Lithe and agile as a gazelle in the desert she sped on beside me along the dark crooked silent streets. In a few minutes the tragedy of the harem-gate would be discovered, and every effort would be then made to recapture the eloping favourite of the brutal Black Sultan. We knew well that if captured both of us would be given alive to the alligators, a punishment too terrible to contemplate. But together we sped on, our pace quickened by the fiendish yells of our pursuers, until doubling in a maze of narrow crooked streets, we succeeded at last, with Allah directing our footsteps, in evading the howling guards and gaining one of the four gates of the city, where the same story as we had told in the Fada resulted in the barrier being opened for us, and a moment later we found ourselves in the wild, barren plain, at that hour lying white beneath the brilliant moon. We paused not, however, to admire picturesque effects, but strode boldly forward, eager to put as great a distance as possible between ourselves and the stronghold of the Ahir, ere the dawn.
Fortunately my bright-eyed fellow-fugitive was well acquainted with the country around Agadez, therefore we were enabled to journey by untravelled paths; but the three days we spent in that burning inhospitable wilderness, ere we reached the well where we obtained our first handful of dates and slaked our thirst, were among the most terrible of any I have experienced during my many wanderings over the sandy Saharan waste.
On that evening when the mysterious horizon was ablaze with the fiery sunset, and I had turned my face to the Holy Ca’aba, I was dismayed to discover that, instead of travelling towards the country of her people, the Kel-Oui, we had struck out in an entirely different direction, but when I mentioned it she merely replied—
“I promised, in return for thine assistance, to lead thee unto the Three Dwarfs of Lebo, the secret of which none know save myself. Ere three suns have set thine eyes shall witness that which will amaze thee.”
Next day we trudged still forward into a stony, almost impenetrable country, utterly unknown to me, and two days later, having ascended a rocky ridge, my conductress suddenly halted almost breathless, her tiny feet sadly cut by the sharp stones notwithstanding the wrappings I had placed about them, and pointing before her, cried—
“Behold! The Three Dwarfs!”
Eagerly I strained mine eyes in the direction indicated, and there discerned in the small oasis below, about an hour’s march distant, three colossal pyramids of rock of similar shape to those beside the Nile.
“Yon fertile spot was Lebo until ten years ago, when the men of the Black Sultan came and destroyed it, and took its inhabitants as slaves,” she explained. “See! From here thou canst distinguish the white walls of the ruins gleaming amongst the palms. We of the Kel-Oui had lived here since the days of the Prophet, until our enemies of the Ahir conquered us. But let us haste forward, and I will impart unto thee the secret I have promised.”
Together we clambered down over the rocks and gained the sandy plain, at last reaching the ruined and desolate town where the cracked smoke-stained walls were half overgrown by tangled masses of greenery, welcome in that sunbaked wilderness, and presently came to the base of the first of the colossal monuments of a past and long-forgotten age. They were built of blocks of dark grey granite, sadly chipped and worn at the base, but higher up still well preserved, having regard to the generations that must have arisen and passed since the hands that built them crumbled to dust.
“By pure accident,” explained the bright-faced girl when together we halted to gaze upward, “I discovered the secret of these wonders of Lebo. Thou hast, by thy lion’s courage, saved my life, therefore unto thee is due the greatest reward that I can offer thee. Two years ago I fell captive in the hands of thy people, the Azjar, over in the Tinghert, and it was by thine own good favour I was released. That is why I recognised thee in the palace of Agadez. Now once again I owe my freedom unto thee; therefore, in order that the months thou hast spent in Agadez shall not be wholly wasted, I will reveal unto thee the secret which I have always withheld from mine own people.”