My last recollection is of Efali. I chanced to come upon him in camp enjoying a well-earned rest, and the luxury of _shade_, beneath a tree. He was through at last, with the strain of carrying the life of the _Taralum_ in his hands. The old man struggled to his feet to come forward to shake hands, and, though every step gave him pain, the undaunted fire of a great traveller was in his eyes, and the spirit that knows no defeat in the big places of the world. With gladness we shook hands, and went our different ways. CHAPTER VI A CITY OF SHADOWS [Illustration] CHAPTER VI A CITY OF SHADOWS (_Fachi Oasis_) In a land of overpowering solitude Fachi stands alone: a forlorn group of dwellings in a mighty wilderness of colourless sands. All around is absolute desert, vast and silent, and depressingly poverty-stricken. Not until far beyond its immediate ranges are outland borders situated, that finally interrupt the sway of the desert seas. To the east, 100 miles away, lies the Kowar Depression, and, farther on, Tibesti; to the west, 200 miles away, the mountainland of Aïr: to the south, some 300 miles, the desert merges into the bush of the French Sudan; while in the north it extends to the Fezzan. The environment of Fachi might well terrify the stoutest. Moreover, the vast desert that surrounds it is an open highway for raiders, and others, who seek to pass across it, on secretive journeys, from one distant region to another. Lost in a land of this kind, where few but raiders pass, without neighbours, without anyone to call to for help, one wonders, to begin with, how Fachi can exist. It shelters no more than a mere handful of sedentary natives, about 150 to 200 human souls in all, yet this strangest of primitive dens stands unbroken, alone, as it has stood since its beginning, as a citadel of the desert. Raiders who come and go are free to pass before Fachi at will, for, once clear of the desert’s borders, there is no living soul to stay them. And the natives of the town will tell you, with comprehensible pride, but with a hard light in their eyes, that evil-visaged men have sat down and looked upon Fachi from a distance, coveting its capture—in the end to rise and go their way, foiled by the fear of death in the traps of a wizards’ den. In the modern history of Fachi, caravans visiting the oasis have been attacked outside its walls, where bleached human skulls still deck the sands; but only once has the town itself been threatened with destruction. That occurred fifteen years ago, when the raiders, said to number 1,500, forced a temporary entrance and fought through the western side of the town: the houses of which part still lie in ruins eloquent of the destruction of the fateful day.