"El hamdou-lillah! God be praised!" he whispered, as the yellow
automobile vanished from sight and Maieddine came out from the cluster
of black tents in the yellow sand.
XXVI
Next day, Lella M'Barka was well enough to begin the march again. They
started, in the same curtained carriage, at that moment before dawn
while it is still dark, and a thin white cloth seems spread over the
dead face of night. Then day came trembling along the horizon, and the
shadows of horses and carriage grew long and grotesquely deformed. It
was the time, M'Barka said, when Chitan the devil, and the evil Djenoun
that possess people's minds and drive them insane, were most powerful;
and she would hardly listen when Victoria answered that she did not
believe in Djenoun.
In a long day, they came to Bou-Saada, reaching the hidden oasis after
nightfall, and staying in the house of the Caid with whom Stephen and
Nevill had talked of Ben Halim. Lella M'Barka was related to the Caid's
wife, and was so happy in meeting a cousin after years of separation,
that the fever in her blood was cooled; and in the morning she was able
to go on.
Then came two days of driving to Djelfa, at first in a country strange
enough to be Djinn-haunted, a country of gloomy mountains, and deep
water-courses like badly healed wounds; passing through dry river-beds,
and over broken roads with here and there a bordj where men brought
water to the mules, in skins held together with ropes of straw.
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