Pierre Benoît

“ Of a sudden I seized Morhange by the arm. The grayish thing was alive. A pitiful long neck emerged from it with the heartrending cry of a beast in despair.
"The fool," I cried, "he has let one of our beasts get loose, and the stream is carrying it away!"
"You are mistaken," said Morhange. "Our camels are all in the cave. The one Bou-Djema is running after is not ours. And the cry of anguish we just heard, that was not Bou-Djema either. Bou-Djema is a brave Chaamb who has at this moment only one idea, to appropriate the intestate capital represented by this camel in the stream." ”

“ I was filled with emotion at this last moment; I went to the Targa and took his hand.
"Ceghéir-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. Ceghéir-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. ”

“ When we had come up even with it we saw that it was a man in the long dark blue robes of the Tuareg.
"Give me your hand," said Morhange, "and brace yourself against a rock, hard."
He was very, very strong. In an instant, as if it were child's play, he had brought the body ashore.
"He is still alive," he pronounced with satisfaction. "Now it is a question of getting him to the grotto. This is no place to resuscitate a drowned man."
He raised the body in his powerful arms.
"It is astonishing how little he weighs for a man of his height." ”

“ In no time at all, I was stretched out on an inclined marble table.
The Negro began to massage me vigorously.
"More gently there, fellow!"
My masseur did not reply, but laughed and rubbed still harder.
"Where do you come from? Kanem? Torkou? You laugh too much for a Targa."
Unbroken silence. The Negro was as speechless as he was hilarious.
"After all, I am making a fool of myself," I said, giving up the case. "Such as he is, he is more agreeable than Le Mesge with his nightmarish erudition. But, on my word, what a recruit he would be for Hamman on the rue des Mathurins!"
"Cigarette, sidi?" ”

“ Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh waved his hand impatiently.
"Ceghéir-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. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ And, furthermore, I may as well admit that I rather liked the turn that our trip was beginning to take. I had, at that instant, the sensation of journeying toward something incredible, toward some tremendous adventure. You do not live with impunity for months and years as the guest of the desert. Sooner or later, it has its way with you, annihilates the good officer, the timid executive, overthrows his solicitude for his responsibilities. What is there behind those mysterious rocks, those dim solitudes, which have held at bay the most illustrious pursuers of mystery? ”

“ It was an orichalch ring, exactly like that which Antinea had given me the previous day and the one which she herself wore.
Morhange smiled.
"Well?" I said.
"Well?"
"You have seen her?"
"I have indeed," Morhange replied.
"She is beautiful, is she not?"
"It would be difficult to dispute that," my comrade answered. "I even believe that I can say that she is as intelligent as she is beautiful."
There was a pause. Morhange was calmly fingering the orichalch ring.
"You know what our fate is to be?"
"I know. Le Mesge explained it to us yesterday in polite mythological terms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ M. Le Mesge shrugged his shoulders.
"It is a human forehead," he affirmed curtly, "and not bronze. Bronze is darker, sir. This is the great unknown metal of which Plato speaks in the Critias, and which is something between gold and silver: it is the special metal of the mountains of the Atlantides. It is orichalch."
Bending again, I satisfied myself that this metal was the same as that with which the walls of the library were overcast.
"It is orichalch," continued M. Le Mesge. "You look as if you had no idea how a human body can look like a statue of orichalch. ”

“ Stay if you wish, if you are afraid. I am going. I want to see Gâo once again, Gâo 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. ”

“ The Tuareg are afraid of the ilhinen, spirits with horns and tails, covered with hair, who make the cattle sicken and die and cast spells over men. But I know well that the Christians are not afraid and even laugh at the fears of the Tuareg."
"And you?" I asked. "You are a Targa and you are not afraid of the ilhinen?"
Eg-Anteouen showed a little red leather bag hung about his neck on a chain of white seeds.
"I have my amulet," he replied gravely, "blessed by the venerable Sidi-Moussa himself. And then I am with you. You saved my life. You have desired to see the inscriptions. ”

“ Tanit-Zerga paused.
"That was the last night of Gâo. While I was sleeping and the moon was still high above the forest, a dog yelped, but only for an instant. Then came the cry of men, then of women, the kind of cry that you can never forget if you have once heard it. When the sun rose, it found me, quite naked, running and stumbling towards the north with my little companions, beside the swiftly moving camels of the Tuareg who escorted us. Behind, followed the women of the tribe, my mother among them, two by two, the yoke upon their necks. There were not many men. ”

“ III THE MORHANGE-SAINT-AVIT MISSION
"So I killed Captain Morhange," André de Saint-Avit said to me the next day, at the same time, in the same place, with a calm that took no account of the night, the frightful night I had just been through. "Why do I tell you this? I don't know in the least. Because of the desert, perhaps. Are you a man capable of enduring the weight of that confidence, and further, if necessary, of assuming the consequences it may bring? I don't know that, either. The future will decide. ”

