Zoraida: A Romance of the Harem and the Great Sahara

“Well?” I exclaimed, handing back the paper. “You will have an opportunity of seeing her very soon, I suppose?”

“See her? Never!” he answered, with poignant bitterness. “Already I have discovered that she is instituting inquiries about me; that is the reason why I have not sought to return to Biskra. I do not desire the past disinterred;” and he thoughtfully watched the ascending rings of smoke.

“Fate plays us some sorry tricks sometimes. Most probably you will meet her just when you least expect – ”

“What?” he cried, interrupting. “Face her? To hold her hand as before – to tell her that her husband, the man whose ring she wears, and over whom the journalists gush and drivel, is – is a murderer! No! No! I never will!”

“But, my dear fellow, is it not your duty to denounce him if you possess absolute proof of his guilt?” I argued.

“My duty? Bien” he answered reflectively. “But the denunciation would bring no satisfaction to me – on the contrary, it would kill her.”

“You are right,” I conceded reluctantly, after a pause. “Your silence and self-denial is the greatest kindness you could show towards her. Indeed, your affection must be very deep-rooted, or your patience would long ago have been exhausted amid this hard life and social ostracism.”

“Ah! Heaven knows how well I love her,” he said, turning to me with a deep, wistful look. “She loves me too, and the fact that she has sought to find out where I am shows that she thinks sometimes of me. But I mean to keep the resolve I made long ago, for under an assumed name and in the Spahis she will never discover me.”

“Now that De Largentière is Governor, he is all-powerful,” I observed. “I wonder what he would do if he discovered you, and found out that you held absolute proof of his guilt?”

“Cr-r-r!” he exclaimed, as with a sad smile he drew his finger across his throat. “If he dared not commit the crime himself, he would hire one of the many obliging Arab desperadoes who hang about the fringe of the Desert.”

“Yes,” I said. “He would, no doubt, make some serious attempt to seal your lips.”

“I shall give him no opportunity. As far as I am concerned, he will, for Violet’s sake, enjoy his reputation for honesty and uprightness,” he declared. Then he added quickly, “But why should we drift to a subject that is to me so painful? The romance of my life has ended. I am a derelict, a piece of human wreckage drifting helplessly upon the sea of despair.”

“So am I,” I said gloomily. “Only I am struggling to reach a landmark that will direct me to a harbour of refuge.”

“I scarcely follow you,” he observed, suddenly interested. “That you have some very strong motive for spending your days in these uncivilised regions seems certain, but as you have never exchanged confidences with me, I remain in ignorance. Is it in your case also a woman?”

I nodded an affirmative.

“Tell me about her. Who is she?” he inquired, looking straight into my eyes.

For a few moments I remained silent. Then, returning his steadfast gaze, I answered —

“I love Zoraida!”

“Zoraida!” he cried, starting up. “Surely you don’t mean the woman of the Ennitra, known as Daughter of the Sun?”

“The same,” I replied. “You may laugh, sneer, tell me I am a dreamer, dazzled by the glitter and splendour of an Eastern court, fascinated by a pair of kohl-darkened eyes and a forehead hung with sequins, but, nevertheless, the fact remains that she and I love each another.”

“It seems impossible,” he said. “You have actually looked upon her unveiled, and spoken with her, then?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because it is death to an Infidel to either look upon her countenance or seek to address her. While a prisoner in Hadj Absalam’s palace, I heard most extraordinary things regarding her. The terrible story was told me how, on one occasion, three Chasseurs, held captive by the old robber, had, by the purest accident, discovered her passing unveiled from the court of the palace guards into the harem. Amazed at her extraordinary beauty, they stood gazing at her, but those looks of admiration cost them their lives. Their gaze, it was alleged, had polluted her, and within an hour their heads were smote off and their bodies thrown to the dogs.”

“Then you have never seen her?”

“No. During the time I was in the hands of the Ennitra, she was absent. Many were the strange rumours I heard about her, however: how she was possessed of almost supernatural power, how she had planned most of the raiding expeditions of Hadj Absalam, how she ruled the fierce band as their Queen, and, attired as a youth, had actually led them successfully against our forces! I can scarcely believe it all, but the palace guards assured me that all they told me was the unexaggerated truth. Six months ago the Government issued a proclamation, offering two rewards of ten thousand francs each for the capture of Hadj Absalam and Zoraida.”

