XIX
THE TANEZRUFT
During the first hour of our flight, the great mehari ofCegheir-ben-Cheikh carried us at a mad pace. We covered at least fiveleagues. With fixed eyes, I guided the beast toward the _gour_ whichthe Targa had pointed out, its ridge becoming higher and higheragainst the paling sky.
The speed caused a little breeze to whistle in our ears. Great tuftsof _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 rustlingbehind us.
"Stop the camel," Tanit-Zerga commanded. "It is not worth while tomake him kneel."
A little gray creature bounded on the camel. The mehari set out againat 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 followedour footsteps and rejoined us. I heard the quick panting of the bravelittle creature becoming gradually slower and slower.
"I am happy," murmured Tanit-Zerga.
Cegheir-ben-Cheikh had not been mistaken. We reached the _gour_ as thesun rose. I looked back. The Atakor was nothing more than a monstrouschaos amid the night mists which trailed the dawn. It was no longerpossible to pick out from among the nameless peaks, the one on whichAntinea 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 startingon the part of the desert which Duveyrier calls the Tassili of thesouth, and which figures on the maps of the Minister of Public Worksunder this attractive title: "Rocky plateau, without water, withoutvegetation, inhospitable for man and beast."
Nothing, unless parts of the Kalahari, is more frightful than thisrocky desert. Oh, Cegheir-ben-Cheikh did not exaggerate in saying thatno one would dream of following us into that country.
Great patches of oblivion still refused to clear away. Memories chasedeach other incoherently about my head. A sentence came back to metextually: "It seemed to Dick that he had never, since the beginningof original darkness, done anything at all save jolt through the air."I gave a little laugh. "In the last few hours," I thought, "I havebeen heaping up literary situations. A while ago, a hundred feet abovethe ground, I was Fabrice of _La Chartreuse de Parme_ beside hisItalian dungeon. Now, here on my camel, I am Dick of _The Light ThatFailed_, crossing the desert to meet his companions in arms." Ichuckled again; then shuddered. I thought of the preceding night, ofthe Orestes of _Andromaque_ who agreed to sacrifice Pyrrhus. Aliterary situation indeed....
Cegheir-ben-Cheikh had reckoned eight days to get to the woodedcountry of the Awellimiden, forerunners of the grassy steppes of theSoudan. He knew well the worth of his beast. Tanit-Zerga had suddenlygiven him a name, _El Mellen_, the white one, for the magnificentmehari had an almost spotless coat. Once he went two days withouteating, merely picking up here and there a branch of an acacia treewhose hideous white spines, four inches long, filled me with fear forour friend's oesophagus. The wells marked out by Cegheir-ben-Cheikhwere indeed at the indicated spots, but we found nothing in them but aburning yellow mud. It was enough for the camel, enough so that at theend of the fifth day, thanks to prodigious self-control, we had usedup only one of our two water skins. Then we believed ourselves safe.
Near one of these muddy puddles, I succeeded that day in shooting downa little straight-horned desert gazelle. Tanit-Zerga skinned the beastand we regaled ourselves with a delicious haunch. Meantime, littleGale, who never ceased prying about the cracks in the rocks during ourmid-day halts in the heat, discovered an _ourane_, a sand crocodile,five feet long, and made short work of breaking his neck. She ate somuch she could not budge. It cost us a pint of water to help herdigestion. We gave it with good grace, for we were happy. Tanit-Zergadid not say so, but her joy at knowing that I was thinking no more ofthe woman in the gold diadem and the emeralds was apparent. Andreally, during those days, I hardly thought of her. I thought only ofthe torrid heat to be avoided, of the water skins which, if you wishedto drink fresh water, had to be left for an hour in a cleft in therocks; of the intense joy which seized you when you raised to yourlips a leather goblet brimming with that life-saving water.... I cansay this with authority, with good authority, indeed; passion,spiritual or physical, is a thing for those who have eaten and drunkand rested.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon. The frightful heat wasslackening. We had left a kind of rocky crevice where we had had alittle nap. Seated on a huge rock, we were watching the reddeningwest.
