“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.
III
A band of Ehaggaran natives, engaged in tending to the grazing of their herds of goats and camels, were camped beneath the eastern slopes of the Ahaggar mountain-range near Tiririn, not vastly distant from Ghat, on the borders of the Fezzan.
In the cool of late afternoon the women were bestirring about the tasks of camp; voices floated softly into the great space of the surroundings; wood-smoke rose from freshly nourished camp-fires, untroubled by wind; and altogether the scene was pastoral and peaceful.
None would suspect that the camp sheltered bandits. Yet it is often thus that, mingled with the commonplace simplicity of rural atmosphere, gangs of robbers of the Sahara, when off the trail, live and protect themselves against discovery at the hands of unfriendly neighbours. Surrounded by peaceful occupation and circumspect behaviour, they live the routine life of their camps, their weapons of warfare carefully hidden, and all other traces of evil-doing; while they retreat behind a curtain of deceit, and cunning, and secrecy; in which they are past-masters. And, in this camp near Tiririn, behind the veil of placid scene, lay Kahena, the bride of Rali.
Among a group of congested hutments Kahena, her cotton shawl drawn closely about her features, was hidden in a dark chamber, free from bonds, but hourly watched over by the women of the robber band so that she should not endeavour to escape; though escape in such a wilderness, should she be desperate enough to attempt it, could only spell death.