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Title: Stepsons of France
Author: Wren, Percival Christopher (1885-1941)
Date of first publication: November 1917
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1925
   ["Cheaper Edition"]
Date first posted: 26 February 2013
Date last updated: 26 February 2013
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1048

This ebook was produced by Al Haines






STEPSONS OF FRANCE

BY

PERCIVAL CHRISTOPHER WREN



LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.  210 VICTORIA STREET, TORONTO

_Printed in England._




  FIRST EDITION . . November, 1917
  Reprinted . . . . December, 1917
  Reprinted . . . . February, 1919
  Cheaper Edition . 1925



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




BY THE SAME AUTHOR


BEAU GESTE

"A rattling good story by a rattling good writer."--_The Sphere_.

_Thirteenth Large Impression._


THE WAGES OF VIRTUE

A vivid picture of life in the French Foreign Legion.  The sayings, the
doings and adventures of those reckless soldiers make it not only a
romance but a reality.

_Sixth Large Impression._




  TO
  THE AUTHOR OF
  "SALAAM"




CONTENTS

CHAP.

I  Ten little Legionaries II   la Ninon de L'Enclos III  An Officer
and--a Liar IV  The Dead Hand V  The Gift VI  The Deserter VII  Five
Minutes VIII  "Here are Ladies" IX  The MacSnorrt X  "Belzbuth" XI
The Quest XII  "Vengeance is Mine..." XIII  Sermons in Stones XIV
Moonshine XV  The Coward of the Legion XVI  Mahdev Rao XVII  The Merry
Liars




  "_Soldats de la Lgion,
  De la Lgion trangre,
  N'ayant pas de nation,
  La France est votre Mre._"
      WAR-SONG OF THE LEGION.




STEPSONS OF FRANCE




I

TEN LITTLE LEGIONARIES

At the Dept at Sidi-bel-Abbs, Sergeant-Major Suicide-Maker was a
devil, but at a little frontier outpost in the desert, he was _the_
devil, the increase in his degree being commensurate with the increase
in his opportunities.  When the Seventh Company of the First Battalion
of the Foreign Legion of France, stationed at Anargoula in the Sahara,
learned that Lieutenant Roberte was in hospital with a broken leg, it
realized that, Captain d'Armentires being absent with the Mule
Company, chasing Touaregs to the south, it would be commanded for a
space by Sergeant-Major Suicide-Maker--in other words by The Devil.

Not only would it be commanded by him, it would be harried, harassed,
hounded, bullied, brow-beaten, and be-devilled; it would be unable to
call its soul its own and loth to so call its body.

On realizing the ugly truth, the Seventh Company gasped unanimously and
then swore diversely in all the languages of Europe and a few of those
of Asia and Africa.  It realized that it was about to learn, as the
Bucking Bronco remarked to his friend John Bull (once Sir Montague
Merline, of the Queen's African Rifles), that it had been wrong in
guessing it was already on the ground-floor of hell.  Or, if it had
been there heretofore, it was now about to have a taste of the cellars.

Sergeant-Major Suicide-Maker had lived well up to his reputation, even
under the revisional jurisdiction and faintly restraining curb of
Captain d'Armentires and then of Lieutenant Roberte.

Each of these was a strong man and a just, and though anything in the
world but mild and indulgent, would not permit really unbridled vicious
tyranny such as the Sergeant-Major's unsupervised, unhampered sway
would be.  Under their command, he would always be limited to the
surreptitious abuse of his very considerable legitimate powers.  With
no one above him, the mind shrank from contemplating the life of a
Legionary in Anargoula, and from conceiving this worthy as absolute
monarch and arbitrary autocrat.

The number of men undergoing _cellule_ punishment would be limited only
by standing room in the cells--each a miniature Black Hole of Calcutta
with embellishments.  The time spent in drilling at the _pas
gymnastique_[1] and, worse, standing at "attention" in the hottest
corner of the red-hot barrack-yard would be only limited by the
physical capacity of the Legionaries to run and to stand at
"attention."  Never would there be "_Rompez_"[2] until some one had
been carried to hospital, suffering from heatstroke or collapse.  The
alternatives to the maddening agony of life would be suicide, desertion
(and death from thirst or at the hands of the Arabs), or revolt and the
Penal Battalions--the one thing on earth worse than Legion life in a
desert station, under a half-mad bully whose monomania was driving men
to suicide.  _Le Cafard_, the desert madness of the Legion, was rampant
and chronic.  Ten legionaries under the leadership of a Frenchman
calling himself Blondin, and who spoke perfect English and German, had
formed a secret society and hatched a plot.  They were going to
"remove" Sergeant-Major Suicide-Maker and "go on pump," as the
legionary calls deserting.


[1] The "double" march.

[2] Dismiss.


Blondin (a pretty, black-eyed, black-moustached Provenal, who looked
like a blue-jowled porcelain doll) was an educated man, brilliantly
clever, and of considerable personality and force of character.  Also
he was a finished and heartless scoundrel.  His nine adherents were
Ramon Diego, a grizzled Spaniard, a man of tremendous physical strength
and weak mind; Fritz Bauer, a Swiss, also much stronger of muscle than
of brain; a curious Franco-Berber half-caste called Jean Kebir, who
spoke perfect Arabic and knew the Koran by heart (_Kebir_ is Arabic for
"lion," and a lion Jean Kebir was, and Blondin had been very glad
indeed to win him over, as he would be an invaluable interpreter and
adviser in the journey Blondin meant to take); Jacques Lejaune, a
domineering, violent ruffian, a former merchant-captain, who could
steer by the stars and use a compass; Fritz Schlantz, a wonderful
marksman; Karl Anderssen, who had won the _mdaille_ for bravery;
Mohamed the Turk--just plain Mohamed (very plain); Georges Grondin the
musician who was a fine cook; and finally the big Moorish negro, Hassan
Moghrabi, who understood camels and horses.

