A sudden sickness came over me. I seized the Targa's arm as he was
starting to intone his refrain for the third time.
"When will we reach this cave with the inscriptions?" I asked
brusquely.
He looked at me and replied with his usual calm: "We are there."
"We are there? Then why don't you show it to us?"
"You did not ask me," he replied, not without a touch of insolence.
Morhange had jumped to his feet.
"The cave is here?"
"It is here," Eg-Anteouen replied slowly, rising to his feet.
"Take us to it."
"Morhange," I said, suddenly anxious, "night is falling. We will see
nothing. And perhaps it is still some way off."
"It is hardly five hundred paces," Eg-Anteouen replied. "The cave is
full of dead underbrush. We will set it on fire and the Captain will
see as in full daylight."
"Come," my comrade repeated.
"And the camels?" I hazarded.
"They are tethered," said Eg-Anteouen, "and we shall not be gone
long."
He had started toward the black mountain. Morhange, trembling with
excitement, followed. I followed, too, the victim of profound
uneasiness. My pulses throbbed. "I am not afraid," I kept repeating to
myself. "I swear that this is not fear."
And really it was not fear. Yet, what a strange dizziness! There was a
mist over my eyes. My ears buzzed. Again I heard Eg-Anteouen's voice,
but multiplied, immense, and at the same time, very low.
"The Daughters of the Night are seven...."
It seemed to me that the voice of the mountain, re-echoing, repeated
that sinister last line to infinity: "And the seventh is a boy, one of whose eyes has flown
away."
"Here it is," said the Targa.
A black hole in the wall opened up. Bending over, Eg-Anteouen entered.
We followed him. The darkness closed around us.
A yellow flame. Eg-Anteouen had struck his flint. He set fire to a
pile of brush near the surface. At first we could see nothing. The
smoke blinded us.
Eg-Anteouen stayed at one side of the opening of the cave. He was
seated and, more inscrutible than ever, had begun again to blow great
puffs of gray smoke from his pipe.
The burning brush cast a flickering light. I caught a glimpse of
Morhange. He seemed very pale. With both hands braced against the
wall, he was working to decipher a mass of signs which I could
scarcely distinguish.
Nevertheless, I thought I could see his hands trembling.
"The devil," I thought, finding it more and more difficult to
co-ordinate my thoughts, "he seems to be as unstrung as I."
I heard him call out to Eg-Anteouen in what seemed to me a loud voice: "Stand to one side. Let the air in. What a smoke!"