To dig a tunnel through the hard-baked earth with no tools but hand drills would be an impossible feat in the course of one night. But one night we removed a third of the necessary dirt, replaced all we could, and scattered the rest. On the next night we easily took out what we had packed in, dug some more of the hard dirt, and refilled the hole. Out of the nightly period of three or four hours that we could give the task without slackening our next day's labor, a continually greater part went to taking out and replacing loose dirt; even so, we delved further every night, and in six nights only a shell of solid ground remained to break out. We need not fear someone stepping on this shell and finding loose earth beneath it. It lay directly under the hook where some grisly carrion still hung. There was hardly more risk of one of the prisoners venturing near our digging place.
By careful testing, we discovered that we could not be seen by our prisonmates so far from the watch lamp; and we took great care not to rattle our chains.
The day that the cruel fast of Ramadan was to end, we quarry slaves were brought back to the prison half an hour earlier than usual so the guards could repair to the high ground to watch for the new moon—the Moon of Ramadan whose first glimpse signals the feast. From within the walls we heard their joyful cries; and Jim and I looked at each other across the darkening room. Shortly the prisoners grew quiet. The night darkened, and the stars shone brighter as the moon set. We waited till every form was still, then crept to the wall.
In less than an hour we had scooped out the loose dirt from our passage; then, crawling in and stabbing upward with the drills, I broke the shallow crust that still penned us in. In a moment more we stood outside the wall, holding our chains so they would make no sound. Jim knew a quick route toward the rook's-nest tree—he had learned every footpath in the oasis in the days before Zimil died from a fall and he had been sent by a jealous foreman to the gangs.
We came up into the hard-packed road leading to the quarry. There was no reason to expect any traveler here at this time of night, and in our awful urgency we did not take great care with chains. Had their occasional low rattling carried far? I must ask the question when I heard one stone knock another far up the path. It might be a stray camel or donkey or even a wild night prowler venturing this close to the reek of man, but it might be a man in some venture of the night.
"He comin' dis way," Jim whispered.
"Who could it be?"
"He wearin' hard sole shoes lak Otto de guard."
We had time to hide, but very little room. The greatest safety lay in the thorn thickets, some of them shoulder high, growing beside the road; just beyond lay naked ground whose dim, illusive starlight would surely disclose black shapes. Jim found a refuge about ten steps up the road from the one I chose. As I crouched behind a thornbush, I reached down and found a stone as big as an orange and held it at my shoulder ready to hurl in a short-armed throw.
I died for a time, it seemed, and the world died with me, and nothing was left but the darkness, the watching stars, and the sound of footsteps drawing nearer. Time neither sped nor crawled: its passage was apparent only in the increasing nearness of the traveler. My eyes grew strangely relaxed. I made out his shape far beyond any vision less keen than a night hunter's. He walked briskly, with his head high, and on the opposite side of the road from the thickets. I thought that he was watching them out of the corner of his eye.
Such alertness was natural enough by a walker in this lonely place at night. His mission might be easily guessed by some object—I took it for earthen jug—under his arm: likely it contained a liquor forbidden good Mussulmen, but which he had got hand on, concealed at the quarry, and had now retrieved to drink at tonight's feast. This was instantaneous perception-he had not yet come opposite Jim. As he did so, I detected not the slightest change of his step or suspicious action.
But as he passed on, his head turned a little toward the thickets, so that he kept a narrow field of vision over his shoulder. Now he was in ten feet of me, and I hurled my stone.
It struck him in the belly and he fell hard, like a butchered camel. Instantly Jim and I had crouched over him, ready to strike him with our chains if he tried to rise or to call for help. But he could only groan and tremble.
"Jim, can we bind him and gag him and put out of sight till we can get away?" I murmured. But I knew better than that.
"They'll come lookin' for him when he don' bring 'at booze, so I gwine kill him."
I could not bear for innocent, great-hearted Jim to be the one of us two to take human life. And that was the reason, not forty blows of the kurbash on my bare feet, that I quickly picked up the stone I had thrown, struck quickly with it and with great force. In a few seconds or two more, we had sped on.
"Cap'n, le's don't stop to file off 'em irons. Le's run as fast as we kin, and not mind 'at noise."
So we ran like burdened camels running toward water after great dearth on the desert. Jim knew the shortest way; we had hardly got our second wind when, from high ground overlooking the wadi, we saw the beautiful yellow flicker of a thorn fire. We ran toward it, our chains clanging. Soon there rose beside it a man dressed like a wandering mendicant, but these profess poverty, while picketed near the fire were three of the most noble riding camels I had ever seen, beasts of great price. "Ick, Ick," he told them in a low voice, and they straightway kneeled. I could hardly believe they would let us mount, with our jangling chains, and smelling as we did of the prison and of human blood, but if their strange dignities were offended, they gave no sign; and at once Jim and I were hoisted to a giant's height.
Our leader took up the wadi until it leveled off, then across the desert. I saw that he was guiding by the great star in the east that the Arabs called Azazel, but when we had crossed a rocky ridge, we turned due south, toward the caravan road from the oasis to the military town of Misda. Long before we gained it, a company of camel riders bore down on us from a hillcrest where they had stood vigil. As they swept around us, I saw that they numbered about twenty, and all but one of them wore black veils. The bared face was only a pale blur in the darkness, but it caused a painful swelling of my heart and a great exultation of my soul.
One of the men passed me a robe, a cap, and black slit facecloth; another gave Jim the same. We put them on the best we could over our irons, during which our smoothly running camels never changed pace. Before long we came upon the road, and when we had followed it southward about an hour, we met a small caravan of Fezzan Arabs hastening toward the oasis to celebrate the feast of Ramadan.
"Who are you?" their captain called in Arabic.
"The Tuareg," our veiled leader answered.
"Bismillah! The Men of the Black Veilsl"
They would tell tonight of meeting the Abandoned of Allah, and on being questioned might remember that the garments of two of them seemed awry, and a clanking sound rose as they rode past. But we would not be traveling this road if it would lead us into danger, and my fear passed away like a puff of smoke in the cooling breeze, and only joy remained.
We turned off in about an hour, and to my surprise struck, not west toward Tuareg country, but southeast. For three hours more we kept a steady gait, guided by the stars, until we came to a little wadi and followed it down to a well-pitched camp by an abundant water hole. Here fires of thornwood and dried camel dung blazed cheerfully, two small pavilions and one large one had been raised against the sun, and white-veiled men picketed the camels and tended fires and cooking pots.
I lost sight of Isabel before 1 had one clear glimpse of her face, but her orders were being forthrightly carried out. Two white-veiled men with files began to cut away my irons; two others were removing Jim's. The chains fell and rattled on the ground. The iron rings on my ankles, never letting me go for more than fifteen years, soon lay impotent on the ground.