CHAPTER XIV
HE ACTS BY THE CODE
An irregular oval in form, in extent about three acres, the oasis, El Kebr, nourished around three wells.
Probably these had been sunk in ancient times, before the records of man, when this desert of the Sahara had been a fertile land, well-watered and luxuriant of vegetation, supporting an immense population. The age-old masonry about their curbs attested to the truth of this surmise, and might have afforded interesting material for the antiquarian.
From the wells it radiated—the oasis—a wilderness of green growing things, interspersed with the slim, towering boles of a grove of date palms; but the sands were ever insidiously creeping, creeping in toward the water; year by year the acreage of verdure was diminishing, and, left to nature, it was only a question of time ere the desert would hold full sway, even to the lips of the life-giving wells, which, too, were doomed to be choked and lost.
But for the present it sufficed for the purposes of Monsieur l'Empereur, Leopold le Premier. It was settled upon by him to be the site of his capital city of the future—Troya, as he already called it in the fervor of his magnificent imagination.
O'Rourke came to El Kebr, early in the following dawn, at the head of a party of reconnaissance. It was apparent that the Tawarek, Ibeni, had kept faith in regard to his departure with his men; satisfied he undoubtedly had been to
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