II
Months later, in a certain Tuareg camp on the edge of the desert, two men were engrossed in working out a sum upon the sand; in native fashion, marking out rows of double dots with imprint of the first two fingers of the right hand; then flicking out some portions of their handiwork when mutual consultation advised correction.
The men were Rali and his brother Yofa, and they were calculating the stages of a long journey. Their dark, hawk-like eyes, peering through the slit of their veils, glinted actively; and assuredly some great enterprise was afoot. At last the sums on the sand were swept out by a stroke or two of the hand, and the men arose.
“We have met on the tenth day of the moon which is called Togaso,” said Rali. “If Allah is kind we shall reach the country of our enemies on the fourteenth day of the moon which is called Assum.”
For months Rali had waited with that patience and will that are gifted to his race. Now it was his turn to move the pawn of breathless import that should win or lose a mighty stake in the gamble of life. Now, surely, his opponents had grown unwary, forgetful of the danger of being followed, and vigilance relaxed in confidence of their security behind tracks that had grown dim upon the sand, or obliterated by kindly elements of Time. Not now would the robbers guess that Rali had followed those self-same tracks while they were yet fresh to the vision, and had read there the riddle of the sands as clearly as scholar might read parchment. For two days he had followed them; afterwards he had stored in his mind the acute observations by which he hoped he would ultimately run the robbers to earth. He knew the tribe the robbers belonged to; knew each camel of the band should he ever cross their tracks again: marvellous observation and memory that are second nature to the tribes of the desert places, reared by the wayside of drifting sand and shepherds of camels from childhood.
It was evening. The sun, which had blazed down on the hot sand all day with the heat of a furnace fire, had dipped below the straight plain-edge of the horizon. For a fleeting moment the sand took on a ruddy glow, and, in the gracious, luminous light, even the soiled dress of the men and women of the bush-camp lost all shabbiness. Then the soft light died out, and it was almost night.
In the centre of the Tuareg encampment, of frail skin-covered gipsy shelters, three saddled camels were kneeling ready for a journey. Two awaited riders, the third was burdened with provisions; leather bags containing native food, and goatskins filled with precious water.
Presently Rali and Yofa, accompanied by a group of their friends, came up to the camels in readiness to depart. Both were fully armed with modern rifles and belts of ammunition. Solemnly the travellers bade good-bye to their comrades in camp. Then they swung easily into their saddles; and on the instant the camels felt touch of human hand they rose from the ground.
“Brothers, we depart,” cried Rali. “Tidings wing faster than the winds across the sands. See! we start south on the way to Kano, our tracks will lead in that direction and be lost. Hold fast our secret. Ere to-morrow we will turn about and speed north—and no stranger must know. In your salaams to the Rising Sun plead that Allah protect us. If life be spared we shall come back, bearing with us the beautiful Kahena, when the days are young in the moon which is called Germuda.”
A BRIEF HALT
And the camels padded noiselessly off into the night: gaunt, moving objects that dwindled down to shadowy specks on the plain of sand—then disappeared.
The journey which Rali and Yofa set out upon, which they had reckoned would entail thirty-five days of incessant travel, held no great hardship for them. Their anxiety lay in the danger of it, the strain of constant watchfulness, the duty of following out to the end the elusive trail of the robbers, now old and faint and altogether blank in places.
“We have tracked the wild sheep of our mountains to their cool dark caves in the summits with only the pin-scrape of an odd hoof-slip on the hard rocks to guide us, and our fathers have followed the ill-fated caravans of our tribe when lost in the sandstorms of the desert until they have found the bleached bones and the resting-place of those who had perished. May the eyes of the vulture be given us, and the cunning of the jackal, so that we, in our great need, shall not fail.”
Thus spoke Rali, when they commenced to follow the trail of the robbers at the place where he had marked it months before, while it was yet fresh.
Slowly they tracked the trail onward, day after day, ever heading northward along the margins of wastes of sand that lay spell-bound in the grip of limitless silence.
One night they passed close under the great, darkly frowning mass of Baguezan, a prominent range in Aïr; and two days later found them east of the mountains, seeking the tracks in the sand while the sun went down in golden splendour behind the rugged peaks of Timia.
Later on, vague signs in the sand told them that the robbers had altered their course, and they swung westward into the mountain-land through the wide plain that trends toward the great Agoras river-bed.
Near its source they turned again northward.
They were now in a forsaken land that had once been the stronghold of their race throughout the hey-day of their power—stricken, deserted, northern Aïr, no longer harbouring living soul, no longer prospering in any way whatever.
Village after village they passed of tiny huts built from the stones of the mountains, and all stood grave and silent as tombs of the dead.
“The legends our mothers have taught us tell that we come of a great race,” said Rali. “And truly it was so. But a curse has fallen upon us with such merciless weight that, in our depression, we have come to believe that our race shall die until none remain.”
“Yes, brother,” answered Yofa. “I fear thou speakest truth. There are many kinds of misfortune, as there are many kinds of peoples on the earth; little peoples and great peoples. The incomprehensible purpose of destiny may single out any one of them, or any group of them, at any time if they trend toward ill-advised and unhealthy disguise of the soul, which has been bequeathed to them, and, mayhap, they shall fade like the leaves of the forest, until they die. Thus, sometimes, to halt an evil that has escaped beyond the shores of restraint, a great blight doth fall, that spreadeth broadcast in the land, since the victims, in their self-confident security, do not see that it is among them, nor seek a remedy, nor hear the words of wisdom of the far-seeing wizards. Allah is strong, and we but as pebbles on the sand. They are there for a purpose, as we are here; when the purpose is past, or unduly transgressed, we shall be overcome and laid low, as drifting sand doth smother those stones.
“But every failure and every shortcoming hath remedy, if we search diligently to find it. And seldom doth hard struggle to ward off disaster go unrewarded. Wherefore blame is upon us, for we, as a race, are no longer great of will; we idle by our herds, we drift like grass seeds to and fro upon the desert, and we take not firm root anywhere in the soil. Yea, verily, we are drifting, ever drifting wherever soft winds blow.”
In answer to these words, and in conclusion, Rali stretched out his hand to embrace the landscape of noble, strong-featured mountains that encompassed them, and exclaimed:
“They, the once dearly loved hills of our forefathers, more fortunate than we, are immovable to the influence of sunshine or storm. We may falter in the conduct of our lives, and pass carelessly on; but they shall remain, for ever monuments to the land of our race, their purpose fulfilled, their infinite composure pointing calmness and resolution, yet offering neither reproof nor scorn upon the shortcomings of humanity.”
Thus spoke those grave Tuareg men, revealing the inherent melancholy of their race, and the remnants of nobility of character that spring forth like gleams of light on occasions of deep emotion, but quickly die out in the willy-nilly idling of careless, aimless lives. For in their camps the Tuaregs of to-day may be likened to the lizards on the stones by their hut-doors: creatures content to idle and bask in the sun, contemplative, perhaps, but making no great exertion to do aught but eat and sleep and exist at freedom in the languishing temperature of African climate.
Meantime, onward they journeyed, day after day; sometimes, night after night; sleuths with their eyes to the ground clinging to the slightest fragment of sign of the robbers’ old trail. No check, and they had many, could shake them from their purpose nor confuse their wonderful intelligence in tracking. Ever they held on, out into the wastes of sand, out into the Unknown, far beyond the limits of their territory. Whither they were going they knew not! That the faint tracks at their feet alone could ultimately answer.