“‘Of course we shall,’ replied another; and they were just about to defy the enemy with shouts, inviting them to the combat, when a second boy said, ‘It would be better to go first to the village and fight those that are left behind there.’ “They therefore descended the mountain by the other slope, and returned to the village. When those who had remained there saw them coming they were afraid, and cried, ‘Alas! here are the boys coming back again. They have evidently defeated the party we sent out against them.’ “One man went out to parley with the children. They took him prisoner, obtained from him all the information they wanted, and then they drew their swords and killed him. “They next advanced upon the village, entered it, and even went up to the hut of the chief, who was a very old man. He got up and came to meet them. They shouted, ‘Thou didst mean to kill us and our mothers with us, but now it is thou who art to die; thy children and thy children’s children, and all thy nephews are dead. It is all over.’ “They flung their spears at him, and one of them pierced his heart, coming out at the other side. Then the boys shouted, ‘Death to thee, and to thy mother, thou son of a harlot!’ Next they burnt the village, and killed all the women and children. Only one man escaped. He ran out to the army and told the troops all that had happened, asking them, ‘Did you not meet the children?’ ‘No!’ ‘Did you not find any trace of them?’ ‘We did; but we lost their track!’ “‘Well,’ he went on; ‘go to the village, there is not a man left alive, not even a woman, not even a child. All, all are slain!’ “They put spurs to their horses and galloped back; they reached the village. The children of the genii came out and began the battle. They fought from ten o’clock in the morning till sunset. The boys were victorious, slew all their enemies, and took possession of the war-drum. “Of the sons of the genii sixty were dead, but sixty survived, and became the fathers of the Tuaregs.” In the fifteenth century they founded a great city, about 281 miles to the north of Gao, which they called Es Suk, or Tadamekka (now Tademeket), where they probably led a half-nomad, half-sedentary life, as do certain tribes or fractions of tribes at the present day at Rhat, Tintellust, and Sinder, or Gober. At the same period the Askia Empire of the Songhay negroes was at the zenith of its prosperity, with Gao, or Garo, as its capital. An Askia went to attack Es-Suk, and destroyed it. Rather than submit to the yoke of the conqueror, the Tuaregs abandoned their capital, and fled to the Ahaggar heights or the plateaux of Air. According to a legend only one Es Suk escaped, a man named Mohamed ben Eddain, who founded a new tribe, that of the present Kel es Suk, by giving his daughters in marriage to Arabs, sheriffs of the tribe of El Abaker, descendants of the Ansars, or first companions of the Prophet.