Atlantida | Page 7

from the post, that he is an irreproachable non-commissioned officer from
every point of view, and that if we had been warned of your arrival--"
"Evidently," he said, with a coldly ironical smile. "Also, Lieutenant, I have no intention

of holding him responsible for the negligences which attach to your office. He is not
obliged to know that the officer who abandons a post like Hassi-Inifel, if it is only for two
hours, risks not finding much left on his return. The Chaamba brigands, my dear sir, love
firearms, and for the sake of the sixty muskets in your racks, I am sure they would not
scruple to make an officer, whose otherwise excellent record is well known to me,
account for his absence to a court-martial. Come with me, if you please. We will finish
the little inspection I began too rapidly a little while ago."
He was already on the stairs. I followed in his footsteps. Chatelain closed the order of
march. I heard him murmuring, in a tone which you can imagine:
"Well, we are in for it now!"

II
CAPTAIN DE SAINT-AVIT
A few days sufficed to convince us that Chatelain's fears as to our official relations with
the new chief were vain. Often I have thought that by the severity he showed at our first
encounter Saint-Avit wished to create a formal barrier, to show us that he knew how to
keep his head high in spite of the weight of his heavy past. Certain it is that the day after
his arrival, he showed himself in a very different light, even complimenting the Sergeant
on the upkeep of the post and the instruction of the men. To me he was charming.
"We are of the same class, aren't we?" he said to me. "I don't have to ask you to dispense
with formalities, it is your right."
Vain marks of confidence, alas! False witnesses to a freedom of spirit, one in face of the
other. What more accessible in appearance than the immense Sahara, open to all those
who are willing to be engulfed by it? Yet what is more secret? After six months of
companionship, of communion of life such as only a Post in the South offers, I ask
myself if the most extraordinary of my adventures is not to be leaving to-morrow, toward
unsounded solitudes, with a man whose real thoughts are as unknown to me as these
same solitudes, for which he has succeeded in making me long.
The first surprise which was given me by this singular companion was occasioned by the
baggage that followed him.
On his inopportune arrival, alone, from Wargla, he had trusted to the Mehari he rode only
what can be carried without harm by such a delicate beast,--his arms, sabre and revolver,
a heavy carbine, and a very reduced pack. The rest did not arrive till fifteen days later,
with the convoy which supplied the post.
Three cases of respectable dimensions were carried one after another to the Captain's
room, and the grimaces of the porters said enough as to their weight.

I discreetly left Saint-Avit to his unpacking and began opening the mail which the convoy
had sent me.
He returned to the office a little later and glanced at the several reviews which I had just
recieved.
"So," he said. "You take these."
He skimmed through, as he spoke, the last number of the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur
Erdkunde in Berlin.
"Yes," I answered. "These gentlemen are kind enough to interest themselves in my works
on the geology of the Wadi Mia and the high Igharghar."
"That may be useful to me," he murmured, continuing to turn over the leaves.
"It's at your service."
"Thanks. I am afraid I have nothing to offer you in exchange, except Pliny, perhaps. And
still--you know what he said of Igharghar, according to King Juba. However, come help
me put my traps in place and you will see if anything appeals to you."
I accepted without further urging.
We commenced by unearthing various meteorological and astronomical instruments--the
thermometers of Baudin, Salleron, Fastre, an aneroid, a Fortin barometer, chronometers,
a sextant, an astronomical spyglass, a compass glass.... In short, what Duveyrier calls the
material that is simplest and easiest to transport on a camel.
As Saint-Avit handed them to me I arranged them on the only table in the room.
"Now," he announced to me, "there is nothing more but books. I will pass them to you.
Pile them up in a corner until I can have a book-shelf made."
For two hours altogether I helped him to heap up a real library. And what a library! Such
as never before a post in the South had seen. All the texts consecrated, under whatever
titles, by antiquity to