“I know what you have heard is the truth, from personal observation,” I said quietly. His statement about the reward was, however, startling, and caused me increased uneasiness.

“Tell me all about her,” he urged. “How a Christian could succeed in approaching her, judging from all I have heard as to the rigorous manner in which she is guarded, seems absolutely incomprehensible.”

“It forms a strange story,” I admitted, and then, while he consumed a fresh cigarette, I proceeded to briefly relate the manner in which we became acquainted, and the weird and startling events that followed, suppressing only the fact that Agadez had been occupied by the outlaws. I hesitated to tell him this, because I feared that if a large body of Spahis were in the district, they would at once proceed there, and in all probability capture both the robber Sheikh and Zoraida, to secure the reward. Nevertheless, I explained how I became possessed of the Crescent of Glorious Wonders, of which he had heard rumours, and which he examined with intense interest when I produced it from my forage-bag. Then, after I had replaced it in its hiding-place, I told him of the extraordinary directions the dead imam had given me, and that I was on my way to test the truth of his strange statement.

“In two days you will arrive at the spot he has indicated,” he observed, after listening to my story with breathless interest. “The mystery is so remarkable, and has so excited my curiosity, that I wish I might be permitted to accompany you in this search for an explanation. Do you object?”

“Not in the least,” I answered, laughing. “There is something so uncanny about the whole affair, that your companionship will be most acceptable. When shall we set out?”

“To start now would be unwise,” he said, gazing round with practised eye at the Desert, already aglow in the brilliant sunshine, and observing, at a glance, its atmospheric conditions. “Let us eat and idle now, and leave at sunset.”

To this arrangement I acquiesced. Then he told me how the Spahis had encamped four hours’ march away, that he had strayed from a reconnoitring party, and, having regard to the fact that they were remaining there at least a week and that we should be only four or five days absent, he did not consider it necessary to undertake an eight hours’ ride to ask permission of his captain before starting.

“Military regulations are sometimes relaxed in this out-of-the-world spot,” he added, laughing. “When they find I’m missing, they will probably search for me; but having now lost myself, why should I return just at present, especially as they are not likely to move on before they find traces of me.”

“In what direction are you marching? Towards Agadez?” I inquired anxiously.

“Scarcely,” he replied, with a smile. “We have no desire to be annihilated by the Sultan of the Ahír. No. We are travelling due south to Lake Tsâd.”

His answer reassured me, and, having prepared and eaten a rather primitive meal, we sought under a tree that dreamy, peaceful repose that desert travellers find so refreshing in an oasis.

An hour before the sun had sunk in its fiery glory of gold and crimson, there was a beautiful mirage of water, rocks, and feathery palms upon the sky, but, as we prepared to depart, it faded from our gaze as rapidly as it had appeared. With the brilliant glow of the dying day behind us, we set forth into an unknown country, Uzanne upon his white Arab stallion, I upon my handsomely-caparisoned camel. Riding down the eastern side of the wooded hill we almost imperceptibly entered the plain, the slope being so gradual. After travelling for some time in the darkening hours along the level ground, we found it was by no means flat, although it usually appeared so in our immediate neighbourhood; yet it had an upward trend, and some distance beyond it rose and fell in long, wavelike swells of sufficient height to hide, at times, even such an object as the range of Gueisiger mountains on our left. On all sides we scanned the fertile plain for any signs of life. A herd of gazelles scampered along in front, but no other living thing seemed near.

When we had been riding about five hours, we detected straight before us, rising from the level of the plain, now sandy and desolate, a long black line, jagged and irregular, which gradually developed, on nearer view in the brilliant moonbeams, into something like a mass of ruins resembling a deserted town.

