During the first hour of our flight, the great mehari of
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh carried us at a mad pace. We covered at least five
leagues. With fixed eyes, I guided the beast toward the gour which
the Targa had pointed out, its ridge becoming higher and higher
against the paling sky.
The speed caused a little breeze to whistle in our ears. Great tufts
of retem, like fleshless skeletons, were tossed to right and left.
I heard the voice of Tanit-Zerga whispering: "Stop the camel."
At first I did not understand.
"Stop him," she repeated.
Her hand pulled sharply at my right arm.
I obeyed. The camel slackened his pace with very bad grace.
"Listen," she said.
At first I heard nothing. Then a very slight noise, a dry rustling
behind us.
"Stop the camel," Tanit-Zerga commanded. "It is not worth while to
make him kneel."
A little gray creature bounded on the camel. The mehari set out again
at his best speed.
"Let him go," said Tanit-Zerga. "Galé has jumped on."
I felt a tuft of bristly hair under my arm. The mongoose had followed
our footsteps and rejoined us. I heard the quick panting of the brave
little creature becoming gradually slower and slower.
"I am happy," murmured Tanit-Zerga.
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh had not been mistaken. We reached the gour as the
sun rose. I looked back. The Atakor was nothing more than a monstrous
chaos amid the night mists which trailed the dawn. It was no longer
possible to pick out from among the nameless peaks, the one on which
Antinea was still weaving her passionate plots.
You know what the Tanezruft is, the "plain of plains," abandoned,
uninhabitable, the country of hunger and thirst. We were then starting
on the part of the desert which Duveyrier calls the Tassili of the
south, and which figures on the maps of the Minister of Public Works
under this attractive title: "Rocky plateau, without water, without
vegetation, inhospitable for man and beast."
Nothing, unless parts of the Kalahari, is more frightful than this
rocky desert. Oh, Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh did not exaggerate in saying that
no one would dream of following us into that country.
Great patches of oblivion still refused to clear away. Memories chased
each other incoherently about my head. A sentence came back to me
textually: "It seemed to Dick that he had never, since the beginning
of original darkness, done anything at all save jolt through the air."
I gave a little laugh. "In the last few hours," I thought, "I have
been heaping up literary situations. A while ago, a hundred feet above
the ground, I was Fabrice of La Chartreuse de Parme beside his
Italian dungeon. Now, here on my camel, I am Dick of The Light That
Failed, crossing the desert to meet his companions in arms." I
chuckled again; then shuddered. I thought of the preceding night, of
the Orestes of Andromaque who agreed to sacrifice Pyrrhus. A
literary situation indeed....