by Anthology
I am not going to tell you about the second march. It was more horrible than anything you can imagine. I suffered all that it is humanly possible to suffer in the desert. But already I began to observe with infinite pity that my man's strength was outlasting the nervous force of my little companion. The poor child walked on without saying a word, chewing feebly one corner of her haik which she had drawn over her face. Galé followed.
The well toward which we were dragging ourselves was indicated on Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh's paper by the one word Tissaririn. Tissaririn is the plural of Tissarirt and means "two isolated trees."
Day was dawning when finally I saw the two trees, two gum trees. Hardly a league separated us from them. I gave a cry of joy.
"Courage, Tanit-Zerga, there is the well."
She drew her veil aside and I saw the poor anguished little face.
"So much the better," she murmured, "because otherwise…."
She could not even finish the sentence.
We finished the last half mile almost at a run. We already saw the hole, the opening of the well.
Finally we reached it.
It was empty.
It is a strange sensation to be dying of thirst. At first the suffering is terrible. Then, gradually, it becomes less. You become partly unconscious. Ridiculous little things about your life occur to you, fly about you like mosquitoes. I began to remember my history composition for the entrance examination of Saint-Cyr, "The Campaign of Marengo." Obstinately I repeated to myself, "I have already said that the battery unmasked by Marmont at the moment of Kellerman's charge included eighteen pieces…. No, I remember now, it was only twelve pieces. I am sure it was twelve pieces."
I kept on repeating:
"Twelve pieces."
Then I fell into a sort of coma.
I was recalled from it by feeling a red-hot iron on my forehead. I opened my eyes. Tanit-Zerga was bending over me. It was her hand which burnt so.
"Get up," she said. "We must go on."
"Go on, Tanit-Zerga! The desert is on fire. The sun is at the zenith. It is noon."
"We must go on," she repeated.
Then I saw that she was delirious.
She was standing erect. Her haik had fallen to the ground and little Galé, rolled up in a ball, was asleep on it.
Bareheaded, indifferent to the frightful sunlight, she kept repeating:
"We must go on."
A little sense came back to me.
"Cover your head, Tanit-Zerga, cover your head."
"Come," she repeated. "Let's go. Gâo is over there, not far away. I can feel it. I want to see Gâo again."
I made her sit down beside me in the shadow of a rock. I realized that all strength had left her. The wave of pity that swept over me, brought back my senses.
"Gâo is just over there, isn't it?" she asked.
Her gleaming eyes became imploring.
"Yes, dear little girl. Gâo is there. But for God's sake lie down. The sun is fearful."
"Oh, Gâo, Gâo!" she repeated. "I know very well that I shall see Gâo again."
She sat up. Her fiery little hands gripped mine.
"Listen. I must tell you so you can understand how I know I shall see Gâo again."
"Tanit-Zerga, be quiet, my little girl, be quiet."
"No, I must tell you. A long time ago, on the bank of the river where there is water, at Gâo, where my father was a prince, there was…. Well, one day, one feast day, there came from the interior of the country an old magician, dressed in skins and feathers, with a mask and a pointed head-dress, with castanets, and two serpents in a bag. On the village square, where all our people formed in a circle, he danced the boussadilla. I was in the first row, and because I had a necklace of pink tourmaline, he quickly saw that I was the daughter of a chief. So he spoke to me of the past, of the great Mandingue Empire over which my grandfathers had ruled, of our enemies, the fierce Kountas, of everything, and finally he said:
"'Have no fear, little girl.'
"Then he said again, 'Do not be afraid. Evil days may be in store for you, but what does that matter? For one day you will see Gâo gleaming on the horizon, no longer a servile Gâo reduced to the rank of a little Negro town, but the splendid Gâo of other days, the great capital of the country of the blacks, Gâo reborn, with its mosque of seven towers and fourteen cupolas of turquoise, with its houses with cool courts, its fountains, its watered gardens, all blooming with great red and white flowers…. That will be for you the hour of deliverance and of royalty.'"
