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"You have no right to smile," she said a little aggrieved, "and to pay no attention to me. But never mind! It is for myself that I tell these things, for the sake of recollection. Above Gâo, the Niger makes a bend. There is a little promontory in the river, thickly covered with large gum trees. It was an evening in August and the sun was sinking.
Tanit-Zerga was standing up. All about us, on our heads, the sun blazed on the hamada, burning it white. Suddenly the child stretched out her arms. She gave a terrible cry. "Gâo! There is Gâo!" I looked at her. "Gâo," she repeated. "Oh, I know it well! There are the trees and the fountains, the cupolas and the towers, the palm trees, the great red and white flowers. Gâo...."
"I want to go away, too," she said in a smothered voice. "For a long time, I have wanted to go away. I want to see Gâo, the village on the bank of the river, and the blue gum trees, and the green water. "Ever since I came here, I have wanted to get away," she repeated, "but I am too little to go alone into the great Sahara. I never dared speak to the others who came here before you.
I saw my friend, the French officer, sleeping in peace, while a great crow hung croaking above his head: 'Caw, caw the shade of the gum trees of Gâo caw, caw will avail nothing tomorrow night caw, caw to the white chief nor to his escort. "Dawn had scarcely begun, when I went to find the native soldiers.
I realized again with joy that his itinerary was exact and that I had followed it scrupulously. "The evening of the day after to-morrow," I said, "we shall be setting out on the stage which will take us, by the next dawn, to the waters at Telemsi. Once there, we shall not have to worry any more about water." Tanit-Zerga's eyes danced in her thin face. "And Gâo?" she asked.
"My father replied that the French who protected the poor natives against the Tuareg were welcome: that it was not from evil design, but for fish that they had built the barrage, and that he put all the resources of Gâo, including the forge, at the disposition of the French chief, for repairing the gunboat. "While they were talking, the French chief looked at me and I looked at him.
He extended its boundaries beyond those of Ghana to include such important trading cities as Timbuktu and Gao, encompassing an area larger than that controlled by the European monarchs of that day. This empire also was based on its ability to provide stable government and a flourishing economy.
Bareheaded, indifferent to the frightful sunlight, she kept repeating: "We must go on." A little sense came back to me. "Cover your head, Tanit-Zerga, cover your head." "Come," she repeated. "Let's go. Gâo is over there, not far away. I can feel it. I want to see Gâo again." I made her sit down beside me in the shadow of a rock. I realized that all strength had left her.
Here, a little in advance, ever and again with his head to the ground listening, his great arms bare, pieces of eight in his ears as ornaments, is the handsome Italian Cecco, who cut his name in letters of blood on the back of the governor of the prison at Gao.
At Gâo, when I was just a child, I used to climb almost as high as this in the gum trees to take the little toucans out of their nests. It is even easier to climb down." "And when we are down, how will we get out? Do you know the way through the barriers?" "No one knows the way through the barriers," she said, "except Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh, and perhaps Antinea." "Then?"
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