Invasion of the Sea. Jules Verne

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       An encounter at the well of Gabès

      “Captain Hardigan?” replied the sergeant, with a trace of surprise in his voice.

      “It is indeed.”

      “We’ve just come from Tunis,” added Lieutenant Villette.

      “We’re leaving shortly on an expedition, and you’ll be coming with us, Nicol.”

      “At your service, sir,” replied the sergeant, “and ready to follow you wherever you go.”

      “Of course, of course,” said Captain Hardigan. “And how is your old brother?”

      “Just fine. Still walking on his four legs, and I make sure they don’t have a chance to get rusty.”

      “Good for you, Nicol. And how about Ace-of-Hearts? Is he still your brother’s friend?”

      “As much as ever, sir. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were twins.”

      “That would be strange, a dog and a horse!” replied the officer with a laugh. “But don’t worry, Nicol, we won’t separate them when we leave.”

      “It would certainly be the death of them if you did, sir.”

      Just then, there was the sound of a loud gunshot off shore.

      “What was that?” asked Lieutenant Villette.

      “Probably a canon from the cruiser anchoring in the gulf.”

      “Coming to get that rogue Hadjar,” added the sergeant. “You really got a prize when you captured him, sir.”

      “You mean when we all captured him,” said Captain Hardigan.

      “Yes, and the old brother, and Ace-of-Hearts too,” exclaimed the sergeant.

      Then the two officers continued their way up toward the fort, while Sergeant Nicol and his men went back down toward the lower town of Gabès.

      ii

      The Tuareg, who belong to the Berber race, used to live in Icham, the area bounded by Touat to the north (a vast oasis in the Sahara five hundred kilometers southeast of Morocco), Timbuktu to the south, the Niger to the west, and the Fezzan to the east. But at the time of our story, they had been obliged to move to the more easterly regions of the Sahara. At the beginning of the twentieth century, their many tribes, some almost sedentary and others completely nomadic, were to be found in the middle of the flat, sandy plains known in Arabic as outtâ, stretching from the Sudan to the area where the Algerian and Tunisian deserts meet.

      For a number of years, after work was abandoned on Captain Roudaire’s project of creating an inland sea in Arad,¹ the region extending westward from Gabès, the resident-general and the bey² of Tunis had persuaded some Tuareg to settle in the oases around the chotts, hoping their warlike nature might make them in a sense the gendarmes of the desert. It was a vain hope. The Imohagh still deserved the insulting nickname of “Tuareg,” or “night bandits,” which had made them feared throughout the Sudan. Furthermore, if work on the Sahara Sea were to be resumed, there was no doubt that they would be in the forefront of the tribes most hostile to the idea of flooding the chotts.

      But while any individual Targui might work, ostensibly at least, as a caravan guide and even as its guard, he was nevertheless a thief by instinct and pirate by nature, and his reputation was too well established not to inspire profound distrust. Several years earlier, Major Laing, while traveling through these dangerous lands of the Dark Continent, ran the risk of being massacred in an attack by these fearsome natives.³ And in 1881, during an expedition that left Ouargla under the command of Major Flatters, that brave officer and his comrades lost their lives at Bir-el-Gharama.⁴ The military authorities in Algeria and Tunisia had to be constantly on their guard, relentlessly pushing back those populous tribes.

      Of all the Tuareg tribes, the Ahaggar were considered one of the most warlike. Their leading chieftains were involved in all the attempted uprisings that made it so difficult to maintain French influence over the wide expanse of the desert. The governor of Algeria and the resident-general of Tunisia, always on the alert, had to keep a particularly close watch on the region of sebkha and chotts. This was especially important because of a project that was nearing completion, the flooding of the inland sea, which is the theme of this story. It was an undertaking that would create extreme hardship for the Tuareg tribes and deprive them of their source of livelihood by reducing the volume of caravan traffic. By making it easier to quell them, it would also reduce the number of their attacks and the growing list of names that were still being added to African obituaries.

      It was to this Ahaggar tribe, one of the most influential, that Hadjar’s family belonged. Enterprising, bold, and ruthless, Djemma’s son had always been known as one of the most redoubtable chieftains in the whole region to the south of the Aurès Mountains. During the past few years he had led many attacks against caravans and isolated detachments. His fame grew among the tribes who were gradually drifting back toward the east of the Sahara, as the vast lifeless plain in that part of Africa is called. He moved with disconcerting rapidity, and, although the authorities had ordered the military leaders to capture him at any cost, he had always been able to elude the expeditions sent out after him. When he was reported to be near one oasis, he would suddenly appear in the neighborhood of another. At the head of a band of Tuareg no less fierce than their leader, he scoured the whole country between the Algerian chotts and the Gulf of Gabès. The kafila, or caravans, no longer dared to set out across the desert without the protection of a large escort, and the heavy traffic bound for the markets of Tripolitania suffered greatly from this state of affairs.

      True, there were several military posts at Nefta, Gafsa, and Tozeur, which is the political center of that region, but the expeditions mounted against Hadjar and his band had never had any success. The daring warrior had always managed to escape from them until the day, a few weeks earlier, when he had fallen into the hands of a French detachment.