ange repeated:

"The country of fear."

The strange concert ceased as the first stars appeared in the sky.
With deep emotion we watched the tiny bluish flames appear, one after
another. At that portentous moment they seemed to span the distance
between us, isolated, condemned, lost, and our brothers of higher
latitudes, who at that hour were rushing about their poor pleasures
with delirious frenzy in cities where the whiteness of electric lamps
came on in a burst.

_Chet-Ahadh essa hetisenet
Materedjre d'Erredjaot,
Matesekek d-Essekaot,
Matelahrlahr d'Ellerhaot,
Ettas djenen, barad tit-ennit abatet._

Eg-Anteouen's voice raised itself in slow guttural tones. It resounded
with sad, grave majesty in the silence now complete.

I touched the Targa's arm. With a movement of his head, he pointed to
a constellation glittering in the firmament.

"The Pleiades," I murmured to Morhange, showing him the seven pale
stars, while Eg-Anteouen took up his mournful song in the same
monotone:

"The Daughters of the Night are seven:
Materedjre and Erredjeaot,
Matesekek and Essekaot,
Matelahrlahr and Ellerhaot,
The seventh is a boy, one of whose eyes has flown away."

A sudden sickness came over me. I seized the Targa's arm as he was
starting to intone his refrain for the third time.

"When will we reach this cave with the inscriptions?" I asked
brusquely.

He looked at me and replied with his usual calm:

"We are there."

"We are there? Then why don't you show it to us?"

"You did not ask me," he replied, not without a touch of insolence.

Morhange had jumped to his feet.

"The cave is here?"

"It is here," Eg-Anteouen replied slowly, rising to his feet.

"Take us to it."

"Morhange," I said, suddenly anxious, "night is falling. We will see
nothing. And perhaps it is still some way off."

"It is hardly five hundred paces," Eg-Anteouen replied. "The cave is
full of dead underbrush. We will set it on fire and the Captain will
see as in full daylight."

"Come," my comrade repeated.

"And the camels?" I hazarded.

"They are tethered," said Eg-Anteouen, "and we shall not be gone
long."

He had started toward the black mountain. Morhange, trembling with
excitement, followed. I followed, too, the victim of profound
uneasiness. My pulses throbbed. "I am not afraid," I kept repeating to
myself. "I swear that this is not fear."

And really it was not fear. Yet, what a strange dizziness! There was a
mis