The desolation here was complete.  All around us lay the dunes, monstrous as still leviathans.  Here and there, between their strange, suggestive shapes, under the dark sky one could see the ghastly whiteness of the saltpetre in the arid plains beyond, where the low bushes bent in the chilly breeze.  I thought of London ­only a few days’ journey from me ­revelled for a moment in my situation, which, contrary to my expectation, was rather emphasised by the presence of my companions.  The gorgeous Spahi, with his scarlet cloak and hood, his musket and sword, his high red leggings, the ragged, sweating captive in his patched burnous, ex-butcher looking, despite his cord emblem of bondage, like reigning Emperor ­they were appropriate figures in this desert place.  I had just thought this, and was regarding my Sackville Street suit with disgust, when a low, distinct and near sound suddenly rose from behind a sand dune on my left.  It was exactly like the dull beating of a tom-tom.  The silence preceding it had been intense, for the breeze was as yet too light to make more than the faintest sighing music, and in the gathering darkness this abrupt and gloomy noise produced, I supposed, by some hidden nomad, made a very unpleasant, even sinister impression upon me.  Instinctively I put my hand on the revolver which was slung at my side in a pouch of gazelle skin.  As I did so, I saw the Spahi turn sharply and gaze in the direction of the sound, lifting one hand to his ear.

The low thunder of the instrument, beaten rhythmically and persistently, grew louder and was evidently drawing nearer.  The musician must be climbing up the far side of the dune.  I had swung round to face him, and expected every moment to see some wild figure appear upon the summit, defining itself against the cold and gloomy sky.  But none came.  Nevertheless, the noise increased till it was a roar, drew near till it was actually upon us.  It seemed to me that I heard the sticks striking the hard, stretched skin furiously, as if some phantom drummer were stealthily encircling us, catching us in a net, a trap of horrible, vicious uproar.  Instinctively I threw a questioning, perhaps an appealing, glance at my two companions.  The Spahi had dropped his hand from his ear.  He stood upright, as if at attention on the parade-ground of Biskra.  His face was set ­afterwards I told myself it was fatalistic.  The murderer, on the other hand, was smiling.  I remember the gleam of his big white teeth.  Why was he smiling?  While I asked myself the question the roar of the tom-tom grew gradually less, as if the man beating it were walking rapidly away from us in the direction of Sidi-Massarli.  None of us said a word till only a faint, heavy throbbing, like the beating of a heart, I fancied, was audible in the darkness.  Then I spoke, as silence fell.

“Who is it?”

“Monsieur, it is no one.”

The Spain’s voice was dry and soft.

“What is it?”

“Monsieur, it is the desert drum.  There will be death in Sidi-Massarli to-night.”

I felt myself turn cold.  He spoke with such conviction.  The murderer was still smiling, and I noticed that the tired look had left him.  He stood in an alert attitude, and the sweat had dried on his broad forehead.

“The desert drum?” I repeated.

“Monsieur has not heard of it?”

“Yes, I have heard ­but ­it can’t be.  There must have been someone.”

I looked at the white teeth of the murderer, white as the saltpetre which makes winter in the desert.

“I must get back to the Bordj,” I said abruptly.

“I will accompany monsieur.”

The old formula, and this time the voice which spoke it sounded natural.  We went forward together.  I walked very fast.  I wanted to catch up that music, to prove to myself that it was produced by human fists and sticks upon an instrument which, however barbarous, had been fashioned by human hands.  But we entered Sidi-Massarli in a silence, only broken by the soughing of the wind and the heavy shuffle of the murderer’s feet upon the sand.

Outside the Cafe Maure D’oud was standing with the white hood of his burnous drawn forward over his head; one or two ragged Arabs stood with him.

“They’ve been playing tom-toms in the village, D’oud?”

“Monsieur asks if ­”

“Tom-toms.  Can’t you understand?”

I glanced quickly at the murderer as D’oud mentioned the last name, a name common to many dancers of the East.  I think I expected to see upon his face some tremendous expression, a revelation of the soul of the man who had run for one whole day through the sand behind the Spahi’s horse, cursing at the end of the cord which dragged him onward from Tunis.

