If necessary, he would even break his promise to the Agha.
While she danced inside the great tent, outside in the open space round the fire, the dwellers in the little tents sat with their knees in their arms watching the dancing of two young Negroes from the Soudan. The blacks had torn their turbans from their shaven heads, and thrown aside their burnouses. Naked to their waists, with short, loose trousers, and sashes which other men seized, to swing the wearers round and round, their sweating skin had the gloss of ebony. It was a whirlwind of a dance, and an old wizard with a tom-tom, and a dark giant with metal castanets made music for the dancers, taking eccentric steps themselves as they played. The Soudanese fell into an ecstasy of giddiness, running about on their hands and feet like huge black tarantulas, or turning themselves into human wheels, to roll through the bed of the dying fire and out on the other side, sending up showers of sparks. All the while, they uttered a barking chant, in time to the wicked music, which seemed to shriek for war and bloodshed; and now and then they would dash after some toddling boy, catch him by the scalp-lock on his shaved head (left for the grasp of Azraïl the death-angel) and force him to join the dance.
Mean-faced Kabyle dogs, guarding deserted tents, howled their hatred of the music, while far away, across desert spaces, jackals cried to one another. And the scintillating network of stars was dimmed by a thin veil of sand which the wind lifted and let fall, as Victoria lifted and let fall the spangled scarf that made her beauty more mysterious, more desirable, in the eyes of Maïeddine.
XXVIII
"In the name of the All-Merciful and Pitiful! We seek refuge with the Lord of the Day, against the sinfulness of beings created by Him; against all evil, and against the night, lest they overcome us suddenly."
It was the Prayer of the Dawn, El Fejûr; and Victoria heard it cried in the voices of the old men of the zmala, early in the morning, as she dressed to continue her journey.
Every one was astir in the tente sultane, behind the different curtain partitions, and outside were the noises of the douar, waking to a new day. The girl could not wait for the coffee that Fafann would bring her, for she was eager to see the caravan that Si Maïeddine was assembling. As soon as she was ready she stole out into the dim dawn, more mystic in the desert than moon-rise or moon-setting. The air was crisp and tingling, and smelled of wild thyme, the herb that nomad women love, and wear crushed in their bosoms, or thrust up their nostrils. The camels had not come yet, for the men of the douar had not finished their prayer. In the wide open space where they had watched the dance last night, now they were praying, sons of Ishmael, a crowd of prostrate white figures, their faces against the sand.
Victoria stood waiting by the big tent, but she had not much need for patience. Soon the desert prayer was over, and the zmala was buzzing with excitement, as it had buzzed when the travellers arrived.
The Soudanese Negroes who had danced the wild dance appeared leading two white meharis, running camels, aristocrats of the camel world. On the back of each rose a cage-like bassour, draped with haoulis, striped rose-colour and purple. The desert beasts moved delicately, on legs longer and more slender than those of pack-camels, their necks swaying like the necks of swans who swim with the tide. Victoria thought them like magnificent, four-legged cousins of ostriches, and the superciliousness of their expressions amused her; the look they had of elderly ladies, dissatisfied with every one but themselves, and conscious of being supremely "well-connected." "A camel cannot see its own hump, but it can see those of others," she had heard M'Barka say.