Evidently we were on the right path, as indicated by Mohammed ben Ishak. In this he certainly had not deceived me. On the outskirts of this desolate pile, lying so far from civilisation, we saw first an old reservoir, edged in with rough-faced blocks of granite. No wall or gate marked the city boundary, nor were the ruined buildings, half buried in drifting sand, conspicuous by their architectural beauty, for square black stones, piled on one another without mortar, formed houses that for size were larger than those in Agadez, but the stony desolation was not relieved by a piece of either wood or metal. Many of the houses seemed in an excellent state of preservation, and all seemed as if the inhabitants had left through a pestilence rather than the ravages of war; time alone, assisted by the wind and tempest, appeared to have dismantled others. There were three mosques, but all were however, in a confused mass of ruins, the cupola of one alone remaining intact, though its crescent that had pointed skyward had rotted and fallen. It was strangely weird riding through that deserted city in the brilliant moonlight, amid grotesque and ghostly shadows. Upon the last-mentioned mosque we discovered a stone, rudely inscribed, in Arabic, with the words, “The building of this holy place was ordered by the Khalîf Othman.” This gave us a clue to the age of this half-effaced city, for the Khalîf was all-powerful in Northern Africa in the twenty-seventh year of the Hedjira (A.D. 647), and lived at Sbeitla, once a great city, but now, like this forgotten place, a mere heap of crumbling ruins.

Continuing our weary way, we journeyed straight on between a parallel range of sand dunes, until we came to the open plain again. More stony the country grew, as we proceeded, hour after hour, guided only by the stars, through the barren, desolate land, until we halted at sunrise in the midst of a vast wilderness, where no rising ground relieved the monotony of the rocky level. Eating, resting, and sleeping, we resumed the journey again at sunset, and, throughout the night, pushed onward in eager search of the single clump of palms beneath the shadow of which I was to seek to elucidate the Great Secret.

At last, however, the ground ascended gently, and we saw, away to the south-east, hills rising, peak after peak, as far as the eye could reach. The outlook of rounded hill-tops was varied occasionally by a small plateau, but the landscape was terribly arid and dispiriting. Nevertheless, we plodded still onward in the direction the dead man had indicated, until at length our eager, impatient eyes were rewarded by the sight of a low hill, surmounted by a single dump of about half a dozen palms, their feathery tops looming darkly against the horizon already flushed by the delicate rose-tints of dawn.

We both detected our goal at the same moment, and, with ejaculations of satisfaction, spurred forward excitedly at redoubled pace, breathlessly impatient to put the Crescent of Glorious Wonders to the crucial test.

The spot was actually within sight!

Swiftly we rode over the soft, treacherous sand and great patches of rough stones, our adventurous spirits suddenly stimulated by the anticipation that probably within an hour, the Great Mystery – the secret preserved through so many ages, the knowledge by which alone I could effect Zoraida’s rescue – would at last be revealed.

Chapter Forty Two.

Vagaries of Vision

Over the rising ground we eagerly sped, halting not till we dismounted beneath the palms. The spot bore no trace of having been visited by travellers; indeed, for the past two days we had not come across a single bone of horse or camel, the country being apparently desolate and unexplored.

Having carefully recalled the old imam’s dying instructions, Octave and I became both convinced that this must be the place he had indicated. Standing together, we cast our gaze wonderingly around, but saw nothing to relieve the dreary monotony of sand and sky, except far away eastward on the distant horizon, where a great mountain loomed, misty and indistinct, in the purple haze.

“At last the supreme moment has arrived,” I said excitedly, drawing the Crescent of Glorious Wonders from the bag in which I had hidden it. “We will put the truth of Mohammed ben Ishak’s assertions, to the test.”

“How that piece of engraved metal can effect the rescue of Zoraida remains to me a mystery,” Octave exclaimed, intensely interested in the strange experiment I was about to make. He had tied his horse to a palm trunk, taken a draught from his water-skin, and now stood with folded arms, intently watching my actions.

Still half dubious as to whether the old imam had spoken the truth, I gazed upon the Crescent, tracing its mystic inscription, and vainly endeavouring to decipher it.

“Did the imam explain the exact position in which you were to place it upon your head?” asked my friend.

“He told me to let it rest upon my brow,” I answered.

“Then you must remove your head-gear.”

This I did at once, casting it upon the sand. Then, breathless with excitement, knowing how much depended upon the elucidation of the Great Mystery, I took the strangely-shaped object that had experienced so many vicissitudes, and, while Uzanne riveted his dark, serious eyes upon mine, placed it upon my forehead. Pressing its inner edge against my brow, it fitted tightly, the horns gripping my temples with an unpleasant pressure that caused them to throb violently.

