A desert lark rose near me and burst into joyous song. My horse turned its head slowly, and regarded me steadily for a few moments with his large, serious eyes. The utter loneliness in that arid waste, one of the most dreary regions of the Sahara, was terribly depressing.
But on my finger was her ring. The souvenir was by no means a valuable one, yet so dearly did I prize it that I would not have given it in exchange for anything that might be offered. It was of a type common among Arab women; heavy oxydised silver, and around it, in small Arabic characters of gold, ran a text from the Korân, “Allah is gracious and merciful.” Taking it off, I examined the inside, and found it quite bright and smooth by constant wear.
Whatever my mysterious enchantress was, or whoever she would prove to be, this was her pledge of trust. And she, whose face I had not looked upon, had named me “the Faithful!”
Yet as I sat thinking, grim, uncanny feelings of doubt and insecurity filled my mind, for I remembered the strange words of Ali Ben Hafiz, and the fateful Omen of the Camel’s Hoof.
I had at last become enmeshed as the dead man had prophesied!
Chapter Six.
The Man with a Secret.
At sundown, three days after my escape from the Ennitra, my eyes distinguished the palms of the Meskam Oasis standing at the foot of a large sand-hill. Zoraida had correctly informed me, for under feathery trees, amid the luxuriant vegetation which one finds here and there in the Sahara, the Spahis and Chasseurs d’Afrique had established an advanced post.