Julius by Daphne du Maurier Page A

high, aggressive and confident, as his grandfather had done.
    He stood for a moment sniffing the hot air, the amber and the dust, the sweat of a sleeping Arab lying against the wall taking his siesta, the whiff of steam on linen that blew down the street from the window of Nanette the blanchisseuse , and these things seemed good to him, part of the life he was leading, and he fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette, glancing behind him at the house to see if the Rabbin was watching. He inhaled deeply, satisfied with the smoke and the intake of breath, and in his pockets he found a petal of bougainvillea flower and a eucalyptus leaf pressed together that he had picked up in Mustapha some days ago, now faded and crushed but the scent still strong as ever. He bit the flower so that he should taste it as well as smell it, and he strolled along the streets, his hands in his pockets, his cigarette hanging from his lips, whistling a song. He went to the street corner where he knew he would find the other fellows. There they were, Marcel Hibert, Pierre Falco, Toto the freckled madcap son of a coiffeur, Boru the half-caste. Julius at fifteen was the leader, younger than any of them. ‘I couldn’t get away before,’ he said. ‘Come on, there’s no time to lose.’
    It was a long climb from the town of Alger to the hills, where the road to Constantine stretched over the unbroken country. A hot walk too, in the full glare of the sun.
    It was two hours or more before they had left the last village clinging to the fringe of Alger and were standing by a belt of trees that screened them from the road.
    ‘Phew! what a trudge!’ grumbled Pierre. ‘I thought we should never get here. Let’s hope we shall have some success.’
    ‘It’ll be a lark even if we get nothing at all,’ grinned Toto, and he winked at Boru and snapped his fingers.
    ‘Have we ever failed yet?’ said Julius; ‘would I have brought you here if I hadn’t been confident?’
    ‘Come on, what’s the plan of attack?’ said Marcel. He was the eldest, sometimes he resented this leadership by the youngest boy.
    ‘You owe me money, my friend,’ said Julius; ‘have you made any reckoning?’
    Marcel reddened and shuffled his feet. ‘You might give me till to-morrow,’ he muttered. ‘We shall see what happens to-day.’
    ‘The three weeks at ten per cent interest are up,’ said Julius; ‘after to-day my interest is fifteen per cent.’
    ‘Oh! very well, you shall have it now. I cannot afford more interest.’
    The coins changed hands.
    ‘Meanwhile, I’ve decided our plan,’ said Julius. ‘The merchant will soon appear along the road. There’s a stretch of three kilometres or more he has to cover before he reaches the shade of these trees. He’ll be tired from the sun. He will want to rest his feet. You must hide here and I’ll begin conversation with him. When I give the signal you will burst from the trees and run to the mules. Boru is used to managing animals; he will take charge of two. The rest of us will take one apiece. Then ride like the devil, shouting at the top of your voices. This will scare the mules, and they’ll bolt. Hold on tight and don’t let yourselves be thrown.’
    ‘Supposing the merchant tries to follow us?’
    ‘He’ll not follow us, I shall see to that,’ said Julius. The boys glanced at each other, half excited, half scared.
    ‘What will you do?’ asked Toto.
    Julius patted his pocket. ‘The same as David did to Goliath,’ he said.
    They blinked stupidly, they did not understand. Julius laughed and turned on his heel. ‘I am a Jew, I know everything,’ he said. Then he walked away from the belt of trees to a high position where he could watch the long winding road and the dust from a merchant travelling with his mules.
    Julius crouched in a ditch by the side of the road, his chin resting in his hands, and an hour had passed before he finally saw the little cavalcade approaching in the distance. The five mules were