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There is, however, even in Algiers itself, one class of men who remain unaffected by their European surroundings, passive amid much change, a model for their neighbours. These are the Beni M'záb, a tribe of Mohammedan Protestants from southern Algeria, where they settled long ago, as the Puritans did in New England, that they might there worship God in freedom.
The other six cities, called holy by the Beni-M'Zab, were far away still. She knew this, because Maïeddine had told her they would not descend into the Wady M'Zab till next day. Berryan and Guerrara were on the upper plateau; and Victoria could hardly bear to pass by, for Berryan was by far the most Eastern-seeming place she had seen.
Sometimes came caravans, in this billowing immensity between the M'Zab and Ouargla city of Solomon, whither the Queen of Sheba rode on her mehari: caravans blazing red and yellow, which swept like slow lines of flame across the desert, going east towards the sunrise, or west where the sunset spreads over the sky like a purple fan opening, or the tail of a celestial peacock.
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.
"It is a sign of trouble when the sand of the desert turns to blood," muttered Fafann to her mistress, quoting a Bedouin proverb. The men of the M'Zab do not willingly give lodging to strangers, least of all to Arabs; and at Beni-Isguen, holy city and scene of strange mysteries, no stranger may rest for the night.
A more conceited man would have been happier, but Max had not joined the Legion with the object of finding happiness, and one who was watching believed that it would be good for him to wait. But it had not been a march for marching's sake: its real purpose was more grave. A band of Arab thieves and murderers on the border of the M'zab country had to be caught and punished.
But he kept his tongue in control, though his brain was hot as if he wore no turban, under the blaze of the sun. "I will leave things as they are while we are in this black Gehenna," he determined. "What is written is written. Yet who has seen the book of the writing? And there is a curse on all this country, till the M'Zab is passed."
"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."
Many Arabs worked with surprising briskness at the loading or unloading of great carts, men of the Ouled Naïls, with eyes more mysterious than the eyes of veiled women; tall fellows wearing high shoes of soft, pale brown leather made for walking long distances in heavy sand; and Maïeddine said that there was great traffic and commerce between Djelfa and the M'Zab country, where she and he and M'Barka would arrive presently, after passing his father's douar.
They told the stories of the Koulouglis, whose mothers were Moorish slaves, and romances in which figured the dark-skinned Beni M'Zab and the freed negroes who had fled away from the lands in the very heart of the sun. All this information, not wholly devoid of a naive egoism, Batouch poured forth gently and melodiously as they walked through the twilight in the tunnel.
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