hted 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."

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 t