"When a woman has seen the guest she no longer cares for the master."
An old hunter had told him this proverb, a lame, one-eyed man, an
outcast from his tribe, or very nearly, whose wife was so old that
Owen's presence afforded him no cause for jealousy, a friend of the
hunter who owned the eagles, so Owen discovered, but not until the
end of a week's acquaintance, which was strange, for he had seen a
great deal of this man in the last few days. The explanation he gave
one night in the café where Owen went to talk and drink with the
Spahis; coming in suddenly, and taking Owen away into a corner, he
explained that he had not told him before that his friend Tahar, he
who owned the eagles, had gone away to live in another oasis,
because it had not occurred to him that Owen was seeking Tahar,
fancying somehow that it was another--as if there were hundreds of
people in the Sahara who hunted gazelles with eagles!
"_Grand Dieu_!" and Owen turned to his own dragoman, who happened to
be present. "_A-t-on jamais!_... _Ici depuis trois semaines!_"
The dragoman, who expected an outburst, reminded Owen of the progress
he had made in Arabic, and of the storms of the last three weeks,
the rain and wind which had made travelling in the desert
impossible, and when Owen spoke of starting on the morrow the
dragoman shook his head, and the wind in the street convinced Owen
that he must remain where he was.
"_Mais si j'avais su_--"
The dragoman pointed out to him the terrible weather they had
experienced, and how glad he had been to find shelter in Laghouat.
"_Oui, Sidna, vous êtes maintenant au comble de regrets, mats pour
rien au monde vous n'auriez fait ces étapes vers le sud_."
Owen felt that the man was right, though he would not admit it; the
camels themselves could hardly have been persuaded to undertake
another day's march; his horse--well, the vultures might have been
tearing him if he had persevered, so instead of going off in one of
his squibby little rages, which would have made him ridiculous, Owen
suddenly grew sad and invited the hunter to drink with him, and it
was arranged that as soon as the wind dropped the quest for Tahar
should be pursued.
He would be found in an oasis not more than two days' journey from
Laghouat, so the hunter said, but the dragoman's opinion was that
the old hunter was not very sure; Tahar would be found there, and if
he were not there he was for certain in another oasis three or four
days still farther south.
"But I cannot travel all over the Sahara in search of eagles."
"If _Sidna_ would like to return to Tunis?"
But to return to Tunis would mean returning to England, and Owen felt
that his business in the desert was not yet completed; as well
travel from one oasis to another in quest of eagles as anything
else, and three days afterwards he rode at the head of his caravan,
anxious to reach Ain Mahdy, trying to believe he had grown
interested in the Arab, and would like to see him living under the
rule of his own chief, even though the chief was, to a certain
extent, responsible to the French Government; still, to all intents
and purposes he would be a free Arab. Yes, and Owen thought he would
like to see a Kaid; and wondering what his reception would be like,
he rode through the desert thinking of the Kaid, his eyes fixed on
the great horizons which had re-appeared, having been lost for many
days in mist and rain.
An exquisite silence vibrated through the great spaces, music for
harps rather than for violins, and Owen rode on, reaching the oasis,
as he had been told he would, at the end of the second day's
journey. When he arrived the Kaid was engaged in administering
justice, and Owen was forced _de faire un peu l'anti-chambre_; but
this was not disagreeable to him. The Arab court-house seemed to him
an excellent place for a lesson in the language; and the case the
Kaid was deciding was to his taste. A man was suing for divorce, and
for reasons which would have astonished Englishmen, and cause the
plaintiff to be hurled out of civilised society; but in the Sahara
the case did not strike anybody as unnatural; and Owen listened to
the woman telling her misfortunes under a veil. But though deeply
interested he was forced to leave the building; the flies plagued
him unendurably, and presently he found the flies had odious
auxiliaries in the carpet, and after explaining his torture to the
dragoman, who was not suffering at all, he left the building and
walked in the street.
Half an hour after the Kaid came forward to meet him with a little
black sheep in his arms, struggling, frightened at finding itself
captured, bleating painfully. The wool was separated, and Owen was
invited to feel this living flesh, which in a few hours he would be
eating; it would have been impolite to the Kaid to refuse to feel
the sheep's ribs, so Owen complied, though he knew that doing so
would prevent him from enjoying his dinner, and he was very hungry
at the time. The sheep's eyes haunted him all through the meal, and
his pleasure was still further discounted by the news that though
the eagles were at Ain Mahdy, the owner having left them--
"Having left them," Owen repeated. "Good God! I was told he was
here."
"He left here three days ago."
Owen cursed his friend in Laghouat. If he had only told him in the
beginning of the week! The dragoman answered:
"_Sidna, vous vous en souvenez_"
"Speak to me in Arabic, damn you! There is nothing to do here but to
learn Arabic."
"Quite true, _Sidna_, we shall not be able to start to-morrow; the
rains are beginning again."
"Was there ever such luck as mine, to come to the desert, where it
never rains, and to find nothing but rain?"--rain which Owen had
never seen equalled except once in Connemara, where he had gone to
fish, and it annoyed him to hear that these torrential rains only
happened once every three or four years in the Sahara. He was too
annoyed to answer his dragoman.... _Enfin_, Tahar had left his
eagles at Ain Mahdy, and Owen fed them morning and evening, gorging
them with food, not knowing that one of the great difficulties is to
procure in the trained eagle sufficient hunger to induce him to
pursue the quarry. It was an accident that some friend of Tahar's
surprised Owen feeding the eagles and warned him.
"These eagles will not be able to hunt for weeks now."
Owen cursed himself and the universe, Allah and the God of Israel,
Christ and the prophets.
"But, _Sidna_, their hunger can be excited by a drug, and this drug
is Tahar's secret."
"Then to-morrow we start, though there be sand storms or rain storms,
whatever the weather may be."
The dragoman condoned Owen's mistake in feeding the eagles.
"The gazelles come down from the mountains after the rains; we shall
catch sight of some on our way."