CHAPTER XXIII
"WHERE THE STRANGE ROADS GO DOWN"
Shadows of evening flowed over the desert like blue water out of whose depths rose the golden crowns of the dunes. The caravan had still some miles of sand billows between them and Touggourt, when suddenly a faint thrill of sound, which might have been the waking dream of a tired brain, or a trick of wind, a sound scarcely louder than heart-throbs, grew definite and distinct: the distant beating of African drums, the shriek of räitas, and the sighing of ghesbahs. The Arabs on their camels came crowding round Max, who led the caravan, riding beside Sanda's mehari.
"Sidi," said their leader, "this music is not of earth, for Touggourt is too distant for us to hear aught from there. It is the devil. It comes from under the dunes. Such music we have heard in the haunted desert where the great caravan was buried beneath the sands, but here it is the first time, and it is a warning of evil. Something terrible is about to happen. What shall we do—stop here and pray, though the sunset prayer is past, or go on?"
"Go on, of course," ordered Max. "As for the music, it must be that the wind brings it from Touggourt."
"It is not possible, Sidi," the camel-man, husband of Khadra, persisted. "Besides, there is no great feastday at this time, not even a wedding or a circumcision, or we should have heard before we started away that it was to be. Such playing, if from the hands of man, would mean some great event."
Even as he spoke the music grew louder and wilder. Max hurried the caravan on as fast as it could go among the sand billows, fearing that the Arabs' superstition might cause a stampede. With every stride of the camels' long, four-jointed legs, the music swelled; and at the crest of a higher dune than any they had climbed, Sanda, leaning out of her bassourah, gave a cry.
"A caravan—oh! but a huge caravan like an army," she exclaimed, "or like a troop of ghosts. What if—what if it should be Sir Knight just starting away?"
"I think it is he," Max answered heavily. "I think it must be Stanton getting off."