Part 24 (1/2)
”The wells of El Djebir, Monsieur,” explained Sergeant Perinaud. ”It is here we should find our men, if they are proceeding by the shortest route to their hills. If not--” He shrugged his shoulders significantly.
The horses were roused from their gentle amble into a gallop. The dust rose from fourscore hoofs as the Goumiers raced down in an enveloping cloud upon the cl.u.s.ter of palms and thicket of broom scrub which surrounded the watering-place. They pulled their horses upon their haunches; they shouted in hoa.r.s.e disappointment. The shadowed resting-place beneath the palms was empty. Not a living soul was in sight.
Perinaud shrugged his shoulders again.
”This is very conclusive, Monsieur. The party we seek has thought fit to leave the open road and to bury themselves in the recesses of the jungle and the northern gorges of the river. They did not do that without a reason. It remains to follow, if we can.”
The native officer shouted something and Perinaud turned swiftly in the saddle to stare down the track which they had been following. A white figure bestriding a brown horse was thundering towards them, the rider's _haik_ fluttering out snowily against the dun background of the earth.
”So Monsieur thought fit to leave me--me!” expostulated Daoud, as he drew rein at Aylmer's side. ”I, I who address you, am told by the chance gossip of the Sok that this expedition has set out without a word of warning, to seek bandits--where?” He threw abroad his arms in derision.
”On the broad and open road, within sound, nay, almost within sight, of the patrols of Casablanca. I ask, is it here that knaves are likely to hide their knavery? Your venture and its object are already the pivot on which the laughter of the market-place swings.”
He turned and pointed vehemently towards the north.
”Has none of your trained spies had the wit or the courage to tell you that a hundred of these Beni M'Geel Berbers have encamped in the thickets of the Bou Gherba gorge this ten days back? And yet the market-place knows it, as it knows a hundred things beneath your concern.”
Perinaud looked the Moor up and down. Then he turned leisurely towards Aylmer.
”He is a safe man, this?” he asked. ”You guarantee him?”
Aylmer smiled, and shrugged his shoulders towards the waiting Goumiers.
”They are all for their own hand, these, are they not, Sergeant? Yes, I will guarantee that he seeks to serve me, for the moment, and in serving me, himself. It is the way with these desert folk. They cannot manage large issues, and they split into factions to follow small ones. Let us hear him and, if you see no objection, take his advice. He has been in Casablanca before.”
Perinaud grunted and eyed the Moor grudgingly.
”Well, man of infinite knowledge,” he said in Arabic. ”You propose--what?”
”Are there two courses before us?” asked Daoud, disdainfully. ”Or are we to await reinforcements? We have to surround this lair of desert cats.”
”Where?” asked Perinaud, laconically.
The Moor wheeled his stallion with an elaborate caracole.
”If the Sidi had used my services from the first,” he said, ”he would have been saved an hour's ride. Forward, Sidi!”
The sergeant lifted his eyebrows at Aylmer with an air of comical resignation. To the native officer he gave a decisive little nod. With Daoud leading, the brown stallion arching his neck in remonstrance to a tightened rein and goading spur, the column broke formation and in single file turned northwards into the broom scrub which fringes the tilled lands of the Chawia.
The hors.e.m.e.n rode in silence. The mantle of Rattier's taciturnity, rent to rags in D'Hubert's office, seemed to have been restored to its pristine imperviousness, seemed, indeed, to hang heavy upon the spirits of the whole company. Now and again the commandant's lips moved uneasily, but the spoken word died still-born. A Goumier would address fervent maledictions to the memory of the female ancestors of a stumbling horse; curt conferences took place at long intervals between Perinaud and the native officer. But apart from this, the thud of hoofs meeting sand or earth and the dull rap of rein or stirrup leather were all the sounds which broke the stillness. The heavy noontide heat seemed to have swallowed into silence all sound. For sound denotes creative energy, and energy, when the sun is at its zenith in South Morocco, is sapped.
Their course, as Aylmer was quick to notice, led perpetually upward, but in gradients which almost eluded notice. Gray blue in the haze of distance, the rolling uplands culminated in a range of low hills, but these were a full day's march beyond their powers. Their goal, if it were to be reached within daylight, must be nearer than that. His attention, as the hours went monotonously by, was at last drawn to a gap in the far mapped expanse of vegetation.
A line of green, deeper and of more luxuriant growth than the thickets around them, divided the jungle from east to west. Daoud, turning in his saddle, waved his hand in an important gesture.
”The Gorge of the Bou Djerba, Sidi,” he said. ”It is my advice that I go forward to reconnoitre--alone.”
Aylmer looked at Perinaud. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders.
”Monsieur guarantees this fellow, I understand? Well, let him justify himself. I have no objections.”