At length the Arab, becoming enraged at the
insults heaped upon him by the dead Tawarek,
completely lost his self-control.
«If my brother is dead,’ he cried furiously, * you
shall at any rate keep him company,’ and, snatching
up his gun, he fired point blank into his antagonist.
The latter sprang to his feet, and pursued by his
living opponent fled to his tomb, where he suddenly
disappeared.
The Arab, considerably pleased at having fought
and got the better of a real ghost, returned in excellent
spirits to the fire for his meal. He stooped
down and shook his brother to awaken him; but
found that the ball which he had aimed at his late
opponent had passed through his shadowy form,
and, striking his brother in the head, had killed him
instantly.
The Sahara, especially at night, is an uncanny
land. Its wild and desolate wastes seem to have
been chosen by Nature as a playground wherein to
exhibit her most eerie and fantastic tricks. The
solitary life led by the nomadic inhabitants, who,
while hunting or tending their herds, are frequently
compelled to pass day after day alone in the wilderness,
by accentuating their inherent morbid and
dreamy temperament causes them to see in the
hidden forces of Nature the agency of supernatural
beings created by their own vivid imaginations.
Any natural phenomenon which cannot be explained
by their simple science is thus attributed by them
to some jinn or demon.
The weird unaccountable droning to be heard on
a still night in many parts of the Sahara is said by
the Arabs to be the jinns conversing among themselves.
The curious pillars of sand raised by the whirlwinds
so common in the desert, and known even in
England as ‘ sand-devils,’ are attributed to the playfulness
of a passing jinn.
A story is current among the natives of Algeria
of an Arab who, while travelling in the desert, made
some slighting remark to his companion about a
* sand-devil,’ which chanced to be passing near.
The ‘ devil ’ immediately wheeled round, rushed
swirling and roaring towards him, caught him as
he turned to fly, knocked him down, and tearing
the burnous from his back, whirled it up into the
sky until it was lost to sight. The ‘devil’ swept
shrieking triumphantly on, leaving the Arab to rise
sadly to his feet, the poorer by a new burnous, and
with a greatly increased respect for the unseen jinns
of the desert.