"The wells of El Djebir, Monsieur," explained Sergeant Perinaud. "It is here we should find our men, if they are proceeding by the shortest route to their hills. If not—" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.
The horses were roused from their gentle amble into a gallop. The dust rose from fourscore hoofs as the Goumiers raced down in an enveloping cloud upon the cluster of palms and thicket of broom scrub which surrounded the watering-place. They pulled their horses upon their haunches; they shouted in hoarse disappointment. The shadowed resting-place beneath the palms was empty. Not a living soul was in sight.
Perinaud shrugged his shoulders again.
"This is very conclusive, Monsieur. The party we seek has thought fit to leave the open road and to bury themselves in the recesses of the jungle and the northern gorges of the river. They did not do that without a reason. It remains to follow, if we can."
The native officer shouted something and Perinaud turned swiftly in the saddle to stare down the track which they had been following. A white figure bestriding a brown horse was thundering towards them, the rider's haik fluttering out snowily against the dun background of the earth.
"So Monsieur thought fit to leave me—me!" expostulated Daoud, as he drew rein at Aylmer's side. "I, I who address you, am told by the chance gossip of the Sôk that this expedition has set out without a word of warning, to seek bandits—where?" He threw abroad his arms in derision. "On the broad and open road, within sound, nay, almost within sight, of the patrols of Casablanca. I ask, is it here that knaves are likely to hide their knavery? Your venture and its object are already the pivot on which the laughter of the market-place swings."
He turned and pointed vehemently towards the north.
"Has none of your trained spies had the wit or the courage to tell you that a hundred of these Beni M'Geel Berbers have encamped in the thickets of the Bou Gherba gorge this ten days back? And yet the market-place knows it, as it knows a hundred things beneath your concern."
Perinaud looked the Moor up and down. Then he turned leisurely towards Aylmer.
"He is a safe man, this?" he asked. "You guarantee him?"