Batouch stirred uneasily, pulled his hood from his eyes and looked into the storm gravely. Then he shifted on the camel’s hump and said to Ali:
“How shall we get to Arba? The wind is like all the Touaregs going to battle. And when we leave the oasis——”
“The wind is going down, Batouch-ben-Brahim,” responded Ali, calmly. “This evening the Roumis can lie in the tents.”
Batouch’s thick lips curled with sarcasm. He spat into the wind, blew his nose in his burnous, and answered:
“You are a child, and can sing a pretty song, but—”
Ali pointed with his delicate hand towards the south.
“Do you not see the light in the sky?”
Batouch stared before him, and perceived that there was in truth a lifting of the darkness beyond, a whiteness growing where the desert lay.
“As we come into the desert the wind will fall,” said Ali; and again he began to sing to himself:
“Janat! Janat! Janat!”