Fortunately the storm had been of comparatively short duration, and the loss of life was in consequence confined to the cattle and horses. Some of the latter, in their terror, had fled wildly from the hot blast, and, being overtaken by it, had perished miserably, a few hummocks of drifted sand marking the places where they fell.
Ere the march could be resumed, a prolonged halt was called, and a fairly liberal amount of water given to men and cattle. Much of the baggage had to be abandoned, for want of sufficient means of transport.
At length the wearied men arrived at the oasis of El Tebat, where two more days were spent ere the march was resumed. Thence, after thirty days, following a widely-spaced chain of oases, the Sheikh Wadherim brought his tribe back to their native haunts of Wadi Tlat. With his men, and their wives and families, flocks, herds, and other possessions, he had journeyed to the sea in the belief that the followers of Mohammed would gain an easy victory over the unbelievers, and, rich in booty, would live at their ease in the fertile oases by the coast till the call of the desert would once again have to be obeyed. If his faith in the Prophet had been rudely shaken, the sheikh gave no sign of his bad fortune.
Wadi Tlat, situated on the southern border of the great Plateau of Ahaggar, was the name given by the Tlat River to the surrounding valley. The country, though rugged, abounded with coarse herbage, and nearly ten thousand nomads found means of subsistence in the district watered by the river and two of its tributaries.
What lay to the southward of the plateau none of the Arabs knew. To them it was a broad, trackless desert, peopled by the jinns or spirits of an evil world; and although the Tlat—usually little more than a series of shallow pools, connected at certain points of the river by a narrow stream fed by a lake up in the mountains—flowed in a south-westerly direction, none of the Arabs had the courage to follow its course beyond Bab-el-Jinn—the Gate of Evil Spirits—two bleak and massive rocks standing like giant pinnacles in the middle of a narrow gorge.
Here, at Wadi Tlat, full six hundred miles from the sea, Arthur Reeves, Hugh, and Gerald entered into a new phase of their captivity, far beyond the help of any European influence, and doomed, apparently, to lifelong slavery!
CHAPTER VI
The Escape
FOR several days the captives' lot, though hard, was not oppressive. Save for the fetters on their wrists, they were not subjected to bonds, nor were their movements restricted, within certain limits. Their work consisted in having to tend and water the camels, horses, and cattle, and to cultivate a strip of land on the banks of the river. Although, generally speaking, the Arabs are a nomadic race, and do not take kindly to husbandry, this fertile strip of ground offered too good an opportunity of cultivating maize to be ignored; and the work was delegated to the slaves, most of whom were of negro descent, while some were Arabs who, through offences committed against the tribal laws and customs, were reduced to compulsory servitude.
The Englishmen's clothing, long since in rags, was now barely enough to cover them; but, hardened to the sun's rays, the discomfort was less than they had anticipated. Reeves's chief source of anxiety on this account was concerning his automatic pistol and ammunition, till, fearing that the ragged state of his clothing would reveal the precious treasure, he stealthily wrapped the weapon and cartridges in a fragment of sheepskin, and hid them under a rock at some distance from the camp.