Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/297

Rh bags of wool. Suddenly a commotion started and a crowd began collecting about an open space, in the center of which a man with a fair, olive complexion stood out conspicuously among the darker, almost black nomads from the desert.

"It is the Sous, Abd er-Rbi'a," was heard passed on from mouth to mouth. The man was fixing some short staves in the ground, seven of them in all. Then he made a formal harangue and, throwing aside his dark-blue boumous, drew from his belt seven kumias, as curved as sickles. With great skill he threw them at the boards with such force that the blades sank into the wood or split the staves and fell to the ground. As the circle pressed forward to toss their coins into his basket, Er-Rbi'a went up close to one woman after another in his audience, looked searchingly into her eyes and asked in a whisper:

"Are you Aksa? &hellip; Are you from the land of the Sous and were you the wife of Abd er-Rbi'a? &hellip;"

The women only laughed, the crowd laughed, and the mad mountaineer pressed his head between his thin hands and cried in despair:

"Again I have not found her. Where are you, delight of my eyes? Where are you, Aksa, the pride of unhappy Er-Rbi'a?"

The crowd only laughed the louder, and one of the onlookers, a stout Arab merchant, pulled at the bournous of the mountaineer and asked him whom he was seeking.

"My wife, the beautiful Aksa, whom they took from me ten years ago when I went to search for treasure in Mamora."

"So long ago?" laughed the merchant. "Aksa has had