Progress was slow, the path imperceptible or devious. The light of morning was no longer yellow, but alive with the rose red of sunrise as they halted, at a gesture from their leader, and gazed between the trunks of a grove of palms.
White against the green of crops a dozen houses lined the edge of an oval space, which some winter floods of bygone years had hewn deep in the surrounding alluvial soil. The forest thickets grew up to the fringe of the arable land, divided from it by hedges of cactus. Between the house and the river was an encampment of brown, dilapidated tents. The land immediately in front of these was bare and open, as if some ceaseless traffic had beaten all vegetation down. On an eminence stood a lime-washed, dome-topped shrine.
"If possible, we should surround and examine each house or tent in silence, and one by one," suggested Daoud.
"A matter of hours," said Perinaud. "No, let our men form rank where their rifles command each doorway, and I will see to the summoning of the inhabitants. For the moment, softly. Keep your horses off the rock, but avoid the thickest of the jungle. Show judgment, my children, show judgment!"
He finished with a little oath of surprise. For almost at his horse's feet, or, at the furthest, a bare five yards from him, a man had suddenly risen from a thicket—a man clad in a dirty djelab, who viewed the sitting horsemen with every sign of amazement and sudden panic. In another moment, and with a shrill cry, he had darted through the palm grove and was flying across the crop lands, straight towards the line of silent tents.
Perinaud struck spurs into his stallion.
"Take him!" he cried, and his voice had a queer note of exasperation as he tried to make it vehement and yet hold it below the level of a shout. He led the charge which raced across the herbage. Aylmer, carried away by the sudden infection of repressed excitement, thundered at his side. The dark spot of brown made by the djelab of the fugitive seemed, for the moment, to comprehend all that was vital in existence. He must not reach the tents, he must not give the alarm. Although he was a matter of fifty yards or more behind his quarry, owing to the start the runner had gained by the intervening palms, Aylmer began to lean forward in the saddle, to thrust out his arm, feel a tenseness, a twitching in his fingers as if he already grasped the hood of the garment which rose and fell with its owner's every stride.
A yell burst from Perinaud's lips—a yell of rage and warning!
"A trap!" he cried. "The silos! The silos! Pull wide! Pull wide!"
Aylmer heard a crash. A Goumier on his right seemed to have been swallowed with his horse into the very earth. He gripped his own rein, moved by a sudden and imperfectly comprehended pulse of fear, and wrenched at his bridle. His horse fought under the strain, made a half-hearted attempt to halt, and was carried by mere impetus another fifty yards. There came another crash; another Goumier's horse disappeared, while the man, spilled from the saddle, rolled over a dozen times across the hardened flat. Perinaud's stallion, its eyes wild, its nostrils round with terror, spread out its legs and skated forward to the very brink of—what?