"Listen," she said.
At first I heard nothing. Then a very slight noise, a dry rustling
behind us.
"Stop the camel," Tanit-Zerga commanded. "It is not worth while to
make him kneel."
A little gray creature bounded on the camel. The mehari set out again
at his best speed.
"Let him go," said Tanit-Zerga. "Galé has jumped on."
I felt a tuft of bristly hair under my arm. The mongoose had followed
our footsteps and rejoined us. I heard the quick panting of the brave
little creature becoming gradually slower and slower.
"I am happy," murmured Tanit-Zerga.
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh had not been mistaken. We reached the _gour_ as the
sun rose. I looked back. The Atakor was nothing more than a monstrous
chaos amid the night mists which trailed the dawn. It was no longer
possible to pick out from among the nameless peaks, the one on which
Antinea was still weaving her passionate plots.
You know what the Tanezruft is, the "plain of plains," abandoned,
uninhabitable, the country of hunger and thirst. We were then starting
on the part of the desert which Duveyrier calls the Tassili of the
south, and which figures on the maps of the Minister of Public Works
under this attractive title: "Rocky plateau, without water, without
vegetation, inhospitable for man and beast."
Nothing, unless parts of the Kalahari, is more frightful than this
rocky desert. Oh, Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh did not exaggerate in saying that
no one would dream of following us into that country.
Great patches of oblivion still refused to clear away. Memories chased
each other incoherently about my head. A sentence came back to me
textually: "It seemed to Dick that he had never, since the beginning
of original darkness, done anything at all save jolt through the air."
I gave a little laugh. "In the last few hours," I thought, "I have
been heaping up literary situations. A while ago, a hundred feet above
the ground, I was Fabrice of _La Chartreuse de Parme_ beside his
Italian dungeon. Now, here on my camel, I am Dick of _The Light That
Failed_, crossing the desert to meet his companions in arms." I
chuckled again; then shuddered. I thought of the preceding night, of
the Orestes of _Andromaque_ who agreed to sacrifice Pyrrhus. A
literary situation indeed....
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh had reckoned eight days to get to the wooded
country of the Awellimiden, forerunners of the grassy steppes of the
Soudan. He knew well the worth of his beast. Tanit-Zerga had suddenly
given him a name, _El Mellen_, the white one, for the magnificent
mehari had an almost spotless coat. Once he went two days without
eating, merely picking up here and there a branch of an acacia tree
whose hideous white spines, four inches long, filled me with fear for
our friend's oesophagus. The wells marked out by Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh
were indeed at the indicated spots, but we found nothing in them but a
burning yellow mud. It was enough for the camel, enough so that at the
end of the fifth day, thanks to prodigious self-control, we had used
up only one of our two water skins. Then we believed ourselves safe.
Near one of these muddy puddles, I succeeded that day in shooting down
a little straight-horned desert gazelle. Tanit-Zerga skinned the beast
and we regaled ourselves with a delicious haunch. Meantime, little
Galé, who never ceased prying about the cracks in the rocks during our
mid-day halts in the heat, discovered an _ourane_, a sand crocodile,
five feet long, and made short work of breaking his neck. She ate so
much she could not budge. It cost us a pint of water to help her
digestion. We gave it with good grace, for we were happy. Tanit-Zerga
did not say so, but her joy at knowing that I was thinking no more of
the woman in the gold diadem and the emeralds was apparent. And
really, during those days, I hardly thought of her. I thought only of
the torrid heat to be avoided, of the water skins which, if you wished
to drink fresh water, had to be left for an hour in a cleft in the
rocks; of the intense joy which seized you when you raised to your
lips a leather goblet brimming with that life-saving water.... I can
say this with authority, with good authority, indeed; passion,
spiritual or physical, is a thing for those who have eaten and drunk
and rested.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon. The frightful heat was
slackening. We had left a kind of rocky crevice where we had had a
little nap. Seated on a huge rock, we were watching the reddening
west.
I spread out the roll of paper on which Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh had marked
the stages of our journey as far as the road from the Soudan. I
realized again with joy that his itinerary was exact and that I had
followed it scrupulously.
"The evening of the day after to-morrow," I said, "we shall be setting
out on the stage which will take us, by the next dawn, to the waters
at Telemsi. Once there, we shall not have to worry any more about
water."
Tanit-Zerga's eyes danced in her thin face.
"And Gâo?" she asked.
"We will be only a week from the Niger. And Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh said
that at Telemsi, one reached a road overhung with mimosa."
"I know the mimosa," she said. "They are the little yellow balls that
melt in your hand. But I like the caper flowers better. You will come
with me to Gâo. My father, Sonni-Azkia, was killed, as I told you, by
the Awellimiden. But my people must have rebuilt the villages. They
are used to that. You will see how you will be received."
"I will go, Tanit-Zerga, I promise you. But you also, you must promise
me...."
"What? Oh, I guess. You must take me for a little fool if you believe
me capable of speaking of things which might make trouble for my
friend."
She looked at me as she spoke. Privation and great fatigue had
chiselled the brown face where her great eyes shone.... Since then, I
have had time to assemble the maps and compasses, and to fix forever
the spot where, for the first time, I understood the beauty of
Tanit-Zerga's eyes.
There was a deep silence between us. It was she who broke it.
"Night is coming. We must eat so as to leave as soon as possible."
She stood up and went toward the rocks.
Almost immediately, I heard her calling in an anguished voice that
sent a chill through me.
"Come! Oh, come see!"
With a bound, I was at her side.
"The camel," she murmured. "The camel!"