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  PENGUIN

  CLASSICS

  HASHISH

  HENRY DE MONFREID was an adventurer, seaman and smuggler. His publications include Secrets of the Red Sea and Sea Adventures.

  HENRY DE MONFREID

  Hashish

  A Smuggler’s tale

  Translated by HELEN BUCHANAN BELL

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in France under the title Las Crosière de Hachich

  This translation first published 1935

  Published in Penguin Books 1946

  Published in Penguin Classics 2007

  1

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-195821-7

  Contents

  1 My Friend Floquet

  2 A Prisoner’s Smile

  3 The Trocas Fishers

  4 Mr Ki

  5 The Flies from Sinai

  6 Business is Business

  7 Port Vendres

  8 The Voyage to the Piraeus

  9 Papamanoli

  10 The Journey to Steno

  11 The Farm

  12 My First Contact with Egypt

  13 The Death of Lieutenant Voiron

  14 The Turtle Fisher

  15 The Khamsin

  16 Big Guns in Action

  17 The Miraculous Cisterns

  18 The Legend of Cheik Badhour

  19 The Hand of Destiny

  20 First Contact with the Customs

  21 Two Types of Englishmen

  22 The Strait of Jubal

  23 The Hiding-Place

  24 Suez

  25 The Consulate

  26 Stavro

  27 The Sea-Wall

  28 Stavro and I Cross Swords

  29 The Miraculous Catch

  30 The King of the Smugglers

  31 The Bedouins

  32 The Story of Djebeli

  33 The Landing by Night

  34 Footprints in the Sand

  35 The Jews

  36 How History is Written

  37 A Pair of Poltroons

  38 The Mysterious Drug

  39 Wreckage

  40 Hemp

  41 The Tortures of Doubt

  ONE

  My Friend Floquet

  The season was now too far advanced to contemplate going to Makalla. Summer had nearly come, and in a few weeks the western monsoon would be beginning to blow, so for the moment I gave up all idea of going to fetch the wood I needed for building my ship. The thought of having to fight my way back against the wind with a cumbersome cargo of planks and beams was anything but tempting.

  My dream, though unfulfilled, would remain a source of secret happiness, giving me courage and strength to face life and wrest something from it. For men must always follow a dream, no matter what. If fortune does not favour the old, it is, perhaps, because they can no longer believe in those chimeras, those mirages of the spirit, which the young go for helter-skelter, so sure of being able to reach them that obstacles fall under their unheeding feet, before their existence has been suspected.

  At the end of the first volume of my memoirs, I said I would speak at length of the shady means taken by the Government of Djibouti to have me condemned in 1915.

  At that time I believed in justice; I had the childlike credulity of a savage. A judge to me was a being of superior essence, far above mere human emotions like hatred or envy, and I could no more have doubted this than I could have doubted my own conscience. But, alas, my illusions soon lay in the dust, and I sank into a quagmire of distress in which I floundered drearily, seeking in vain for one patch of solid ground.

  When I read again my log-book written at this period, the bitter words rise from the pages and renew those long-past sufferings.

  But why lay forth my misery? What good can it do? Why tear their illusions from those who have been lucky enough to keep them?

  My only reason for referring at all to that nightmare of my past is to speak of an incident which resulted from it, and which put me in contact with a man who had belonged to the famous syndicate of dealers in arms from which I had bought my last cargo on credit.

  As I recounted in Secrets of the Red Sea, the munitions which had been seized on the island of Maskali had been advanced to me by this syndicate. If I had not been a sort of Don Quixote at that time, with my head full of outworn ideas of chivalry, I should have boldly declared the truth, not caring if I did compromise my powerful suppliers, and in that case things might have turned out very differently for me. But I could not resist playing the romantically chivalrous part, and my beau geste led to my condemnation.

  When I got back to Djibouti and had earned a little money by working as a diver, these honourable tradesmen had not the slightest scruple about taking it from me. What did they risk, since I had been fool enough to exonerate them from all responsibility, taking the entire blame on my own shoulders?

  The agent for the firm in whose employment I had originally been demanded payment for the confiscated arms, and threatened to sue me for the money. All the other members of this honourable syndicate backed him up except one, Monsieur Floquet, who flatly refused to be a party to any such thing. He drew on his head the enmity of the others, for the moral reasons he advanced for not claiming any money from me constituted an eloquent reproach. Finally, the syndicate shied at calling in public opinion, for these people who trample all the virtues underfoot when they can do so with impunity are very sensitive about respectability and their reputations in the eyes of society.