I spread out the roll of paper on which Cegheir-ben-Cheikh had markedthe stages of our journey as far as the road from the Soudan. Irealized again with joy that his itinerary was exact and that I hadfollowed it scrupulously.
"The evening of the day after to-morrow," I said, "we shall be settingout on the stage which will take us, by the next dawn, to the watersat Telemsi. Once there, we shall not have to worry any more aboutwater."
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 saidthat at Telemsi, one reached a road overhung with mimosa."
"I know the mimosa," she said. "They are the little yellow balls thatmelt in your hand. But I like the caper flowers better. You will comewith me to Gao. My father, Sonni-Azkia, was killed, as I told you, bythe Awellimiden. But my people must have rebuilt the villages. Theyare used to that. You will see how you will be received."
"I will go, Tanit-Zerga, I promise you. But you also, you must promiseme...."
"What? Oh, I guess. You must take me for a little fool if you believeme capable of speaking of things which might make trouble for myfriend."
She looked at me as she spoke. Privation and great fatigue hadchiselled the brown face where her great eyes shone.... Since then, Ihave had time to assemble the maps and compasses, and to fix foreverthe spot where, for the first time, I understood the beauty ofTanit-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 thatsent 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 paleflanks knotted up by convulsive spasms, _El Mellen_ lay in anguish.
I need not say that we rushed to him in feverish haste. Of what _ElMellen_ was dying, I did not know, I never have known. All the meharaare that way. They are at once the most enduring and the most delicateof beasts. They will travel for six months across the most frightfuldeserts, with little food, without water, and seem only the better forit. Then, one day when nothing is the matter, they stretch out andgive you the slip with disconcerting ease.
When Tanit-Zerga and I saw that there was nothing more to do, we stoodthere without a word, watching his slackening spasms. When he breathedhis 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," Ireplied. "We could make thirty miles by going toward Iferouane; butthe wells are not marked on that route."
"Then we must walk toward the springs of Telemsi," she said. "Ahundred 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 makeGale eat and drink, for we cannot carry all the tins, and the waterskin is so heavy that we should not get three miles if we tried tocarry it. We will put a little water in one of the tins after emptyingit 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 outfor another eighteen miles and we will reach the wells marked on thepaper by Cegheir-ben-Cheikh."
"Oh," I murmured sadly, "if my shoulder were only not this way, Icould 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 twomore and the one filled with water. Come. We must leave in an hour ifwe 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 whichwe had begun so happily and confidently. Without the little girl, Ibelieve I should have seated myself upon a rock and waited. Gale onlywas happy.
"We must not let her eat too much," said Tanit-Zerga. "She would notbe able to follow us. And to-morrow she must work. If she catchesanother _ourane_, it will be for us."
You have walked in the desert. You know how terrible the first hoursof the night are. When the moon comes up, huge and yellow, a sharpdust seems to rise in suffocating clouds. You move your jawsmechanically as if to crush the dust that finds its way into yourthroat 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. Butanyway it is bearable. "The night is ending," you say, "and with itthe march. All in all, I am less tired than at the beginning." Thenight ends, but then comes the most terrible hour of all. You areperishing of thirst and shaking with cold. All the fatigue comes backat once. The horrible breeze which precedes the dawn is no comfort.Quite the contrary. Every time you stumble, you say, "The next misstepwill be the last."
That is what people feel and say even when they know that in a fewhours they will have a good rest with food and water.
I was suffering terribly. Every step jolted my poor shoulder. At onetime, I wanted to stop, to sit down. Then I looked at Tanit-Zerga. Shewas walking ahead with her eyes almost closed. Her expression was anindefinable one of mingled suffering and determination. I closed myown 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 didnot eat. Instead, she swallowed a little of her half can of water. Shelay drowsy all day. Gale ran about our rock giving plaintive littlecries.
