None of those of her people who had gone forth to attack us would, however, return.
Seventy of them were stretched dead under the bright stars of the Eastern sky, and nearly a hundred were lying with great ugly stains of blood upon their burnouses, racked by the agony of their wounds, and well knowing that ere the morrow’s sun would set they would succumb to heat and thirst; that in a few short hours the vultures would lay bare their bones and leave them whitening on the glaring sand.
Chapter Nine.
Uzanne, the Outcast.
The wild turbulence of that terrible night was succeeded by a peaceful, brilliant dawn.
Already my comrades were preparing to move south, for immediately upon the conclusion of the fight, messengers had been hastily despatched to overtake the commandant, and the detachment would also move on after the Chasseurs at sunset, as the unburied bodies of the marauders would prevent them remaining longer on the Meskam.
My wound—a deep laceration of the flesh where an Arab’s bullet had grazed me—proving more painful than at first, I had decided to accompany the messenger who, with an escort, would leave the camp at sundown to travel due north by way of Zaouïa Timassanin and over the barren Areg, bearing the intelligence of the annihilation of the marauders to the headquarters of the Spahis at Tuggurt. For some time I was undecided whether to remain with the military post, or return to civilisation. It was six months since I had left Oran, and for the greater part of that time I had been travelling. I was by no means tired of life in the desert, but the recollection that the mysterious Zoraida intended to perform a pilgrimage to the popular shrine on the outskirts of Algiers, and that if I went south to Zamlen as I had intended, I should certainly lose all chance of seeing her again, caused my decision to recross the Atlas and return.
Late that afternoon, while the glaring sun blazed down upon the motionless bodies of the marauders over which the great dark vultures now hovered, I sat in Uzanne’s tent. Stretched upon the ground, my friend, half-dressed, lay with his head upon his saddle. The wound in his shoulder had been roughly bandaged, pending an examination by the surgeon who had gone south with the Chasseurs, and although his bronzed face was a trifle paler, he nevertheless wore an air of utter carelessness.