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The wailing of the raïta mingled with the heavy throbbing of the tom-tom, and filled the girl's heart with a vague foreboding, a yearning for something she had not known, and did not understand. Yet it seemed that she must have both known and understood long ago, before memory recorded anything perhaps in some forgotten incarnation.
One of these was a large Arab café on the outskirts of the town where the trampled sand of the streets became a vast, flowing wave of gold. Four Eyes had been in Touggourt more than once, having marched all the way from Bel-Abbés, long before the railway was begun or thought of. He urged Max to come into the low white building where at dusk the räita and the tomtom had begun to scream and throb.
The hoarse derbouka, and the languorous ghesbah joined in with the savage tobol and the strident raïta; and under all was the tired heart-beat of the bendir, dull yet resonant, and curiously exciting to the nerves. Victoria's head swam. She wondered if it were wholly the effect of the African music, or if the lagmi she had sipped was mounting to her brain.
And amongst others, the shippe of Michael de Oquendo, which was one of the great Galliasses: and two great ships of Venice also, namely, la Raita and Belahzara, with other 36 or 38 ships more, which perished in sundry tempests, together with most of the persons contained in them.
They were playing the bendir, the tomtom, the Arab flute, as well as the räita; but the räita laughed the other music down. They were waiting, eager-eyed. If Max had not known beforehand that something was expected, he would have guessed it. At last she came, the great desert dancer said to be the most beautiful Ouled Nail of her generation.
Their shadows waved fantastically along the walls as they strode noiselessly in, wild as spirits dancing to the voice of their master Satan, the seductive räita. At one end of the room sat the musicians, all giant negroes, the scars and tattoo marks on their sweating black faces giving them a villainous look in the wavering light.
Also he was master of the Arab flute, and the räita, "Muezzin of Satan," strange instrument of the wicked voice that can cry down all other voices.
As ships, great and small, sail the sea, so sailed the caravans of the nomad tribes in the desert which surges on unchecked to Egypt: nomads who come and go, north and south, east and west, under the burning sun and the throbbing stars, as Allah has written their comings and goings in His book: men in white, journeying with their women, their children, and their trains of beasts, singing as they pass, and at night under the black tents resting to the music of the tom-tom and raïta.
How dare he look at her like that, after Ahmara!" thought Max. His blood sang in his ears like the wicked voice of the räita following the caravan. All that was in him of primitive man yearned to dash between the two and snatch Sanda from Stanton. But the soldier in him, which discipline and modern conventions had made, held him back. Sanda was Mademoiselle DeLisle, the daughter of his colonel.
Worn on the warm flesh, the beads gave out a heady perfume, which was like the breath of the desert. It made the girl giddy, and it grew stronger and sweeter as she danced, seeming to mingle with the crying of the raïta and the sobbing of the ghesbah, so that she confused fragrance with music, music with fragrance. Maïeddine stared at her, like a man who dreams with his eyes open.
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