“I will go, Tanit-Zerga, I promise you.  But you also, you must promise me....”

“What?  Oh, I guess.  You must take me for a little fool if you believe me capable of speaking of things which might make trouble for my friend.”

She looked at me as she spoke.  Privation and great fatigue had chiselled the brown face where her great eyes shone....  Since then, I have had time to assemble the maps and compasses, and to fix forever the spot where, for the first time, I understood the beauty of Tanit-Zerga’s eyes.

There was a deep silence between us.  It was she who broke it.

“Night is coming.  We must eat so as to leave as soon as possible.”

She stood up and went toward the rocks.

Almost immediately, I heard her calling in an anguished voice that sent a chill through me.

“Come!  Oh, come see!”

With a bound, I was at her side.

“The camel,” she murmured.  “The camel!”

I looked, and a deadly shudder seized me.

Stretched out at full length, on the other side of the rocks, his pale flanks knotted up by convulsive spasms, El Mellen lay in anguish.

I need not say that we rushed to him in feverish haste.  Of what El Mellen was dying, I did not know, I never have known.  All the mehara are that way.  They are at once the most enduring and the most delicate of beasts.  They will travel for six months across the most frightful deserts, with little food, without water, and seem only the better for it.  Then, one day when nothing is the matter, they stretch out and give you the slip with disconcerting ease.

When Tanit-Zerga and I saw that there was nothing more to do, we stood there without a word, watching his slackening spasms.  When he breathed his last, we felt that our life, as well as his, had gone.

It was Tanit-Zerga who spoke first.

“How far are we from the Soudan road?” she asked.

“We are a hundred and twenty miles from the springs of Telemsi,” I replied.  “We could make thirty miles by going toward Iferouane; but the wells are not marked on that route.”

“Then we must walk toward the springs of Telemsi,” she said.  “A hundred and twenty miles, that makes seven days?”

“Seven days at the least, Tanit-Zerga.”

“How far is it to the first well?”

“Thirty-five miles.”

The little girl’s face contracted somewhat.  But she braced up quickly.

“We must set out at once.”

“Set out on foot, Tanit-Zerga!”

She stamped her foot.  I marveled to see her so strong.

“We must go,” she repeated.  “We are going to eat and drink and make Gale eat and drink, for we cannot carry all the tins, and the water skin is so heavy that we should not get three miles if we tried to carry it.  We will put a little water in one of the tins after emptying it through a little hole.  That will be enough for to-night’s stage, which will be eighteen miles without water.  To-morrow we will set out for another eighteen miles and we will reach the wells marked on the paper by Cegheir-ben-Cheikh.”