“Dieu!” cried Octave, grasping my left hand suddenly. “Tell me – tell me quickly – what ails you?”

I was staggering as one intoxicated. I heard his voice, but it seemed distant, even sepulchral, for when the cold metal came in contact with my brow, I experienced sensations excruciatingly painful. Across the top of my skull and through my temples and eyes sharp pains shot, producing an acute sensitiveness, as though flesh and brain were being torn asunder by sharp hooks. In the first acute spasm of suffering, I cried aloud, causing Uzanne considerable anxiety. For a few moments the agony was intense. The tapering ends of the Crescent pressed into my temples, causing them to shoot in spasms that lancinated every nerve, and I felt myself on the point of fainting under the horrible cruciation.

With a sudden impetuous movement I tried to doff the semicircle of metal, but whether I did not pull it evenly, or whether my head had swollen after I had assumed it, I could not tell. All I knew was, that I could not disengage my head from its tightening grip. Clenching my teeth, I struggled against the nauseating faintness that crept over me, and gradually the sudden pangs decreased, until the maddening racking of my brain was succeeded by a curious tranquillisation that caused me to involuntarily reconcile myself to circumstances.

Octave’s presence, and indeed all my immediate surroundings, seemed to fade from my sight, and in their place there was conjured up in the vista down which I seemed to gaze a vision indistinct at first, but gradually becoming more and more vivid. With my face to the east, a feeling of calm pleasure and enchantment overspread me as my vision seemed to extend to treble its normal range.

It was an extraordinary phenomenon.

With my eyes fixed upon the purple mountain fading into a shadowy outline against the clear and brilliant sky, I appeared to gradually approach it. As it grew larger and more distinct, I was enabled to take in the details of the scene, and become enraptured by its charm. The sides of the mountain were clothed by luxuriant foliage and sweet-smelling flowers, and when, in the strange hallucination which had taken possession of me, I approached still nearer, I suddenly experienced a conviction that I had on a previous occasion gazed upon the same scene.

Vainly I tried to recall it. The pressure upon my temples appeared to have crushed and dulled my senses so that any effort to recollect the past was unavailing. My brain seemed electrified by the sudden shock when I had placed the Crescent upon my brow, and now all the past was but a blank, all the present chaotic and incomprehensible. Yet the scene was so familiar, that my inability to recollect where I had before witnessed it was tantalising, and caused me to wonder whether my mind had become unbalanced and the exteriorised image had not been induced by insanity. I dreaded to think it might be so. Yet I now experienced no pain, only a strange, uncontrollable desire to draw nearer. The mountain seemed to act as a magnet, transfixing me, drawing me closer and closer, with a force mystic, but utterly irresistible.

Within me was a violent craving, a sudden longing to search for some unknown person or object concealed there, the truth of which I must at all hazards discover.

Words fell upon my ear; but they were unintelligible. Uzanne was no doubt asking me a question in his eagerness to know what had caused my alarming change of manner, but I heeded not. Swiftly I approached the single mountain rising in its solitary beauty in that vast, lonely land, until suddenly its highest point attracted me, and at last, with an ejaculation of joy, I remembered.

The summit was shaped in the form of a camel’s hump, crowned by three palms that looked at that altitude no bigger than the little finger-joint. The centre tree raised its feathery head higher than those of its companions. Yes, it was the same! The scene that my keen vision now gazed upon was a reproduction, exact in every particular, of the picture that had been revealed by the crystal mirror that Mohammed ben Ishak had allowed me to gaze upon!

In the mirror I had been painfully impressed by the figure of a dying man in the immediate foreground, but the presence of death no longer marred the scene. Pushing forward still nearer, over rough, broken ground, without experiencing any physical fatigue, I distinguished straight before me a dark spot in the side of a great wall of grey rock, just at a point where it rose from the plain to form part of the mountain. Presently I could see that it was the low arched entrance to what appeared to be a cave, and as a sudden desire seized me to investigate it, I pressed forward, overwhelmed by a vivid conviction that within that cavern lay an elucidation of the Great Mystery. Eagerly I approached, until I had come within a leopard’s leap of the gloomy opening, then suddenly some inexplicable power arrested my progress. Struggling to proceed, I fought desperately with the unseen influence that held me back, determined that even though I risked my life, I must enter that rocky portal and search for the knowledge by which I might rescue Zoraida. Her words of piteous appeal urged me forward, but though I exerted all my strength and will, yet I did not advance a single inch further towards my weird and gloomy goal.

