Chapter Seven.
The White City.
All sounds had gradually died away in the town. A marabout had climbed to the terrace of the great mosque and was crying “Allah is great! Allah is great!” The surrounding terraces were peopled with white forms which stood out against the summits of the palm trees and the green of the baobab. Their backs were turned to the purple splendours of the dying light, for their faces looked towards the already darkened east, lighted for them by that eternal light in which Mecca is to be found. The silence was harshly broken by a brazen sound. It was the tam-tams in the Kasbah sounding the call for prayer.
The plain was now a vast desert phantasmagorically illuminated. Above, the sky flamed into every imaginable colour, and the small water-channel, scarcely visible a moment before, blazed into a reflection of the ardour of the sky, while the rows of ospreys on its banks looked like necklaces of pink pearls. Then all the enchantment was overwhelmed by the sudden twilight that heralds the tropical night.
Well mounted on a swift camel, with water-skin and provision-bag filled, and escorted by my guards, I had ridden through the crowded markets, and passing out of the Kofa-n-Magaidi, or eastern gate, set forth across the wide, sandy plain in the direction of prayer. The brief glimpse I caught of the place as I passed hurriedly through its streets surprised me. The inhabitants seemed to some extent a cultured people, and the women apparently enjoyed considerable personal freedom, although the majority were veiled. The men, despite their bellicose spirit and the chronic state of warfare maintained, were not naturally cruel, and treated their slaves kindly.
The towers, cupolas and high white walls of the great, impregnable palace, wherein dwelt the woman who had enchanted me, stood dark and frowning against the crimson brilliance of the afterglow, and from my exalted position on the back of my meheri I turned once to glance at them, wondering if Azala knew of my expulsion. Perhaps from her lattice in the great square tower rising above the city she was watching my departure, but she had given no sign, and sorrowfully I at length turned my back upon the White City of the Sultan ’Othman, and urged my camel onward towards the horizon, which seemed a sea of mirage, with a feeling that Fate had, indeed, laid her hand upon me with undeserved harshness.
In the cooler hours that succeeded, when the light had entirely faded, and the wind, whirling up clouds of find sand into our faces, compelled us to cover them as we rode on, leaving only our eyes visible, Shu’ba, the chief of the black horsemen accompanying me, declared that if we were to reach Kukawa, in Bornu, within three days, we should be compelled to press forward constantly, resting but a few hours during the heat of noon. My guards were heavily armed, each carrying a very keen, straight sword, a dagger suspended from the left wrist, and a spear six feet long, while with several this arsenal was also supplemented by a rifle. Acting no doubt under the Sultan’s orders, they treated me with every consideration, and proved themselves light-hearted, genial fellows; yet the long ride through the great, silent wilderness, eternally warm, eternally gloomy, gave me many opportunities for dismal reflections upon the strange turn events had taken. Azala had fascinated, entranced me, and I loved her with all the strength of my being. Yet I had been thus forcibly torn from her, never to return on penalty of death. Each long stride of the animal beneath me took me further from her, yet she trusted in me to save her. From the words uttered by Khazneh in reply to the Sultan, it was evident that the latter had had no knowledge of my capture and imprisonment, and Azala had, on account of her father’s absence, been unable to secure my release.
The mysterious symbol that seemed to link me in some inexplicable manner to the woman I loved had apparently produced in the Sultan a feeling of dismay, for when he noticed it a sudden terror had enthralled him. Awe-stricken at its significance, he had instantly rescinded the order for my execution, sending me forth from his empire as if apprehensive that my presence was a harbinger of some dreaded evil.
For a brief space we halted in the date-grove of Maifoura at midnight, eating a little tiggra with curdled milk diluted with water, and some ngaji or paste of sorghum, and having thus recruited our strength the cry of “Ala e’dhahar! ala e dhahar!” (Mount! mount!) sounded, and we resumed our ride over the low hills of Kobiri, and through the great, gloomy forest of Gounel. South of the Lake Tsad the country is fertile, and only here and there are there wide, sandy deserts reminding one of the waterless, sterile regions of Azawagh and Taganet in the Great Sahara, that arid, monotonous, and almost impassable gulf that separates the regions of Sokoto, Bornu, Baguirmi and Gando from the European civilisation of Northern Algeria. Having passed through the forest, the wooded level became interrupted from time to time by bare-naked concavities, or shallow hollows, consisting of black, sedimentary soil, where, during the rainy season, the water collects, and drying up gradually leaves a most fertile sediment for the cultivation of the masakwa, a kind of holcus which is the most important article in the agriculture of Sokoto. We saw herds of ostriches, troops of gazelles and many moufflons as, on our forced march, we passed the great ruins of Thaba, grim, grey, time-worn monuments of the Roman occupation, forded the Yoobe river at Ngouroutoua—where my guards told me an English traveller named Richardson had died many years ago—skirted the lagoon of Mouggobi, and continuing for nearly eight hours along narrow, verdant valleys, where, side by side with the diminutive, stunted palms, grew the colossal baobabs, the mastodons of the vegetable kingdom, whose gigantic branches were inhabited by vultures, serpents, bats and lizards. Then at last we passed out upon the great granite plateau of Koyam, dotted over with hillocks and in part strewn with quartz sand, home of the nomad Uled-Delim, “pirates of the desert,” a sun-baked, stony wilderness devoid of any living thing. The third day was occupied wholly in crossing this vast solitude, where incessantly we were compelled to shout “Hai! Hai!” the ejaculation of caution to our camels, as the beasts, weary and jaded, plodded on until, about an hour after we had knelt to repeat our majhrib, while the shadows were lengthening as the sun declined, the tall, white watch-tower at the principal gate of Kukawa rose before us, and beyond lay the waters of Lake Tsad shimmering like liquid gold in the glorious evening light.
When the cry was raised that the town was in sight, my guards held consultation and halted. Then Shu’ba, drawing up his camel close to mine, exclaimed,—