Lolling lazily at her ease among the silken cushions in her jakfi, she would chat with charming frankness through the night, as in the moonlight we plodded steadily onward guided by one of the slaves to whom the route was familiar. She told me all about herself, of her childhood, spent in the barren desert of the Ahaggar, of a visit she paid to Algiers one Ramadân, and of the attack by the Kel-Fadê upon the little village of Afara Aouhan, her capture, and her subsequent life in the harem of the Sheikh. From her I gleaned many details regarding her people, of their wanderings, their power in the Desert, and their raids upon neighbouring nomad tribes. Many were the horrible stories she told me of the fierce brutality of Hadj Absalam, who was feared by his people as a wicked, unjust, and tyrannical ruler, and who, despising the French military authorities, delighted in the torture of Christian captives, and endeavoured to entice the Zouaves and Spahis into his mountain fastnesses where he could slaughter them without mercy. The Great Pirate’s impregnable palace, the fame of which had long ago spread from Timbuktu to Cairo, she described in detail, and if what she said proved correct, the place must be of magnificent proportions, and a very remarkable structure. The harem, she said, contained over four hundred inmates, the majority of whom had fallen prisoners in various raids, but so fickle was the pirate Sultan of the Sahara, that assassination was horribly frequent, and poison, the silken cord, or the scimitar, removed, almost weekly, those who failed to find favour in the eyes of their cruel captor.
Yet, regarding Zoraida, I could gather scarcely anything beyond the fact that the subjects of Hadj Absalam knew her by repute as the most beautiful of women, and that few, even of the female inmates of the palace, had ever looked upon her unveiled face. One evening, as we rode beside each other in the brilliant afterglow, I admitted how utterly mystified I was regarding the woman I loved; to which Halima replied softly—
“Who she is no one can tell. Her name is synonymous for all that is pure and good, her benevolence among our poorer families is proverbial, and she possesseth a strange power, the secret of which none hath ever been able to discover.”
“Thou didst tell me that thy people sought my destruction,” I said. “Dost thou know the reason for their secret hatred?”
“I have heard that thou holdest the mysterious power of defeating thine enemies once possessed by the Lalla Zoraida, and that until thy death it cannot return to her,” she answered. “But thou dost not seem so terrible as report describeth thee,” she added, with a coquettish smile.
I laughed. It was nevertheless strange that my would-be assassin Labakan had made a similar allegation. Remembering that I was accompanying my fair companion upon an adventurous journey to an unknown destination, I said—
“Though we have travelled together these six days, thou hast not yet told me whither our camels’ heads are set.”
Puffing thoughtfully at the cigarette between her dainty lips, she replied, “Already have I explained that I am returning to my people. The route we are traversing is known only to the trusty slave who guideth us and to mine own people, for there are no wells, and no adventurous traveller hath ever dared to penetrate into this deserted, silent land of the Samun.”
“Is it not known to thine enemies, the Kel-Fadê?” I asked, recollecting with bitterness that to the marauders of the tribe that had held her in bondage I also owed my captivity in the Court of the Eunuchs.