I seated myself on a cushion, holding the leopard firmly between my knees. He was purring with impatience. I was thinking. Not about my goal. For a long time that had been fixed. But about the means.

Then, I seemed to hear a distant murmur, a faint sound of voices.

King Hiram growled louder, struggled. I gave him a little more leash. He began to rub along the dark walls on the sides whence the voices seemed to come. I followed him, stumbling as quietly as I could among the scattered cushions.

My eyes, become accustomed to the darkness, could see the pyramid of cushions on which Antinea had first appeared to me.

Suddenly I stumbled. The leopard had stopped. I realized that I had stepped on his tail. Brave beast, he did not make a sound.

Groping along the wall, I felt a second door. Quietly, very quietly, I opened it as I had opened the preceding one. The leopard whimpered feebly.

"King Hiram," I murmured, "be quiet."

And I put my arms about his powerful neck.

I felt his warm wet tongue on my hands. His flanks quivered. He shook with happiness.

In front of us, lighted in the center, another room opened up. In the middle six men were squatting on the matting, playing dice and drinking coffee from tiny copper coffee cups with long stems.

They were the white Tuareg.

A lamp, hung from the ceiling, threw a circle of light over them. Everything outside that circle was in deep shadow.

The black faces, the copper cups, the white robes, the moving light and shadow, made a strange etching.

They played with a reserved dignity, announcing the throws in raucous voices.

Then, slowly, very slowly, I slipped the leash from the collar of the impatient little beast.

"Go, boy."

He leapt with a sharp yelp.

And what I had foreseen happened.

The first bound of King Hiram carried him into the midst of the white Tuareg, sowing confusion in the bodyguard. Another leap carried him into the shadow again. I made out vaguely the shaded opening of another corridor on the side of the room opposite where I was standing.

"There!" I thought.

The confusion in the room was indescribable, but noiseless. One realized the restraint which nearness to a great presence imposed upon the exasperated guards. The stakes and the dice-boxes had rolled in one direction, the copper cups, in the other.

Two of the Tuareg, doubled up with pain, were rubbing their ribs with low oaths.

I need not say that I profited by this silent confusion to glide into the room. I was now flattened against the wall of the second corridor, down which King Hiram had just disappeared.

At that moment a clear gong echoed in the silence. The trembling which seized the Tuareg assured me that I had chosen the right way.

One of the six men got up. He passed me and I fell in behind him. I was perfectly calm. My least movement was perfectly calculated.

"All that I risk here now," I said to myself, "is being led back politely to my room."

The Targa lifted a curtain. I followed on his heels into the chamber of Antinea.

The room was huge and at once well lighted and very dark. While the right half, where Antinea was, gleamed under shaded lamps, the left was dim.

Those who have penetrated into a Mussulman home know what a guignol is, a kind of square niche in the wall, four feet from the floor, its opening covered by a curtain. One mounts to it by wooden steps. I noticed such a guignol at my left. I crept into it. My pulses beat in the shadow. But I was calm, quite calm.

There I could see and hear everything.

I was in Antinea's chamber. There was nothing singular about the room, except the great luxury of the hangings. The ceiling was in shadow, but multicolored lanterns cast a vague and gentle light over gleaming stuffs and furs.

Antinea was stretched out on a lion's skin, smoking. A little silver tray and pitcher lay beside her. King Hiram was flattened out at her feet, licking them madly.

The Targa slave stood rigid before her, one hand on his heart, the other on his forehead, saluting.

Antinea spoke in a hard voice, without looking at the man.

"Why did you let the leopard pass? I told you that I wanted to be alone."

"He knocked us over, mistress," said the Targa humbly.

"The doors were not closed, then?"

The slave did not answer.

"Shall I take him away?" he asked.

And his eyes, fastened upon King Hiram who stared at him maliciously, expressed well enough his desire for a negative reply.

"Let him stay since he is here," said Antinea.

She tapped nervously on the little silver tray.

"What is the captain doing?" she asked.

"He dined a while ago and seemed to enjoy his food," the Targa answered.

"Has he said nothing?"

"Yes, he asked to see his companion, the other officer."

Antinea tapped the little tray still more rapidly.

"Did he say nothing else?"

"No, mistress," said the man.

A pallor overspread the Atlantide's little forehead.

"Go get him," she said brusquely.

Bowing, the Targa left the room.

