William Le Queux

“ Then, urging her to warn the Sultan of the intentions of the Azjar, I kissed her once tenderly upon the lips, lifted her into the saddle of her gaily caparisoned horse, and then she twisted her torn veil about her face, and, giving me “Peace,” sped away swift as an arrow into the darkness, bearing intelligence that would cause the utmost sensation in the mountain fastness.
“I love her,” I murmured, when the sound of her horse’s hoofs had died away. “But how can I save her? To-morrow, when we enter Afo and loot the Palace, she will be secured as slave. No!” ”

“ Truly he can render our spears as broken reeds, and our blades as useless as rusted tin. Each day at the maghrib he standeth beneath a baldachin of purple and giveth the people an assurance of his favour, while all fall down and kiss the hem of his crimson garment so that they may be blessed. In Salemma, El Had, El Guerat, and the villages around Gatron, he hath healed the sick and performed wondrous miracles, while before our own eyes hath he caused a great tree to rise from the bare sand—a marvel which no earthly being could accomplish. ”

“ At night, however, when the outlaws of the desert had cast sand upon their feet and prayed their maghrib, and we had encamped under the palms of the oasis, eaten our dates and kouss-kouss, and slaked our thirst from our water-skins, then commenced the real luxury of the day—the luxury of idleness—as, reclining on a mat in front of the Sheikh’s tent, with coffee and a cigarette, the great Abdul-Melik would relate with slow distinctness stories of past encounters between his people and the hated Christians. ”

“ I echoed. “What art thou?”
“I am Balkîs, sole lineal descendant of the great queen who ruled over Saba, and guardian of her treasure,” she answered. “I am a queen without court; a ruler without people. The palace that thou hast inspected is mine; the throne from the arm of which thou hast filched the great ruby is my lonely seat of royalty; for I am queen of a dead city. ”

“ Our Sheikh nodded, his keen eyes watching the face of the infidel. The latter’s countenance grew grave, whereat we, standing around leaning on our spears, laughed in derision.
“Thou art of the great army of the infidels,” Tamahu said. “Yet thy face palest when we speak of conflict!”
The officer started, and knit his grey brows.
“I fear not thine host of Veiled Men, fierce and relentless though ye be. True, I am a soldier, but one thing alone I dread.”
“Thou fearest to lose thy life,” observed our Sheikh, knowing that the garrison at that little desert town was but small and weak. ”

“ Whilst she went forth secretly I called Malela, son of Tamahu, and imparted to him the circumstances, telling him of my intention to go secretly to Akkar, and giving him instructions how to preserve from the tribe the fact that I was absent. Malela was one of the fiercest of desert-pirates, as valiant a man as ever drew a jambiyah against an enemy; but when I mentioned my intended visit to the silent legendary land, the wealth and terrors of which he had heard hundreds of times from the lips of the story-tellers and marabouts, his face paled beneath its bronze. ”

“ For fully half an hour we toiled upward to the apex, until we at length reached it, perspiring and panting, and minutely examined the single enormous block of stone that capped the summit. By its size I saw that no human hands could move it. If the treasure lay beneath, then it must remain for ever concealed.
“That parchment giveth no instructions how the spoils of war may be reached. We must discover that for ourselves,” she observed, clambering on, still in her ragged male attire with which I had furnished her before leaving the stronghold of the Black Sultan. ”

“ In the sky a saffron streak showed on the edge of the sandy plain, heralding the sun’s coming. I watched it gradually spread, knowing that each moment brought me nearer to an end of agony. I lifted my voice in supplication to Allah, and showered voluble curses upon the expedition about to be attempted by my tribe. The pale, handsome face of Kheira was ever before me, haunting me like a half-remembered dream, its beauty fascinating me, and even causing me to forget the horror of those hours of dawn. ”

“ On the second night darkness fell swiftly, but the moon rose, and under its bright mystic light we sped forward, until suddenly the gaunt man, in a dirty, ragged burnouse, who acted as our guide, shouted, and we pulled up quickly. Then, in the moonlight, I could just distinguish among the trees of the little oasis a few low, white houses, of what I subsequently learned was the little desert village of Tilouat, inhabited by the Kel-Emoghri, and distant ten leagues from the town of Idelès. ”

“ Then a file of armed men, headed by the blood-red banner of Akkar, lined our route, bowing low as we passed on into a hall, high vaulted and of enormous proportions, in the centre of which stood a wonderful throne of gold, covered with hundreds upon hundreds of eyes of every variety and size, wrought in gems to imitate those of human beings and of animals. As I gazed upon it I suddenly recollected what I had heard from the story-tellers about this wondrous seat of Akkar’s Queen. ”

“ Beyond, lying in the full sun glare, were sixty or seventy wretched, woolly-haired negroes, men and women, chained together and guarded by a dozen of the veiled men. Throughout Northern and Central Africa the very name of the Songhoi was synonymous with all that was fierce, cruel, and relentless, for they lived by robbing the desert caravans or capturing slaves in the boundless virgin forests between the Niger and the Congo, being essentially a nomadic race, and having no other home than their tents in the Sahara, that limitless wilderness of rock and sand. ”

“ True, I have fallen captive into thine hands, having journeyed to Tilouat to see my father’s mother who was dying; but thinkest thou that I fear thee? No!” she added with flashing eyes. “Though the people dread thee as the great and powerful Chief, I despise thee and all thy miserable parasites. If thou smitest off mine hands, it is but the same punishment as thou hast meted out to others of my sex. Thou art, after all, a mere coward who maketh war upon women.” ”

