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Comme il se couchait de très bonne heure, il lui arrivait de s'éveiller au milieu de la nuit. Hanté par son idée fixe, il ouvrait la fenêtre. Une fois rassuré, avant de regagner son lit il allait, une bougie
Two years before the famous Spanish captain, Pedro de Navarro, had seized upon the coast town of Bougie, and had unfortunately left it in the hands of a totally insufficient garrison. This departure from the sound rules of warfare had already been punished as it deserved, as the garrison was perpetually harassed and annoyed by the surrounding Arab tribes.
It was immediately drawn up in these terms: "We, the undersigned, certify that the Caïd of Bougie wished to dissuade us from going to Algiers by land; that he has assured us that we shall be massacred on the road; that notwithstanding his representations, reiterated twenty times, we have persisted in our project.
Duvivier was called to Bougie; Maumet was compelled by his wounds to return to Paris; Captain Lamoriciere was, therefore, appointed chief of the united battalion, having given proof of his capacity in every way, whether as soldier, linguist, or negotiator, being a wise and prudent man.
In vain the wary and cool-headed Kheyr-ed-Din counselled prudence and delay, but these words were not to be found in the vocabulary of his elder brother. "What had to be done," he replied, "had better be done at once," and at the head of only fifty men landed and assaulted the still uncompleted ramparts of Bougie.
It was bad enough in a bunk, where you could brace your knees against the side, and keep moderately still till you dozed off, when naturally you were shot out sprawling into the lost drainage wandering on the erratic floor. What those Arabs suffered on deck I cannot tell you. I never went up to find out. At Bougie they seemed to have left it all to Allah, with the usual result.
The blue water is wonderfully transparent, and the azure sky, a deep azure, as if it had received two coats of paint, expands its wonderful beauty above it. They seem to be looking at themselves in a glass, and to be a reflection of each other. Bougie is a town of ruins, and on the quay, when one arrives, one sees such a magnificent ruin, that one might imagine one was at the opera.
To be sure, the inexorable inn-keeper still keeps up, we believe, the inevitable bougie, but even that is fast becoming more of a fiction than ever. Even in the churches, it is said, the use of candles is gradually falling off.
"With nothing," answered his escort, "but your insignificance. However, a man cannot live as a mere private man, after having been Dey of Algiers." And the unfortunate man perished by the rope. The communication by sea between Bougie and Algiers was not so difficult, even with the "sandalas," as the Caïd of the former town wished to assure me.
As a matter of curiosity, we lighted a bougie, and placed it on the edge of the snow, at the top of the slope of 3 or 4 feet which led down the surface of the ice, and then stood to watch the effect of the current on the flame.
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