who said that for two days they had been followed
by a small body of Arabs who had been evidently
waiting for a favourable opportunity to attack them.
In order to give our party a more formidable
appearance I had bought in Tougourt an Arab gun.
I did not wish to cut up the few cartridges which I
had, so I asked Aissa whether he could procure me
some powder from the Arabs.
As the inhabitants of Algeria are a particularly
unruly lot to govern, the French have been compelled
to place the sale of arms and ammunition under the
most stringent regulations. But the Arabs, of
course, elude them.
Aissa, with a knowing wag of his head, assured
me that he would have no difficulty in procuring me
as much powder as I wanted. Only the night
before, he told me, while he was sleeping in the
market with some friends of his who had come in
with a caravan from Biskra, an Arab had come
round to them soon after midnight and showed them
a sample of some excellent powder, a camel-load of
which he had smuggled into the country from
Tripoli and concealed in the house of a friend of
his in the old town, and they had merely to go round
to this house and mention a password to buy as
much powder as they wished.
As for the extra camel, El Haj had met a man
named El Ayed, who, having come in the night
before with five camels, was anxious to get them
away again as soon as possible to save them from
being requisitioned by the French.
I sent El Haj in search of him. He soon found
him and brought him up. After a little preliminary
conversation, I pointed out to El Ayed that the
best means of saving his camels was to hire them
out to me, and so place them under the protection of
the British flag. El Ayed, with a confidence in the
might of the British Empire, which was really
touching, jumped at my offer, and I, taking a
mean advantage of his dilemma, at once engaged
him and his five beasts to take me to Wargla
and back for twenty francs, or about two francs
a day, which, as the usual price for a single camel
per diem is about four francs, was a fairly good
bargain.
The name of my new retainer, El Ayed, is the
Arab word which means the feast, and was given
to him because he happened to have been born upon
one of the festivals of the Mohammedan year, much
on the same principle as a boy who in England is
born on Christmas Day is sometimes christened
‘Noel.’ He was a brawny-looking specimen of
humanity, who called himself an Arab, though his
fair skin, almost flaxen beard, and grey eyes, seemed
more to point to a Berber origin.
Our preparations for a start occupied all the
morning, and it was not until the small hours of the
afternoon that we finally set out for Wargla.
With a high wind and sandstorm blowing
travelling was anything but pleasant. We passed
Temasin, passed the Zawia of Tamelath on our left,
and then entered into a small shott beyond. A
terrific storm of wind and rain went by us on the
east and then wheeled round and followed us,