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A strange tale of cannibalism by Lefkadie
Herne. Occasionally a caravan passes with traders

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armed to the teeth, prepared to
fight every yard of the way against the

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tare egg. To be robbed in
the desert is death, for without camels,

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traveling is impossible. Vast distances separate
the green islands in this yellow ocean

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of sand, where the mouths of
the wells are still guarded against the drift

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with great stones, as in the
days when Jacob serves seven years for Rachel.

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Between these halting places, the sand
is burning enough to blister the skin

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of de feet. The thermometer registers
an incredible temperature. The least portion of

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the features exposed is scorched as by
fire, and traveling is possible only with

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a veiled face. Then there are
sand storms, sand pillars reaching from earth

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to sky, and the wrecks of
the camels skeleton bleaching to the whiteness of

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chalk. In this ghastly desolation,
the last fragment of the exploring mission finds

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itself reduced to such misery that,
even with a certainty of water a few

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miles off, the men cannot summon
strength and advance. There is only one

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camel. It is their ship,
their engine, their forlorn hope. The

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richest of a thousand kingdoms would be
as nothing in their eyes at such a

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juncture. In exchange for one day, one hour of that camel's life.

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There is a single native French officer
alive. The quartermaster. He is trusted

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by the Muslim spahis to go forward
with the camel to the well, procure

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water, and send back the animal
with the supply of well filled skin.

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But within a few hundred yards of
the well, his strength fails him.

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The Arab soldier accompanying him volunteers to
obtain water, but rewards himself for his

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pains by stealing the camel. The
frightful despair of the survivors may be imagined.

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Without their camel, to carry water
with them is impossible. For days.

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Subsequently, that little band of human
skeletons, struggling vainly to keep the

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well, compelled by infernal thirst and
heat, to return after having marched a

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few miles under the sun, lizards
and sand insects are eaten. Alive,

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reason weakens and looses its grasp upon
the reins of passion. An Arab sent

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out for assistance, is shot and
eaten by his comrades. Two more are

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subsequently murdered. The survivors devoured the
bodies, and the new face of horror

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commences. Those who had marched on
in advance return upon hearing the shots.

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They partake of the repass. They
even kill another of the weaker ones and

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eat his flesh. After this,
the wreck of the expedition supports itself by

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cannibalism. As a pack of wolves
devour each other in the madness of hunger,

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there is little flesh on those starving
bodies. The bones are crushed and

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devoured. Discipline is of course forgotten. The French officer is killed and eaten.

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Then appears the most horrible phase of
the long tragedy. The sufferers conceive

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a hideous dread of each other.
They separate, They fear at night to

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sleep. The man who yields to
slumber in spite of himself may never wake.

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Carrying with a provision of human flesh, they continue to struggle backward and

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forward between two oasis, dreading each
other more than death, fearing the sunset,

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the flesh colored sunset of the desert, fearing the tipidness of night,

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tempting the weary to close their eyes, fearing the furnace glow of dawn heralding

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another day of horrors. In the
glare of his comrade's eyes, in the

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fleshlessness of his comrade's face, each
sees a menace and a mockery of death.

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Each keeps his finger upon the trigger
of his revolver. Only when nearly

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one half of the survivors have been
devoured by the rest does the remnant of

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the expedition succeed in reaching a nomad
camp, whose friendly shake affords them true

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Arab hospitality. Strangely enough, these
wretched survivors still feel the most intense hatred

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to one of their number, who
had been left behind at Hassi Hajad the

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pilgrims well, and who had repeatedly
fled from those who sought to kill and

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devour him. They designed to return
and kill him and beg that camels be

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lent to them, But the Arab
hosts suspects something. He insists upon accompanying

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them, and beholds sight that would
have sickened the fiercest even of torreg By

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his coming, the life of the
Spahi is safe, but his fear of

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his old comrade is such that he
refuses to accept aid until they have themselves

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departed another way. At last,
a troop of friendly horsemen escort the victims

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to a wargla, the tunis of
the desert. Whence it is generally possible

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to obtain an escort to the last
of the French military outposts, to Garth.

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But even a Wargla is remote from
the civilized world proper, and the

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French flag could never be maintained there
except under the protection of an expeditionary column.

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When the reader pictures to his mind
the unutterable misery of that march through

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a waste fantastically desolate, as a
lunar landscape, under a sky whose very

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clouds are flying sand, under a
perpendicular sun whose beams scorch like molten iron,

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against a wind whose heat flails the
face excoriates, the hands, shrivels

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even the water skins upon the backs
of the drumidaries. And when he imagines

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that silent struggle about the oasis,
the murder of sleepers at the well,

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the frenzy of mutual hatred inspired by
cannibalism, the emaciation that rendered it almost

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impossible to obtain three days food from
nearly twelve adult bodies. The crunching of

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bones when starvation had consumed the muscles
of the victim. The thirst that blackens

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the lips and makes the tongue crack
open, and stifles speech in the throat.

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It is indeed difficult to conceive how
men can pass through such experience and

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remain sane. The most pitiful case
of all seems that of the poor spah,

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he left alone for nearly a week
at the well, who took the

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flight whenever his ghoulish companions came back
for water, and returned by stealth in

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the night to gnaw the bones of
the dead. And of a strange tale

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of cannibalism,