Tanit-Zerga was standing up. All about us, on our heads, the sun blazed on the hamada, burning it white.
Suddenly the child stretched out her arms. She gave a terrible cry.
"Gâo! There is Gâo!"
I looked at her.
"Gâo," she repeated. "Oh, I know it well! There are the trees and the fountains, the cupolas and the towers, the palm trees, the great red and white flowers. Gâo…."
Indeed, along the shimmering horizon rose a fantastic city with mighty buildings that towered, tier on tier, until they formed a rainbow. Wide-eyed, we stood and watched the terrible mirage quiver feverishly before us.
"Gâo!" I cried. "Gâo!"
And almost immediately I uttered another cry, of sorrow and of horror. Tanit-Zerga's little hand relaxed in mine. I had just time to catch the child in my arms and hear her murmur as in a whisper:
"And then that will be the day of deliverance. The day of deliverance and of royalty."
Several hours later I took the knife with which we had skinned the desert gazelle and, in the sand at the foot of the rock where Tanit-Zerga had given up her spirit, I made a little hollow where she was to rest.
When everything was ready, I wanted to look once more at that dear little face. Courage failed me for a moment…. Then I quickly drew the haik over the brown face and laid the body of the child in the hollow.
I had reckoned without Galé.
The eyes of the mongoose had not left me during the whole time that I was about my sad duty. When she heard the first handfuls of sand fall on the haik, she gave a sharp cry. I looked at her and saw her ready to spring, her eyes daring fire.
"Galé!" I implored; and I tried to stroke her.
She bit my hand and then leapt into the grave and began to dig, throwing the sand furiously aside.
I tried three times to chase her away. I felt that I should never finish my task and that, even if I did, Galé would stay there and disinter the body.
My carbine lay at my feet. A shot drew echoes from the immense empty desert. A moment later, Galé also slept her last sleep, curled up, as I so often had seen her, against the neck of her mistress.
When the surface showed nothing more than a little mound of trampled sand, I rose staggering and started off aimlessly into the desert, toward the south.
XX
THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETE
At the foot of the valley of the Mia, at the place where the jackal had cried the night Saint-Avit told me he had killed Morhange, another jackal, or perhaps the same one, howled again.
Immediately I had a feeling that this night would see the irremediable fulfilled.
We were seated that evening, as before, on the poor veranda improvised outside our dining-room. The floor was of plaster, the balustrade of twisted branches; four posts supported a thatched roof.
I have already said that from the veranda one could look far out over the desert. As he finished speaking, Saint-Avit rose and stood leaning his elbows on the railing. I followed him.
"And then…." I said.
He looked at me.
"And then what? Surely you know what all the newspapers told—how, in the country of the Awellimiden, I was found dying of hunger and thirst by an expedition under the command of Captain Aymard, and taken to Timbuctoo. I was delirious for a month afterward. I have never known what I may have said during those spells of burning fever. You may be sure the officers of the Timbuctoo Club did not feel it incumbent upon th
em to tell me. When I told them of my adventures, as they are related in the report of the Morhange—Saint-Avit Expedition, I could see well enough from the cold politeness with which they received my explanations, that the official version which I gave them differed at certain points from the fragments which had escaped me in my delirium.
"They did not press the matter. It remains understood that Captain Morhange died from a sunstroke and that I buried him on the border of the Tarhit watercourse, three marches from Timissao. Everybody can detect that there are things missing in my story. Doubtless they guess at some mysterious drama. But proofs are another matter. Because of the impossibility of collecting them, they prefer to smother what could only become a silly scandal. But now you know all the details as well as I."
"And—she?" I asked timidly.
He smiled triumphantly. It was triumph at having led me to think no longer of Morhange, or of his crime, the triumph of feeling that he had succeeded in imbuing me with his own madness.
