined bel Cossim in castigating Ali. "I can no longer hold friendship with a man who is capable of committing such an act," he declared. "This is one of the worst breaches of faith that ever disgraced a man of your supposed high character!"
The tactics put Ali uncharacteristically on the defensive. He admitted that the night before he had discussed having the party detained until the matter could be settled but insisted that he had had no part in the disappearance of the slaves. He begged not to be denounced to the governor, urging bel Cossim, instead, to leave a small gift for the governor and to proceed immediately to the north, the direction in which the slaves must surely have escaped.
"I am in your power, and will go on with you and my friend Moulay Ibrahim, without any attendants, to prove to you that I am innocent," Ali conceded, "and that I place the greatest confidence in your friendship."
They rode north together, bel Cossim and Ibrahim trusting that the sailors' seven-hour head start was enough to put them beyond reach of their search. Not long after they had arrived on the plateau to the north of Agadir, they encountered Sidi Hamet's party traveling south. Sheik Ali now resorted to righteous indignation, accusing Hamet of reneging on his lawful debts. He and Seid owed him four hundred dollars, he declared, which they were obligated to pay him upon their return from the desert. They had, instead, passed three days through his territory without informing him of their return, "without even calling on me to eat bread," he complained, bitterly. This was disrespectful and dishonorable. He was their patron and would have accompanied them with a guard safely through Sidi Hashem's territory. "But you wished to cheat me of my money, as you did of my daughter," he accused Hamet.
Hamet did not take the bait. He could only lose a shouting match with the older, more powerful man. He replied calmly but firmly to the tirade, "It is better for us to settle our disputes than to quarrel. For the goods that you consigned to us to sell on the desert, Seid and I owe you exactly three hundred and sixty dollars, though, in fact, the merchandise was not worth half that much. To settle this matter, however, we agree to pay this amount, but no interest on it."
After some discussion, Ali accepted these terms. Hamet counted out the required number of silver pieces from the ransom money that Willshire had sent and handed them to Ali, who agreed that the matter was settled. Rais bel Cossim presented Moulay Ibrahim with a gift for his hospitality and justice. They swore lifelong friendship and prayed together. Ibrahim, whose secret betrayal of Ali had gone undetected by the sheik, now returned to the south with him. Ibrahim could rest soundly knowing that he had done the right thing, averting a large-scale conflict and not materially harming the sheik. The rest of the party headed north again.
Around ten o'clock, Hamet, Seid, bel Cossim, and Bel Mooden caught up with the sailors. Riley asked bel Cossim what had happened to Sheik Ali and Moulay Ibrahim. "They have set out for their homes," he replied. The group stopped nearly at sea level beside a well that gave them good water, and over a breakfast of biscuits and butter, bel Cossim told Riley about the meeting that had settled matters between Hamet and Ali.
With the recent arrivals and the muleteers and camel guides, the sailors were now in the hands of a strong, heavily armed company of men. The group again followed a path along the beach where there was enough firm sand and, where the beach terminated, headed up the bluffs on tight switchbacks. To reach Cape Ghir they faced either a lengthy inland trek around insurmountable peaks, which would take them through possibly hostile passes, or a direct route across an exposed cliff face. They chose to attempt the latter, on a narrow, storied ledge above the sea.
The Jews' Leap was a path so wanting that once you started on it with beasts, there was no turning around. Slightly less than a half mile long, it had earned its name when a chance meeting between six Jews heading north from Agadir met a company of Moors heading south, resulting in catastrophe. It was customary for travelers in both directions to make sure the path was clear by checking it from an outcropping at either end built for that purpose or by calling loudly and listening for an answer. But it was after dusk, and both parties, being in a hurry and assuming no one else would be crossing at that hour, failed to take the usual precautions.
The two groups of men, all mounted on mules or other beasts, met in the narrowest section about halfway across, where it was impossible to pass each other or to turn back. The Moors were outraged and threatened to throw the Jews down. The Jews, though by necessity submissive in Morocco, would not sacrifice their mounts without a fight. The Jewish leader vaulted carefully ov
er the head of his mule with a large stick raised for fighting. The first Moor did the same but with a scimitar, forcing the Jew back and knocking his mule off the ledge. The Jew's stick was soon hacked to a nub. Faced with being stabbed or pushed off, he lunged for the Moor's arm, grabbed hold, and leaped over the side.
Another Moor and two more Jews followed, along with eight mules, before the rest could flee on foot. Eventually, relatives of the dead Moors hunted down and murdered the three remaining Jews, completing the tragedy.
In one stretch, the trail narrowed to just two feet. Any slip by mule or camel meant a hundred-foot plunge into the sea. "It is, indeed, enough to produce dizziness," Riley observed, "even in the head of a sailor."
They continued on to Cape Ghir, on a path undercut by the sea, so that huge chunks of the coast were lying in the churning surf below them. Riley was certain that where he stood would soon follow. Inland lay "an inclined plane . . . covered with pebbles and other round smooth stones that bore strong marks of having been tossed about and worn by the surf on a sea beach." This was topped by "cliffs of craggy and broken rocks," in all, a 1,200-foot promontory, around which mariners have frequently reported treacherous shifting winds.