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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.
A French officer stationed at Ghardaia had married a beautiful Arab girl of good family distantly related to the Agha of the Ouled-Serrin, and being at Algiers on official business, his wife away at her father's tent, he had promised to lend his house, a few miles out of the town, to Si Maïeddine.
An amiable prospect when one has none too much time to foil all the tricks of the natives. When does he arrive?" "Day after tomorrow, probably. I have news of a convoy coming from Ghardaia. It is likely that he will avail himself of it. The indications are that he doesn't know very much about traveling alone."
Eagerly she lifted from the ground, which was covered with rugs, a large green earthern jar. "It is full of rosewater to bathe thy face, for the water of the desert here is brackish, and harsh to the skin, because of saltpetre. The Sidi ordered enough rosewater to last till Ghardaia, in the M'Zab country. Then he will get thee more."
But all night he thought of what M'Barka had said, and the message of the sand. It was a dangerous message, yet the counsel was after his own heart. In the morning he was still brooding over the message; and as they travelled through the black desert on the way to Ghardaia and the hidden cities of the M'Zab, he fell into long silences.
Then why did Si Maïeddine bring you by El Aghouat and Ghardaia especially when his cousin's an invalid? It couldn't have been just because he didn't want you to be seen, because, as you're dressed like an Arab girl no one could guess he was travelling with a European." "His father lives near El Aghouat," Victoria reminded her sister.
It seemed to Victoria that she looked on one of the great sights of the world: the five cities, gleaming white, and glowing bronze, closely built on their five conical hills, which rose steeply from the flat bottom of the gold-lined cup Ghardaia, Beni-Isguen, Bou-Noura, Melika, and El-Ateuf.
Arrived at the bottom of the cup, it was necessary to pass through the longest and only modern street of Ghardaia, the capital of the M'Zab. A wind had sprung up, to lift the sand which sprinkled the hard-trodden ground with thick powder of gold dust, and whirl it westward against the fire of sunset, red as a blowing spray of blood.
Five days' journeying from Ghardaia brought the travellers to a desert world full of movement and interest. There were many caravans going northward. Pretty girls smiled at them from swaying red bassourahs, sitting among pots and pans, and bundles of finery. Little children in nests of scarlet rags, on loaded camels, clasped squawking cocks and hens, tied by the leg.
On the other side of Ghardaia, even when Victoria had ceased to be actually impatient for her meeting with Saidee, she had longed to know the number of days, that she might count them. But now she had drunk so deep of the colour and the silence that, in spite of herself, she was passing beyond that phase. What were a few days more, after so many years?
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