character for which this race are notorious. The
stories which we continually heard about them had
aroused my curiosity to the utmost, and I was extremely
anxious to see these men. But the ill-luck
which had dogged our steps had hitherto frustrated
all our efforts to find them; and now, just when we
were beginning to think that we had fairly got them
within our reach, it appeared that they had slipped
once more through our fingers and retired into their
home in the inaccessible depths of the Sahara.
If so, our last chance of seeing them was lost.
We should never have been able to have obtained
permission from the French Government to follow
them, and as I knew that all my movements were
being most carefully watched by the authorities, who
seem to imagine that every Englishman who appears
in Algeria must necessarily be either a spy or a
Government agent engaged in urging the natives to
revolt, my chance of giving these officious officials
the slip was a very small one indeed. If the
Tawareks had retreated into the depths of the
Sahara, there remained nothing for us but to own
ourselves defeated and to take the shortest road back
again to civilisation, for any attempt to follow them
would merely result in our being ignominiously
brought back again in the charge of a party of
Spahis.
Aissa, who, being an Arab, was a fatalist by birth,
had declared that he considered it to be mecJctoub
(foreordained) that we should never succeed in our
search, and I began almost to fear that he must be
right.
At Biskra we had been told that we should
possibly find some members of this race at Tougourt.
On our arrival there, however, we found that, so far
from any of them being in the neighbourhood,
none had been seen there for many weeks, and we
had been recommended to repair to Wargla, where,
however, we were again disappointed, as they had,
contrary to their usual custom, abandoned the
district for nearly a year. And so things had gone
on until on our arrival at El Wad, just when we had
thought ourselves to be fairly on the right scent, our
evil destiny had still pursued us, for we had found
that the Tawareks had left the neighbourhood and retired
to Edemeetha ; and now, as we had been told
that a large party of them had the day before been
seen migrating southward in the direction of
Ghadames, and as there seemed to be every probability
that they were the men whom we were
endeavouring to find, it seemed as though they had
already got beyond out reach.
It was intensely disappointing. I began to feel
as though we had been hunting some kind of human
will-o’-the-wisp which had no real existence, and
that we had been following this phantom about the
desert, lured on by its ever-retreating form. Our
journey had certainly been in its way an interesting
one, but we seemed to have failed in the main object
of it.
But, no. I was lying half asleep on my bed, for
the day was a scorchingly hot one, when the door
opened and Aissa looked in. Seeing that I was in
the room he, without a word, flung the door wide