Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh had reckoned eight days to get to the wooded
country of the Awellimiden, forerunners of the grassy steppes of the
Soudan. He knew well the worth of his beast. Tanit-Zerga had suddenly
given him a name, El Mellen, the white one, for the magnificent
mehari had an almost spotless coat. Once he went two days without
eating, merely picking up here and there a branch of an acacia tree
whose hideous white spines, four inches long, filled me with fear for
our friend's oesophagus. The wells marked out by Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh
were indeed at the indicated spots, but we found nothing in them but a
burning yellow mud. It was enough for the camel, enough so that at the
end of the fifth day, thanks to prodigious self-control, we had used
up only one of our two water skins. Then we believed ourselves safe.
Near one of these muddy puddles, I succeeded that day in shooting down
a little straight-horned desert gazelle. Tanit-Zerga skinned the beast
and we regaled ourselves with a delicious haunch. Meantime, little
Galé, who never ceased prying about the cracks in the rocks during our
mid-day halts in the heat, discovered an ourane, a sand crocodile,
five feet long, and made short work of breaking his neck. She ate so
much she could not budge. It cost us a pint of water to help her
digestion. We gave it with good grace, for we were happy. Tanit-Zerga
did not say so, but her joy at knowing that I was thinking no more of
the woman in the gold diadem and the emeralds was apparent. And
really, during those days, I hardly thought of her. I thought only of
the torrid heat to be avoided, of the water skins which, if you wished
to drink fresh water, had to be left for an hour in a cleft in the
rocks; of the intense joy which seized you when you raised to your
lips a leather goblet brimming with that life-saving water.... I can
say this with authority, with good authority, indeed; passion,
spiritual or physical, is a thing for those who have eaten and drunk
and rested.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon. The frightful heat was
slackening. We had left a kind of rocky crevice where we had had a
little nap. Seated on a huge rock, we were watching the reddening
west.
I spread out the roll of paper on which Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh had marked
the stages of our journey as far as the road from the Soudan. I
realized again with joy that his itinerary was exact and that I had
followed it scrupulously.