I am not going to tell you about the second march. It was morehorrible than anything you can imagine. I suffered all that it ishumanly possible to suffer in the desert. But already I began toobserve with infinite pity that my man's strength was outlasting thenervous force of my little companion. The poor child walked on withoutsaying a word, chewing feebly one corner of her _haik_ which she haddrawn over her face. Gale followed.
The well toward which we were dragging ourselves was indicated onCegheir-ben-Cheikh's paper by the one word _Tissaririn. Tissaririn_ isthe 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 thehole, the opening of the well.
Finally we reached it.
It was empty.
It is a strange sensation to be dying of thirst. At first thesuffering is terrible. Then, gradually, it becomes less. You becomepartly unconscious. Ridiculous little things about your life occur toyou, fly about you like mosquitoes. I began to remember my historycomposition for the entrance examination of Saint-Cyr, "The Campaignof Marengo." Obstinately I repeated to myself, "I have already saidthat the battery unmasked by Marmont at the moment of Kellerman'scharge included eighteen pieces.... No, I remember now, it was onlytwelve 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. Iopened my eyes. Tanit-Zerga was bending over me. It was her hand whichburnt 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 littleGale, 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. Ican feel it. I want to see Gao again."
I made her sit down beside me in the shadow of a rock. I realized thatall 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. Thesun is fearful."
"Oh, Gao, Gao!" she repeated. "I know very well that I shall see Gaoagain."
She sat up. Her fiery little hands gripped mine.
"Listen. I must tell you so you can understand how I know I shall seeGao 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 wherethere is water, at Gao, where my father was a prince, there was....Well, one day, one feast day, there came from the interior of thecountry an old magician, dressed in skins and feathers, with a maskand a pointed head-dress, with castanets, and two serpents in a bag.On the village square, where all our people formed in a circle, hedanced the _boussadilla_. I was in the first row, and because I had anecklace of pink tourmaline, he quickly saw that I was the daughter ofa chief. So he spoke to me of the past, of the great Mandingue Empireover which my grandfathers had ruled, of our enemies, the fierceKountas, 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 foryou, but what does that matter? For one day you will see Gao gleamingon the horizon, no longer a servile Gao reduced to the rank of alittle Negro town, but the splendid Gao of other days, the greatcapital of the country of the blacks, Gao reborn, with its mosque ofseven towers and fourteen cupolas of turquoise, with its houses withcool courts, its fountains, its watered gardens, all blooming withgreat red and white flowers.... That will be for you the hour ofdeliverance and of royalty.'"
Tanit-Zerga was standing up. All about us, on our heads, the sunblazed 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 thefountains, the cupolas and the towers, the palm trees, the great redand white flowers. Gao...."
Indeed, along the shimmering horizon rose a fantastic
city with mightybuildings that towered, tier on tier, until they formed a rainbow.Wide-eyed, we stood and watched the terrible mirage quiver feverishlybefore 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 catchthe child in my arms and hear her murmur as in a whisper:
"And then that will be the day of deliverance. The day of deliveranceand of royalty."
Several hours later I took the knife with which we had skinned thedesert gazelle and, in the sand at the foot of the rock whereTanit-Zerga had given up her spirit, I made a little hollow where shewas to rest.
When everything was ready, I wanted to look once more at that dearlittle face. Courage failed me for a moment.... Then I quickly drewthe _haik_ over the brown face and laid the body of the child in thehollow.
I had reckoned without Gale.
The eyes of the mongoose had not left me during the whole time that Iwas about my sad duty. When she heard the first handfuls of sand fallon the _haik_, she gave a sharp cry. I looked at her and saw her readyto 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 neverfinish my task and that, even if I did, Gale would stay there anddisinter the body.
My carbine lay at my feet. A shot drew echoes from the immense emptydesert. A moment later, Gale also slept her last sleep, curled up, asI so often had seen her, against the neck of her mistress.
When the surface showed nothing more than a little mound of trampledsand, I rose staggering and started off aimlessly into the desert,toward the south.