Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/91

Rh We passed a Negro village, a collection of adobe houses, more like swallows' nests or ruins than dwellings for men. Little pickanninies of the black parents whose forefathers were imported from the Sudan ran out between the prickly Berber figs that sheltered the village from the road. In the shade of a fig-tree beside the village path I noticed two women, one well along in years and the other quite young, brightly gowned and wearing heavy silver ornaments round their necks and down over their breasts. My hunter's instinct caused me to reach for my camera and stalk my victims, who I saw from a distance were wildly gesticulating and had not yet scented the approaching danger in the already-poised apparatus. Wishing to be sure of my aim, I quietly moved up a little closer and only then discovered that the older woman was beating tire younger, tearing the rag of a shirt she wore, hammering at her head with one hand and scratching with the other her onyx-black neck and breast. I was amazed that the older woman carried out her chastisement in absolute silence and that the younger one offered but a weak defence, only occasionally groaning and striking back with little spirit.

What can it be? Perhaps it is a mother punishing her daughter for having wandered farther than the prickly hedge, where some passing Arab merchant or young French planter became enamoured of her beautiful, statuesque figure and enticed her away; or possibly the old woman is the first wife of her husband and the younger a subsequent one. Perhaps the master of the house has for her forgotten all his other wives and showers upon