I listened to this dialogue with great anxiety. Was this Morhange? Had he been faithful to me, after all? Had I suspected him unjustly? He had wanted to see me and been unable to!

My eyes never left Antinea's.

She was no longer the haughty, mocking princess of our first interview. She no longer wore the golden circlet on her forehead. Not a bracelet, not a ring. She was dressed only in a full flowing tunic. Her black hair, unbound, lay in masses of ebony over her slight shoulders and her bare arms.

Her beautiful eyes were deep circled. Her divine mouth drooped. I did not know whether I was glad or sorry to see this new quivering Cleopatra.

Flattened at her feet, King Hiram gazed submissively at her.

An immense orichalch mirror with golden reflections was set into the wall at the right. Suddenly she raised herself erect before it. I saw her nude.

A splendid and bitter sight!—A woman who thinks herself alone, standing before her mirror in expectation of the man she wishes to subdue!

The six incense-burners scattered about the room sent up invisible columns of perfume. The balsam spices of Arabia wore floating webs in which my shameless senses were entangled.... And, back toward me, standing straight as a lily, Antinea smiled into her mirror.

Low steps sounded in the corridor. Antinea immediately fell back into the nonchalant pose in which I had first seen her. One had to see such a transformation to believe it possible.

Morhange entered the room, preceded by a white Targa.

He, too, seemed rather pale. But I was most struck by the expression of serene peace on that face which I thought I knew so well. I felt that I never had understood what manner of man Morhange was, never.

He stood erect before Antinea without seeming to notice her gesture inviting him to be seated.

She smiled at him.

"You are surprised, perhaps," she said finally, "that I should send for you at so late an hour."

Morhange did not move an eyelash.

"Have you considered it well?" she demanded.

Morhange smiled gravely, but did not reply.

I could read in Antinea's face the effort it cost her to continue smiling; I admired the self-control of these two beings.

"I sent for you," she continued. "You do not guess why?... Well, it is to tell you something that you do not expect. It will be no surprise to you if I say that I never met a man like you. During your captivity, you have expressed only one wish. Do you recall it?"

"I asked your permission to see my friend before I died," said Morhange simply.

I do not know what stirred me more on hearing these words: delight at Morhange's formal tone in speaking to Antinea, or emotion at hearing the one wish he had expressed.

But Antinea continued calmly:

"That is why I sent for you—to tell you that you are going to see him again. And I am going to do something else. You will perhaps scorn me even more when you realize that you had only to oppose me to bend me to your will—I, who have bent all other wills to mine. But, however that may be, it is decided: I give you both your liberty. Tomorrow Cegheir-ben-Cheikh will lead you past the fifth enclosure. Are you satisfied?"

"I am," said Morhange with a mocking smile.

"That will give me a chance," he continued, "to make better plans for the next trip I intend to make this way. For you need not doubt that I shall feel bound to return to express my gratitude. Only, next time, to render so great a queen the honors due her, I shall ask my government to furnish me with two or three hundred European soldiers and several cannon."

Antinea was standing up, very pale.

"What are you saying?"

"I am saying," said Morhange coldly, "that I foresaw this. First threats, then promises."

Antinea stepped toward him. He had folded his arms. He looked at her with a sort of grave pity.

"I will make you die in the most atrocious agonies," she said finally.

"I am your prisoner," Morhange replied.

"You shall suffer things that you cannot even imagine."

"I am your prisoner," repeated Morhange in the same sad calm.

Antinea paced the room like a beast in a cage. She advanced toward my companion and, no longer mistress of herself, struck him in the face.

He smiled and caught hold of her, drawing her little wrists together with a strange mixture of force and gentleness.

King Hiram growled. I thought he was about to leap. But the cold eyes of Morhange held him fascinated.

"I will have your comrade killed before your eyes," gasped Antinea.

It seemed to me that Morhange paled, but only for a second. I was overcome by the nobility and insight of his reply.

"My companion is brave. He does not fear death. And, in any case, he would prefer death to life purchased at the price you name."

So saying, he let go Antinea's wrists. Her pallor was terrible. From the expression of her mouth I felt that this would be her last word to him.

"Listen," she said.

How beautiful she was, in her scorned majesty, her beauty powerless for the first time!

"Listen," she continued. "Listen. For the last time. Remember that I hold the gates of this palace, that I have supreme power over your life. Remember that you breathe only at my pleasure. Remember...."

