"The country of fear," I murmured in a low voice. And Morhange repeated: "The country of fear." The strange concert ceased as the first stars appeared in the sky. With deep emotion we watched the tiny bluish flames appear, one after another. At that portentous moment they seemed to span the distance between us, isolated, condemned, lost, and our brothers of higher latitudes, who at that hour were rushing about their poor pleasures with delirious frenzy in cities where the whiteness of electric lamps came on in a burst. _Chêt-Ahadh essa hetîsenet Mâteredjrê d'Erredjaot, Mâtesekek d-Essekâot, Mâtelahrlahr d'Ellerhâot, Ettâs djenen, barâd tît-ennit abâtet._ Eg-Anteouen's voice raised itself in slow guttural tones. It resounded with sad, grave majesty in the silence now complete. I touched the Targa's arm. With a movement of his head, he pointed to a constellation glittering in the firmament. "The Pleiades," I murmured to Morhange, showing him the seven pale stars, while Eg-Anteouen took up his mournful song in the same monotone: "The Daughters of the Night are seven: Mâteredjrê and Erredjeâot, Mâtesekek and Essekâot, Mâtelahrlahr and Ellerhâot, The seventh is a boy, one of whose eyes has flown away." 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.