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We started from Algiers, and he made a mystery even of the way we came, though I found out the names of some places we passed, like El Aghouat and Ghardaia " Saidee's eyes widened with a sudden flash. "What, you came here by El Aghouat and Ghardaia?" "Yes. Isn't that the best way?" "The best, if the longest is the best. I don't know much about North Africa geographically.
In the bottom of the golden bowl, there was a river bed to cross, on a bridge of planks, but among the burning stones trickled a mere runnel of water, bright as spilt mercury. And Maïeddine chose the moment when the minarets of El Aghouat rose from a sea of palms, to point out the strange, pale hills crowned by old koubbahs of marabouts and the military hospital.
For background, there was a knot of trees; for they had come south of El Aghouat to the strange region of dayas, where the stony desolation is broken by little emerald hollows, running with water, like big round bowls stuck full of delicate greenery and blossoms.
"There has been rain this month, and thou knowest better than I do that beyond El Aghouat it rains but once in five years. Else, why do the men of the M'Zab country break their hearts to dig deep wells? There will be no rain. It is but a sand-storm we have to fear." "Yet I feel in the roots of my hair and behind my eyes that the rain is coming."
"It is the Paris of our Sahara," he said, "and all the desert men, from Caïds to camel-drivers, look forward to its pleasures." He planned to let the girl see El Aghouat for the first time at sunset. That was to be one of his surprises. By nature he was dramatic; and the birth of the sun and the death of the sun are the great dramas of the desert.
There would have been room and to spare for a dozen such under the tente sultane of the Agha, at his douar south of El Aghouat. As Maïeddine rode up, a buzz of excitement rose in the hive. Some one ran to tell the Kebir that a great Sidi was arriving, and the headman came out from his tent, where he had been meditating or dozing after the chanting of the midday prayer the prayer of noon.
The French officer was at the hotel for the night; the Arab was dining with him, but instead of resting, would go on with his horse and a Negro servant who, it seemed, had been waiting for several days, since their master had passed through Touggourt on the way to Algiers. "Then he didn't come from El Aghouat," said Nevill. "Where is he going? Did you find out that?" "Not for certain.
He wished to be the hero of such a drama for Victoria, with El Aghouat for his background; for there, he was leading her in at the gate of his own country.
He cheered her by describing the interest of the journey when, by and by, she would ride a mehari, sitting in a bassour, made of branches heated and bent into shape like a great cage, lined and draped with soft haoulis of beautiful colours, and comfortably cushioned. It would not be long now before they should come to the douar of his father the Agha, beyond El Aghouat.
Maïeddine is stopping with him leaves to-morrow or day after; supposed to have come from El Aghouat, and to be going back there. But that isn't to say either supposition's true." "We must find out where he's going have him watched," said Stephen. "Yes. Only, the trouble is, if he's on to the game, it's just what he'll expect.
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