piercingshriek, followed by a loud splash.
I shouted, but there was no answer. My companion had stumbled into somechasm, and I was alone. The light of the hideous eyes had died out, andthe spot was in almost total darkness. A dozen times I called his name,but there was no reassuring reply. Then, cautiously creeping forwardupon my hands and knees, fearing the worst, I soon came to the edge ofan abyss. Some stones I gathered and flung in. By the sound of thesplash I knew the water must be of enormous depth. There, in that darkuncanny spot, had Colonel Flatters, the great explorer, whoseintrepidity has been for years admired by the world, met his death.
A long time I spent alternately shouting and listening. He might, Ireflected, have been saved by falling stunned upon some rocky ledge.But I remembered hearing the splash. No, he had undoubtedly beenprecipitated into the water: the inky flood had closed over him.
After diligent search I found a spot where the abyss ended, and againcrept forward, still in darkness most intense. Yet the air seemedfresh, and I felt convinced that some outlet must lay beyond. How long,however, I toiled on in that narrow tunnel I know not, save that itsdampness chilled me; and when at last it widened in ascending, I foundmyself a few minutes afterwards amid brushwood and brambles in the outerworld.
That night I wandered across the large fertile tract, but could not atfirst recognise it. When dawn spread, however, I saw around me a ridgeof dunes that were familiar landmarks, and recognised, to my amazement,that I was at the oasis of Am Ohannan, on the direct caravan route thatruns across the barren Afelele to Touat.
I had travelled nearly seventy miles in a subterranean region unknown toman, but in so doing had solved the problem that had so long puzzledgeographers, the reason why the Igharghar no longer flowed. Besides, Ihad ascertained the fate of the hapless explorer, whose loss is lamentedby both Arabs and Roumis to this day. Within one moon of my escape Iwas enabled to rejoin my people, and when news of my adventure reachedthe Bureau Arabe, in Algiers, I was summoned thither to give a detailedaccount of it before a small assembly of geographers and militaryofficers.
This I did, a report of it appearing in English in _The GeographicalJournal_ a month later. Of late, several attempts have been made byFrench expeditions to reach that uncanny realm of eternal darkness, butwithout success. Its entrance beneath the dry cataract of the Ighargharis now merely an overflowing well, around which a little herbage hasgrown, while its exit on the Am Ohannan I have unfortunately failed tore-discover. But since this strange adventure I have been known amongmy fellow tribesmen throughout the desert as "El Waci," or The Teacher,because I have been enabled to prove to the French the existence of anundreamed-of region, and to elucidate the Secret of Sa.
CHAPTER FOUR.
THE THREE DWARFS OF LEBO.
When my beard, now long, scraggy, and grey, was yet soft as silk upon myyouthful chin, I was sent as spy into Agadez, the mysterious City of theBlack Sultan. At that time it was the richest, most zealously guarded,and most strongly fortified town in the whole Sahara, and surrounded, asit constantly was, by marauding tribes and enemies of all sorts, avigilant watch was kept day and night, and woe betide any stranger foundwithin its colossal walls, for the most fiendish of tortures that themind of man could devise was certain to be practised upon him, and hisbody eventually given to the hungry dogs at the city gate.
In order, however, to ascertain its true strength and the number of itsgarrison, I, as one of the younger and more adventurous of our clansmen,was chosen by Tamahu, our Sheikh, to enter and bring back report to ourencampment in the rocky fastness of the Tignoutin. Therefore I removedmy big black veil, assumed the white haik and burnouse of theBeni-Mansour, a peaceful tribe further north, and contrived to becaptured as slave by a party of raiding Ennitra who were encamped by thewell of Tafidet, five miles from the capital of Ahir. As I hadanticipated, I was soon taken to the City of the Black Sultan, and theresold in the slave-market, first becoming the property of a Jew merchant,then of Hanaza, the Grand Vizier of the Sultan. As personal slave ofthis high official I was lodged within the palace, or Fada, thatveritable city within a city, containing as it did nearly three thousandinhabitants, over one thousand of whom were inmates of his Majesty'sharem.
