Immediately I began to get nervous again.

I pulled out the cushion and slipped off the noose.  With my good hand, I pulled the rope, holding it out five or six feet from the face of the mountain, and put my foot on it.

Then I took the little cardboard box from my pocket and opened it.

One after the other, three little luminous circles rose in the inky night.  I saw them rise higher and higher against the rocky wall.  Their pale rose aureols gleamed faintly.  Then, one by one, they turned, disappeared.

“You are tired, Sidi Lieutenant.  Let me hold the rope.”

Cegheir-ben-Cheikh rose up at my side.

I looked at his tall black silhouette.  I shuddered, but I did not let go of the rope on which I began to feel distant jerks.

“Give it to me,” he repeated with authority.

And he took it from my hands.

I don’t know what possessed me then.  I was standing beside that great dark phantom.  And I ask you, what could I, with a dislocated shoulder, do against that man whose agile strength I already knew?  What was there to do?  I saw him buttressed against the wall, holding the rope with both hands, with both feet, with all his body, much better than I had been able to do.

A rustling above our heads.  A little shadowy form.

“There,” said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, seizing the little shadow in his powerful arms and placing her on the ground, while the rope, let slack, slapped back against the rock.

Tanit-Zerga recognized the Targa and groaned.

He put his hand roughly over her mouth.

“Shut up, camel thief, wretched little fly.”

He seized her arm.  Then he turned to me.

“Come,” he said in an imperious tone.

I obeyed.  During our short walk, I heard Tanit-Zerga’s teeth chattering with terror.

We reached a little cave.

“Go in,” said the Targa.

He lighted a torch.  The red light showed a superb mehari peacefully chewing his cud.

“The little one is not stupid,” said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, pointing to the animal.  “She knows enough to pick out the best and the strongest.  But she is rattle-brained.”

He held the torch nearer the camel.

“She is rattle-brained,” he continued.  “She only saddled him.  No water, no food.  At this hour, three days from now, all three of you would have been dead on the road, and on what a road!”

Tanit-Zerga’s teeth no longer chattered.  She was looking at the Targa with a mixture of terror and hope.

“Come here, Sidi Lieutenant,” said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, “so that I can explain to you.”

When I was beside him, he said: 

“On each side there is a skin of water.  Make that water last as long as possible, for you are going to cross a terrible country.  It may be that you will not find a well for three hundred miles.

“There,” he went on, “in the saddle bags, are cans of preserved meat.  Not many, for water is much more precious.  Here also is a carbine, your carbine, sidi.  Try not to use it except to shoot antelopes.  And there is this.”