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Updated: May 11, 2025
It was watching me with queer little pink eyes. "It is my mongoose," explained Tanit-Zerga. "Come now," I said sharply, "is that all?" I must have looked so crabbed and ridiculous that Tanit-Zerga began to laugh. I laughed, too. "Galé is my friend," she said when she was serious again. "I saved her life. It was when she was quite little. I will tell you about it some day.
"No, Tanit-Zerga, I would rather stay here this evening. I am not hungry. I am tired." "You remember my name?" she said. She seemed proud of it. I felt that in her I had an ally in case of need. "I remember your name, Tanit-Zerga, because it is beautiful." Then I added: "Now, leave me, little one. I want to be alone." It seemed as if she would never go. I was touched, but at the same time vexed.
They will travel for six months across the most frightful deserts, with little food, without water, and seem only the better for it. Then, one day when nothing is the matter, they stretch out and give you the slip with disconcerting ease. When Tanit-Zerga and I saw that there was nothing more to do, we stood there without a word, watching his slackening spasms.
Near one of these muddy puddles, I succeeded that day in shooting down a little straight-horned desert gazelle. Tanit-Zerga skinned the beast and we regaled ourselves with a delicious haunch.
To-morrow we will set out for another eighteen miles and we will reach the wells marked on the paper by Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh." "Oh," I murmured sadly, "if my shoulder were only not this way, I could carry the water skin." "It is as it is," said Tanit-Zerga. "You will take your carbine and two tins of meat. I shall take two more and the one filled with water. Come.
I closed my own eyes and went on. Such was the first stage. At dawn we stopped in a hollow in the rocks. Soon the heat forced us to rise to seek a deeper one. Tanit-Zerga did not eat. Instead, she swallowed a little of her half can of water. She lay drowsy all day. Galé ran about our rock giving plaintive little cries. I am not going to tell you about the second march.
I had just time to catch the child in my arms and hear her murmur as in a whisper: "And then that will be the day of deliverance. The day of deliverance and of royalty." Several hours later I took the knife with which we had skinned the desert gazelle and, in the sand at the foot of the rock where Tanit-Zerga had given up her spirit, I made a little hollow where she was to rest.
"Go on, little Tanit-Zerga, go on." "Well, with my little companions, of whom I was very fond, I played at the edge of the river where there is water, under the jujube trees, brothers of the zeg-zeg, the spines of which pierced the head of your prophet and which we call 'the tree of Paradise' because our prophet told us that under it would live those chosen of Paradise; and which is sometimes so big, so big, that a horseman cannot traverse its shade in a century.
"There," said Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh, seizing the little shadow in his powerful arms and placing her on the ground, while the rope, let slack, slapped back against the rock. Tanit-Zerga recognized the Targa and groaned. He put his hand roughly over her mouth. "Shut up, camel thief, wretched little fly." He seized her arm. Then he turned to me. "Come," he said in an imperious tone. I obeyed.
Their smooth bistre skins gleamed beneath veils shot with silver. I was sorry not to see the red silk tunic of Tanit-Zerga. Again, I thought of Morhange, but only for an instant. "The chips, Koukou," demanded the Hetman, "We are not here to amuse ourselves." The Zwinglian cook placed a box of many-colored chips in front of him.
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