ards, gentlemen."

In the name of God, am I or am I not at Ahaggar?

VIII

AWAKENING AT AHAGGAR

It was broad daylight when I opened my eyes. I thought at once of
Morhange. I could not see him, but I heard him, close by, giving
little grunts of surprise.

I called to him. He ran to me.

"Then they didn't tie you up?" I asked.

"I beg your pardon. They did. But they did it badly; I managed to get
free."

"You might have untied me, too," I remarked crossly.

"What good would it have done? I should only have waked you up. And I
thought that your first word would be to call me. There, that's done."

I reeled as I tried to stand on my feet.

Morhange smiled.

"We might have spent the whole night smoking and drinking and not been
in a worse state," he said. "Anyhow, that Eg-Anteouen with his
hasheesh is a fine rascal."

"Cegheir-ben-Cheikh," I corrected.

I rubbed my hand over my forehead.

"Where are we?"

"My dear boy," Morhange replied, "since I awakened from the
extraordinary nightmare which is mixed up with the smoky cave and the
lamp-lit stairway of the Arabian Nights, I have been going from
surprise to surprise, from confusion to confusion. Just look around
you."

I rubbed my eyes and stared. Then I seized my friend's hand.

"Morhange," I begged, "tell me if we are still dreaming."

We were in a round room, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, and of about
the same height, lighted by a great window opening on a sky of intense
blue.

Swallows flew back and forth, outside, giving quick, joyous cries.

The floor, the incurving walls and the ceiling were of a kind of
veined marble like porphyry, panelled with a strange metal, paler than
gold, darker than silver, clouded just then by the early morning mist
that came in through the window in great puffs.

I staggered toward this window, drawn by the freshness of the breeze
and the sunlight which was chasing away my dreams, and I leaned my
elbows on the balustrade.

I could not restrain a cry of delight.

I was standing on a kind of balcony, cut into the flank of a mountain,
overhanging an abyss. Above me, blue sky; below appeared a veritable
earthly paradise hemmed in on all sides by mountains that formed a
continuous and impassable wall about it. A garden lay spread out down
there. The palm trees gently swayed their great fronds. At their feet
was a tangle of the smaller trees which grow in an oasis under their
protection: almonds, lemon