errara were on the upper plateau; and
Victoria could hardly bear to pass by, for Berryan was by far the most
Eastern-seeming place she had seen. She wondered if, should she ask him
as a favour, Maieddine would rest there that night, instead of camping
somewhere farther on, in the hideous desert; for already it was late
afternoon. But she would ask nothing of him now, for he was no longer
quite the trusty friend she had persuaded herself to think him. One
night, since the sand-divining, she had had a fearful dream concerning
Maieddine. Outside her tent she had heard a soft padding sound, and
peeping from under the flap, she had seen a splendid, tawny tiger, who
looked at her with brilliant topaz eyes which fascinated her so that she
could not turn away. But she knew that the animal was Maieddine; that
each night he changed himself into a tiger; and that as a tiger he was
more his real self than when by day he appeared as a man.

They filed past Berryan; the meharis, the white stallion, the
pack-camel, and the mule, in slow procession, along a rough road which
wound close to the green oasis. And from among the palm trees men and
women and little children, gorgeous as great tropical birds, in their
robes of scarlet, ochre-yellow, and emerald, peered at the little
caravan with cynical curiosity. Victoria looked back longingly, for she
knew that the way from Berryan to the Wady M'Zab would be grim and
toilsome under the burning sun. Hill after hill, they mounted and
descended; hills stony yet sandy, always the same dull colour, and so
shapeless as to daze the brain with their monotony. But towards evening,
when the animals had climbed to the crest of a hill like a dingy wave,
suddenly a white obelisk shot up, pale and stiff as a dead man's finger.
Tops of tall palms were like the dark plumes on the heads of ten
thousand dancing women of the Sahara, and as a steep descent began,
there glittered the five hidden cities, like a strange fairyland lost in
the desert. The whole Wady M'Zab lay under the eyes of the travellers,
as if they looked down over the rim of an immense cup. Here, some who
were left of the sons of Tyre and Carthage dwelt safe and snug,
crouching in the protection of the valley they had found and reclaimed
from the abomination of desolation.

It seemed to Victoria that she looked on one of the great sights of the
world: the five cities, gleaming white, and glowing bronze, closely
built on their five conical hi