In the whole of Africa, no monarch, not even the Moorish Lord of theLand of the Maghrib, was housed so luxuriously as this half-negroconqueror of the Asben. When first I entered the Fada as slave, I wasstruck by the magnificence of the wonderful domain. As I crossed courtafter court, each more beautiful than the one before, and each devotedto a separate department of the royal household, the guards, thejanissaries, the treasurer, the armourers, and the eunuchs, I was amazedat every turn by their magnificence and beauty. At last we came to thecourt of the Grand Vizier, a smaller but prettier place, with a cool,plashing fountain tiled in blue and white, and shaded by figs, myrtles,and trailing vines. Beyond, I could see an arched gateway in the blackwall, before which stood two giant negro guards in bright blue, theirdrawn swords flashing in the sun. Of my conductor I enquired whitherthat gate led, and was told it was impassable to all save the Sultanhimself, for it was the gate of the Courts of Love, the entrance to theroyal harem.
Through the many months during which I served my capricious master, thatclosed, iron-studded door, zealously guarded night and day by its mutejanissaries with their curved scimitars, was a constant source ofmystery to me. Often I sat in the courtyard and dreamed of the thousandterrible dramas which that ponderous door hid from those outside thatworld of love, hatred, and all the fiercest passions of the human heart.The Sultan was fickle and capricious. The favourite of to-day was thediscarded of to-morrow. The bright-eyed houri who, loaded with jewels,could twist her master round her finger one day, was the next the merestharem slave, compelled to wash the feet of the woman who had succeededher in her royal master's favour. Truly the harem of the Sultan of theAhir was a veritable hotbed of intrigue, where ofttimes the innocentvictims of jealousy were cast alive to the wild beasts, or compelled topartake of the Cup of Death--coffee wherein chopped hair had beenplaced--a draught that was inevitably fatal.
One brilliant night, when the silver moonbeams whitened the courtwherein I lived, I sat in the deep shadow of the oleanders, sad andlonely. Through six long dreary months had I been held slave by theGrand Vizier, yet it was Allah's will that I should have no opportunityto return to my people. So I possessed myself in patience. Throughthose months mine eyes and ears had been ever on the alert, and long agoI had completed my investigations. Suddenly my reflections wereinterrupted, for I saw standing before me a veritable vision of beauty,a pale-faced girl in the gorgeous costume of the harem, covered withglittering jewels, and wearing the tiny fez, pearl-embroidered zouave,and filmy _serroual_ of the Sultan's favourites. Not more thaneighteen, her unveiled countenance was white as any Englishwoman's; herstartled eyes were bright as the moonbeams above, and as she stood muteand trembling before me, her bare, panting bosom, half-covered by herlong, dark tresses, rose and fell quickly. I raised my eyes, and sawthat the negro guards were sleeping. She had escaped from the Courts ofLove.
"Quick!" she gasped, terrified. "Hide me, while there is yet time."
At her bidding I rose instantly, for her wondrous beauty held me asbeneath some witch's spell. And at the same time I led the way to mytiny den, a mere hole in the gigantic wall that separated the royalharem from the outer courts of the palace.
"My name is Zohra," she explained, when she had entered; "and thine?"--she paused for an instant, looking me straight in the face. "Of averity," she added at length, "thine is Ahamadou, the spy of the dreadedAzjar, the Veiled Men."
I started, for I had believed my secret safe.
"What knowest thou of me?" I gasped eagerly.
"That thou hast risked all in order to report to thy people upon theBlack Sultan's strength," she answered, sinking upon my narrow divan,throwing back her handsome head and gazing into my eyes. "But ourinterests are mutual. I have these ten months been
held captive, anddesire to escape. By bribing one of the slaves with the Sultan's ring Icontrived to have poison placed in the kouss-kouss of the guards--"
"You have killed them!" I cried, peering forth, and noticing theghastly look upon their faces as they slept at their posts.
"It was the only way," she answered, shrugging her shoulders. "Toobtain me the Sultan's men murdered my kinsmen, and put our village tothe sword. Mine is but a mild revenge."
"Of what tribe art thou?" I enquired eagerly, detecting in her softsibillations an accent entirely unfamiliar.
"I am of the Kel-Oui, and was born at Lebo."
"At Lebo!" I cried eagerly. "Then thou knowest of the Three Dwarfs ofLebo?"
"Yea. And furthermore I have learnt their secret, a secret which shallbe thine alone in return for safe conduct to my
The Veiled Man Page 12
