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"It is," he answered me. "When do you expect to leave me?" "To-day. The road which Eg-Anteouen proposes to take into Ahaggar crosses this one about four leagues from here. I have a favor to ask of you in this connection." "Please tell me." "It is to let me take one of the two baggage camels, since my Targa has lost his."
I then suggested that it would be of interest to kill two birds with one stone, and to get, in passing, an idea of the northern Ahaggar, so as to make sure whether the Tuaregs of Ahitarhen had continued to have as cordial relations with the Senoussis as they had had when they combined to massacre the Flatters' mission. I was immediately accorded the permission.
And the only real difference was that you could take a P. & O. steamer at Marseilles and buy a through ticket to Tasili Ahaggar if you wanted to go there and that the shores of the Sahara became the Riviera of the world, crowded with health resorts and watering-places so that Pax had not lived in vain, nor Thornton, nor Bill Hood, nor Bennie Hooker, nor any of them.
"When I left Ahaggar, you remember that it was niche number 55 that was to be mine. Since then, I have never stopped calculating and I conclude that it is in number 80 or 85 that I shall repose. But any calculations based upon so fragile a foundation as a woman's whim may be erroneous. That is why I am getting more and more nervous. 'I must hurry, I tell myself. 'I must hurry.
In the name of God, am I or am I not at Ahaggar? It was broad daylight when I opened my eyes. I thought at once of Morhange. I could not see him, but I heard him, close by, giving little grunts of surprise. I called to him. He ran to me. "Then they didn't tie you up?" I asked. "I beg your pardon. They did. But they did it badly; I managed to get free."
I knelt also, for the light of the great candelabra was scarcely sufficient to read the label where, none the less, I recognized the Professor's handwriting. It bore these few words, in a large round hand: "Number 53. Major Sir Archibald Russell. Born at Richmond, July 5, 1860. Died at Ahaggar, December 3, 1896." I leapt to my feet. "Major Russell!" I exclaimed.
"Colonel von Wittman, born at Jena in 1855. Died at Ahaggar, May 1, 1896.... Colonel Wittman, the explorer of Kanem, who disappeared off Agadès." "Exactly," said M. Le Mesge again. "Number 50," I read in my turn, steadying myself against the wall, so as not to fall. "Marquis Alonzo d'Oliveira, born at Cadiz, February 21, 1868. Died at Ahaggar, February 1, 1896. Oliveira, who was going to Araouan."
"Well," said Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh, "you must not rejoin the road from Timissao to Timbuctoo until you are four hundred miles from here toward Iferouane, or better still, at the spring of Telemsi. That is the boundary between the Tuareg of Ahaggar and the Awellimiden Tuareg." The little voice of Tanit-Zerga broke in: "It was the Awellimiden Tuareg who massacred my people and carried me into slavery.
From within the stockade came dull noises, a bugle call, the rattle of chains. The post was waking up. For several seconds we stood there silent, our eyes fixed on the southern route by which one reaches Temassinin, Eguéré and Ahaggar. A rap on the dining-room door behind us made us start. "Come in," said André de Saint-Avit in a voice which had become suddenly hard.
That is how, by following the laws of inheritance, the remains of the library of Carthage, enriched by the remnants of the library of Alexandria, are actually before your eyes. "Science fled from man. While he was building those monstrous Babels of pseudo-science in Berlin, London, Paris, Science was taking refuge in this desert corner of Ahaggar.
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