The man who stood holding the bridle of his milk-white horse was none other than Octave Uzanne, the Spahi who, when we had met on the fatal Meskam Oasis, had told me his life’s romance!
“Really, I can scarce believe my eyes,” I continued, speaking in French. “I was at Tuggurt when a messenger arrived with the news that Paul Deschanel’s column had been cut up and massacred at the Well of Dhaya, near Aïn Souf, by the Ouled Ba’ Hammou. I naturally concluded you had also fallen.”
“Sapristi! Je suis un veinard,” he answered in the slang of the Army of Africa, still holding my hand in his hearty grip. Then, with a sigh, he added, with seriousness, “It is, alas! true that our column was enticed into an ambush by the Ennitra, assisted by the Ouled Ba’ Hammou, and slaughtered, myself with eight others being the sole survivors. For two months we were held prisoners by Hadj Absalam, until at length I managed to escape and travel back alone to Tuggurt to relate the terrible story. Poor Deschanel! his was indeed a sad end—very sad!”
For a moment he seemed overcome by thoughts of his dead comrades, but in a few seconds he had reassumed his old buoyancy, and, offering me a cigarette, took one himself, and, having lit up, we squatted side by side in the shadow to talk.
“Well, what brings you here, so far from Biskra?” I asked presently, after he had related to me his adventures at the mountain stronghold of the Ennitra, which were almost as exciting as my own.
“Duty,” he answered briefly, with a hard look upon his handsome face quite unusual to him.
“You are not alone?” I queried.
“No—not exactly alone,” he answered abruptly, without apparently intending to tell me the object for which he had penetrated so far south, for he suddenly exclaimed, “You have not yet told me what sort of life you have been leading among the Bedouins—or why you are here alone.”
Briefly I related the story of my capture, my slavery, and my escape, without, however, telling him the real object for which I was working, or mentioning the assault on Agadez.
“You are a born adventurer; I am one by circumstance,” he exclaimed, with a good-humoured laugh, when I had concluded. Then he added, “Although my life with the Ennitra was one of terrible drudgery, yet, after all, I would rather have remained with them—had I but known;” and he sighed regretfully.