"I have remembered all that," said Morhange.

"A last time," she repeated.

The serenity of Morhange's face was so powerful that I scarcely noticed his opponent. In that transfigured countenance, no trace of worldliness remained.

"A last time," came Antinea's voice, almost breaking.

Morhange was not even looking at her.

"As you will," she said.

Her gong resounded. She had struck the silver disc. The white Targa appeared.

"Leave the room!"

Morhange, his head held high, went out.

Now Antinea is in my arms. This is no haughty, voluptuous woman whom I am pressing to my heart. It is only an unhappy, scorned little girl.

So great was her trouble that she showed no surprise when I stepped out beside her. Her head is on my shoulder. Like the crescent moon in the black clouds, I see her clear little bird-like profile amid her mass of hair. Her warm arms hold me convulsively.... O tremblant coeur humain....

Who could resist such an embrace, amid the soft perfumes, in the langorous night? I feel myself a being without will. Is this my voice, the voice which is murmuring:

"Ask me what you will, and I will do it, I will do it."

My senses are sharpened, tenfold keen. My head rests against a soft, nervous little knee. Clouds of odors whirl about me. Suddenly it seems as if the golden lanterns are waving from the ceiling like giant censers. Is this my voice, the voice repeating in a dream:

"Ask me what you will, and I will do it. I will do it."

Antinea's face is almost touching mine. A strange light flickers in her great eyes.

Beyond, I see the gleaming eyes of King Hiram. Beside him, there is a little table of Kairouan, blue and gold. On that table I see the gong with which Antinea summons the slaves. I see the hammer with which she struck it just now, a hammer with a long ebony handle, a heavy silver head ... the hammer with which little Lieutenant Kaine dealt death....

I see nothing more....



XVII

THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS

I awakened in my room. The sun, already at its zenith, filled the place with unbearable light and heat.

The first thing I saw, on opening my eyes, was the shade, ripped down, lying in the middle of the floor. Then, confusedly, the night's events began to come back to me.

My head felt stupid and heavy. My mind wandered. My memory seemed blocked. "I went out with the leopard, that is certain. That red mark on my forefinger shows how he strained at the leash. My knees are still dusty. I remember creeping along the wall in the room where the white Tuareg were playing at dice. That was the minute after King Hiram had leapt past them. After that ... oh, Morhange and Antinea.... And then?"

I recalled nothing more. I recalled nothing more. But something must have happened, something which I could not remember.

I was uneasy. I wanted to go back, yet it seemed as if I were afraid to go. I have never felt anything more painful than those conflicting emotions.

"It is a long way from here to Antinea's apartments. I must have been very sound asleep not to have noticed when they brought me back—for they have brought me back."

I stopped trying to think it out. My head ached too much.

"I must have air," I murmured. "I am roasting here; it will drive me mad."

I had to see someone, no matter whom. Mechanically, I walked toward the library.

I found M. Le Mesge in a transport of delirious joy. The Professor was engaged in opening an enormous bale, carefully sewed in a brown blanket.

"You come at a good time, sir," he cried, on seeing me enter. "The magazines have just arrived."

He dashed about in feverish haste. Presently a stream of pamphlets and magazines, blue, green, yellow and salmon, was bursting from an opening in the bale.

"Splendid, splendid!" he cried, dancing with joy. "Not too late, either; here are the numbers for October fifteenth. We must give a vote of thanks to good Ameur."

His good spirits were contagious.

"There is a good Turkish merchant who subscribes to all the interesting magazines of the two continents. He sends them on by Rhadames to a destination which he little suspects. Ah, here are the French ones."

M. Le Mesge ran feverishly over, the tables of contents.

"Internal politics: articles by Francis Charmes, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, d'Haussonville on the Czar's trip to Paris. Look, a study by Avenel of wages in the Middle Ages. And verse, verses of the young poets, Fernand Gregh, Edmond Haraucourt. Ah, the resume of a book by Henry de Castries on Islam. That may be interesting.... Take what you please."

Joy makes people amiable and M. Le Mesge was really delirious with it.

A puff of breeze came from the window. I went to the balustrade and, resting my elbows on it, began to run through a number of the Revue des Deux Mondes.

I did not read, but flipped over the pages, my eyes now on the lines of swarming little black characters, now on the rocky basin which lay shivering, pale pink, under the declining sun.

