With a blow of the tip of his cane Morhange knocked a fragment of rock
from the black flank of the mountain.
"What is it?" he asked, holding it out to me.
"A basaltic peridot," I said.
"It can't be very interesting, you barely glanced at it."
"It is very interesting, on the contrary. But, for the moment, I admit
that I am otherwise preoccupied."
"How?"
"Look this way a bit," I said, showing towards the west, on the
horizon, a black spot across the white plain.
It was six o'clock in the morning. The sun had risen. But it could not
be found in the surprisingly polished air. And not a breath of air,
not a breath. Suddenly one of the camels called. An enormous antelope
had just come in sight, and had stopped in its flight, terrified,
racing the wall of rock. It stayed there at a little distance from us,
dazed, trembling on its slender legs.
Bou-Djema had rejoined us.
"When the legs of the mohor tremble it is because the firmament is
shaken," he muttered.
"A storm?"
"Yes, a storm."
"And you find that alarming?"
I did not answer immediately. I was exchanging several brief words
with Bou-Djema, who was occupied in soothing the camels which were
giving signs of being restive.
Morhange repeated his question. I shrugged my shoulders.
"Alarming? I don't know. I have never seen a storm on the Hoggar. But
I distrust it. And the signs are that this is going to be a big one.
See there already."
A slight dust had risen before the cliff. In the still air a few
grains of sand had begun to whirl round and round, with a speed which
increased to dizziness, giving us in advance the spectacle in
miniature of what would soon be breaking upon us.
With harsh cries a flock of wild geese appeared, flying low. They came
out of the west.
"They are fleeing towards the Sebkha d'Amanghor," said Bou-Djema.
There could be no greater mistake, I thought.
Morhange looked at me curiously.
"What must we do?" he asked.
"Mount our camels immediately, before they are completely
demoralized, and hurry to find shelter in some high places. Take
account of our situation. It is easy to follow the bed of a stream.
But within a quarter of an hour perhaps the storm will have burst.
Within a half hour a perfect torrent will be rushing here. On this
soil, which is almost impermeable, rain will roll like a pail of water
thrown on a bituminous pavement. No depth, all height. Look at this."
And I showed him, a dozen meters high, long hollow gouges, marks of
former erosions on the rocky wall.
"In an hour the waters will reach that height. Those are the marks of
the last inundation. Let us get started. There is not an instant to
lose."
"All right," Morhange replied tranquilly.
We had the greatest difficulty to make the camels kneel. When we had
thrown ourselves into the saddle they started off at a pace which
their terror rendered more and more disorderly.
Of a sudden the wind began, a formidable wind, and, almost at the same
time the light was eclipsed in the ravine. Above our heads the sky had
become, in the flash of an eye, darker than the walls of the canyon
which we were descending at a breathless pace.
"A path, a stairway in the wall," I screamed against the wind to my
companions. "If we don't find one in a minute we are lost."
They did not hear me, but, turning in my saddle, I saw that they had
lost no distance, Morhange following me, and Bou-Djema in the rear
driving the two baggage camels masterfully before him.
A blinding streak of lightning rent the obscurity. A peal of thunder,
re-echoed to infinity by the rocky wall, rang out, and immediately
great tepid drops began to fall. In an instant, our burnouses, which
had been blown out behind by the speed with which we were traveling,
were stuck tight to our streaming bodies.
"Saved!" I exclaimed suddenly.
Abruptly on our right a crevice opened in the midst of the wall. It
was the almost perpendicular bed of a stream, an affluent of the one
we had had the unfortunate idea of following that morning. Already a
veritable torrent was gushing over it with a fine uproar.
I have never better appreciated the incomparable sure-footedness of
camels in the most precipitate places. Bracing themselves, stretching
out their great legs, balancing themselves among the rocks that were
beginning to be swept loose, our camels accomplished at that moment
what the mules of the Pyrannees might have failed in.
After several moments of superhuman effort we found ourselves at last
out of danger, on a kind of basaltic terrace, elevated some fifty
meters above the channel of the stream we had just left. Luck was with
us; a little grotto opened out behind. Bou-Djema succeeded in
sheltering the camels there. From its threshold we had leisure to
contemplate in silence the prodigious spectacle spread out before us.
You have, I believe, been at the Camp of Chalons for artillery drills.
You have seen when the shell bursts how the chalky soil of the Marne
effervesces like the inkwells at school, when we used to throw a piece
of calcium carbonate into them. Well, it was almost like that, but in
the midst of the desert, in the midst of obscurity. The white waters
rushed into the depths of the black hole, and rose and rose towards
the pedestal on which we stood. And there was the uninterrupted noise
of thunder, and still louder, the sound of whole walls of rock,
undermined by the flood, collapsing in a heap and dissolving in a few
seconds of time in the midst of the rising water.
All the time that this deluge lasted, one hour, perhaps two, Morhange
and I stayed bending over this fantastic foaming vat; anxious to see,
to see everything, to see in spite of everything; rejoicing with a
kind of ineffable horror when we felt the shelf of basalt on which we
had taken refuge swaying beneath us from the battering impact of the
water. I believe that never for an instant did we think, so beautiful
it was, of wishing for the end of that gigantic nightmare.
Finally a ray of the sun shone through. Only then did we look at each
other.
Morhange held out his hand.
"Thank you," he said simply.
And he added with a smile:
"To be drowned in the very middle of the Sahara would have been
pretentious and ridiculous. You have saved us, thanks to your power of
decision, from this very paradoxical end."
Ah, that he had been thrown by a misstep of his camel and rolled to
his death in the midst of the flood! Then what followed would never
have happened. That is the thought that comes to me in hours of
weakness. But I have told you that I pull myself out of it quickly.
No, no, I do not regret it, I cannot regret it, that what happened did
happen.
* * * * *
Morhange left me to go into the little grotto, where Bou-Djema's
camels were now resting comfortably. I stayed alone, watching the
torrent which was continuously rising with the impetuous inrush of its
unbridled tributaries. It had stopped raining. The sun shone from a
sky that had renewed its blueness. I could feel the clothes that had a
moment before been drenching, drying upon me incredibly fast.
A hand was placed on my shoulder. Morhange was again beside me.
"Come here," he said.
Somewhat surprised, I followed him. We went into the grotto.
The opening, which was big enough to admit the camels, made it fairly
light. Morhange led me up to the smooth face of rock opposite. "Look,"
he said, with unconcealed joy.
"What of it?"
"Don't you see?"
"I see that there are several Tuareg inscriptions," I answered, with
some disappointment. "But I thought I had told you that I read Tifinar
writing very badly. Are these writings more interesting than the
others we have come upon before?"
"Look at this one," said Morhange. There was such an accent of triumph
in his tone that this time I concentrated my attention.