The first thing he saw were three palm-trees, yellow trees torn and broken, and there were two more a little farther on; and there was a great noise in their crowns when the caravan drew up before the walls of the caravansary—five palms, the wind turning their crowns inside out like umbrellas, horrible and black, standing out in livid lines upon a sky that was altogether black; four; great walls, and on two sides of the square an open gallery, a shelter for horses; in the corner rooms without windows, and open doorways. Owen chose one, and the dragoman spoke of scorpions and vipers; and well he might do so, for Owen drove a hissing serpent out of his room immediately afterwards, killing it in the corridor. And then the question was, could the doorway be barricaded in such a way as to prevent the intrusion of further visitors?
The wind continued to rise, and he lay rolled in his blanket, uncomfortable, frightened, listening to the wind raging among the rocks and palms, and, between his short, starting sleeps, wondering if it would not have been better to lie in the ravine, in some crevice, rather than in this verminous and viperous place.
Next day he had an opportunity of contrasting the discomfort of the caravansary with a bivouac under a rainy sky; for at nightfall, within two days' journey of Laghouat, the caravan halted in a desolate valley, shut in between two lines of reddish hills seemingly as barren as the valley itself. After long searching in the ravines a little brushwood was collected, and an attempt was made to light a fire, which was unsuccessful. The only food they had that night was a few dates and biscuits, and these were eaten under their blankets in the rain, Owen having discovered that it was wetter in his tent than without. This discomfort was the most serious he had experienced, yet he felt it hardly at all, thinking that perhaps it would have been very little use coming to the desert in a railway train or in a mail coach. Only by such adventures is travel made rememberable, and, looking out of his blankets, he was rewarded by a sight which he felt would not be easily forgotten—the camels on their knees about the drivers, who were feeding them from their hands, the poor beasts leaning out their long necks to take what was given to them—a wretched repast, yet their grunts were full of satisfaction.
In the morning, however, they were irritable, and bleated angrily when asked to kneel down so that their packs might be put upon them; but in the end they submitted, and Owen noticed a certain strain of cheerfulness in their demeanour all that day. Perhaps they scented their destination. Owen's horse certainly scented a stable within a day's journey of Laghouat, for he pricked up his ears, and there was nothing else but the instinct of a stable that could have induced him to do so, for on their left was a sinister mountain—sinister always, Owen thought, even in the sunlight, but more sinister than ever in the rainy season, wrapped in a cloud, showing here and there a peak when the clouds lifted. And no mountain seemed harder to leave behind than this one. Owen, who knew that Laghouat was not many miles distant, rode on in front, impatient to see the oasis rise out of the desert. The wind still raged, driving the sand; and before him stretched endless hillocks of yellow sand; and he wandered among these, uncertain whither lay the road, until he happened upon a little convoy bringing grain to the town. The convoy turned to the left…. His mistake was that he had been looking to the right.
Laghouat, built among rocks, some of which were white, showed up high above the plain; and, notwithstanding his desire for food and shelter, he sat on his horse at gaze, interested in the ramparts of this black town, defended by towers, outlined upon a grey sky.
VIII
"When a woman has seen the guest she no longer cares for the master." An old hunter had told him this proverb, a lame, one-eyed man, an outcast from his tribe, or very nearly, whose wife was so old that Owen's presence afforded him no cause for jealousy, a friend of the hunter who owned the eagles, so Owen discovered, but not until the end of a week's acquaintance, which was strange, for he had seen a great deal of this man in the last few days. The explanation he gave one night in the café where Owen went to talk and drink with the Spahis; coming in suddenly, and taking Owen away into a corner, he explained that he had not told him before that his friend Tahar, he who owned the eagles, had gone away to live in another oasis, because it had not occurred to him that Owen was seeking Tahar, fancying somehow that it was another—as if there were hundreds of people in the Sahara who hunted gazelles with eagles!
"Grand Dieu!" and Owen turned to his own dragoman, who happened to be present. "A-t-on jamais!… Ici depuis trois semaines!"
The dragoman, who expected an outburst, reminded Owen of the progress he had made in Arabic, and of the storms of the last three weeks, the rain and wind which had made travelling in the desert impossible, and when Owen spoke of starting on the morrow the dragoman shook his head, and the wind in the street convinced Owen that he must remain where he was.
"Mais si j'avais su—"