Suddenly my attention became fixed. There was a strange coincidence between the text and the landscape.

"In the sky overhead were only light shreds of cloud, like bits of white ash floating up from burnt-out logs. The sun fell over a circle of rocky peaks, silhouetting their severe lines against the azure sky. From on high, a great sadness and gentleness poured down into the lonely enclosure, like a magic drink into a deep cup...."[17]

[Footnote 17: Gabrielle d'Annunzio: Les Vierges aux Rochers. Cf. The Revue des Deux Mondes of October 15, 1896; page 867.]

I turned the pages feverishly. My mind seemed to be clearing.

Behind me, M. Le Mesge, deep in an article, voiced his opinions in indignant growls.

I continued reading:

"On all sides a magnificent view spread out before us in the raw light. The chain of rocks, clearly visible in their barren desolation which stretched to the very summit, lay stretched out like some great heap of gigantic, unformed things left by some primordial race of Titans to stupefy human beings. Overturned towers...."

"It is shameful, downright shameful," the Professor was repeating.

"Overturned towers, crumbling citadels, cupolas fallen in, broken pillars, mutilated colossi, prows of vessels, thighs of monsters, bones of titans,—this mass, impassable with its ridges and gullies, seemed the embodiment of everything huge and tragic. So clear were the distances...."

"Downright shameful," M. Le Mesge kept on saying in exasperation, thumping his fist on the table.

"So clear were the distances that I could see, as if I had it under my eyes, infinitely enlarged, every contour of the rock which Violante had shown me through the window with the gesture of a creator...."

Trembling, I closed the magazine. At my feet, now red, I saw the rock which Antinea had pointed out to me the day of our first interview, huge, steep, overhanging the reddish brown garden.

"That is my horizon," she had said.

M. Le Mesge's excitement had passed all bounds.

"It is worse than shameful; it is infamous."

I almost wanted to strangle him into silence. He seized my arm.

"Read that, sir; and, although you don't know a great deal about the subject, you will see that this article on Roman Africa is a miracle of misinformation, a monument of ignorance. And it is signed ... do you know by whom it is signed?"

"Leave me alone," I said brutally.

"Well, it is signed Gaston Boissier. Yes, sir! Gaston Boissier, grand officer of the Legion of Honor, lecturer at the Ecole Normale Superieure, permanent secretary of the French Academy, member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Literature, one of those who once ruled out the subject of my thesis ... one of those ... ah, poor university, ah, poor France!"

I was no longer listening. I had begun to read again. My forehead was covered with sweat. But it seemed as if my head had been cleared like a room when a window is opened; memories were beginning to come back like doves winging their way home to the dovecote.

"At that moment, an irrepressible tremor shook her whole body; her eyes dilated as if some terrible sight had filled them with horror.

"'Antonello,' she murmured.

"And for seconds, she was unable to say another word.

"I looked at her in mute anguish and the suffering which drew her dear lips together seemed also to clutch at my heart. The vision which was in her eyes passed into mine, and I saw again the thin white face of Antonello, and the quick quivering of his eyelids, the waves of agony which seized his long worn body and shook it like a reed."

I threw the magazine upon the table.

"That is it," I said.

To cut the pages, I had used the knife with which M. Le Mesge had cut the cords of the bale, a short ebony-handled dagger, one of those daggers that the Tuareg wear in a bracelet sheath against the upper left arm.

I slipped it into the big pocket of my flannel dolman and walked toward the door.

I was about to cross the threshold when I heard M. Le Mesge call me.

"Monsieur de Saint Avit! Monsieur de Saint Avit!

"I want to ask you something, please."

"What is it?"

"Nothing important. You know that I have to mark the labels for the red marble hall...."

I walked toward the table.

"Well, I forgot to ask M. Morhange, at the beginning, the date and place of his birth. After that, I had no chance. I did not see him again. So I am forced to turn to you. Perhaps you can tell me?"

"I can," I said very calmly.

He took a large white card from a box which contained several and dipped his pen.

"Number 54 ... Captain?"

"Captain Jean-Marie-Francois Morhange."

While I dictated, one hand resting on the table, I noticed on my cuff a stain, a little stain, reddish brown.

"Morhange," repeated M. Le Mesge, finishing the lettering of my friend's name. "Born at...?"

"Villefranche."

"Villefranche, Rhone. What date?"

"The fourteenth of October, 1859."

