by Anthology
The little voice of Tanit-Zerga broke in:
"It was the Awellimiden Tuareg who massacred my people and carried me into slavery. I do not want to pass through the country of the Awellimiden."
"Be still, miserable little fly," said Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh.
Then addressing me, he continued:
"I have said what I have said. The little one is not wrong. The Awellimiden are a savage people. But they are afraid of the French. Many of them trade with the stations north of the Niger. On the other hand, they are at war with the people of Ahaggar, who will not follow you into their country. What I have said, is said. You must rejoin the Timbuctoo road near where it enters the borders of the Awellimiden. Their country is wooded and rich in springs. If you reach the springs at Telemsi, you will finish your journey beneath a canopy of blossoming mimosa. On the other hand, the road from here to Telemsi is shorter than by way of Timissao. It is quite straight."
"Yes, it is direct," I said, "but, in following it, you have to cross the Tanezruft."
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh waved his hand impatiently.
"Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh knows that," he said. "He knows what the Tanezruft is. He who has traveled over all the Sahara knows that he would shudder at crossing the Tanezruft and the Tassili from the south. He knows that the camels that wander into that country either die or become wild, for no one will risk his life to go look for them. It is the terror that hangs over that region that may save you. For you have to choose: you must run the risk of dying of thirst on the tracks of the Tanezruft or have your throat cut along some other route.
"You can stay here," he added.
"My choice is made, Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh," I announced.
"Good!" he replied, again opening out the roll of paper. "This trail begins at the second barrier of earth, to which I will lead you. It ends at Iferouane. I have marked the wells, but do not trust to them too much, for many of them are dry. Be careful not to stray from the route. If you lose it, it is death…. Now mount the camel with the little one. Two make less noise than four."
We went a long way in silence. Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh walked ahead and his camel followed meekly. We crossed, first, a dark passage, then, a deep gorge, then another passage…. The entrance to each was hidden by a thick tangle of rocks and briars.
Suddenly a burning breath touched our faces. A dull reddish light filtered in through the end of the passage. The desert lay before us.
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh had stopped.
"Get down," he said.
A spring gurgled out of the rock. The Targa went to it and filled a copper cup with the water.
"Drink," he said, holding it out to each of us in turn. We obeyed.
"Drink again," he ordered. "You will save just so much of the contents of your water skins. Now try not to be thirsty before sunset."
He looked over the saddle girths.
"That's all right," he murmured. "Now go. In two hours the dawn will be here. You must be out of sight."
I was filled with emotion at this last moment; I went to the Targa and took his hand.
"Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh," I asked in a low voice, "why are you doing this?"
He stepped back and I saw his dark eyes gleam.
"Why?" he said.
"Yes, why?"
He replied with dignity:
"The Prophet permits every just man, once in his lifetime, to let pity take the place of duty. Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh is turning this permission to the advantage of one who saved his life."
"And you are not afraid," I asked, "that I will disclose the secret of Antinea if I return among Frenchmen?" He shook his head.
"I am not afraid of that," he said, and his voice was full of irony. "It is not to your interest that Frenchmen should know how the Captain met his death."
I was horrified at this logical reply.
"Perhaps I am doing wrong," the Targa went on, "in not killing the little one…. But she loves you. She will not talk. Now go. Day is coming."
I tried to press the hand of this strange rescuer, but he again drew back.
"Do not thank me. What I am doing, I do to acquire merit in the eyes of God. You may be sure that I shall never do it again neither for you nor for anyone else."
And, as I made a gesture to reassure him on that point, "Do not protest," he said in a tone the mockery of which still sounds in my ears. "Do not protest. What I am doing is of value to me, but not to you."
I looked at him uncomprehendingly.
"Not to you, Sidi Lieutenant, not to you," his grave voice continued. "For you will come back; and when that day comes, do not count on the help of Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh."
"I will come back?" I asked, shuddering.
"You will come back," the Targa replied.
He was standing erect, a black statue against the wall of gray rock.
"You will come back," he repeated with emphasis. "You are fleeing now, but you are mistaken if you think that you will look at the world with the same eyes as before. Henceforth, one idea, will follow you everywhere you go; and in one year, five, perhaps ten years, you will pass again through the corridor through which you have just come."
"Be still, Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh," said the trembling voice of Tanit-Zerga.
"Be still yourself, miserable little fly," said Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh.
He sneered.
"The little one is afraid because she knows that I tell the truth. She knows the story of Lieutenant Ghiberti."
"Lieutenant Ghiberti?" I said, the sweat standing out on my forehead.
"He was an Italian officer whom I met between Rhât and Rhadamès eight years ago. He did not believe that love of Antinea could make him forget all else that life contained. He tried to escape, and he succeeded. I do not know how, for I did not help him. He went back to his country. But hear what happened: two years later, to the very day, when I was leaving the look-out, I discovered a miserable tattered creature, half dead from hunger and fatigue, searching in vain for the entrance to the northern barrier. It was Lieutenant Ghiberti, come back. He fills niche Number 39 in the red marble hall."
The Targa smiled slightly.
"That is the story of Lieutenant Ghiberti which you wished to hear. But enough of this. Mount your camel."
