“Then we can ride faster,” she replied quietly, looking at the shining particles glistening in the sun.
Mustafa Ali made a movement of impatience and persisted doggedly. “Mademoiselle would do well to start.”
Diana looked up swiftly with angry eyes. Under the man’s suave manner and simple words a peremptory tone had crept into his voice. She sat quite still, her fingers raking the warm sand, and under her haughty stare the guide’s eyes wavered and turned away. “We will start when I choose, Mustafa Ali,” she said brusquely. “You may give orders to your men, but you will take your orders from me. I will tell you when I am ready. You may go.”
Still he hesitated, swaying irresolutely backwards and forwards on his heels.
Diana snapped her fingers over her shoulder, a trick she had learned from a French officer in Biskra. “I said go!” she repeated sharply. She took no notice of his going and did not look back to see what orders he gave the men. She glanced at her watch again. Perhaps it was growing late, perhaps the camp was a longer ride than she had thought; but Mustafa Ali must learn his lesson if they rode till midnight to reach the oasis. She pushed her obstinate chin out further and then smiled again suddenly. She hoped that the night would fall before they reached their destination. There had been one or two moonlight riding picnics out from Biskra, and the glamour of the desert nights had gone to Diana’s head. This riding into the unknown away from the noisy, chattering crowd who had spoiled the perfect stillness of the night would be infinitely more perfect. She gave a little sigh of regret as she thought of it. It was not really practical. Though she would wait nearly another hour to allow the fact of her authority to sink into Mustafa Ali’s brain she would have to hasten afterwards to arrive at the camp before darkness set in. The men were unused to her ways and she to theirs. She would not have Stephens’ help to-night; she would have to depend on herself to order everything as she wished it, and it was easier done in daylight. One hour would not make much difference. The horses had more in them than had been taken out of them this morning; they could be pushed along a bit faster with no harm happening to them. She eyed her watch from time to time with a grin of amusement, but suppressed the temptation to look and see how Mustafa Ali was taking it, for her action might be seen and misconstrued.
When the time she had set herself was up she rose and walked slowly towards the group of Arabs. The guide’s face was sullen, but she took no notice, and, when they started, motioned him to her side again with a reference to Biskra that provoked a flow of words. It was the last place she wanted to hear of, but it was one of which he spoke the readiest, and she knew it was not wise to allow him to remain silent to sulk. His ill-temper would evaporate with the sound of his own voice. She rode forward steadily, silent herself, busy with her own thoughts, heedless of the voice beside her, and unconscious of the fact when it became silent.
She had been quite right about the capabilities of the horses. They responded without any apparent effort to the further demand made of them. The one in particular that Diana was riding moved in a swift, easy gallop that was the perfection of motion.
They had been riding for some hours when they came to the first oasis that had been sighted since leaving the one where the midday halt was made. Diana pulled up her horse to look at it, for it was unusually beautiful in the luxuriousness and arrangement of its group of palms and leafy bushes. Some pigeons were cooing softly, hidden from sight amongst the trees, with a plaintive melancholy that somehow seemed in keeping with the deserted spot. Beside the well, forming a triangle, stood what had been three particularly fine palm trees, but the tops had been broken off about twenty feet up from the ground, and the mutilated trunks reared themselves bare and desolate-looking. Diana took off her heavy helmet and tossed it to the man behind her, and sat looking at the oasis, while the faint breeze that had sprung up stirred her thick, short hair, and cooled her hot head. The sad notes of the pigeons and the broken palms, that with their unusualness vaguely suggested a tragedy, lent an air of mystery to the place that pleased her.
She turned eagerly to Mustafa Ali. “Why did you not arrange for the camp to be here? It would have been a long enough ride.”
The man fidgeted in his saddle, fingering his beard uneasily, his eyes wandering past Diana’s and looking at the broken trees. “No man rests here, Mademoiselle. It is the place of devils. The curse of Allah is upon it,” he muttered, touching his horse with his heel, and making it sidle restlessly—an obvious hint that Diana ignored.
“I like it,” she persisted obstinately.
He made a quick gesture with his fingers. “It is accursed. Death lurks beside those broken palm trees,” he said, looking at her curiously.
She jerked her head with a sudden smile. “For you, perhaps, but not for me. Allah’s curse rests only upon those who fear it. But since you are afraid, Mustafa Ali, let us go on.” She gave a little light laugh, and Mustafa Ali kicked his horse savagely as he followed.
The distance before her spread out cleanly with the sharp distinctness that precedes the setting sun. She rode on until she began to wonder if it would indeed be nightfall before she reached her destination. They had ridden longer and faster than had ever been intended. It seemed odd that they had not overtaken the baggage camels. She looked at her watch with a frown. “Where is your caravan, Mustafa Ali?” she called. “I see no sign of an oasis, and the darkness will come.”
“If Mademoiselle had started earlier—” he said sullenly.
“If I had started earlier it would still have been too far. To-morrow we will arrange it otherwise,” she said firmly.
“To-morrow—” he growled indistinctly.
Diana looked at him keenly. “What did you say?” she asked haughtily.
His hand went to his forehead mechanically. “Tomorrow is with Allah!” he murmured with unctuous piety.
A retort trembled on Diana’s lips, but her attention was distracted from her annoying guide to a collection of black specks far off across the desert. They were too far away for her to see clearly, but she pointed to them, peering at them intently. “See!” she cried. “Is that the caravan?”
“As Allah wills!” he replied more piously than before, and Diana wished, with a sudden feeling of irritation, that he would stop relegating his responsibilities to the Deity and take a little more active personal interest in his missing camel train.
The black specks were moving fast across the level plain. Very soon Diana saw that it was not the slow, leisurely camels that they were overtaking, but a band of mounted men who were moving swiftly towards them. They had seen nobody since the traders’ caravan had passed them in the morning. For Diana the Arabs that were approaching were even more interesting than the caravan had been. She had seen plenty of caravans arriving and departing from Biskra, but, though she had seen small parties of tribesmen constantly in the vicinity of the town, she had never seen so large a body of mounted men before, nor had she seen them as they were here, one with the wild picturesqueness of their surroundings. It was impossible to count how many there were, for they were riding in close formation, the wind filling their great white cloaks, making each man look gigantic. Diana’s interest flamed up excitedly. It was like passing another ship upon a hitherto empty sea. They seemed to add a desired touch to the grim loneliness of the scene that had begun to be a little awe-inspiring. Perhaps she was hungry, perhaps she was tired, or perhaps she was only annoyed by the bad arrangements of her guide, but before the advent of the mounted Arabs Diana had been conscious of a feeling of oppression, as if the silent desolation of the desert was weighing heavily upon her, but the body of swiftly moving men and horses had changed the aspect utterly. An atmosphere of life and purpose seemed to have taken the place of the quiet stagnation that had been before their coming.
The