"The fourteenth of October, 1859. Good. Died at Ahaggar, the fifth of January, 1897.... There, that is done. A thousand thanks, sir, for your kindness."

"You are welcome."

I left M. Le Mesge.

My mind, thenceforth, was well made up; and, as I said, I was perfectly calm. Nevertheless, when I had taken leave of M. Le Mesge, I felt the need of waiting a few minutes before executing my decision.

First I wandered through the corridors; then, finding myself near my room, I went to it. It was still intolerably hot. I sat down on my divan and began to think.

The dagger in my pocket bothered me. I took it out and laid it on the floor.

It was a good dagger, with a diamond-shaped blade, and with a collar of orange leather between the blade and the handle.

The sight of it recalled the silver hammer. I remembered how easily it fitted into my hand when I struck....

Every detail of the scene came back to me with incomparable vividness. But I did not even shiver. It seemed as if my determination to kill the instigator of the murder permitted me peacefully to evoke its brutal details.

If I reflected over my deed, it was to be surprised at it, not to condemn myself.

"Well," I said to myself, "I have killed this Morhange, who was once a baby, who, like all the others, cost his mother so much trouble with his baby sicknesses. I have put an end to his life, I have reduced to nothingness the monument of love, of tears, of trials overcome and pitfalls escaped, which constitutes a human existence. What an extraordinary adventure!"

That was all. No fear, no remorse, none of that Shakespearean horror after the murder, which, today, sceptic though I am and blase and utterly, utterly disillusioned, sets me shuddering whenever I am alone in a dark room.

"Come," I thought. "It's time. Time to finish it up."

I picked up the dagger. Before putting it in my pocket, I went through the motion of striking. All was well. The dagger fitted into my hand.

I had been through Antinea's apartment only when guided, the first time by the white Targa, the second time, by the leopard. Yet I found the way again without trouble. Just before coming to the door with the rose window, I met a Targa.

"Let me pass," I ordered. "Your mistress has sent for me." The man obeyed, stepping back.

Soon a dim melody came to my ears. I recognized the sound of a rebaza, the violin with a single string, played by the Tuareg women. It was Aguida playing, squatting as usual at the feet of her mistress. The three other women were also squatted about her. Tanit-Zerga was not there.

Oh! Since that was the last time I saw her, let, oh, let me tell you of Antinea, how she looked in that supreme moment.

Did she feel the danger hovering over her and did she wish to brave it by her surest artifices? I had in mind the slender; unadorned body, without rings, without jewels, which I had pressed to my heart the night before. And now I started in surprise at seeing before me, adorned like an idol, not a woman, but a queen!

The heavy splendor of the Pharaohs weighted down her slender body. On her head was the great gold pschent of Egyptian gods and kings; emeralds, the national stone of the Tuareg, were set in it, tracing and retracing her name in Tifinar characters. A red satin schenti, embroidered in golden lotus, enveloped her like the casket of a jewel. At her feet, lay an ebony scepter, headed with a trident. Her bare arms were encircled by two serpents whose fangs touched her armpits as if to bury themselves there. From the ear pieces of the pschent streamed a necklace of emeralds; its first strand passed under her determined chin; the others lay in circles against her bare throat.

She smiled as I entered.

"I was expecting you," she said simply.

I advanced till I was four steps from the throne, then stopped before her.

She looked at me ironically.

"What is that?" she asked with perfect calm.

I followed her gesture. The handle of the dagger protruded from my pocket.

I drew it out and held it firmly in my hand, ready to strike.

"The first of you who moves will be sent naked six leagues into the red desert and left there to die," said Antinea coldly to her women, whom my gesture had thrown into a frightened murmuring.

She turned to me.

"That dagger is very ugly and you hold it badly. Shall I send Sydya to my room to get the silver hammer? You are more adroit with it than with the dagger."

"Antinea," I said in a low voice, "I am going to kill you."

"Do not speak so formally. You were more affectionate last night. Are you embarrassed by them?" she said, pointing to the women, whose eyes were wide with terror.

"Kill me?" she went on. "You are hardly reasonable. Kill me at the moment when you can reap the fruits of the murder of...."

"Did—did he suffer?" I asked suddenly, trembling.

"Very little. I told you that you used the hammer as if you had done nothing else all your life."

"Like little Kaine," I murmured.

She smiled in surprise.