I obeyed without saying a word. Tanit-Zerga, seated behind me, put her little arms around me. Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh was still holding the bridle.
"One word more," he said, pointing to a black spot against the violet sky of the southern horizon. "You see the gour there; that is your way. It is eighteen miles from here. You should reach it by sunrise. Then consult your map. The next point is marked. If you do not stray from the line, you should be at the springs of Telemsi in eight days."
The camel's neck was stretched toward the dark wind coming from the south.
The Targa released the bridle with a sweep of his hand.
"Now go."
"Thank you," I called to him, turning back in the saddle. "Thank you, Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh, and farewell."
I heard his voice replying in the distance:
"Au revoir, Lieutenant de Saint Avit."
XIX
THE TANEZRUFT
During the first hour of our flight, the great mehari of Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh carried us at a mad pace. We covered at least five leagues. With fixed eyes, I guided the beast toward the gour which the Targa had pointed out, its ridge becoming higher and higher against the paling sky.
The speed caused a little breeze to whistle in our ears. Great tufts of retem, like fleshless skeletons, were tossed to right and left.
I heard the voice of Tanit-Zerga whispering:
"Stop the camel."
At first I did not understand.
"Stop him," she repeated.
Her hand pulled sharply at my right arm.
I obeyed. The camel slackened his pace with very bad grace.
"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!"
I looked, and a deadly shudder seized me.
Stretched out at full length, on the other side of the rocks, his pale flanks knotted up by convulsive spasms, El Mellen lay in anguish.
I need not say that we rushed to him in feverish haste. Of what El Mellen was dying, I did not know, I never have known. All the mehara are that way. They are at once the most enduring and the most delicate of beasts. They will travel for six months across the most frightful deserts, with little food, without water, and seem only the better for it. Then, one day when nothing is the matter, they stretch out and give you the slip with disconcerting ease.
When Tanit-Zerga and I saw that there was nothing more to do, we stood there without a word, watching his slackening spasms. When he breathed his last, we felt that our life, as well as his, had gone.
It was Tanit-Zerga who spoke first.
"How far are we from the Soudan road?" she asked.
"We are a hundred and twenty miles from the springs of Telemsi," I replied. "We could make thirty miles by going toward Iferouane; but the wells are not marked on that route."
"Then we must walk toward the springs of Telemsi," she said. "A hundred and twenty miles, that makes seven days?"
"Seven days at the least, Tanit-Zerga."
"How far is it to the first well?"
"Thirty-five miles."
The little girl's face contracted somewhat. But she braced up quickly.
"We must set out at once."
"Set out on foot, Tanit-Zerga!"
She stamped her foot. I marveled to see her so strong.
"We must go," she repeated. "We are going to eat and drink and make Galé eat and drink, for we cannot carry all the tins, and the water skin is so heavy that we should not get three miles if we tried to carry it. We will put a little water in one of the tins after emptying it through a little hole. That will be enough for to-night's stage, which will be eighteen miles without water. To-morrow we will set out for another eighteen miles and we will reach the wells marked on the paper by Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh."
"
Oh," I murmured sadly, "if my shoulder were only not this way, I could carry the water skin."
"It is as it is," said Tanit-Zerga.
"You will take your carbine and two tins of meat. I shall take two more and the one filled with water. Come. We must leave in an hour if we wish to cover the eighteen miles. You know that when the sun is up, the rocks are so hot we cannot walk."
I leave you to imagine in what sad silence we passed that hour which we had begun so happily and confidently. Without the little girl, I believe I should have seated myself upon a rock and waited. Galé only was happy.
"We must not let her eat too much," said Tanit-Zerga. "She would not be able to follow us. And to-morrow she must work. If she catches another ourane, it will be for us."
You have walked in the desert. You know how terrible the first hours of the night are. When the moon comes up, huge and yellow, a sharp dust seems to rise in suffocating clouds. You move your jaws mechanically as if to crush the dust that finds its way into your throat like fire. Then usually a kind of lassitude, of drowsiness, follows. You walk without thinking. You forget where you are walking. You remember only when you stumble. Of course you stumble often. But anyway it is bearable. "The night is ending," you say, "and with it the march. All in all, I am less tired than at the beginning." The night ends, but then comes the most terrible hour of all. You are perishing of thirst and shaking with cold. All the fatigue comes back at once. The horrible breeze which precedes the dawn is no comfort. Quite the contrary. Every time you stumble, you say, "The next misstep will be the last."
That is what people feel and say even when they know that in a few hours they will have a good rest with food and water.
I was suffering terribly. Every step jolted my poor shoulder. At one time, I wanted to stop, to sit down. Then I looked at Tanit-Zerga. She was walking ahead with her eyes almost closed. Her expression was an indefinable one of mingled suffering and determination. I closed my own eyes and went on.
Such was the first stage. At dawn we stopped in a hollow in the rocks. Soon the heat forced us to rise to seek a deeper one. Tanit-Zerga did not eat. Instead, she swallowed a little of her half can of water. She lay drowsy all day. Galé ran about our rock giving plaintive little cries.
