The Washington times., 1918-08-18

gSiNeoO Curse of Allah rest upon
the little doctor! 1t was
only his oily tongue that coaxed Sundance
back over the route we followed from the
Flowing Sands of Keash, and six long
months have passed since said good-by to
them outside the mud walls and watched
them go into the wastes of dreamy hello
trope that stretched southwark.
The blue-veiled Touaregs say that Allah
made the desert when he was in temper.
1t must have been a devil of a temper!
Here on the rooftop, day after day, have
looked out over the baked mud parapet
wearily watching the dancing sand col
umns that the big-eyed Kabyle children
think are angry djinns. Day after day l
stare at the occasional f1ea-bitten camel
that surges up out of the wind-piled dunes,
praying to heaven that Sundance will be
the bobbing rider on its back. But my
prayers are unanswered.
am. certain that the sun-smitten sands
have captured Halliday and the little doc
tor, and this place has become hell to me.
The hammering of the coppersmith in the
little shop beneath my room, and the
swash swash of the slippered feet of the
veiled women torment my aching brain,
while the odors of musk and ambergris,
bonjoin and bergamotte that rise from the
Souk-el-Attarine where the perfume sellers
haggle, make me long iercely for the clean
scent of the pine-covered slopes of old
Vermont.
Sometimes think l might lose my rea-
son by staring at those terrible spaces that
are stippled with wicked greens and glow
ing chromes. That is why | am putting
this strange story on paper. Sundance
Halliday gave me permission to tell it at
the expiration of six months, and the time.
is up. The coppersmith, who has watched
me staring out at the shimmering wastes
where the salt crystals blaze like diamonds,
shakes his head as he hammers at his
pans.
"The sands are warm and nice to lie in,
he mumbled yesterday. land Allah can find
one in the desert as well as in the oasis.
Blessed be Allah,' So it is evident that
the coppersmith thinks that Sundance and
the little doctor of the Foreign Legion will
never come back.
Here then l tell the story of The Flow
ing Sands of Keash. The tale starts with
our meeting with the marabout in the
courtyard of Green Tiles at the little
mosque of El Aliel Ahmed He was old,
was that holy man. Older than any man
Frra had 10 cot In frSr st
velvet shadow and stared at the sage-green
tiles over which the painting lizards crept
slowly. and because Sundance had been
liberal with aims, that ancient told us the
story of that little mosque whose walls
were whittier than a secured bone.
This Africa is old. It's very odors seem
10 tell of rotting centuries. And that time
wiihered marabout with the spell of the
ages upon him. told us of happenings that
made us stare out into the sands with a
feeling of great awe.
| wish Sundance Halliday was here be-
side me as I write. BY the beard of the
Prophet, ! do! He remembered much
more than / did of the stories which the
holy man unfolded. Sometimes | dozed
and sometimes the heat seemed to make
my brain bubble so that the words of the
marabout went through my head like the
noise of a great wind
But heard much of what he said Ay.
] did He paraded through the centuries
and flung the Past at our heads He knew
this heat-pickled land like an East Side
boy knows the Bowery. He went back
into the little beginnings of Time, and told
us OF things that happened before Sidi
Okba swept along Northern Africa. He
told of matters that were new when the
Temple of Ammon rose out of the sands
of Karnak, and my eyes grew heavy as
listened to him.
HE drives me mad" muttered, "he
knows too muchi"
Hush" cried Sundance Listen to
him, He knows more than all the his
torians of Europe,"
Let him keep his knowledge" growled,
and | tried to sleep while the marabout
talked and talked as he waited for the
death of the day to cry his prayers into
the silence.
Sundance Halliday says that slept
through much Of that afternoon, and be-
lieve Sundance is right But now and then
would wake up and listen. And II was
then I heard of the former glories Of FL
Aliel Ahmed. Heard il in little pieces that
caught in waking moments. Once sat
up and listened with all my wits alert.
The marabOut had made a peculiar. sound
with his mouth, and out of the cracks in
the tiles came a million lizards, small,
green lizards, that turned their heads
toward the old man as if they expected
him TO do something.
They still remember" he said softly,
speaking in Arabic. They remember that
this place was the home of the Flaming
Lizard of Death before the Roumis chased
the Red Priests into the desert And the