“ At the going down of the sun I shall part from thee, and leave this home of my race for ever. In six hours’ march, by the secret gorges, I can reach our encampment, therefore trouble no further after me. Close this treasure-house, return to thine own people, and let them profit by thy discovery.”
“But thou, Zohra, boldest me in fascination,” I cried passionately. “Thou hast entranced me. I love thee!”
“Love can never enter mine heart,” she answered with a calm smile, but sighing nevertheless. “I am already the wife of thine enemy, Melaki, ruler of the Kel-Oui.” ”

“ Although I am bearer of the historic name of Balkîs, and possess treasure of greater worth than men have ever dreamed, my subjects number only fourteen persons, all of whom are my relatives and live here with me in this my palace. As thou hast already seen, our once-powerful city with its fifty brazen gates hath fallen into decay because of the curse placed upon it by Allah. The teeming populace that once crowded its thoroughfares and market-places have dwindled down until mine own family only are left, the last of a long illustrious, world-famed line. ”

“ Ruined temples, with long rows of broken columns, and great houses cracked and fallen into decay, stood silent and deserted, grim, grey relics of a glorious past. Here and there obelisks and colossi still stood, and the broad streets of the giant city were everywhere well-defined by the ruins, half-buried by drifting sand on either side. Above, a single eagle soared high in the heavens, the only sign of life in that once populous and magnificent centre of a lost civilisation. ”

“ Lounging on a bench under the tall date-palms in the market-place of Hamman-el-Enf, I smoked a rank cherbli in dreamy laziness. The day was dying; the blazing African sun sank, flooding the broad Bay of Tunis with its blood-red afterglow, and the giant palms cast their long, straight shadows over the hot, sun-blanched stones. There are no half lights in Northern Africa; all is either glaring brilliance or sombre shadow. Little twilight is there in that land of mosques and marabouts; night follows the death of day with astonishing rapidity. ”

“ At that hour a coolness falls over everything, intense silence reigns, the sky above grows a deeper and deeper blue, and the palms and talha trees look mysterious in the half-light. Soon the stars shine out like diamond points, and it grows darker and darker, until the chill night-breeze of the desert stirs the feathery heads of the date-palms. Then the lawless nomads, my companions, would wrap their burnouses closely about them, scoop out a hole in the warm sand, and there repose until the first flush of dawn. ”

“ She had already mounted, and had twisted a white haick about her face until only her eyes and the row of emeralds across her brow remained visible.
It is needless to recount the long breathless days we spent together in journeying westward, resting by day and travelling ever in the track of the blood-red afterglow, until we came upon a range of giant snow-crested mountains, as great as the monster Atlas that loom as a barrier between ourselves and the so-called civilisation of the Franks. ”

“ Essoyouti, a scholar renowned throughout Tripoli and Tunis, had versed me in legendary lore, until I had become full of glowing fancies and unutterable longing to penetrate the entrancing mysteries to which he had so often referred as problems that could never be solved.
I am a Veiled Man. Openly, I confess myself a vagabond and a brigand. Living here, in the heart of the Great Desert, six moons march from Algiers, and a thousand miles beyond the French outposts, theft is, with my nomadic tribe, their natural industry—a branch of education, in fact. ”

“ Then in a few moments the frou-frou of silk startled me, and next second I leaped to my feet, and, with a cry of joy, clasped Kheira in my arms.
In her gorgeous harem dress of pale rose silk, with golden bejewelled girdle, she looked bewitching, though around her eyes were dark rings that betrayed the anxiety of the past few days. As our lips met in hot, passionate kisses, she was followed by a tall, stately, dark-bearded man of matchless bearing, whose robe was of amaranth silk, and who wore in his head-dress a magnificent diamond aigrette. ”

“ I raised my rifle and took deliberate aim at her panting breast. My hands trembled. Next second a flood of bitter recollections surged through my brain. I remembered those solemn words she had uttered: “We are of different races; different creeds. What is right in thine eyes is sin in mine; what is worship to thee is, to me, idolatry. It is the very fact that we love one another that should cause us to part and forget.” ”

“ O Ahamadou, our Sheikh! We are thy kinsmen, yet thou hast sent to attack us!” they exclaimed.
“Our kinsmen!” I cried, noticing that they wore the white burnouse of the north, with their haicks held around their heads by ropes of twisted camel’s hair. They wore no veils, and a Touareg is unrecognisable, even to his relatives, if his black litham be removed.
“Yea,” cried one, the elder of the four. “Lend us a veil, and we will show thee.” ”

“ Riding day by day over the breathless solitudes of sand, no single word of complaint ever escaped her. Whenever we halted, before she ate she would busy herself in attending to our wounded; sometimes bandaging an arm or a leg, at others pouring out water and handing it to a thirsty man with a pleasing smile that quickened his pulse. ”

“ The gems were of the first water, the spoils taken in battle by the notorious queen once feared by all the world, while heaped everywhere were bejewelled breast-plates, gem-encrusted goblets, golden dishes, and swords with hilts and scabbards thickly set with precious stones. Wheresoever I trod there were scattered in the fine white dust strings of pearls, uncut gems, rings, and ear-ornaments, while all around were piled great immovable boxes of hewn stone, like coffins, securely clamped with rusting iron. ”