"Oh, you know that story.... Yes, like little Kaine. But at least Kaine was sensible. You ... I do not understand."

"I do not understand myself, very well."

She looked at me with amused curiosity.

"Antinea," I said.

"What is it?"

"I did what you told me to. May I in turn ask one favor, ask you one question?"

"What is it?"

"It was dark, was it not, in the room where he was?"

"Very dark. I had to lead you to the bed where he lay asleep."

"He was asleep, you are sure?"

"I said so."

"He—did not die instantly, did he?"

"No. I know exactly when he died; two minutes after you struck him and fled with a shriek."

"Then surely he could not have known?"

"Known what?"

"That it was I who—who held the hammer."

"He might not have known it, indeed," Antinea said. "But he did know."

"How?"

"He did know ... because I told him," she said, staring at me with magnificent audacity.

"And," I murmured, "he—he believed it?"

"With the help of my explanation, he recognized your shriek. If he had not realized that you were his murderer, the affair would not have interested me," she finished with a scornful little smile.

Four steps, I said, separated me from Antinea. I sprang forward. But, before I reached her, I was struck to the floor.

King Hiram had leapt at my throat.

At the same moment I heard the calm, haughty voice of Antinea:

"Call the men," she commanded.

A second later I was released from the leopard's clutch. The six white Tuareg had surrounded me and were trying to bind me.

I am fairly strong and quick. I was on my feet in a second. One of my enemies lay on the floor, ten feet away, felled by a well-placed blow on the jaw. Another was gasping under my knee. That was the last time I saw Antinea. She stood erect, both hands resting on her ebony scepter, watching the struggle with a smile of contemptuous interest.

Suddenly I gave a loud cry and loosed the hold I had on my victim. A cracking in my left arm: one of the Tuareg had seized it and twisted until my shoulder was dislocated.

When I completely lost consciousness, I was being carried down the corridor by two white phantoms, so bound that I could not move a muscle.



XVIII

THE FIRE-FLIES

Through the great open window, waves of pale moonlight surged into my room.

A slender white figure was standing beside the bed where I lay.

"You, Tanit-Zerga!" I murmured. She laid a finger on her lips.

"Sh! Yes, it is I."

I tried to raise myself up on the bed. A terrible pain seized my shoulder. The events of the afternoon came back to my poor harassed mind.

"Oh, little one, if you knew!"

"I know," she said.

I was weaker than a baby. After the overstrain of the day had come a fit of utter nervous depression. A lump rose in my throat, choking me.

"If you knew, if you only knew!... Take me away, little one. Get me away from here."

"Not so loud," she whispered. "There is a white Targa on guard at the door."

"Take me away; save me," I repeated.

"That is what I came for," she said simply.

I looked at her. She no longer was wearing her beautiful red silk tunic. A plain white haik was wrapped about her; and she had drawn one corner of it over her head.

"I want to go away, too," she said in a smothered voice.

"For a long time, I have wanted to go away. I want to see Gao, the village on the bank of the river, and the blue gum trees, and the green water.

"Ever since I came here, I have wanted to get away," she repeated, "but I am too little to go alone into the great Sahara. I never dared speak to the others who came here before you. They all thought only of her.... But you, you wanted to kill her."

I gave a low moan.

"You are suffering," she said. "They broke your arm."

"Dislocated it anyhow."

"Let me see."

With infinite gentleness, she passed her smooth little hands over my shoulder.

"You tell me that there is a white Targa on guard before my door, Tanit-Zerga," I said. "Then how did you get in?"

"That way," she said, pointing to the window. A dark perpendicular line halved its blue opening.

Tanit-Zerga went to the window. I saw her standing erect on the sill. A knife shone in her hands. She cut the rope at the top of the opening. It slipped down to the stone with a dry sound.

She came back to me.

"How can we escape?" I asked.

"That way," she repeated, and she pointed again at the window.

I leaned out. My feverish gaze fell upon the shadowy depths, searching for those invisible rocks, the rocks upon which little Kaine had dashed himself.

"That way!" I exclaimed, shuddering. "Why, it is two hundred feet from here to the ground."

"The rope is two hundred and fifty," she replied. "It is a good strong rope which I stole in the oasis; they used it in felling trees. It is quite new."

"Climb down that way, Tanit-Zerga! With my shoulder!"