But I only met the gentle smile of eyes so tender, so submissive, that they were as the eyes of a woman who had always been a slave, while the ragged Arabs laughed at the idea of tom-toms in Sidi-Massarli.

When we reached the Bordj I found that it contained only one good-sized room, quite bare, with stone floor and white walls.  Here, upon a deal table, was set forth my repast; the foods I had brought with me, and a red Arab soup served in a gigantic bowl of palmwood.  A candle guttered in the glass neck of a bottle, and upon the floor were already spread my gaudy striped quilt, my pillow, and my blanket.  The Spahi surveyed these preparations with a deliberate greediness, lingering in the narrow doorway.

I sat down on a bench before the table.  My attendants were to eat at the Cafe Maure.

“Where are you going to sleep?” I asked of D’oud.

“At the Cafe Maure, monsieur, if monsieur is not afraid to sleep alone.  Here is the key.  Monsieur can lock himself in.  The door is strong.”

I was helping myself to the soup.  The rising wind blew up the skirts of the Spahi’s scarlet robe.  In the wind ­was it imagination? ­I seemed to hear some thin, passing echoes of a tom-tom’s beat.

“Come in,” I said to the Spahi.  “You shall sup with me to-night, and ­and you shall sleep here with me.”

D’oud’s expressive face became sinister.  Arabs are almost as jealous as they are vain.

“But, monsieur, he will sleep in the Cafe Maure.  If monsieur wishes for a companion, I ­”

“Come in,” I repeated to the Spahi.  “You can sleep here to-night.”

The Spahi stepped over the lintel with a jingling of spurs, a rattling of accoutrements.  The murderer stepped in softly after him, drawn by the cord.  D’oud began to look as grim as death.  He made a ferocious gesture towards the murderer.

“And that man?  Monsieur wishes to sleep in the same room with him?”

I heard the sound of the tom-tom above the wail of the wind.

“Yes,” I said.

Why did I wish it?  I hardly know.  I had no fear for, no desire to protect myself.  But I remembered the smile I had seen, the Spahi’s saying, “There will be death in Sidi-Massarli to-night,” and I was resolved that the three men who had heard the desert drum together should not be parted till the morning.  D’oud said no more.  He waited upon me with his usual diligence, but I could see that he was furiously angry.  The Spahi ate ravenously.  So did the murderer, who more than once, however, seemed to be dropping to sleep over his food.  He was apparently dead tired.  As the wind was now become very violent I did not feel disposed to stir out again, and I ordered D’oud to bring us three cups of coffee to the Bordj.  He cast a vicious look at the Spahi and went out into the darkness.  I saw him no more that night.  A boy from the Cafe Maure brought us coffee, cleared the remains of our supper from the table, and presently muttered some Arab salutation, departed, and was lost in the wind.

The murderer was now frankly asleep with his head upon the table, and the Spahi began to blink.  I, too, felt very tired, but I had something still to say.  Speaking softly, I said to the Spahi: 

“That sound we heard to-night ­”

“Monsieur?”

“Have you ever heard it before?”

“Never, monsieur.  But my brother heard it just before he had a stroke of the sun.  He fell dead before his captain beside the wall of Sada.  He was a tirailleur.”

“And you think this sound means that death is near?

“I know it, monsieur.  All desert people know it.  I was born at Touggourt, and how should I not know?”

“But then one of us ­”

I looked from him to the sleeping murderer.

“There will be death in Sidi-Massarli tonight, monsieur.  It is the will of Allah.  Blessed be Allah.”

