XVIII
It is the first reconnaissance made in the tract of country to the east of the encampment of Dialdé, towards Djidiam, and it is carried out by Jean, Sergeant Muller, and tall Nyaor.
According to the report of timid old women of the friendly tribe, fresh tracks of a large body of foot soldiers and mounted men, who could be no other than the army of the great black chief, had been seen on the sand.
For two hours the three mounted spahis patrolled the plain in all directions, but discovered no human footprint, nor any trace of the passage of an army.
On the other hand, the ground was covered with the spoor of all the fauna of Africa—from the great round pit made by the heavy foot of the hippopotamus to the dainty little triangular hoofprint of the light-stepping gazelle. The sand, hardened by the last showers of the winter season, preserved faithfully all the impressions made upon it by the denizens of the wild. The paws of monkeys, the great straggling stride of giraffes, the tracks of lizards and serpents, the pads of tigers and lions were visible. One might have traced the stealthy comings and goings of jackals, the prodigious leaps of hunted deer. There were suggestions of all the terrible vitality which darkness unchains in these deserts—deserts that lie so silent under the burning eye of the sun. One could form a picture of the saturnalia of wild life bursting forth under cover of darkness.
All the wild fowl lurking in the brushwood rose up, startled by the three spahis’ horses. It was miraculous shooting country. Red partridges, guinea fowl, blue jays, pink jays, sheeny blackbirds, and huge bustards flew across the very muzzles of their rifles. But the spahis let them all go, still continuing their vain search for human tracks.
It was nearly evening, and dense vapours were gathering on the horizon. The sky had that heavy, torpid aspect, such as the imagination pictures at the setting of antediluvian suns—at the period when the atmosphere, more torrid, more heavily charged with vital essences, was maturing on primitive earth the monstrous germs of the mammoth and the pleiosaurus.
The sun sank slowly down among the strange veils; it grew lustreless, livid, rayless; distorted and disproportionately magnified; and then at last its light was quenched.
Nyaor, who until that moment had followed Muller and Jean with his customary insouciance, remarked that it would be imprudent to pursue the reconnaissance further, and that the two toubabs, his friends, would be unnecessarily rash if they persisted.
Actually there was a possibility of every kind of surprise attack, and danger might be lurking all around them. Moreover, there were everywhere fresh spoor of lions; the horses began to stop dead and to sniff at the five claw marks so clearly defined on the level sand, and to tremble with terror....
After consultation, Jean and Sergeant Muller decided to turn, and soon the three horses were racing like the wind in the direction of the blockhouse, the white burnooses of their riders floating behind them. In the distance, that awe-inspiring cavernous voice, which the Moors liken to thunder, began to make itself heard: the roar of the hunting lion.
They were brave men, these three, galloping there, yet they experienced that kind of vertigo which is produced by excessive speed; the contagion of that dread which was spurring on their maddened beasts. The reeds which bent under them, the branches that whipped their legs, seemed to them troops of lions of the desert, bounding in pursuit of them....
Soon they were within sight of the stream which separated them from the French tents, the inhabited world, and the little Arab blockhouse of the village of Dialdé, still glowing with the last red rays of sunset.
They swam their horses across and re-entered the camp.