At first he demurred, but finding me inexorable he at length submitted, and asked to be allowed to take Mezouda with him.
"She is my wife," he explained. "I married her in Algiers two years ago, and by her aid alone have I been enabled to approach so nearly the realisation of the plot I had conceived."
"It was truly an ingenious one," I laughed. "Yes, Mezouda shall go with thee. Remain in silence of thine intentions, and meet me among the palms outside the town an hour after sundown."
At first I feared that the intrepid Englishman, who had so nearly been the cause of a great Jehad through the whole Sahara, would endeavour to escape, but both he and his pretty and adventurous wife kept the appointment, and after some days we eventually arrived at our encampment.
The excitement caused by our appearance was unbounded. Taghma and his companions at once recognised the Englishman in his blood-red robe as the Allah of the Kel-Alkoum, and all fell on their knees, crying aloud in adoration.
But their supplications were quickly cut short by the few loud words of authority I uttered, and when half an hour later the reckless adventurer exhibited his stained face and hands, and then entertained them by showing the simple means by which he accomplished his tricks of magic, the air was rent by roars of laughter. The veiled warriors of the Azjar danced for joy, and held their sides when convinced how completely their enemies had been tricked, and how dejected they, no doubt, were when they knew that the Allah, in whom they trusted, had forsaken them without a single word of farewell.
For a month the ingenious impostor remained a guest within our tents; then he departed for the north, taking his wife Mezouda with him. But since that day the Kel-Alkoum, believing themselves the forgotten of Allah, have ever been a cowed and peaceful nation.
CHAPTER SIX.
THE EVIL OF THE THOUSAND EYES.
The camp fire was dying in the gloomy hour before the dawn. In the Great Desert the light comes early from the far-off Holy City, golden as the Prophet"s glory, to light our footsteps in those trackless waterless wastes which are shunned by man and forgotten by Allah. My tribesmen of the Azjar, still wrapped in their black veils, were sleeping soundly prior to the long march of the coming day, and all was quiet save the howling of a desert fox, and the shuffling tread of the sentries as they traversed the camp from end to end, silent and weird in their long black burnouses and veils. Alone, I was sitting gazing into the dying embers, deep in thought. I had been unable to sleep, for a strange premonition of danger oppressed me. We were in the country of the Taitok, a tribe of pure Arabs, fierce in battle, who when united with the Kel-Rhela, their neighbours, were among our most formidable opponents. The Sheikhs of both tribes had made treaty with the French, and placed their country beneath the protection of the tricolour of the Infidels, therefore in our expedition, against their town of Azal, we knew that we must meet with considerable opposition.
We had exercised every caution in our advance, travelling by various ancient dried-up watercourses known only to us, "The Breath of the Wind," approaching in secret the town we intended to loot and burn as a reprisal for an attack made upon us a month before. But the report of a spy, who had gone forward to Azal, was exceedingly discouraging. The French had occupied the Kasbah, the red-burnoused Spahis were swaggering about the streets and market-places, while the tricolour floated over the city gate, and the fierce fighting men of the Taitok were now fearless of any invader. It was this report which caused me considerable uneasiness, and I was calmly reflecting whether to turn off to the east into the barren Ahaggar, or to push forward and measure our strength with our enemies, the Infidels, when suddenly my eyes, sharpened by a lifetime of desert wandering, detected a dark crouching figure moving in the gloom at a little distance from me. In an instant I s.n.a.t.c.hed up my rifle and covered it. Unconscious of how near death was, the mysterious stranger still moved slowly across, lying upon his stomach and dragging himself along the sand in the direction of my tent.
As I looked, a slight flash caught my eye. It was the gleam of the flickering flame upon burnished steel. The man held a knife, and at the door of my tent raised himself before entering, then disappeared within.
Quick as thought I jumped up, drew my keen double-edged _jambiyah_ from my girdle, and noiselessly sped towards my tent, drawing aside the flap, and dashing in to capture the intruder.
The dark figure was bending over a portfolio wherein I keep certain writings belonging to the tribe, the compacts of friends and the threats of foes.
"Thou art my prisoner!" I cried fiercely, halting inside, casting aside my knife and raising my rifle.
The figure turned quickly with a slight scream, and by the feeble light of my hanging-lamp I was amazed to detect the features of a woman, young, beautiful, with a face almost as white as those of the Roumi women who sit at cafes in Algiers.
"Mercy, O Ahamadou!" she implored, next second casting herself upon her knees before me. "True, I have fallen prisoner into thine hands, but the Book of Everlasting Will declares that thou shalt neither hold in slavery nor kill those who art thy friends. I crave thy mercy, for indeed I am thy friend."
