13: El Hamel, the Lost One
"The fate of every man is about his neck."
—Arab proverb.
LIEUTENANT DESTINS was young, unreconciled to loneliness, passionately unwilling to support the burden of his consciousness without the distractions of friends, music, theaters, and the general effervescence of a gay city life— the life of Paris, in fact, now removed from him by the Mediterranean and many weary leagues of the vast Sahara desert. He was undergoing the severest trial a man of his temperament could experience, and his vivacious Gallic soul rebelled and sickened under the ordeal.
It was two years now since he had first arrived at Fort Djebel Sfah, one of the most isolated outposts of the French occupation, northwest of the great range of the Hoggar mountains. It was a region sufficiently d
