,
gargling, quarrelling--nomads wading in their flocks, Djlass
countrymen, Singalese soldiers, Jewish pack-peddlers, Bedouin women
bent double under their stacks of desert fire-grass streaming inward,
dust white, dust yellow, and all red in the dawn under the red wall.

The flood ran against him. It tried to suck him back into the maw of
the city. He fought against it with his shoulders and his knees. He
tried now to run. It sucked him back. A wandering _Aissaoua_ plucked
at his sleeve and held under his nose a desert viper that gave off
metallic rose glints in its slow, pained constrictions.

"To the glory of Sidna Aissa, master, two sous."

He kept tugging at Habib's sleeve, holding him back, sucking him back
with his twisting reptile into the city of the faithful.

"In the name of Jesus, master, two copper sous!"

Habib's nerves snapped. He struck off the holy mendicant with his
fist. "That the devil grill thee!" he chattered. He ran. He bumped
into beasts. He bumped into a blue tunic. He halted, blinked, and
passed a hand over his hot-lidded eyes. He stammered:

"My friend! I have been looking for you! _Hamdou lillah! El
hamdou'llah_!"

Raoul Genet, studying the flushed, bright-eyed, unsteady youth, put up
a hand to cover a little smile, half ironic, half pitying.

"So, Habib ben Habib, you revert! Camel-driver's talk in your mouth
and camel's-hide slippers on your feet. Already you revert! Eh?"

"No, that is not the truth. But I am in need of a friend."

"You look like a ghost, Habib." The faint smile still twisted Raoul's
lips. "Or a drunken angel. You have not slept."

"That's of no importance. I tell you I am in need--"

"You've not had coffee, Habib. When you've had coffee--"

"Coffee! My God! Raoul, that you go on talking of coffee when life and
death are in the balance! For I can't live without--Listen, now!
Strictly! I have need to-night--to-morrow night--one night when it is
dark--I have need of the garrison car."

The other made a blowing sound. "I'm the commandant, am I, overnight?
_Zut_! The garrison car!" Habib took hold of his arm and held it
tight. "If not the car, two horses, then. And I call you my friend."

"_Two_ horses! Ah! So! I begin to perceive. Youth! Youth!"

"Don't jibe, Raoul! I have need of two horses--two horses that are
fast and strong."

"Are the horses in thy father's stable, then, of no swiftness and of
no strength?"

It was said in the _patois_, the bastard Ara