The Edge of the Desert

by Ianthe M. Dunbar

He had been there, perhaps, an hour, and was about to pay for his drink and move on, when a child’s voice made itself heard at his elbow. He turned. By his side stood a small Arab boy, wrapped in a mud-coloured garment, and it was his voice that had aroused his attention. He gave the child a coin, paid his bill and stepped out into the street. And again he found the boy beside him. He was talking in a mixture of broken French and Arabic impossible to follow. What on earth did the child want? He turned on him impatiently and the small figure shrank away, but a few minutes later it was back again, still repeating some unintelligible phrase. Telling him angrily in French to go away, the traveller pushed his way into the crowd. Long festoons of coloured paper had been flung from hand to hand and fragments of them hung dangling in the branches, stirred now and then by a passing breath of wind too faint to set the foliage itself in motion.

It was close on midnight. He wandered down the central street on his way to the harbour. As he drew near, the tang of seaweed and shipping reached him on the night air; and turning, he looked back at the coloured necklace of lights that ringed the shore. His steamer was due to leave early the next day, and this was the last glimpse he would have of the place. Queer, he thought, how he had dipped for a moment into its life. Like opening the pages of a book, reading a few lines, and then being forced to close it again.

As he stood there, he became aware of a movement in the shadows and instinctively drew himself together. The place was lonely, he was a stranger and might be thought worth robbing. Then his keen eyes made out the figure of the child who had already followed him. The boy came up to him, and this time silently held out a scrap of white paper on which something was written. The Englishman took it to the light of a lamp and read it with difficulty. The paper had evidently been torn from a pocket book, and across it was scrawled in pencil the words “Please come,” with an almost illegible signature underneath them. He stared at the writing, puzzled. He knew no one in the place, and his first idea was that the paper had been picked up somewhere. But the Arab boy was pulling his coat gently and pointing to the town. The man hesitated. Stories of decoyed travellers, of murder and robbery passed through his mind, and again he examined the piece of paper.

The writing was evidently English and it was an educated hand, though faltering and uncertain. The signature was unreadable but he guessed it to be a man’s. He questioned the messenger but could not understand what he said, and the boy kept on pointing to the town and tugging his coat softly. The traveller did not hesitate long. His curiosity was roused and there was something adventurous and romantic about the situation that appealed to his youth. He signified his decision by a nod, and prepared to follow his guide.

Swiftly and silently the latter sped in front, turning now and again to make sure he was followed. His bare feet made no sound and the cloak wrapped round him so merged into the surroundings that more than once he seemed to have disappeared altogether. A late moon had risen and the roadway gleamed in its light. As they neared the central thoroughfare with its glare and gay crowds, the boy struck off into a maze of small streets that led away from it towards the Arab quarter. The sound of revelry became fainter and as they climbed the narrow way they left it behind. Black and white in the moonlight stood the gate of the native town, and they passed through it.

The narrow dimly lit streets were almost deserted. In leaving the modern town they seemed to step suddenly into a different world, a world where men moved mysteriously on secret errands. The stranger found himself trying to hush the frank sound of his own footsteps, to bring himself into line, as it were, with his surroundings. A solitary shrouded figure here and there approached on noiseless feet and passed, absorbed and enigmatic. The roadway became so narrow that there seemed but a knife-blade of light between the black shadows of the overhanging houses which drew together like conspirators. Turning and twisting through the tortuous streets the figure ran ahead, and the Englishman still followed, though inwardly somewhat dismayed at the distance he was being taken.

At last they stopped. A low entrance stood in a recess before them, and the boy softly pushed a door open and went in, leading the other a few steps through darkness to a second one which opened into a small courtyard.

The moon shone clearly upon it, showing the arcaded passage that ran round it on which several rooms opened. From one there came a thread of lamplight. There was a small stone well in the centre of the court and the moonlight lit the dim carving on it and on the slender pillars of the arcade. Evidently the house had once been a building of some importance, but it was now shabby and dilapidated. The paving was uneven with gaping cracks, and the pillars were broken and defaced.

At the sound of their approach the door with the light was held ajar and a woman’s muffled figure appeared. The small Arab made a gesture to the Englishman to wait and went into the room closing the door behind him.