n among
the camel-drivers, chosen especially--so said Ben Hadj--because he knew
and could sing a hundred famous songs of love and war. Also he was
master of the Arab flute, and the raeita, "Muezzin of Satan," strange
instrument of the wicked voice that can cry down all other voices.

Lest the men should misunderstand and think lightly of the Agha's guest,
his nephew did not look upon Sanda's face after the hour of meeting her
at Touggourt, in the presence of her friends, until he had brought the
girl to his uncle's house, three days later. She was waited upon only by
the women and the two black giants who rode behind the white camels: and
altogether Sidi Tahar Ben Hadj was in his actions an example of that
Arab chivalry about which Sanda had read. Nevertheless she was not able
to like him.

For one thing, though he had a fine bearing and a good enough figure (so
far as she could tell in his flowing robes and burnous), in looks he was
no hero of romance, but a disappointingly ugly man. Ourieda, the Agha's
daughter, was only sixteen, and Tahar was supposed to be no more than a
dozen years her elder, but he appeared nearer forty than twenty-eight.
He had suffered from smallpox, which had marred his large features and
destroyed the sight of one eye. It had turned white and looked, thought
Sanda, like the eye of a boiled fish. He wore a short black beard that,
although thick, showed the shape of a heavy jaw; and his wide-open,
quivering nostrils gave him the look of a bad-tempered horse. Although
he could speak French, he seemed to the girl singularly alien and
remote. Sanda wondered if he had a wife, or wives, and pitied any Arab
woman unfortunate enough to be shut up in his harem.

On the third morning the great dunes were left behind, and the
bassourahs no longer swayed like towers in a rotary earthquake with the
movements of the camels. Far away across a flat expanse of golden sand,
silvered by saltpetre, a long, low cloud--blue-green as a peacock's
tail--trailed on the horizon. It was the oasis of Djazerta, with its
thousands of date palms.

At first the vision seemed to float behind a veil of sparkling gauze,
unreal as a mirage; but toward noon it brightened and sharpened in
outline, until at last the tall trees took individual form, bunches of
unripe dates beneath their spread fan of plumes hanging down like
immense yellow fists at the end of limp, thin arms cased in
orange-coloured gloves.

There was a _chott_,