"I will let you down," she said firmly. "Feel how strong my arms are. Not that I shall rest your weight on them. But see, on each side of the window is a marble column. By twisting the rope around one of them, I can let you slip down and scarcely feel your weight.

"And look," she continued, "I have made a big knot every ten feet. I can stop the rope with them, every now and then, if I want to rest."

"And you?" I asked.

"When you are down, I shall tie the rope to one of the columns and follow. There are the knots on which to rest if the rope cuts my hands too much. But don't be afraid: I am very agile. At Gao, when I was just a child, I used to climb almost as high as this in the gum trees to take the little toucans out of their nests. It is even easier to climb down."

"And when we are down, how will we get out? Do you know the way through the barriers?"

"No one knows the way through the barriers," she said, "except Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, and perhaps Antinea."

"Then?"

"There are the camels of Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, those which he uses on his forays. I untethered the strongest one and led him out, just below us, and gave him lots of hay so that he will not make a sound and will be well fed when we start."

"But...." I still protested.

She stamped her foot.

"But what? Stay if you wish, if you are afraid. I am going. I want to see Gao once again, Gao with its blue gum-trees and its green water."

I felt myself blushing.

"I will go, Tanit-Zerga. I would rather die of thirst in the midst of the desert than stay here. Let us start."

"Tut!" she said. "Not yet."

She showed me that the dizzy descent was in brilliant moonlight.

"Not yet. We must wait. They would see us. In an hour, the moon will have circled behind the mountain. That will be the time."

She sat silent, her haik wrapped completely about her dark little figure. Was she praying? Perhaps.

Suddenly I no longer saw her. Darkness had crept in the window. The moon had turned.

Tanit-Zerga's hand was on my arm. She drew me toward the abyss. I tried not to tremble.

Everything below us was in shadow. In a low, firm voice, Tanit-Zerga began to speak:

"Everything is ready. I have twisted the rope about the pillar. Here is the slip-knot. Put it under your arms. Take this cushion. Keep it pressed against your hurt shoulder.... A leather cushion.... It is tightly stuffed. Keep face to the wall. It will protect you against the bumping and scraping."

I was now master of myself, very calm. I sat down on the sill of the window, my feet in the void. A breath of cool air from the peaks refreshed me.

I felt little Tanit-Zerga's hand in my vest pocket.

"Here is a box. I must know when you are down, so I can follow. You will open the box. There are fire-flies in it; I shall see them and follow you."

She held my hand a moment.

"Now go," she murmured.

I went.

I remember only one thing about that descent: I was overcome with vexation when the rope stopped and I found myself, feet dangling, against the perfectly smooth wall.

"What is the little fool waiting for?" I said to myself. "I have been hung here for a quarter of an hour. Ah ... at last! Oh, here I am stopped again." Once or twice I thought I was reaching the ground, but it was only a projection from the rock. I had to give a quick shove with my foot.... Then, suddenly, I found myself seated on the ground. I stretched out my hands. Bushes.... A thorn pricked my finger. I was down.

Immediately I began to get nervous again.

I pulled out the cushion and slipped off the noose. With my good hand, I pulled the rope, holding it out five or six feet from the face of the mountain, and put my foot on it.

Then I took the little cardboard box from my pocket and opened it.

One after the other, three little luminous circles rose in the inky night. I saw them rise higher and higher against the rocky wall. Their pale rose aureols gleamed faintly. Then, one by one, they turned, disappeared.

"You are tired, Sidi Lieutenant. Let me hold the rope."

Cegheir-ben-Cheikh rose up at my side.

I looked at his tall black silhouette. I shuddered, but I did not let go of the rope on which I began to feel distant jerks.

"Give it to me," he repeated with authority.

And he took it from my hands.

I don't know what possessed me then. I was standing beside that great dark phantom. And I ask you, what could I, with a dislocated shoulder, do against that man whose agile strength I already knew? What was there to do? I saw him buttressed against the wall, holding the rope with both hands, with both feet, with all his body, much better than I had been able to do.

A rustling above our heads. A little shadowy form.

"There," said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, seizing the little shadow in his powerful arms and placing her on the ground, while the rope, let slack, slapped back against the rock.

Tanit-Zerga recognized the Targa and groaned.

He put his hand roughly over her mouth.

"Shut up, camel thief, wretched little fly."

He seized her arm. Then he turned to me.

"Come," he said in an imperious tone.

