The sun sank slowly down among the strange veils; it grew lustreless, livid, rayless; distorted and disproportionately magnified; and then at last its light was quenched.
Nyaor, who until that moment had followed Muller and Jean with his customary insouciance, remarked that it would be imprudent to pursue the reconnaissance further, and that the two toubabs, his friends, would be unnecessarily rash if they persisted.
Actually there was a possibility of every kind of surprise attack, and danger might be lurking all around them. Moreover, there were everywhere fresh spoor of lions; the horses began to stop dead and to sniff at the five claw marks so clearly defined on the level sand, and to tremble with terror....
After consultation, Jean and Sergeant Muller decided to turn, and soon the three horses were racing like the wind in the direction of the blockhouse, the white burnooses of their riders floating behind them. In the distance, that awe-inspiring cavernous voice, which the Moors liken to thunder, began to make itself heard: the roar of the hunting lion.
They were brave men, these three, galloping there, yet they experienced that kind of vertigo which is produced by excessive speed; the contagion of that dread which was spurring on their maddened beasts. The reeds which bent under them, the branches that whipped their legs, seemed to them troops of lions of the desert, bounding in pursuit of them....
Soon they were within sight of the stream which separated them from the French tents, the inhabited world, and the little Arab blockhouse of the village of Dialdé, still glowing with the last red rays of sunset.
They swam their horses across and re-entered the camp.
XIX
It was the evening hour, with its atmosphere of intense melancholy. Sunset awakened this obscure village to a kind of animation all its own. The black herdsmen were driving home their flocks; the warriors of the tribe, busy with their preparations for battle, were sharpening their fighting knives, and furbishing up their prehistoric guns. The women were making kouss-kouss, to serve as provisions for the army, and were milking their ewes and lean zebu cows. A confused murmur of negro voices arose, mingled with the querulous bleating of goats and the plaintive yelping of Laobé dogs....