Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1913-01-04
d0 ThE MARRIAGE OF
4!lRCApiTAINKETTLE ~
w y 81 n Romance OfH1e Sea FS1
4AI o. ou u. 1. ,s,EI HY Ne. @
II Romance Mhe Sea
Av CUTCLIFFE HYNE
coryr;,ht. fei2. The Bobb.M Merrill conpsns.

next few hours. ! shouldn't wonder
but what you walk into wild bees
nest If you rootle among those rocks
for sufficiently long. But as you're in
terested, guess It will be best for me
to be Jogging" ..
The moon kindly slid away for the
time being behind clouds. and so Cap
tain Kettle was able to pursue his pas
sage across the head Of the valley
erect and in the open. The journey
was not comfortable one. An icy
wind roared down from the snow-clad
peaks Of the Atlas above, and whistled
shrewdly through the pores of his
loosely-woven jellab and though the
gloom Of the night was kind enough to
conceal his whereabouts from an active
enemy, it also failed to show him the
assures and boulders that lay in his
path and as consequence he STUN
bled severely and often. -"
Rut the sailor took these minor trou-
bles rhi'osophicallv enough. munched
a biscuit by way of belated supper. or
early breakfast, washed 1t down with
a nip Of IIorner, and held steadily along
his way From his last halt he had
mapped the contours of the hills care
fully with his eye, and he now checked
his course by, occasional snuints at q
pocket compass, the card of which had
been anointed with luminous paint
Automatically. too. he counted his foot
steps and estimated the distance
travelled. ..s a. ......
1t was no labor to him to do this He
was one Of those rare men to whom
map-making comes by instinct, There
are handful of them in the navy.
where they are for the most part
wasted; and there are said to be three
in the British army. The remaining
half-dozen for the most part survey
impossible places in the Himalavas
where nobody wants to go. or correct
portions of the mad f1icial map of
the British Isles. and send the results
to publications which nobody reads. ~
The spurs of the Atlas. at this part
lie, western end, southern fank--run
more or less parallel to one another
in north and south direction.
in their lower portions before they
get muddled up in the foothills that
border on the Sahara Plain they are
bejrgGsharp and stony. and the valleys
in between broad. and flat. and fertile.
At the upper end they run into the gen
eral scheme Of the range. which is
chaotic and of course it must always
be carried in min that the whole thing
is done on an enormous scale.
: At the end of another four ho1-.&l
rapid tramp, and the sailor, had broken
into trot whenever the ground would
permit the pace, lie, came to another
divide, and looked over into what was
obviously the valley Bergash had talked
about. The moon had retired hv this.
but the clouds had gone. and the sky
was lighted by the wonderful African
stars, and earth below them stood out
like dark photograph. The valley
was not lovely: agricultural land is
seldom that: but it caught the eve with
an irresistible fascination: Here was
the only example remaining today OF
the old Roman type Of cultivation in
Africa. .s.t7 H..
Irrigation was the kev-note Of the
whole A stream. coming from the
unknown heights Of the At1a~ above,
ran down the valleys center like a
backbone It was raised by an auue-
duct hundred feet at an average
above the gravel level. At constant
intervals were masonry dams to catch
the fertilizing flood water. Ribbed
across the aqueduct, each perhaps half
a mile below the one above 1t. were
other ducts running east and west from
which the water was distributed in
ruDlets over the fields as it was re-
CURED.
Infinitely simple was the scheme:
intolerable must have been the amount
of labor required to pile Np all those
enormous masses Of masonry. One
can imagine the rape Of misch'evo,,s
Moroccan sultans when they. tried to
destroy 1t and failed: but there It
stood (as It stands 'todav) as nerfoct as
when it was built in those old centuries
by some soldier Of fortune who had
learned his art in the hard school Of
imperial Rome. ....l
O. But archaeology was not a hing
that troubled Captain Kettle at that
Cor any other) period Of his career.
He viewed the valley and it's appurten-
ances with an inouiring eve and was
intent only Oh discovering a scheme
that would profit hos owners and raliev"
the present necessities Of Miss Emily
Dubbs
The night was dark. and even the
blaze of African starlight has its limit
in illumination. To start with Ket-
tie saw no trace Of the saints fortress
which he knew ought somewhere to
oyerhane the valley. From where he
stood. it lay as point Of fact, against
a black background. and was invisible
even to any one who knew the coun-
try-side.
Even when he descended to the
floor of the valley and onened out tn
rock against the skyline, he had
walked a good two miles among the
corn.helds and the irrigating channels
before he discovered that it was any
thing more than bare rock left stranded
by nature when the great bulk Of the
Atlas above was upreared. .-
The two highest ambitions Of that
old Berber mercenary who had engin-
eered it were that the place should be
strong, and that it should not be con-
spicuous, and to this latter end he had
dovetailed his buildings into the rock
and built them OF stones hewn from the
rock itself.
Captain Kettle walked with head
erect and ears cooked. and worked his
nj