Tartarin does not have any baggage. He comes down from the Rue de la Marine by the little market, full of bananas and water-melons, accompanied by his friend Captain Barbassou.
Tartarin de Tarascon has left on the Moorish shore his arms, his equipment and his illusions, and is preparing to sail back to Tarascon with nothing in his pockets but his hands. Scarcely, however, had he set foot in the captain’s launch, when a breathless creature scrambled down from the square above and galloped towards him. It was the camel, the faithful camel, which for twenty-four hours had been searching for its master.
When Tartarin saw it, he changed colour and pretended not to know it; but the camel was insistent. It frisked along the quay. It called to its friend and regarded him with tender looks. “Take me away!” Its sad eyes seemed to say, “Take me away with you, far away from this mock Arabia, this ridiculous Orient, full of locomotives and stage coaches, where I as a second-class dromadary do not know what will become of me. You are the last Teur, I am the last camel, let us never part, Oh my Tartarin!” “Is that your camel?” Asked the Captain.
“No!... No!... Not mine.” Replied Tartarin, who trembled at the thought of entering Tarascon with this absurd escort; and shamelessly repudiating the companion of his misfortunes he repelled with his foot the soil of Algeria and pushed the boat out from the shore. The camel sniffed at the water, flexed its joints and leapt headlong in behind the boat, where it swam in convoy toward the Zouave, its hump floating on the water like a gourd and it neck lying on the surface like the ram of a trireme.
The boat and the camel came alongside the Zouave at the same time. “I don’t know what I should do about this dromadary.” Said the captain, “I think I’ll take it on board and present it to the zoo at Marseille, I can’t just leave it here.” So by means of block and tackle the wet camel was hoisted onto the deck of the Zouave, which then set sail.
Tartarin spent most of the time in his cabin. Not that the sea was rough or that the chechia had to much to suffer, but because whenever he appeared on the deck the camel made such a ridiculous fuss of its master. You never saw a camel so attached to anyone as this.