"Yes," he said. "She! For six years I have learned nothing more about her. But I see her, I talk with her. I am thinking now how I shall reenter her presence. I shall throw myself at her feet and say simply, 'Forgive me. I rebelled against your law. I did not know. But now I know; and you see that, like Lieutenant Ghiberti, I have come back.'
"'Family, honor, country,' said old Le Mesge, 'you will forget all for her.' Old Le Mesge is a stupid man, but he speaks from experience. He knows, he who has seen broken before Antinea the wills of the fifty ghosts in the red marble hall.
"And now, will you, in your turn, ask me 'What is this woman?' Do I know myself? And besides, what difference does it make? What does her past and the mystery of her origin matter to me; what does it matter whether she is the true descendant of the god of the sea and the sublime Lagides or the bastard of a Polish drunkard and a harlot of the Marbeuf quarter?
"At the time when I was foolish enough to be jealous of Morhange, these questions might have made some difference to the ridiculous self-esteem that civilized people mix up with passion. But I have held Antinea's body in my arms. I no longer wish to know any other, nor if the fields are in blossom, nor what will become of the human spirit….
"I do not wish to know. Or, rather, it is because I have too exact a vision of that future, that I pretend to destroy myself in the only destiny that is worth while: a nature unfathomed and virgin, a mysterious love.
"A nature unfathomed and virgin. I must explain myself. One winter day, in a large city all streaked with the soot that falls from black chimneys of factories and of those horrible houses in the suburbs, I attended a funeral.
"We followed the hearse in the mud. The church was new, damp and poor. Aside from two or three people, relatives struck down by a dull sorrow, everyone had just one idea: to find some pretext to get away. Those who went as far as the cemetery were those who did not find an excuse. I see the gray walls and the cypresses, those trees of sun and shade, so beautiful in the country of southern France against the low purple hills. I see the horrible undertaker's men in greasy jackets and shiny top hats. I see…. No, I'll stop; it's too horrible.
"Near the wall, in a remote plot, a grave had been dug in frightful yellow pebbly clay. It was there that they left the dead man whose name I no longer remember.
"While they were lowering the casket, I looked at my hands, those hands which in that strangely lighted country had pressed the hands of Antinea. A great pity for my body seized me, a great fear of what threatened it in these cities of mud. 'So,' I said to myself, 'it may be that this body, this dear body, will come to such an end! No, no, my body, precious above all other treasures, I swear to you that I will spare you that ignominy; you shall not rot under a registered number in the filth of a suburban cemetery. Your brothers in love, the fifty knights of orichalch, await you, mute and grave, in the red marble hall. I shall take you back to them.'
"A mysterious love. Shame to him who retails the secrets of his loves. The Sahara lays its impassable barrier about Antinea; that is why the most unreasonable requirements of this woman are, in reality, more modest and chaste than your marriage will be, with its vulgar public show, the bans, the invitations, the announcements telling an evil-minded and joking people that after such and such an hour, on such and such a day, you will have the right to violate your little tupenny virgin.
"I think that is all I have to tell you. No, there is still one thing more. I told you a while ago about the red marble hall. South of Cherchell, to the west of the Mazafran river, on a hill which in the early morning, emerges from the mists of the Mitidja, there is a mysterious stone pyramid. The natives call it, 'The Tomb of the Christian.' That is where the body of Antinea's ancestress, that Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, was laid to rest. Though it is placed in the path of invasions, this tomb has kept its treasure. No one has ever been able to discover the painted room where the beautiful body reposes in a glass casket. All that the ancestress has been able to do, the descendant will be able to surpass in grim magnificence. In the center of the red marble hall, on the rock whence comes the plaint of the gloomy fountain, a platform is reserved. It is there, on an orichalch throne, with the Egyptian head-dress and the golden serpent on her brow and the trident of Neptune in her hand, that the marvelous woman I have told you about will be ensconced on that day when the hundred and twenty niches, hollowed out in a circle around her throne, shall each have received its willing prey.