  Now when I look back on the events of that time across fifteen years’ experience of men, I wonder a little cynically whether Floquet acted from sheer love of justice, or simply from prudence.

  He was a man who had always puzzled me, and the more I saw of him and the better I thought I knew him, the deeper in reality grew the mystery of his soul. At the moment of which I speak I felt for him a deep friendship, which increased as I sensed that he had the same feelings for me.

  He was a curious-looking fellow; his colourless eyes, set in a pale face, did not seem to see, and made one uncomfortable as do the eyes of a blind man. He was slender and muscular, and although he was barely
forty, his hair was snow-white. He wore it very long and brushed back off his forehead. His voice was as colourless as his eyes; he was generally taciturn, but when a subject interested him, he would suddenly wake up and become very voluble.

  His employees quickly established themselves in his business; they were rapidly promoted to confidential positions and left unsupervised. They took unscrupulous advantage of this, seemingly with impunity, until one day for no apparent reason Floquet would fly into a terrible rage and sack the lot. His anger was a nervous reflex like the crazy courage of a coward in arms against his weakness.

  One might deduce from this that Floquet was kind and indulgent only from moral weakness, and yet this man was more devoted than a father to my wife and children during my long absences. Nothing can make me forget his infinite goodness to them.

  At this time I am sure that Floquet would have laid down his life for me, as I would mine for him. I believed him to be that rare and precious thing in a frivolous and treacherous world, a true friend, incapable of disloyalty, in whom one could have absolute confidence.

  Yet at times this mysterious man showed peculiar tendencies, and these fugitive reflections of his hidden soul were terrifying, as are all things which come out of an abyss. For instance, he took pleasure in certain forms of cruelty, and loved to fire at cats sleeping unsuspectingly in shadowy corners. At the siesta hour, when beasts and men were asleep, overpowered by the intolerable heat, one could hear the sharp report of his rifle, then the cry of the wounded animal as it dragged itself away to die. Behind the closed shutters of the veranda Floquet would smile secretly in the dim light, and return silently to his comfortable chair to wait for the next chance.

  In direct contrast to this, he was spontaneously and whole-heartedly charitable. He would advance several months’ pay to an employee who was hopelessly tubercular, and pay his passage home to France so that he could go and die in peace beside his old mother. Nothing forced him to this generosity, neither public opinion nor mine, for he carefully concealed such good actions.

  He would take up the defence of an obscure native, some miserable coolie whose fate could not affect him personally in the least. He would move heaven and earth to help him, even going so far as to brave the Governor’s anger on his behalf. What could one make of these contradictions? It was difficult to reconcile the kindness he showed to me and to many others with these disquieting traits in his nature. I was forced to explain it to myself by a lack of balance, a sort of hysteria, and I forced myself to see only great and noble qualities in him. Here was a fine fellow who did good by stealth, while posing before the world as a creature without heart. My friendship deepened to affection, and for ten years I believed he repaid me in kind.

  An unexpected spurt of activity in the sea-snail trade gave me the chance to be of service to Floquet. He proposed that I should go to Massawa with my boutre, the Fat-el-Rahman, and fish for them on his behalf. We made a partnership, to which I contributed my work and the small capital I had left. He provided the bulk of the capital, and undertook the sale in Europe, through a well-known broker in Le Havre who was his customer and friend.

  I had just let my other two boutres, which were smaller than the Fat-el-Rahman, to the Government as coastguard ships. My adopted son, Lucien, was employed by the Government as clerk in the surveying department. My wife and my daughter Gisèle, now six years old, were living at Obock. They would come with me as far as Massawa, where I intended to put them on board an Italian liner bound for Europe, for my wife was worn out by the torrid climate of the coast, and even more so by the constant state of worry to which my wandering life condemned her.

  TWO

  A Prisoner’s Smile

  ’As soon as we had left Obock and rounded the Ras Bir, the heavy swell from the Indian Ocean plunged my family into the agonies of hopeless sea-sickness. We had to tack for three days to get through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, through which swept the north winds, particularly violent at this time of year.

  The currents are stemmed only for a few short hours at high tide. The rest of the time, all the waters accumulated by the south-east winter winds rush down in a furious stream into the Ocean.

  It is necessary to sail close to the coasts in order to benefit by the cross-currents and eddies; this kind of navigation is very dangerous. It can only be practised by very small ships, and even for them it is often fatal.

