Читать книгу A Son of the Sahara - Louise Gerard - Страница 5

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In the days when France was pursuing a vigorous forward policy in Africa, a policy started by General Faidherbe and carried on by subsequent governors, one of the bravest among her pioneer soldiers was Colonel Raoul Le Breton.

He was a big, handsome man with a swarthy complexion, coal-black hair and dark, fiery eyes, by nature impetuous and reckless. With a trio of white sergeants and a hundred Senegalese soldiers, he would attempt—and accomplish—things that no man with ten times his following would have attempted.

But there came a day when even his luck failed.

He left St. Louis, in Senegal, and went upwards to the north-east, intending to pierce the heart of the Sahara. From that expedition, however, he never returned. The Government at St. Louis assumed that he and his little pioneer force had been wiped out by some hostile negro king or Arab chief. It was but one of the tragedies attached to extending a nation's territory.

When Raoul Le Breton went on that ill-fated expedition, he did what no man should have done who attempts to explore the Back of Beyond with an indifferent force.

He took his wife with him.

There was some excuse for this piece of folly. He was newly married. He adored his wife, and she worshipped him, and refused to let him go unless she went also.

She was barely half his age; a girl just fresh from a convent school, whom he had met and married in Paris during his last leave.

Colonel Le Breton journeyed for weeks through an arid country, an almost trackless expanse of poor grass and stunted scrub, until he reached the edge of the Sahara.

Annette Le Breton enjoyed her travels. She did not mind the life in tents, the rough jolting of her camel, the poor food, the heat, the flies; she minded nothing so long as she was with her husband. He was a man of rare fascination, as many women had found to their cost; a light lover until Annette had come into his life and captured his straying heart once and for all.

On the edge of the Sahara Le Breton met a man who, on the surface at least, appeared to see even more quickly than the majority of negro kings and Arab chiefs he had come in contact with, the advantages attached to being under the shadow of the French flag.

It would be difficult to say where the Sultan Casim Ammeh came from. He appeared one afternoon riding like a madman out of the blazing distance; a picturesque figure in his flowing white burnoose, sitting his black stallion like a centaur.

He was a young man, perhaps about twenty-four, of medium height, lean and lithe and brown, with fierce black eyes and a cruel mouth: the hereditary ruler of that portion of the Sahara. His capital was a walled city that, so far, had not been visited by any European. In his way he was a man of great wealth, and he added to that wealth by frequent marauding expeditions and slave-dealing.

With a slight smile he listened to all the Frenchman had to say. Already he had heard of France—a great Power, creeping slowly onwards—and he wondered whether he was strong enough to oppose it, or whether the wiser plan might not be just to rest secure under the shadow of its distant wing, and under its protection continue his wild, marauding life as usual.

As he sat with Colonel Le Breton in the latter's tent, something happened which caused the Sultan Casim Ammeh to make up his mind very quickly.

It was late afternoon. From the open flap of the tent an endless, rolling expense of sand showed, with here and there a knot of coarse, twisted grass, a dwarfed shrub, or a flare of red-flowered, distorted cacti. The French officer's camp was pitched by an oasis; a little group of date palms, where a spring bubbled among brown rocks, bringing an abundance of grass and herbs where horses and camels browsed.

As the two men sat talking, a soft voice said unexpectedly:

"Oh, Raoul, I'd no idea you had a visitor!"

All at once a girl had appeared in the entrance of the tent She was small and slim, with two thick plaits of golden-brown hair reaching to her knees; a beautiful girl of about eighteen, with wide grey eyes and a creamy white skin.

Her voice brought Le Breton to his feet.

"What is it, Annette?" he asked.

"I thought——I'll come later," she said; the blushes mounting to her cheeks.

The Sultan Casim Ammeh got to his feet also. Not out of any sense of deference; he had none where women were concerned, but drawn there by the beauty of the girl.

"You needn't mind what you say in front of this man," her husband remarked. "He doesn't understand a word of French.

"Ill tell you later, Raoul, when there's nobody here." She would have gone, but Le Breton called her forward and, in Arabic, introduced her to his visitor.

Annette bowed to the lean, lithe, brown man in the white burnoose, and her eyes dropped under the fierce admiration in his.

The Sultan looked at her, all the time wondering why the white man was such a fool as to let this priceless pearl, this jewel among women, go unveiled, and allow the eyes of strange men to rest upon her with desire and longing.

Annette said she was pleased to meet him: a message her husband translated, and which brought a fierce smile to the young Sultan's face and made the wild desire in his savage heart suddenly blossom into plans.

So she, this houri from Paradise, was pleased to meet him! This fair flower from a far land! But not so pleased as he was to meet her.

And her husband let her say such things to strange men! What a fool the man was! Not worthy of this houri! He could not appreciate the treasure he possessed. Not as he, the Sultan, would, were she his.

Casim Ammeh despised Colonel Le Breton utterly.

As soon as the introduction was over, Annette would have gone.

"Don't run away, my pet," her husband said fondly. "I shall soon have finished."

But the girl went, anxious to get away from the Arab chief who watched her with such covetous desire and smouldering passion in his fierce black eyes.

When she had gone, the two men seated themselves again. But the Sultan gave no thought to the business in hand. He only wanted one thing now—the girl who had just gone from the tent.

Soon after Annette's departure he left, promising to visit Le Breton again within the course of a few days.

He kept his word.

Five days later he swept out of the desert with a horde of wild horsemen. And in less than half an hour there was only one of Raoul Le Breton's ill-fated expedition left alive.

The next day, with Annette limp across his saddle, the Sultan Casim Ammeh set off with his following to his desert stronghold.