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Page 53
Was the "Albatross" seen by the Arabs, the Mozabites, and the Negroes
who share amongst them the town of Wargla? Certainly, for she was
saluted with many hundred gunshot, and the bullets fell back before
they reached her.
Then came the night, that silent night in the desert of which
Felicien David has so poetically told us the secrets.
During the following hours the course lay southwesterly, cutting
across the routes of El Golea, one of which was explored in 1859 by
the intrepid Duveyrier.
The darkness was profound. Nothing could be seen of the Trans-
Saharan Railway constructing on the plans of Duponchel--a long
ribbon of iron destined to bind together Algiers and Timbuktu by way
of Laghouat and Gardaia, and destined eventually to run down into the
Gulf of Guinea.
Then the "Albatross" entered the equatorial region below the tropic
of Cancer. Six hundred miles from the northern frontier of the Sahara
she crossed the route on which Major Laing met his, death in 1846,
and crossed the road of the caravans from Morocco to the Sudan, and
that part of the desert swept by the Tuaregs, where could be heard
what is called "the song of the sand," a soft and plaintive murmur
that seems to escape from the ground.
Only one thing happened. A cloud of locusts came flying along, and
there fell such a cargo of them on board as to threaten to sink the
ship. But all hands set to work to clear the deck, and the locusts
were thrown over except a few hundred kept by Tapage for his larder.
And he served them up in so succulent a fashion that Frycollin forgot
for the moment his perpetual trances and said, "these are as good as
prawns."
The aeronef was then eleven hundred miles from the Wargla oasis and
almost on the northern frontier of the Sudan. About two o'clock in
the afternoon a city appeared in the bend of a large river. The river
was the Niger. The city was Timbuktu.
If, up to then, this African Mecca had only been visited by the
travelers of the ancient world Batouta, Khazan, Imbert, Mungo Park,
Adams, Laing, Caill�, Barth, Lenz, on that day by a most singular
chance the two Americans could boast of having seen, heard, and smelt
it, on their return to America--if they ever got back there.
Of having seen it, because their view included the whole triangle of
three or four miles in circumference; of having heard it, because the
day was one of some rejoicing and the noise was terrible; of having
smelt it, because the olfactory nerve could not but be very
disagreeably affected by the odors of the Youbou-Kamo square, where
the meatmarket stands close to the palace of the ancient Somai kings.
The engineer had no notion of allowing the president and secretary of
the Weldon Institute to be ignorant that they had the honor of
contemplating the Queen of the Sudan, now in the power of the Tuaregs
of Taganet.
"Gentlemen, Timbuktu!" he said, in the same tone as twelve days
before he had said, "Gentlemen, India!" Then he continued, "Timbuktu
is an important city of from twelve to thirteen thousand inhabitants,
formerly illustrious in science and art. Perhaps you would like to
stay there for a day or two?"
Such a proposal could only have been made ironically. "But,"
continued he, "it would be dangerous among the Negroes, Berbers, and
Foullanes who occupy, it--particularly as our arrival in an aeronef
might prejudice them against you."
"Sir," said Phil Evans, in the same tone, "for the pleasure of
leaving you we would willingly risk an unpleasant reception from the
natives. Prison for prison, we would rather be in Timbuktu than on
the "Albatross.""
"That is a matter of taste," answered the engineer. "Anyhow, I shall
not try the adventure, for I am responsible for the safety of the
guests who do me the honor to travel with me."
"And so," said Uncle Prudent, explosively, "you are not content with
being our jailer, but you insult us."
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