  One can never be sure how such a struggle will end; one always enters upon it with apprehension, each time one swears never again, and each time as soon as one has come safely through, all is forgotten in the joy of victory. I kept on with this exhausting navigation for twelve hours, then made my way into the inner channels of the archipelago of Assab in order to have a day’s calm. Thanks to this rest, my passengers recovered a little, and were able to eat.

  The Fat-el-Rahman had no cabins; we lived on the narrow benches of the after-deck. At night we slept on the deck itself, rolled in blankets, and by day we rigged up an old bit of sail-cloth to shelter us from the sun.

  You can understand that it was not exactly comfortable for a woman, so, in order to give my wife a rest, I decided to put in at Assab, the most southerly port of Eritrea.

  The Italian who was Resident there, Doctor Lanzoni, welcomed us with touching cordiality. He was a fat man with a broad face covered with pimples, and his nose was so voluminous and violet that it looked like a potato or a very fat bud about to burst into leaf. But as is often the case with men who have thick lips, fleshy noses and high complexions, he had something which made one forget his ugliness after a few minutes. These unkind gifts of nature often go with cheery and good-humoured dispositions, and though my daughter had been terrified at first by this vast and noisy animal, she was soon playing familiarly with him. He put himself to a lot of trouble to entertain us, and showed us round his domain.

  We went to see the convicts of the penitentiary at work, this being the only amusement available. It was a prison for natives, like the one the French used to have at Obock. The men were chained by the leg in pairs, and dirty and often blood-stained rags protected their ankles from the heavy iron rings. One of each pair carried the middle of the chain in his hand, so that they could walk more easily.

  These fettered men were working on the construction of a road. They worked slowly; indeed, all their movements were slow because of their chains. Even the black Tigrean soldiers who acted as warders seemed to have caught the infection, for they too dragged themselves about.

  What crimes have these Negroes committed?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing serious in most cases, but the law is very severe. The smallest theft is punished by several years’ imprisonment. However, if they have more than three years to serve, they generally die before the end of their sentence, even though they are treated humanely.

  ‘The real criminals, the assassins, are condemned to solitary confinement for life, for, as you know, Italy has abolished the death penalty. In these cases, we allow relatives to bring them food, so that they rarely survive for long.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, when they are Dankalis, their families bring them poison. They prefer that way out. Some Residents tried to stop this by forbidding all visits, but this made no real difference, for with the complicity of native warders they managed in the long run to get hold of poison. So really, it is better to put no obstacles in their way.’

  I watched the dreary detachment coming back from work and entering the courtyard by the single vaulted door pierced in the blank and melancholy wall.

  One always feels a sort of embarrassment before human beings in captivity, a kind of shame at brandishing one’s freedom before their wistful eyes.

  They asked us for cigarettes. I hadn’t any, but Lanzoni handed me several packets and, suddenly hailing a warder, went some distance off, so that he could pretend not to see that rules were being broken, for these poor devils are forbidden tobacco. I hastily flung over the packets of cigarettes, knowing
they would be shared out, for prisoners feel a bond of brotherhood in their common misfortune.

  It is only in the hell of a convict prison, when men have given up all hope of being able to exploit, enslave and oppress others for their own enrichment, that their thoughts turn to brotherhood, which then seems to them the sole remedy for their distress, for in giving little they receive much.

  Suddenly, one of these creatures dressed in the grey uniform, on which a number in large black figures replaced all that had previously differentiated him from his fellows, turned round. The face on which despair had set its seal brightened into a smile, showing two rows of dazzlingly white teeth.

  Where had I seen this face before? I couldn’t put a name to it, but I was convinced I had already met this man somewhere.

  He was about to speak, but the warder slashed him with his whip to make him get back into the ranks, and I saw him no more.

  I went back to my ship haunted by this vision of distress. I must have recalled to this captive the time when he was a free man, and even now as he slept in the promiscuous heap in the airless cell, he was smiling at memories of liberty.

  During the night, my attention was attracted by hails from the shore. A human form was crouching on the sand, waiting. My curiosity was aroused, and I sent the pirogue to fetch the visitor. It was a Dankali woman, the wife of one of the prisoners. I could only see her vaguely through the darkness. From time to time, the starlight flickered for a moment on a purely cut profile or a pair of wild, dark eyes. She seemed to be very young, barely twenty.

  Her husband had been in prison for a year. She kept prowling round the penitentiary like the female of a wild beast caught in a snare, which cannot keep away from the spot where her mate was captured. She cherished the hope that her man would be able to escape, and until he could, she came every day to bring him goat’s milk from her mountain herd.