“’I don’t know what has come over the natives.  They are working like angels.  If they keep on this way, Colonel, we shall be able to leave this evening.’

“‘Very good,’ said the Colonel, ’but don’t let them spoil the job by too much haste.  We don’t have to be at Ansango before the end of the week.  It will be better to start in the morning.’

“I trembled.  Suppliantly I approached and told him the story of my dream.  He listened with a smile of astonishment; then, at the last, he said gravely: 

“’It is agreed, little Tanit-Zerga.  We will leave this evening if you wish it.’

“And he kissed me.

“The darkness had already fallen when the gunboat, now repaired, left the harbor.  My friend stood in the midst of the group of Frenchmen who waved their caps as long as we could see them.  Standing alone on the rickety jetty, I waited, watching the water flow by, until the last sound of the steam-driven vessel, boum-baraboum, had died away into the night."[16]

[Footnote 16:  Cf. the records and the Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie de Paris (1897) for the cruises on the Niger, made by the Commandant of the Timbuctoo region, Colonel Joffre, Lieutenants Baudry and Bluset, and by Father Hacquart of the White Fathers. (Note by M. Leroux.)]

Tanit-Zerga paused.

“That was the last night of Gao.  While I was sleeping and the moon was still high above the forest, a dog yelped, but only for an instant.  Then came the cry of men, then of women, the kind of cry that you can never forget if you have once heard it.  When the sun rose, it found me, quite naked, running and stumbling towards the north with my little companions, beside the swiftly moving camels of the Tuareg who escorted us.  Behind, followed the women of the tribe, my mother among them, two by two, the yoke upon their necks.  There were not many men.  Almost all lay with their throats cut under the ruins of the thatch of Gao beside my father, brave Sonni-Azkia.  Once again Gao had been razed by a band of Awellimiden, who had come to massacre the French on their gunboat.

“The Tuareg hurried us, hurried us, for they were afraid of being pursued.  We traveled thus for ten days; and, as the millet and hemp disappeared, the march became more frightful.  Finally, near Isakeryen, in the country of Kidal, the Tuareg sold us to a caravan of Trarzan Moors who were going from Bamrouk to Rhat.  At first, because they went more slowly, it seemed good fortune.  But, before long, the desert was an expanse of rough pebbles, and the women began to fall.  As for the men, the last of them had died far back under the blows of the stick for having refused to go farther.