"Yet thou seekest my life with that knife in thine hand!" I cried in anger. "Whence comest thou?" I demanded, for her Arabic was a dialect entirely strange to me.
"From a country afar--a region which no man knoweth," she answered.
"The country of the Azjar is the whole of the Great Desert," I answered, with pride. "Every rock and every wady is known unto them."
"Not every wady," she replied, smiling mysteriously. "They know not the Land of Akkar, nor the City of the Golden Tombs."
"The Land of Akkar!" I gasped, for Akkar was a region which only existed in the legendary lore of the Bedouins, and was supposed to be a fabulous country, wherein lived a mysterious race of white people, and where was concealed the enormous treasure captured during the Mussulman Conquest. "Knowest thou actually the position of the wondrous Land of Akkar?"
"It is my home," she answered in soft sibillation, as stretching forth my hand I motioned her to rise. I saw that her beauty and grace were perfect. She wore no veil, but her dark robe was dusty and stained by long travel, while her striking beauty was enhanced by a string of cut emeralds of great size and l.u.s.tre across her brow, in place of the sequins with which our women decorate themselves. She wore no other jewels, save a single diamond upon the index-finger of the right hand, a stone of wondrous size and brilliancy. It seemed to gleam like some monster eye as she sank upon the divan near, a slight sigh of fatigue escaping her.
"And thy name?" I enquired.
"Nara, daughter of Kiagor," she answered. "And thou art the great Ahamadou, whom all men fear from Lake Tsad, even unto the confines of Algeria, the leader of the dreaded Breath of the Wind. In our secret land reports of thy prowess and ferocity in the fight, of thy leniency towards the women and children of thine enemies, have already reached us, therefore I travelled alone to seek thee."
And she looked up into my face, her full red lips parted in a smile.
"Why?" I enquired, puzzled.
"Because I crave the protection of thine host of black-veiled warriors,"
she answered. "Our land of Akkar is threatened by an invasion of the Infidel English, who have sent two spies northward from the Niger. May Allah burn their vitals! They succeeded in penetrating into our mountain fastness, and were captured by our scouts. One was killed, but the other escaped. He has, undoubtedly, gone back to his own people; and they will advance upon us, for they are a nation the most powerful and most fearless in all the world."
"Of a verity thy lips utter truth," I observed, "for we once fought in the Dervish ranks against the English on the Nile bank, and were cut down like sun-dried gra.s.s before the scythe. But who hath sent thee as messenger to me?"
"I come on my own behalf," she responded. "I am ruler of the Akkar."
It was strange, sitting there in conversation with the ruler of a mysterious region, the existence of which every Arab in the Soudan and the Sahara firmly believed, yet no man had ever set foot in the legendary country, the fabulous wealth and strange sights of which were related by every story-teller from Khartoum even unto Timbuktu. And yet Nara, the Queen of Akkar, was a guest within my camp, and had fallen upon her knees before me in supplication. Ambition was fired within me to visit her wondrous land of the silent dead, and I announced my readiness to effect a treaty with her, first accompanying her alone to see the wonders of her mystic realm. As I spoke, however, a curious change appeared to come over her. Her face flushed slightly, her eyes gleamed with a fiery glance, and there was a hardness about her mouth, which, for one brief moment, caused me suspicion.
"Thou art welcome, O Ahamadou!" she answered, smiling bewitchingly, next instant. "We will start even now, if thou wilt, for no time must be lost ere thine armed men unite with the guards of my kingdom to resist the accursed English, that white-faced tribe whom Eblis hath marked as his own. Let us speed on the wings of haste, and within a week thou mayest be back here within thine own camp."
And she rose in readiness to go forth.
"My _meheri_ is tethered behind yon rock," she continued, pointing out beyond the camp where a great dark rock loomed forth against the fast-clearing sky. "Join me there, and I will guide thy footsteps unto my City of the Golden Tombs."
Whilst she went forth secretly I called Malela, son of Tamahu, and imparted to him the circ.u.mstances, telling him of my intention to go secretly to Akkar, and giving him instructions how to preserve from the tribe the fact that I was absent. Malela was one of the fiercest of desert-pirates, as valiant a man as ever drew a _jambiyah_ against an enemy; but when I mentioned my intended visit to the silent legendary land, the wealth and terrors of which he had heard hundreds of times from the lips of the story-tellers and marabouts, his face paled beneath its bronze.
