If the following pages are ever to see the light of day it will be
because they have been stolen from me. The delay that I exact before
they shall be disclosed assures me of that.[1]
[Footnote 1: This letter, together with the manuscript which
accompanies it, the latter in a separate sealed envelope, was
entrusted by Lieutenant Ferrières, of the 3rd Spahis, the day of the
departure of that officer for the Tassili of the Tuareg (Central
Sahara), to Sergeant Chatelain. The sergeant was instructed to deliver
it, on his next leave, to M. Leroux, Honorary Counsel at the Court of
Appeals at Riom, and Lieutenant Ferrières' nearest relative. As this
magistrate died suddenly before the expiration of the term of ten
years set for the publication of the manuscript here presented,
difficulties arose which have delayed its publication up to the
present date.]
As to this disclosure, let no one distrust my aim when I prepare for
it, when I insist upon it. You may believe me when I maintain that no
pride of authorship binds me to these pages. Already I am too far
removed from all such things. Only it is useless that others should
enter upon the path from which I shall not return.
Four o'clock in the morning. Soon the sun will kindle the hamada with
its pink fire. All about me the bordj is asleep. Through the half-open
door of his room I hear André de Saint-Avit breathing quietly, very
quietly.
In two days we shall start, he and I. We shall leave the bordj. We
shall penetrate far down there to the South. The official orders came
this morning.
Now, even if I wished to withdraw, it is too late. André and I asked
for this mission. The authorization that I sought, together with him,
has at this moment become an order. The hierarchic channels cleared,
the pressure brought to bear at the Ministry;--and then to be afraid,
to recoil before this adventure!...
To be afraid, I said. I know that I am not afraid! One night in the
Gurara, when I found two of my sentinels slaughtered, with the
shameful cross cut of the Berbers slashed across their stomachs--then
I was afraid. I know what fear is. Just so now, when I gazed into the
black depths, whence suddenly all at once the great red sun will rise,
I know that it is not with fear that I tremble. I feel surging within
me the sacred horror of this mystery, and its irresistible attraction.
Delirious dreams, perhaps. The mad imaginings of a brain surcharged,
and an eye distraught by mirages. The day will come, doubtless, when I
shall reread these pages with an indulgent smile, as a man of fifty is
accustomed to smile when he rereads old letters.
Delirious dreams. Mad imaginings. But these dreams, these imaginings,
are dear to me. "Captain de Saint-Avit and Lieutenant Ferrières,"
reads the official dispatch, "will proceed to Tassili to determine the
statigraphic relation of Albien sandstone and carboniferous limestone.
They will, in addition, profit by any opportunities of determining the
possible change of attitude of the Axdjers towards our penetration,
etc." If the journey should indeed have to do only with such poor
things I think that I should never undertake it.
So I am longing for what I dread. I shall be dejected if I do not
find myself in the presence of what makes me strangely fearful.
In the depths of the valley of Wadi Mia a jackal is barking. Now and
again, when a beam of moonlight breaks in a silver patch through the
hollows of the heat-swollen clouds, making him think he sees the young
sun, a turtle dove moans among the palm trees.
I hear a step outside. I lean out of the window. A shade clad in
luminous black stuff glides over the hard-packed earth of the terrace
of the fortification. A light shines in the electric blackness. A man
has just lighted a cigarette. He crouches, facing southwards. He is
smoking.
It is Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh, our Targa guide, the man who in three days
is to lead us across the unknown plateaus of the mysterious
Imoschaoch, across the hamadas of black stones, the great dried oases,
the stretches of silver salt, the tawny hillocks, the flat gold dunes
that are crested over, when the "alizé" blows, with a shimmering haze
of pale sand.
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh! He is the man. There recurs to my mind Duveyrier's
tragic phrase, "At the very moment the Colonel was putting his foot in
the stirrup he was felled by a sabre blow."[2] Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh!
There he is, peacefully smoking his cigarette, a cigarette from the
package that I gave him.... May the Lord forgive me for it.
[Footnote 2: H. Duveyrier, "The Disaster of the Flatters Mission."
Bull. Geol. Soc., 1881.]
The lamp casts a yellow light on the paper. Strange fate, which, I
never knew exactly why, decided one day when I was a lad of sixteen
that I should prepare myself for Saint Cyr, and gave me there André de
Saint-Avit as classmate. I might have studied law or medicine. Then I
should be today a respectable inhabitant of a town with a church and
running water, instead of this cotton-clad phantom, brooding with an
unspeakable anxiety over this desert which is about to swallow me.
A great insect has flown in through the window. It buzzes, strikes
against the rough cast, rebounds against the globe of the lamp, and
then, helpless, its wings singed by the still burning candle, drops on
the white paper.
It is an African May bug, big, black, with spots of livid gray.
I think of others, its brothers in France, the golden-brown May bugs,
which I have seen on stormy summer evenings projecting themselves like
little particles of the soil of my native countryside. It was there
that as a child I spent my vacations, and later on, my leaves. On my
last leave, through those same meadows, there wandered beside me a
slight form, wearing a thin scarf, because of the evening air, so cool
back there. But now this memory stirs me so slightly that I scarcely
raise my eyes to that dark corner of my room where the light is dimly
reflected by the glass of an indistinct portrait. I realize of how
little consequence has become what had seemed at one time capable of
filling all my life. This plaintive mystery is of no more interest to
me. If the strolling singers of Rolla came to murmur their famous
nostalgic airs under the window of this bordj I know that I should not
listen to them, and if they became insistent I should send them on
their way.
What has been capable of causing this metamorphosis in me? A story, a
legend, perhaps, told, at any rate by one on whom rests the direst of
suspicions.
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh has finished his cigarette. I hear him returning
with slow steps to his mat, in barrack B, to the left of the guard
post.
Our departure being scheduled for the tenth of November, the
manuscript attached to this letter was begun on Sunday, the first, and
finished on Thursday, the fifth of November, 1903.
OLIVIER FERRIÈRES, Lt. 3rd Spahis.
I