I obeyed. During our short walk, I heard Tanit-Zerga's teeth chattering with terror.

We reached a little cave.

"Go in," said the Targa.

He lighted a torch. The red light showed a superb mehari peacefully chewing his cud.

"The little one is not stupid," said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, pointing to the animal. "She knows enough to pick out the best and the strongest. But she is rattle-brained."

He held the torch nearer the camel.

"She is rattle-brained," he continued. "She only saddled him. No water, no food. At this hour, three days from now, all three of you would have been dead on the road, and on what a road!"

Tanit-Zerga's teeth no longer chattered. She was looking at the Targa with a mixture of terror and hope.

"Come here, Sidi Lieutenant," said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, "so that I can explain to you."

When I was beside him, he said:

"On each side there is a skin of water. Make that water last as long as possible, for you are going to cross a terrible country. It may be that you will not find a well for three hundred miles.

"There," he went on, "in the saddle bags, are cans of preserved meat. Not many, for water is much more precious. Here also is a carbine, your carbine, sidi. Try not to use it except to shoot antelopes. And there is this."

He spread out a roll of paper. I saw his inscrutible face bent over it; his eyes were smiling; he looked at me.

"Once out of the enclosures, what way did you plan to go?" he asked.

"Toward Ideles, to retake the route where you met the Captain and me," I said.

Cegheir-ben-Cheikh shook his head.

"I thought as much," he murmured.

Then he added coldly:

"Before sunset to-morrow, you and the little one would have been caught and massacred."

"Toward the north is Ahaggar," he continued, "and all Ahaggar is under the control of Antinea. You must go south."

"Then we shall go south."

"By what route?"

"Why, by Silet and Timissao."

The Targa again shook his head.

"They will look for you on that road also," he said. "It is a good road, the road with the wells. They know that you are familiar with it. The Tuareg would not fail to wait at the wells."

"Well, then?"

"Well," said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, "you must not rejoin the road from Timissao to Timbuctoo until you are four hundred miles from here toward Iferouane, or better still, at the spring of Telemsi. That is the boundary between the Tuareg of Ahaggar and the Awellimiden Tuareg."

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 Cegheir-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."

Cegheir-ben-Cheikh waved his hand impatiently.

"Cegheir-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, Cegheir-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. Cegheir-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.

Cegheir-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.

"Cegheir-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. Cegheir-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 Cegheir-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, Cegheir-ben-Cheikh," said the trembling voice of Tanit-Zerga.

"Be still yourself, miserable little fly," said Cegheir-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 Rhat and Rhadames 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. Cegheir-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, Cegheir-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 Cegheir-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. "Gale 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.

Cegheir-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, Cegheir-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....

Cegheir-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 Cegheir-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 Gale, 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 Cegheir-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 Gao?" she asked.

"We will be only a week from the Niger. And Cegheir-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 Gao. 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 Gale 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 Cegheir-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. Gale 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. Gale ran about our rock giving plaintive little cries.

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. Gale followed.

The well toward which we were dragging ourselves was indicated on Cegheir-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 Gale, 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. Gao is over there, not far away. I can feel it. I want to see Gao 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.

"Gao is just over there, isn't it?" she asked.

Her gleaming eyes became imploring.

"Yes, dear little girl. Gao is there. But for God's sake lie down. The sun is fearful."

"Oh, Gao, Gao!" she repeated. "I know very well that I shall see Gao 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 Gao 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 Gao, 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 Gao gleaming on the horizon, no longer a servile Gao reduced to the rank of a little Negro town, but the splendid Gao of other days, the great capital of the country of the blacks, Gao 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.

"Gao! There is Gao!"

I looked at her.

"Gao," 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. Gao...."

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.

"Gao!" I cried. "Gao!"

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 Gale.

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.

"Gale!" 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, Gale 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, Gale 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 them 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, Eguere and Ahaggar.

A rap on the dining-room door behind us made us start.

"Come in," said Andre 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, Lieutenant de Saint-Avit."

In the same calm voice, Andre answered him:

"Peace be with you, Cegheir-ben-Cheikh."

[Transcriber's Notes: 1.In the original books, there were handwritten characters for the Greek words used in the discussion of the Tifinar engravings; the approximate Greek transliterations have been substituted. 2. Another inscription was hand-drawn in the book, and the center symbol looks like a capital W, rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise. I placed notes to that effect where the symbol appears.]

THE END