"May the One of Praise envelope thee with the cloak of His protection,"
he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with heartfelt fervency. "Have we not heard of the awful tortures of those in the mute land--the mysterious region which the Moors have declared to be the veritable dwelling-place of Eblis, the region inhabited by those who have served the Devil and refused both the blessings of Allah and the intercessions of his Prophet?"
"Are not the Azjar without fear, and is not Ahamadou their leader?" I asked proudly, reflecting upon Nara"s marvellous beauty, and feeling an intense curiosity to visit the country wherein no man had hitherto set foot. Again, had not the Queen of Akkar singled out the Veiled Men of the Azjar as her allies against the eaters of unclean meat, the Infidels whose bodies Allah will burn with his all-consuming fire.
Again Malela uttered a prayer to the One, as he stood facing the Holy Ca"aba, and I, too, murmured a _sura_ as I thrust some cartridges into my pouch, drew tighter my belt with its amulets sewn within, and buckled on my sword with the wondrous jewel in the hilt--the mark of chieftainship--for I was to be guest of the Queen of an unknown land.
Then, with a whispered farewell to Tamahu"s son, I stole forth, treading softly among my sleeping tribesmen, and carefully avoiding the sentries until I came to my own swift camel, I mounted it, and a few minutes later joined my handsome guide. She had already mounted, and had twisted a white haick about her face until only her eyes and the row of emeralds across her brow remained visible.
It is needless to recount the long breathless days we spent together in journeying westward, resting by day and travelling ever in the track of the blood-red afterglow, until we came upon a range of giant snow-crested mountains, as great as the monster Atlas that loom as a barrier between ourselves and the so-called civilisation of the Franks.
"Yonder," she said, pointing to them, when first their grandeur burst upon our view in the pale rose of dawn. "Yonder is our land which none can enter, save those who know the secret way. There are but two entrances--one here and the other far south, the way through which the English have unfortunately discovered."
"Then on all sides but one thy kingdom is impregnable," I observed, gazing with amazement at the serrated barrier, which seemed to rise until it reached the misty cloud-land.
"On all but one," she answered. "Those who know not the secret must meet with death, because of the dangers by which Akkar is surrounded as safeguards against her enemies."
Throughout two days we travelled, slowly approaching the snowy range, and one night we halted beside a narrow lake, beyond which was practically an impa.s.sable barrier of rugged cliffs and towering mountains. The night was moonless, and as I laid down to sleep, only the rippling of the water lapping the pebbles broke the appalling stillness. At last, however, I dropped off into a heavy slumber, and was only awakened by a strange roar in my ears like the thunder of a cataract.
I put forth my hand and tried to open my eyes, but both efforts were alike useless. To my amazement I found my hands secured behind me, and my eyes blindfolded.
Then, in an instant, it occurred to me that I had been entrapped. I struggled and fought to free myself, for the air was hot and stifling, and I felt myself being asphyxiated with a deadening roar in my ears, and a close indescribable odour in my nostrils. In my attempt to tear the irritating bandage from my eyes, my head came suddenly into contact with something soft. I placed my cheek against it, and found to my amazement that I was lying on some kind of silken divan, my head supported by an embroidered cushion of the kind usual in our harems.
But the odour about me was not the intoxicating fragrance of burning pastilles, but a damp mouldy smell, as of a chamber long closed.
How long my mental torture and sense of utter helplessness continued I know not. All I recollect is that, of a sudden, the air seemed fresher and cooler, the thunder of the waters died away instantly, and the smell of the charnel-house gave place to a delicate perfume of fresh flowers.
There was a genial warmth upon my cheeks, and I awakened to the fact that the sun was shining upon me, when I felt a hand unloosen the bandage tied behind my head, and heard the voice of Nara say--
"Lo, the danger is past. Thou art in Akkar," and she drew away the piece of black folded silk that had held me without vision.
In abject amazement I looked around stupefied. We were together in a kind of boat shaped like an inverted funnel, which opened only at the top and could be closed at will by a complicated arrangement of levers and wire ropes, a subaquatic vessel fitted with comfortable lounges, having a lighted lamp hanging in the centre. Everything--seats, tables, and all the fittings--swung in rings, therefore, whichever way the boat rolled, even though it might turn complete somersaults, those riding in it could remain seated without inconvenience. On looking back I saw that the narrow stream we were navigating was fed by a mighty torrent that rushed from the mountain-side, a roaring, boiling flood which sent up a great column of spray, reflecting in the sunlight all the colours of the spectrum; and I also observed that we had entered the Land of Akkar by means of that strangely-shaped boat of bolted iron plates as strong as the war-ships of the Infidels, and were now in a deep and fertile valley, having descended from the lake by an unknown subterranean watercourse through the very heart of the giant mountain.