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Updated: June 14, 2025
Around the pool the turtle doves, once more reassured, were bathing their feathers. Mysterious great birds were flying under the darkening palm trees. A less warm wind rocked the trembling black palm branches. We had laid aside our helmets so that our temples could welcome the touch of the feeble breeze. "Chatelain," I said, "it is time to go back to the bordj."
Even so, Stephen would be well ahead, for, as the caravan came to the gate of the bordj, it was only six o'clock, blazing afternoon still, and hot as midday, with the fierce, golden heat of the desert towards the end of May.
When I went in an hour later, I clearly saw his outline in the tent, and then, taking the key out of my pocket, I went into the bordj, where besides myself, there slept my steward, two French laborers, and an old cook whom I had picked up in the Algiers.
Once it had been defended by a row of nails and bits of glass, but most of these were gone. It was an ancient bordj, and many years of peace had passed since it was built in the old days of raids and razzias. Stephen looked out over the desert, through the blue veil of twilight, but could see no sign of life anywhere.
The whole order of things was changed by the sudden flashes from the height of the dark ruin, and the lighting of the bonfires on the bordj roof. Two of the masked men riding on a little in advance of the other twenty had planned, as Stephen guessed, to demand admittance to the bordj, declaring themselves leaders of a Touareg caravan on its way to Touggourt.
It was Stephen who, by virtue of his amateur soldiering experience, had to take the lead. He posted the Highlanders in opposite watch-towers, placing Nevill in one which commanded the two rear walls of the bordj.
When they had dined after a fashion, each making a five-minute meal, there was still time to arrange the defence, for the attacking party if such it were could not reach the bordj in less than an hour, marching as fast as horses and camels could travel among the dunes. The landlord was drunk. There was no disguising that, but though he was past planning, he was not past fighting.
After a moment he looked at her. "Domini," he whispered. "Here won't you won't you let me touch your hand again here?" "Come, Boris," she answered. "It is late." They rode down into Ain-la-Hammam. The tents had all been pitched near together on the south of the bordj, and separated by it from the tiny oasis.
These formed buttresses of considerable strength; and the landlord, instead of grumbling at the damage which might be done to his bordj, and the danger which threatened himself, was maudlin with delight at the prospect of killing a few detested Arabs.
His piercing black eyes stared me calmly out of countenance, and he sat on his spirited horse like a statue, waiting patiently till the guardian of the Bordj was ready to attend to him. My gaze travelled from him along the cord to the man at its end, and rested there with pity.
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