He spread out a roll of paper.  I saw his inscrutible face bent over it; his eyes were smiling; he looked at me.

“Once out of the enclosures, what way did you plan to go?” he asked.

“Toward Ideles, to retake the route where you met the Captain and me,” I said.

Cegheir-ben-Cheikh shook his head.

“I thought as much,” he murmured.

Then he added coldly: 

“Before sunset to-morrow, you and the little one would have been caught and massacred.”

“Toward the north is Ahaggar,” he continued, “and all Ahaggar is under the control of Antinea.  You must go south.”

“Then we shall go south.”

“By what route?”

“Why, by Silet and Timissao.”

The Targa again shook his head.

“They will look for you on that road also,” he said.  “It is a good road, the road with the wells.  They know that you are familiar with it.  The Tuareg would not fail to wait at the wells.”

“Well, then?”

“Well,” said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh, “you must not rejoin the road from Timissao to Timbuctoo until you are four hundred miles from here toward Iferouane, or better still, at the spring of Telemsi.  That is the boundary between the Tuareg of Ahaggar and the Awellimiden Tuareg.”

The little voice of Tanit-Zerga broke in: 

“It was the Awellimiden Tuareg who massacred my people and carried me into slavery.  I do not want to pass through the country of the Awellimiden.”

“Be still, miserable little fly,” said Cegheir-ben-Cheikh.

Then addressing me, he continued: 

“I have said what I have said.  The little one is not wrong.  The Awellimiden are a savage people.  But they are afraid of the French.  Many of them trade with the stations north of the Niger.  On the other hand, they are at war with the people of Ahaggar, who will not follow you into their country.  What I have said, is said.  You must rejoin the Timbuctoo road near where it enters the borders of the Awellimiden.  Their country is wooded and rich in springs.  If you reach the springs at Telemsi, you will finish your journey beneath a canopy of blossoming mimosa.  On the other hand, the road from here to Telemsi is shorter than by way of Timissao.  It is quite straight.”

“Yes, it is direct,” I said, “but, in following it, you have to cross the Tanezruft.”

Cegheir-ben-Cheikh waved his hand impatiently.

“Cegheir-ben-Cheikh knows that,” he said.  “He knows what the Tanezruft is.  He who has traveled over all the Sahara knows that he would shudder at crossing the Tanezruft and the Tassili from the south.  He knows that the camels that wander into that country either die or become wild, for no one will risk his life to go look for them.  It is the terror that hangs over that region that may save you.  For you have to choose:  you must run the risk of dying of thirst on the tracks of the Tanezruft or have your throat cut along some other route.