And then the blue summits of the sandhills turned pink; the last horizontal rays of light glided across this whole region of sand; the sun was quenched in blood-red vapour. And with one impulse all that black throng cast themselves face downwards on the ground to offer up the evening prayer.
It was Islam’s holy hour. From Mecca to the Sahara coast the name of Mahomet passed from mouth to mouth, wafted like a mysterious breath over Africa. Little by little it became fainter as it travelled over the Soudan, until it expired there on those black lips by the shore of the great, restless sea.
The old Yolof priests in their flowing robes, turned towards the sea, recited their prayers with their faces bowed upon the sand, and all the shores were covered with prostrate men. Then all was still, and night fell with the rapidity usual in those countries of the sun.
At nightfall, Jean returned to the spahi’s quarters in the south of St Louis.
In the great white barrack room, open to the evening breeze, all was still and quiet. The numbered beds of the spahis were ranged in rows along the bare walls; the tepid wind from the sea swayed their muslin mosquito curtains. The spahis were out. Jean returned home at a time when the other men were scattered about the deserted streets, hastening to their pleasures, to their loves.
It was at such times that the isolated barracks seemed to him dreary, and that he thought most of his mother.
VI
In the southern quarter of St Louis stood some old brick houses, Arab in appearance, which were lighted up at evening, and whose lamps continued to cast their red rays upon the sands at a time when all that dead-alive town lay asleep. Strange odours of negroes and alcohol, all blended and intensified by the torrid heat, issued thence. Here also at night broke forth an uproar as from hell itself. In that quarter the spahis reigned supreme. Thither betook themselves these unfortunate, red-jacketed warriors, to raise a racket and to forget their troubles; to absorb, actuated either by habit or bravado, incredible quantities of alcohol, and wantonly to spend the sap of their lusty youth.
A dishonouring intimacy with mulatto women lay in wait for them in these vile dens, and extravagant orgies were held, in a delirium caused by absinthe and the torrid heat of Africa.
But Jean avoided with horror these haunts of vice. He was very steady, and was already putting aside the little he could save out of his soldier’s pay, against the blissful moment of his home-coming.