Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/96

 "Nothing," affirmed O'Rourke, "save sand and heat and silence, so far as one can tell. Praises be to the saints if it is so in truth!" he added piously.

"What do you mean, monsieur? What did you fear to encounter in this uninhabitable desert?" "Tawareks," answered O'Rourke briefly.

"Tawareks? What be they, monsieur—bird or beast, or—?"

"Devils," the Irishman indicated sententiously; "devils in human guise, me dear Chambret."

The Frenchman frowned, perplexed.

"I do not comprehend."

"Ye've never heard of the Tawareks, monsieur? 'The masked pirates of the desert,' as your press terms them? The natives that made ye more trouble in the Soudan—around about Timbuctu—than any others?"

Chambret shook his head doubtfully. "I remember hearing of the fighting thereabouts," he admitted; "but, believe me, monsieur, to me the name of one tribe of blacks means no more than that of another."

"Tawareks," O'Rourke objected, "are no niggers. They are the lords of the desert—inhabitants of the Sahara proper—a branch of the Berbers: perhaps the root-stock of the Berber family tree—for they're almost white. They infest the caravan routes; in a word, they're pirates, and rule the country with a rod of iron. Not a caravan gets safely through their territory without paying tribute in the shape of toll money to the Tawareks. They are—divvies incarnate, no less!"

"And you fear them here, monsieur?"

"Much. Why else should I have insisted on a force of forty fighting men, rather than the original ten which Monsieur le Prince suggested?"