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Updated: June 14, 2025
As they began to mount the hill, and the radiance of the sky increased, this impression faded, for the life that centred round the Bordj was vivid, though sparse in comparison with the eddying life of towns, and had that air of peculiar concentration which may be noted in pictures representing a halt in the desert.
I sat on the edge of an old stone well before the Bordj, while Safti smoked his keef. Near midnight, quivering across the sands, came the faint sound of a flute moving from the village towards the deep obscurity of the palm gardens. I knew that air, those trills, those little runs, those grace notes. "It is Smaïn," I said to Safti. "Yes, Sidi. He will play all night alone among the palms.
Boys were playing a game with stones set in an ordered series of small holes scooped by their fingers in the dust. A negro crossed the flat space before the Bordj carrying on his head a huge earthen vase to the well near by, where a crowd of black donkeys, just relieved of their loads of brushwood, was being watered.
"What does Madame think?" asked Batouch. "Does Madame agree with the Englishman?" "It is a strange little place," she answered. She listened to the voices of the doves. A dog barked by the bordj. "It is almost like a hiding-place," she added. Androvsky said nothing, but he, too, was gazing intently at the trees below them, he, too, was listening to the voices of the doves.
Surely it can go in less than half the time we would take, riding up and down among the dunes." "Oh, much less than half! Captain Sabine said that from the bordj of Toudja the pigeon would come to him in an hour and a half, or two at most." "Then wait a little longer. Somehow I feel you'll be glad if you do." Saidee looked quickly at the girl. "You make me superstitious," she said. "Why?"
The iron had shrivelled and curled like so much cardboard, and the gap was filled with circling wreaths of smoke and a crowd of Arabs. Mad with fear, the camels and horses tethered in the stables of the bordj broke their halters and plunged wildly about the courtyard, looming like strange monsters in the red light and belching smoke.
"All's right with the world, and now for a wash and food!" cried Nevill, turning in with a sigh of relief at the gate of the bordj. "But oh, by the way Hamish has got a letter for you or is it Angus? Anyhow, it's from my fairy aunt, which I would envy you, if she hadn't sent me on something better a post-card from Tlemcen.
But Stephen was ready, and he stepped out, closing the door behind him. "Can't you find your servant?" he asked the keeper of the bordj. "No," said the man, adding some epithets singularly unflattering to the absent one and his ancestors. "He has vanished as if his father, the devil, had dragged him down to hell." "Where are the others?" inquired Stephen. "My men and my friend's men?
The heavy face brightened; but there were bags under the bloodshot eyes, and the man's breath reeked of alcohol. Stephen was sorry the brother was away. He had been the more alert and prepossessing of the two. As they talked, the quadrangle of the bordj which was but an inferior caravanserai had waked to animation.
Then it seemed to Stephen that these last were coming back, towards the bordj. They were riding fast, and all together, as if under discipline. Soldiers, certainly: but were they from the north or south? Stephen could not tell; but as his eyes searched the horizon, the doubt was solved. Another party of men were riding southward, toward Toudja, from the north.
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