"When I left Ahaggar, you remember that it was niche number 55 that was to be mine. Since then, I have never stopped calculating and I conclude that it is in number 80 or 85 that I shall repose. But any calculations based upon so fragile a foundation as a woman's whim may be erroneous. That is why I am getting more and more nervous. 'I must hurry,' I tell myself. 'I must hurry.'
"I must hurry," I repeated, as if I were in a dream.
He raised his head with an indefinable expression of joy. His hand trembled with happiness when he shook mine.
"You will see," he repeated excitedly, "you will see."
Ecstatically, he took me in his arms and held me there a long moment.
An extraordinary happiness swept over both of us, while, alternately laughing and crying like children, we kept repeating:
"We must hurry. We must hurry."
Suddenly there sprang up a slight breeze that made the tufts of thatch in the roof rustle. The sky, pale lilac, grew paler still, and, suddenly, a great yellow rent tore it in the east. Dawn broke over the empty desert. From within the stockade came dull noises, a bugle call, the rattle of chains. The post was waking up.
For several seconds we stood there silent, our eyes fixed on the southern route by which one reaches Temassinin, Eguéré and Ahaggar.
A rap on the dining-room door behind us made us start.
"Come in," said André de Saint-Avit in a voice which had become suddenly hard.
The Quartermaster, Chatelain, stood before us.
"What do you want of me at this hour?" Saint-Avit asked brusquely.
The non-com stood at attention.
"Excuse me, Captain. But a native was discovered near the post, last night, by the patrol. He was not trying to hide. As soon as he had been brought here, he asked to be led before the commanding officer. It was midnight and I didn't want to disturb you."
"Who is this native?"
"A Targa, Captain."
"A Targa? Go get him."
Chatelain stepped aside. Escorted by one of our native soldiers, the man stood behind him.
They came out on the terrace.
The new arrival, six feet tall, was indeed a Targa. The light of dawn fell upon his blue-black cotton robes. One could see his great dark eyes flashing.
When he was opposite my companion, I saw a tremor, immediately suppressed, run through both men.
They looked at each other for an instant in silence.
Then, bowing, and in a very calm voice, the Targa spoke:
"Peace be with you, Li
eutenant de Saint-Avit."
In the same calm voice, André answered him:
"Peace be with you, Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh."
* * *
Contents
THE COMING RACE
by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Chapter I.
I am a native of ____, in the United States of America. My ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.; and my grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of Independence. My family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified for the public service. My father once ran for Congress, but was signally defeated by his tailor. After that event he interfered little in politics, and lived much in his library. I was the eldest of three sons, and sent at the age of sixteen to the old country, partly to complete my literary education, partly to commence my commercial training in a mercantile firm at Liverpool. My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.
In the year 18, happening to be in ___, I was invited by a professional engineer, with whom I had made acquaintance, to visit the recesses of the _______ mine, upon which he was employed.
The reader will understand, ere he close this narrative, my reason for concealing all clue to the district of which I write, and will perhaps thank me for refraining from any description that may tend to its discovery.
Let me say, then, as briefly as possible, that I accompanied the engineer into the interior of the mine, and became so strangely fascinated by its gloomy wonders, and so interested in my friend's explorations, that I prolonged my stay in the neighbourhood, and descended daily, for some weeks, into the vaults and galleries hollowed by nature and art beneath the surface of the earth. The engineer was persuaded that far richer deposits of mineral wealth than had yet been detected, would be found in a new shaft that had been commenced under his operations. In piercing this shaft we came one day upon a chasm jagged and seemingly charred at the sides, as if burst asunder at some distant period by volcanic fires. Down this chasm my friend caused himself to be lowered in a 'cage,' having first tested the atmosphere by the safety-lamp. He remained nearly an hour in the abyss. When he returned he was very pale, and with an anxious, thoughtful expression of face, very different from its ordinary character, which was open, cheerful, and fearless.