"He left here three days ago."
Owen cursed his friend in Laghouat. If he had only told him in the beginning of the week! The dragoman answered:
"Sidna, vous vous en souvenez"
"Speak to me in Arabic, damn you! There is nothing to do here but to learn Arabic."
"Quite true, Sidna, we shall not be able to start to-morrow; the rains are beginning again."
"Was there ever such luck as mine, to come to the desert, where it never rains, and to find nothing but rain?"—rain which Owen had never seen equalled except once in Connemara, where he had gone to fish, and it annoyed him to hear that these torrential rains only happened once every three or four years in the Sahara. He was too annoyed to answer his dragoman…. Enfin, Tahar had left his eagles at Ain Mahdy, and Owen fed them morning and evening, gorging them with food, not knowing that one of the great difficulties is to procure in the trained eagle sufficient hunger to induce him to pursue the quarry. It was an accident that some friend of Tahar's surprised Owen feeding the eagles and warned him.
"These eagles will not be able to hunt for weeks now."
Owen cursed himself and the universe, Allah and the God of Israel,
Christ and the prophets.
"But, Sidna, their hunger can be excited by a drug, and this drug is Tahar's secret."
"Then to-morrow we start, though there be sand storms or rain storms, whatever the weather may be."