movingfrom the great Hammada, or stony tableland, in Tripoli, we advanced tothe oasis of Medagin, two days' march from El Aghouat, then held in suchforce by the French that we dared not attack it.
Reaching Medagin at noon, we encamped. When the stars shone bothGabrielle and De Freyville sang us some French _chansons_, the oneaccompanying the other upon the mandoline. Before we scooped out ourhollows in the sand to form our couches I borrowed a gun from one of theArabs, intending to go out at dawn to shoot some desert-partridges inwhich the oasis abounds. Ere day broke I rose, and leaving the wholecamp in slumber, strolled away to a rocky spot I had on the previous daynoted as a likely place to find the birds. It was on the edge of theoasis, at some distance from the well where we had encamped. When Iarrived there the sun had not risen, and the birds were still roosting.Therefore, with my rifle loaded with a bullet (for I had no small shot),I sat down to wait.
For perhaps half-an-hour I had remained when my quick ear detected thesounds of horses' hoofs. Believing the newcomer to be a French vedetteI drew back behind a large boulder, with the barrel of my rifle placedupon the top of the rock in readiness to pick him off as he passed. Oncame the horseman, until suddenly he emerged from among the mimosas andeuphorbias. An ejaculation of dismay involuntarily left my lips. Therewas not one horse, but two. The riders were fugitives. They were ourprisoner-of-war, Lieutenant de Freyville, and Gabrielle Bonnemain, thewoman I loved.
Mounted upon horses they had secured, they spurred forward together atheadlong speed. Their way on to the desert lay down a narrow stonyravine, to traverse which they would be compelled to pass close by thespot where I was lying in ambush. On they came swiftly, without a word.Inwardly I gloated over my revenge.
This man was stealing from me the woman I loved dearer than life. Andshe--she had declared that she loved me! Yet her words were foul lies.She should die!
I fingered the trigger, and held my gun to my shoulder in readiness asthe pair pressed forward, unconscious of their approaching doom. Ifever the spirit of murder entered my soul, it was at that moment.
When within a leopard's leap of the muzzle of my rifle she turned backtowards her companion, uttered some gay words to him, threw back herhead and laughed lightly, displaying her white teeth.
I raised my rifle and took deliberate aim at her panting breast. Myhands trembled. Next second a flood of bitter recollections surgedthrough my brain. I remembered those solemn words she had uttered: "Weare of different races; different creeds. What is right in thine eyesis sin in mine; what is worship to thee is, to me, idolatry. It is thevery fact that we love one another that should cause us to part andforget."
Yes, my enchantress had spoken the truth.
My hands were nerveless. I dropped my gun, the weapon with which I hadso nearly taken her young life, and through a mist of gathering tearswatched her ride rapidly away beside her newly-discovered lover, anddisappear over the dune towards El Aghouat.
When she had gone, my head sank upon my breast and my teeth were set,for full well I knew that never again could I love any woman as truly asI had loved her. My pole-star, the light of my life, had for ever beenextinguished.
CHAPTER THREE.
THE SECRET OF SA.
Through the very heart of the barren, naked Saharan country, thatboundless sea of red-brown arid sands, which, like the ocean itself, issubject to fitful moods of calm and storm, there runs a deep rockyravine which has ever been a mystery to geographers. It commences nearthe shore of Lake Tsad, and extending for nearly eight hundred miles duenorth to Lake Melghir, is known as the Igharghar, and is the dried-upbed of a river, which, with its tributaries, once rendered this barewilderness one of the most fertile spots on earth, but which, forupwards of two thousand years, has ceased to flow. Strangely enough,the country traversed by this great stony ravine is to-day the most aridand inhospitable in the world. The river, which, according to thelegendary stories told in the market-places of the desert towns, musthave been as mighty as the Nile, dried-up suddenly from some cause whichhas always puzzled geographers. A portion of its course, about twohundred miles, half filled with sand, has for ages been used as thecaravan route between the city of Agades, the capital of the Aircountry, and Temasinin, at the foot of the Tinghert Plateau; but theremainder is of such a rocky character as to be impassable, and has onmany occasions served us as ambush when fighting the Ouled Slimanmarauders, our hereditary foes.