“ She has never been obliged to regain her self-mastery, for she never has lost it. She is the only woman who has been able to disassociate those two inextricable things, love and voluptuousness."
M. Le Mesge paused a moment and then went on.
"Once every day, she comes to this vault. She stops before the niches; she meditates before the rigid statues; she touches the cold bosoms, so burning when she knew them. Then, after dreaming before the empty niche where the next victim soon will sleep his eternal sleep in a cold case of orichalch, she returns nonchalantly where he is waiting for her." ”

“ They did not hear me, but, turning in my saddle, I saw that they had lost no distance, Morhange following me, and Bou-Djema in the rear driving the two baggage camels masterfully before him.
A blinding streak of lightning rent the obscurity. A peal of thunder, re-echoed to infinity by the rocky wall, rang out, and immediately great tepid drops began to fall. In an instant, our burnouses, which had been blown out behind by the speed with which we were traveling, were stuck tight to our streaming bodies. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Evil days may be in store for you, but what does that matter? For one day you will see Gâo gleaming on the horizon, no longer a servile Gâo reduced to the rank of a little Negro town, but the splendid Gâo of other days, the great capital of the country of the blacks, Gâo 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.... ”

“ 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, Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh," said the trembling voice of Tanit-Zerga.
"Be still yourself, miserable little fly," said Ceghéir-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 Rhât and Rhadamès eight years ago. ”

“ False witnesses to a freedom of spirit, one in face of the other. What more accessible in appearance than the immense Sahara, open to all those who are willing to be engulfed by it? Yet what is more secret? After six months of companionship, of communion of life such as only a Post in the South offers, I ask myself if the most extraordinary of my adventures is not to be leaving to-morrow, toward unsounded solitudes, with a man whose real thoughts are as unknown to me as these same solitudes, for which he has succeeded in making me long. ”

“ I could not restrain a cry of delight.
I was standing on a kind of balcony, cut into the flank of a mountain, overhanging an abyss. Above me, blue sky; below appeared a veritable earthly paradise hemmed in on all sides by mountains that formed a continuous and impassable wall about it. A garden lay spread out down there. The palm trees gently swayed their great fronds. At their feet was a tangle of the smaller trees which grow in an oasis under their protection: almonds, lemons, oranges, and many others which I could not distinguish from that height. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ Here, the great Egyptian traditions which inspired Solon, Herodotus and Plato. Here, the Greek mythologists, the magicians of Roman Africa, the Indian mystics, all the treasures, in a word, for the lack of which contemporary dissertations are poor laughable things. Believe me, he is well avenged, the little universitarian whom they took for a madman, whom they defied. I have lived, I live, I shall live in a perpetual burst of laughter at their false and garbled erudition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An Egyptian klaft fell over her abundant blue-black curls. Its two points of heavy, gold-embroidered cloth extended to her slim hips. The golden serpent, emerald-eyed, was clasped about her little round, determined forehead, darting its double tongue of rubies over her head.
She wore a tunic of black chiffon shot with gold, very light, very full, slightly gathered in by a white muslin scarf embroidered with iris in black pearls.
That was Antinea's costume. But what was she beneath all this? A slim young girl, with long green eyes and the slender profile of a hawk. A more intense Adonis. ”

“ Ah, that he had been thrown by a misstep of his camel and rolled to his death in the midst of the flood! Then what followed would never have happened. That is the thought that comes to me in hours of weakness. But I have told you that I pull myself out of it quickly. No, no, I do not regret it, I cannot regret it, that what happened did happen.
Morhange left me to go into the little grotto, where Bou-Djema's camels were now resting comfortably. I stayed alone, watching the torrent which was continuously rising with the impetuous inrush of its unbridled tributaries. It had stopped raining. ”

“ I lost my temper with a Negro manicure. I was jealous of Morhange, on my word! Why not, since I was at it, be jealous of those here present; then of the others, the absent, who will come, one by one, to fill the black circle of the still empty niches.... Morhange, I know, is at this moment with Antinea, and it is to me a bitter and splendid joy to think of his joy. But some evening, in three months, four perhaps, the embalmers will come here. Niche 54 will receive its prey. Then a Targa slave will advance toward me. I shall shiver with superb ecstasy. He will touch my arm. ”

“ 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 Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh, pointing to the animal. "She knows enough to pick out the best and the strongest. But she is rattle-brained." ”

“ My quiet was short. "Be honest with yourself," I said. "Since Morhange abandoned you, since the day when you saw Antinea, you have had only one idea. What good is it to beguile yourself with the stories of Tanit-Zerga, charming as they are? This leopard is a pretext, perhaps a guide. Oh, you know that mysterious things are going to happen tonight. How have you been able to keep from doing anything as long as this?"
Immediately I made a resolve.
"If I open the door," I thought, "King Hiram will leap down the corridor and I shall have great difficulty in following him. ”

“ Sand swallows up civilization better than water. To-day there remains nothing of the beautiful isle that the sea and winds kept gay and verdant but this chalky mass. Nothing has endured in this rocky basin, cut off forever from the living world, but the marvelous oasis that you have at your feet, these red fruits, this cascade, this blue lake, sacred witnesses to the golden age that is gone. ”