AMONG THE AOULÂD NAÎEL
(Algerian Sketches: Emile Masqueray: Le Figaro: Translated for Short Stories by Eleanor Moore Hiestand.)
For two wearisome days I had been journeying back and forth in the country of the Aoulâd Naîel. I was still far from my tent when I threw myself prone upon the sands, worn out with fatigue. On the previous afternoon, my guide and I had made a little excursion to a neighboring douar, and I could still hear echoes of the singular greetings showered upon me by my entertainers:
“Our father! Thy tent is blessed! Thy spurs are strong!”
Suddenly, as I lay there, the clouds seemed to lower above my head; they grew strangely dense and shone like brass. The manes and tails of our horses bristled with apprehension. I felt a prolonged shiver pass over me. A powerful hand seemed to press its weight upon my temples. Now the frozen sky was streaked with white; now it settled into oppressive darkness again; and with no living thing in sight upon the dry and barren plain, we felt utterly alone and at the mercy of some awful power. Presently a veil seemed to be thrown over our heads, and night came upon us as suddenly as when a lamp is extinguished in an otherwise unlighted room.
My guide shouted. We leaped upon our horses who galloped away with winged feet, trembling with fear, away into the fathomless shadows. In vain I tried to check this mad pace. I felt like throwing myself face downward upon the ground, for I thought death awaited us in the saddle; but my guide spurred on, quite oblivious of me, murmuring:
“There is no God! but God!”
A moment more and the clouds were cleft in twain with an awful crash. The sky was spread with a sheet of darting flame, and the earth became so bright that I saw quite plainly the gray lizards crawling in a tuft of chih. Our horses wheeled about, but we used our spurs, and, giving them the rein, we fled on, not knowing whither we went. We were quite beside ourselves; we no longer knew what danger it was that lashed us on. My guide urged on my horse with a hempen whip; I shouted to his. Again and again lurid flashes of lightning diffused about as dazzling circles which we traversed with a bound only to enter again into the terrible darkness. How long had we been flying? How many times had we barely escaped those awful thunderbolts? I knew only that we sped like bullets till we struck suddenly against a black cone which loomed up in our course.
Human cries rent the air, mingled with the howls of dogs.
We were trampling down somebody’s tent.