I got up, locked the heavy door of the Bordj, and put the key in the inner pocket of my coat.  As I did so, I fancied I saw the heavy black lids of the murderer’s closed eyes flutter for a moment.  But I cannot be sure.  My head was aching with fatigue.  The Spahi, too, looked stupid with sleep.  He jerked the cord, the murderer awoke with a start, glanced heavily round, stood up.  Pulling him as one would an obstinate dog, the Spahi made him lie down on the bare floor in the corner of the Bordj, ere he himself curled up in the thick quilt which had been rolled up behind his high saddle.  I made no protest, but when the Spahi was asleep, his lean brown hand laid upon his sword, his musket under his shaven head, I pushed one of my blankets over to the murderer, who lay looking like a heap of rags against the white wall.  He smiled at me gently, as he had smiled when the desert drum was beating, and drew the blanket over his mighty limbs and face.

I did not mean to sleep that night.  Tired though I was my brain was so excited that I felt I should not.  I blew out the candle without even the thought that it would be necessary to struggle against sleep.  And in the darkness I heard for an instant the roar of the wind outside, the heavy breathing of my two strange companions within.  For an instant ­then it seemed as if a shutter was drawn suddenly over the light in my brain.  Blackness filled the room where the thoughts develop, crowd, stir in endless activities.  Slumber fell upon me like a great stone that strikes a man down to dumbness, to unconsciousness.

Far in the night I had a dream.  I cannot recall it accurately now.  I could not recall it even the next morning when I awoke.  But in this dream, it seemed to me that fingers felt softly about my heart.  I was conscious of their fluttering touch.  It was as if I were dead, and as if the doctor laid for a moment his hand upon my heart to convince himself that the pulse of life no longer beat.  And this action wove itself naturally into the dream I had.  The fingers so soft, so surreptitious, were lifted from my breast, and I sank deeper into the gulf of sleep, below the place of dreams.  For I was a tired man that night.  At the first breath of dawn I stirred and woke.  It was cold.  I put out one hand and drew up my quilt.  Then I lay still.  The wind had sunk.  I no longer heard it roaring over the desert.  For a moment I hardly remembered where I was, then memory came back and I listened for the deep breathing of the Spahi and the murderer.  Even when the wind blew I had heard it.  I did not hear it now.  I lay there under my quilt for some minutes listening.  The silence was intense.  Had they gone already, started on their way to El Arba?  The Bordj was in darkness, for the windows were very small, and dawn had scarcely begun to break outside and had not yet filtered in through the wooden shutters which barred them.  I disliked this complete silence, and felt about for the matches I had laid beside the candle before turning in.  I could not find them.  Someone had moved them, then.  The heaviness of sleep had quite left me now, and I remembered clearly all the incidents of the previous evening.  The roll of the desert drum sounded again in my ears.  I threw off my quilt, got up, and moved softly over the stone floor towards the corner where the murderer had lain down to sleep.  I bent down to touch him and touched the stone.  They had gone, then!  It was strange that I had not been waked by their departure.  Besides, I had the key of the door.  I thrust my hand into the breast-pocket of my coat which I had worn while I slept.  The key was no longer there.  Then I remembered my dream and the fingers fluttering round my heart.  Stumbling in the blackness I came to the place where the Spahi had lain, stretched out my hands and felt naked flesh.  My hands recoiled from it, for it was very cold.

Half-an-hour later the one-eyed Arab who kept the Bordj, roused by my beating upon the door with the butt end of my revolver, came with D’oud to ask what was the matter.  The door had to be broken in.  This took some time.  Long before I could escape, the light of the sun, entering through the little arched windows, had illumined the nude corpse of the Spahi, the gaping red wound in his throat, the heap of murderer’s rags that lay across his feet.

M’hammed Bouaziz, in the red cloak, the red boots, sword at his side, musket slung over his shoulder, was galloping over the desert on his way to freedom.

But six months later he was taken at night outside a cafe by the lake at Tunis.  He was gazing through the doorway at a girl who was posturing to the sound of pipes between two rows of Arabs.  The light from the cafe fell upon his face, the dancer uttered a cry.

“M’hammed Bouaziz!”

“Aichouch!”

The law avenged the Spahi, and this time it was not to prison they led my friend of Sidi-Massarli, but to an open space before a squad of soldiers just when the dawn was breaking.