" Now he was coming away, thwarted for the moment, but far
from hopeless.
It is a four hours' ride among the dunes, between the Zaouia and the
town, for the sand is heavy and the distance is about seventeen miles.
The red wine of sunset was drained from the cups of the sand-hollows,
and the shadows were cool when Stephen saw the minaret of the town
mosque and the crown of an old watch-tower, pointing up like a thumb and
finger of a buried hand. Soon after, he passed through the belt of black
tents which at all seasons encircles Oued Tolga as a girdle encircles
the waist of an Ouled Nail, and so he rode into the strange city. The
houses were crowded together, two with one wall between, like Siamese
twins, and they had the pale yellow-brown colour of honeycomb, in the
evening light. The roughness of the old, old bricks, made of baked sand,
gave an effect of many little cells; so that the honeycomb effect was
intensified; and the sand which flowed in small rippling waves round the
city, and through streets narrow and broad, was of the same honey-yellow
as the houses, except that it glittered with gypsum under the kindling
stars. Among the bubbly domes, and low square towers, vague in the
dimming light, bunches of palms in hidden gardens nodded over crumbling
walls, like dark plumes on the crowns of the dancing-women.
In the market-place was the little hotel, newly built; the only French
thing in Oued Tolga, except the military barracks, the Bureau Arabe, and
a gurgling artesian well which a French officer had lately completed.
Pages:
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510