After diligent search I found a spot where the abyss ended, and again crept forward, still in darkness most intense. Yet the air seemed fresh, and I felt convinced that some outlet must lay beyond. How long, however, I toiled on in that narrow tunnel I know not, save that its dampness chilled me; and when at last it widened in ascending, I found myself a few minutes afterwards amid brushwood and brambles in the outer world.
That night I wandered across the large fertile tract, but could not at first recognise it. When dawn spread, however, I saw around me a ridge of dunes that were familiar landmarks, and recognised, to my amazement, that I was at the oasis of Am Ohannan, on the direct caravan route that runs across the barren Afelèle to Touat.
I had travelled nearly seventy miles in a subterranean region unknown to man, but in so doing had solved the problem that had so long puzzled geographers, the reason why the Igharghar no longer flowed. Besides, I had ascertained the fate of the hapless explorer, whose loss is lamented by both Arabs and Roumis to this day. Within one moon of my escape I was enabled to rejoin my people, and when news of my adventure reached the Bureau Arabe, in Algiers, I was summoned thither to give a detailed account of it before a small assembly of geographers and military officers.
This I did, a report of it appearing in English in The Geographical Journal a month later. Of late, several attempts have been made by French expeditions to reach that uncanny realm of eternal darkness, but without success. Its entrance beneath the dry cataract of the Igharghar is now merely an overflowing well, around which a little herbage has grown, while its exit on the Am Ohannan I have unfortunately failed to re-discover. But since this strange adventure I have been known among my fellow tribesmen throughout the desert as “El Waci,” or The Teacher, because I have been enabled to prove to the French the existence of an undreamed-of region, and to elucidate the Secret of Sâ.
Chapter Four.
The Three Dwarfs of Lebo.
When my beard, now long, scraggy, and grey, was yet soft as silk upon my youthful chin, I was sent as spy into Agadez, the mysterious City of the Black Sultan. At that time it was the richest, most zealously guarded, and most strongly fortified town in the whole Sahara, and surrounded, as it constantly was, by marauding tribes and enemies of all sorts, a vigilant watch was kept day and night, and woe betide any stranger found within its colossal walls, for the most fiendish of tortures that the mind of man could devise was certain to be practised upon him, and his body eventually given to the hungry dogs at the city gate.
In order, however, to ascertain its true strength and the number of its garrison, I, as one of the younger and more adventurous of our clansmen, was chosen by Tamahu, our Sheikh, to enter and bring back report to our encampment in the rocky fastness of the Tignoutin. Therefore I removed my big black veil, assumed the white haik and burnouse of the Beni-Mansour, a peaceful tribe further north, and contrived to be captured as slave by a party of raiding Ennitra who were encamped by the well of Tafidet, five miles from the capital of Ahir. As I had anticipated, I was soon taken to the City of the Black Sultan, and there sold in the slave-market, first becoming the property of a Jew merchant, then of Hanaza, the Grand Vizier of the Sultan. As personal slave of this high official I was lodged within the palace, or Fada, that veritable city within a city, containing as it did nearly three thousand inhabitants, over one thousand of whom were inmates of his Majesty’s harem.