This steep road was the road
to Fort National--the "thorn in the eye of Kabylia," which pierces so
deeply that Kabylia may writhe, but revolt no more. Already it was
almost as if the car had brought them into another world. The men who
occasionally emerged from the woolly white blankets of the clouds, were
men of a very different type from the mild Kabyles of the plains they
had met trooping along towards Algiers in search of work.
These were brave, upstanding men, worthy of their fathers who revolted
against French rule and could not be conquered until that thorn, Fort
National, was planted deeply in heart and eye. Some were fair, and even
red-haired, which would have surprised Stephen if he had not heard from
Nevill that in old days the Christian slaves used to escape from Algiers
and seek refuge in Kabylia, where they were treated as free men, and no
questions were asked.
Without Fort National, it seemed to Stephen that this strange Berber
people would never have been forced to yield; for looking down from
mountain heights as the motor sped on, it was as if he looked into a
vast and intricate maze of valleys, and on each curiously pointed peak
clung a Kabyle village that seemed to be inlaid in the rock like
separate bits of scarlet enamel. It was the low house-roofs which gave
this effect, for unlike the Arabs, whom the ancient Berber lords of the
soil regard with scorn, the Kabyles build their dwellings of stone,
roofed with red tiles.
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