On one of these expeditions we were encamped in the shadow of some greatrocks, which had once been covered by the giant flood. Around us onevery hand was the sandy, waterless waste, known by the ominous name of_Ur-immandess_, "He (Allah) heareth not," that is, is deaf to the cry ofthe way-laid traveller. It is a dismal tract, one of the most hot andarid in the whole of Northern Africa. The poison-wind blows almostcontinually, and the general appearance of the sand dunes is alteredalmost hour by hour. We were six days' march off an interesting littlewalled town I had once visited, called Azaka 'n Ahkar, where stands thecurious tomb of a chieftain who fell during the Arab invasion over athousand years ago, and to the west, within sight, was the low dark hillknown to us as Mount Hikena, a spot feared universally throughout thedesert as the abode of the jinns.
Already had we engaged the fierce host of the Ouled Sliman in deadlyconflict at the well of Agnar, but finding our opponents armed withrifles procured from European traders, we had drawn off in an endeavourto entice them into the Wady Igharghar, where our superior knowledge ofthe ground would give us distinct advantage. Our losses three daysbefore had been very serious, and our Sheikh Tamahu had despatchedmessengers in all haste to the oasis of Noum-en-Nas, six marchesdistant, to urge forward reinforcements. That night, when the moon hadrisen, I accompanied Hamoud, one of my companions, as scout, to travelnorthward along the dried-up watercourse, to make a _reconnaissance_,and to ascertain if the enemy were in the vicinity. To ride up thatvalley, choked by its myriad boulders, was impossible, therefore we werecompelled to journey on foot.
Had we ascended to the desert we should have imperilled our camp, forour enemies in search of us would undoubtedly detect our presence. Wehad pitched our tents at a secluded inaccessible spot, where thedried-up river had taken a sudden bend, in the heart of a countryscarcely ever traversed. Through the long brilliant night with mycompanion I pressed forward, sometimes clambering over rough rocks,split by the heat of noon and chills of night, and at others sinkingknee-deep in soft sand-drifts. When dawn spread we now and thenclambered up the steep sides of the valley and cautiously tookobservations. In that region, the surface of the desert being perfectlyflat, any object can be seen at great distances, therefore we at alltimes were careful not to stand upright, but remained crouched upon ourfaces. So dry also is the atmosphere that any sudden movement, such asthe flapping of a burnouse or the swish of a horse's tail, will causesparks to be emitted.
Beneath the milk-white sky of noon, when the fiery sun shone like a discof burnished copper, we threw ourselves down beneath the shadow of ahuge boulder to eat and rest. Hamoud, older than myself, was a typicalnomad, bearded, bronzed, and a veritable giant in stature. His physicalstrength and power of endurance was greater than that of any other ofour tribesmen, and he was always amiable and light-hearted. While helit his keef-pipe and chatted, I gazed about me, noticing how, by theaction of the eddying waters of this dried-up river, the very name ofwhich is lost to us, the hard, grey rock above had been worn smooth andhollow. The mystery of the Igharghar had always attracted me since myearliest boyhood. Why this mighty stream, in some places nearly sixmiles wide, should have suddenly ceased to flow, fertilise, and givelife to the great tract it traversed was a problem which the wise men ofall ages had failed to solve. True, the One Merciful heard not in thatwild, unfrequented region. It was the country accursed and forgotten ofAllah.
When, in the cooler hours, we resumed our journey, ever-watchful for thepresence of the Ouled Sliman, on every side we noticed unmistakabletraces of the enormous width and de
pth of the giant waterway. Aboutnoon on the second day I had ascended to the desert to scan the horizon,when I discovered some ruined masonry, half-buried beneath itswinding-sheet of sand. On the keystone of an arch I found aninscription in Roman characters, and here and there stood broken columnsand portions of grey time-worn walls.
It was the site of an effaced and forgotten city; a centre of cultureand civilisation which had owed its very existence to this great river,and had declined and fallen when the stream had so mysteriously ceasedto flow. The once fertile land had withered, and become a dreary,sunburnt, uninhabitable wilderness.
Ask any marabout from Morocco to far-off Tripoli, and he will declarethat for some reason unknown, Allah, before the days of his Prophet, setthe mark of his displeasure upon the country known to us as the Ahaggar.It is not, therefore, surprising that the Ouled Sliman, our enemies,should be known throughout the desert as the Children of Eblis.
As, spear in hand, I
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