Again I looked at my guide. I saw that he was pale.
"What is it, Bou-Djema?" I asked in a low voice.
"Not here, Lieutenant, not here," he muttered.
His teeth chattered. He added in a whisper:
"Not here. This evening, when we stop, when he turns to the East to pray, when the sun goes down. Then, call me to you. I will tell you.... But not here. He is talking, but he is listening. Go ahead. Join the Captain."
"What next?" I murmured, pressing my camel's neck with my foot so as to make him overtake Morhange.
It was about five o'clock when Eg-Anteouen who was leading the way, came to a stop.
"Here it is," he said, getting down from his camel.
It was a beautiful and sinister place. To our left a fantastic wall of granite outlined its gray ribs against the sky. This wall was pierced, from top to bottom, by a winding corridor about a thousand feet high and scarcely wide enough in places to allow three camels to walk abreast.
To the west, straight behind us, the track that we were leaving unrolled like a pale ribbon. The white plain, the road to Shikh-Salah, the established halts, the well-known wells.... And, on the other side, this black wall against the mauve sky, this dark passage.
"We had better stop here," he said simply. "Eg-Anteouen advises us to take as much water here as we can carry."
With one accord we decided to spend the night there, before undertaking the mountain.
There was a spring, in a dark basin, from which fell a little cascade; there were a few shrubs, a few plants.
Already the camels were browsing at the length of their tethers.
Bou-Djema arranged our camp dinner service of tin cups and plates on a great flat stone. An opened tin of meat lay beside a plate of lettuce which he had just gathered from the moist earth around the spring. I could tell from the distracted manner in which he placed these objects upon the rock how deep was his anxiety.
As he was bending toward me to hand me a plate, he pointed to the gloomy black corridor which we were about to enter.
"What did he say?" asked Morhange, who had seen the gesture.
"_Blad-el-Khouf. This is the country of fear._ That is what the Arabs call Ahaggar."
Bou-Djema went a little distance off and sat down, leaving us to our dinner. Squatting on his heels, he began to eat a few lettuce leaves that he had kept for his own meal.