Some strange intuition told me that this cavern was the spot I sought, yet, though again and again I strove to shake off the shackles that had so suddenly been cast about me, all effort was in vain, for an instant later my heart sank in despair as the scene gradually dissolved and receded from my gaze, until the mountain grew so distant as to appear the mere misty outline that I had at first witnessed, and I was rudely aroused from a state of dreamy wonderment by hearing Octave exclaim in alarm —

“Sapristi! old fellow, I’m beginning to think you’ve taken leave of your senses!”

“No,” I answered, endeavouring to calm myself. “I – I have witnessed an extraordinary scene.”

“Has anything remarkable been revealed?” he anxiously inquired.

“Yes. I have had a strangely vivid day-dream, by which I have been shown the spot whereat to search for the promised explication.”

“Where is it?” he asked quickly.

“In a cavern in yonder mountain,” I replied, pointing to the horizon.

“In a cavern?” he cried in surprise. “How have you ascertained that?”

I told him of the success of the catoptromancy, of the picture that my breath had produced upon the mirror, and of the exact reproduction which I had just witnessed.

“But do you think the Crescent has produced this remarkable chimera?” he asked.

“Undoubtedly,” I replied, releasing my head from it at last, and offering it to him, in order to see whether a similar illusion would be revealed. Removing his head-gear, he allowed me to place it upon his brow in the same position as I had assumed it. I held it there several minutes, and asked whether he experienced either pleasure or pain.

“I feel nothing,” he declared at last. Then, with an incredulous smile, he added, “I’m inclined to believe that your remarkable extension of vision is mere imagination. Your nerves are unstrung by thoughts of Zoraida’s peril, in combination with the fatigue of your journey.”

“But I can describe to you yonder mountain minutely,” I said. “The cave is in a high wall of grey granite, and its mouth, once evidently of spacious dimensions, has been rendered small by sand that has drifted up until it has almost choked it. It is semicircular, but seems narrow inside, forming a kind of shallow grotto.”

“And what is the general aspect of the mountain side?”

The picture still remained vividly impressed upon my memory, so I had no difficulty in giving him an accurate description of what I had seen.

“Eh bien! Let us investigate,” he said, evidently amazed at my very detailed word-picture of the place. “Let us see how far you are correct. For ten minutes you’ve been gazing at it with such a strange, far-off look in your eyes, that I confess I began to be concerned as to your sanity. I have seen a similar look in the eyes of Chasseurs who have fallen victims to sunstroke.”

“The mystery is just as inexplicable to myself as it is to you,” I answered. “Somehow, however, the contact of the Crescent has created within me a firmly-rooted conviction that we shall discover something in that cavern.”

“If we can find the place,” he added, laughing good-humouredly.

“Let us try,” I said, climbing upon my camel, who had been resting on his knees a few yards away, and causing him to rise. Uzanne, after another pull at his water-skin, sprang upon his horse, and we both commenced to descend again to the sandy plain.

With eyes fixed upon the mountain, rising like an island amid that inhospitable sea of sand, we pressed forward, Uzanne from time to time expressing a hope that we were not seeking a will-o’-the-wisp, and speculating as to what mystery might be concealed within the gloomy opening I had described. The way grew more rough, sand being succeeded by great sharp stones, which played havoc with my camel’s feet, causing me to travel but slowly, for my animal’s lameness in this vast wilderness might result disastrously. Still we journeyed on, as slowly the great mountain assumed larger proportions, until, after a most tedious course of travel, we found ourselves but a few hundred yards from its base.

The three trees were growing upon the summit as I had seen them in my mental picture, and every detail was the same in reality as I had witnessed it. The ground rose gently, with palmetto and asphodel growing and flourishing among the rocks, but there was no steep cliff of granite – there was no cave!