The Society had been larger, but Franz Joseph Meyr the Austrian had
killed Dimitropoulos the Greek, had deserted alone, and been filleted
by the Touaregs.  Also Alexandre Bac, late of Montmartre, had hanged
himself, and La Cigale had gone too hopelessly mad.

It had been for a grief unto Monsieur Blondin that he could by no means
persuade old Jean Boule to join.  On being sworn to secrecy and
"approached" on the subject, ce bon Jean had replied that he did not
desire to quit the Legion (_Bon sang de Dieu!_), and, moreover, that if
he went "on pump," his friends les Lgionnaires Rupert, 'Erbiggin, and
le Bouckaing Bronceau would go too--and he did not wish to drag them
into so perilous a venture as an attempt to reach the Moroccan coast
across the desert from Anargoula.  Moreover, if he came to know
anything of the plot to kill the Sergeant-Major he would certainly warn
him, if it were to be a mere stab-in-the-back assassination affair,
some dark night.  A fair fight is a different thing.  If Blondin met
the Sergeant-Major alone, when both had their sword-bayonets--that was
a different matter....

Monsieur Blondin sheered off, and decided that the less Jean Boule knew
of the matter, the better for the devoted Ten....

  "Ten little Lgionnaires
  Going 'on pump,'
  Got away safely
  And gave _les autres_ the pump,"

sang Monsieur Blondin, who was very fond of airing his really
remarkable knowledge of colloquial English, British slang, clichs,
rhymes, and _guinguette_ songs.  Not for nothing had he been a Credit
Lyonnais bank-clerk in London for six years.  Being a Provenal, he
added a pronounced _galgeade_ wit to his _macabre_ Legion-humour.

One terrible day the Sergeant-Major excelled himself--but it was not,
as it happened, one of the Ten who attempted to "remove" him.

Having drilled the parade of "defaulters" almost to death, he halted
the unfortunate wretches with their faces to a red-hot wall and their
backs to the smiting sun, and kept them at "attention" until Tou-tou
Boil-the-Cat, an evil liver, collapsed and fell.  He was allowed to
lie.  When, with a crash, old Tant-de-Soif went prone upon his face,
paying his dues to Alcohol, the Sergeant-Major gave the order to turn
about, and then to prepare to fire.  When the line stood, with empty
rifles to the shoulder, as in the act of firing, he kept it in the
arduous strain of this attitude that he might award severe punishment
to the owner of the first rifle that began to quiver or sink downward.
As he did so, he lashed and goaded his victims mercilessly and
skilfully.

At last, the rifle of poor young Jean Brecque began to sway and droop,
and the Sergeant-Major concentrated upon the half-fainting lad the
virulent stream of his poisonous vituperation.  Having dealt with the
subject of Jean, he began upon that of Jean's mother, and with such
horrible foulness of insult that Jean, whose mother was his saint,
sprang forward and swung his rifle up to brain the cowardly brute with
the butt.  As he bounded forward and sprang at the Sergeant-Major, that
officer coolly drew his automatic pistol and shot Jean between the eyes.

Had Blondin acted then, his followers, and the bulk of the parade,
would have leapt from their places and clubbed the Sergeant-Major to a
jelly.  But Monsieur Blondin knew that the Sergeant-Major had seven
more bullets in his automatic, also that the first man who moved would
get one of them, and suicide formed no part of his programme.

"Not just anyhow and anywhere in the trunk, you will observe,
sclrats," remarked the Suicide-Maker coolly, turning Jean over with
his foot, "but neatly in the centre of the face, just between the eyes.
My favourite spot.  _Cessez le feu!  Attention!  Par files de quatre.
Pas gymnastique....  En avant....  Marche!_" ...

The plan was that the Ten, stark naked--so as to avoid any
incriminating stains, rents, or other marks upon their
garments--should, bayonet in hand, await the passing of the
"Suicide-Maker" along a dark corridor that evening.  Having dealt with
him quietly, but faithfully, they would dress, break out of the post,
and set their faces for Morocco at the _pas gymnastique_.

As for Monsieur Blondin, he was determined that this should be no
wretched abortive stroll into the desert, ending in ignominious return
and surrender for food and water; in capture by _goums_[3] in search of
the 25 franc reward for the return of a dead or alive deserter; nor in
torture and death at the hands of the first party of nomad Arabs that
should see fit to fall upon them.  Blondin had read the _Anabasis_ of
one Xenophon, and an _Anabasis_ to Maroc he intended to achieve on the
shoulders, metaphorically speaking, of the faithful nine.  Toward the
setting sun would he lead them, across the Plain of the Shott, through
the country of the Beni Guil, toward the Haut Atlas range, along the
southern slopes to the Adrar Ndren, and so to Marakesh and service with
the Sultan, or to escape by Mogador, Mazagan, or Dar-el-Beida.  No more
difficult really than toward Algiers or Oran, and, whereas capture in
that direction was certain, safety, once in Morocco, was almost equally
sure.  For trained European soldiers were worth their weight in silver
to the Sultan, and, in his service, might amass their weight in gold.
A Moorish villa (and a harem) surrounded by fig-orchards, olive-fields,
vineyards, palm-groves, and a fragrant garden of pepper-trees,
eucalyptus, walnut, almond, oleander, orange and lemon, would suit
Monsieur Blondin well.  Oh, but yes!  And the Ouled-Nael dancing-girls,
Circassian slaves, Spanish beauties....


[3] Arab gens d'armes.


The first part of the plan failed, for _ce vieux sale cochon_ of a Jean
Boule came along the corridor, struck a match to light his cigarette,
saw the crouching, staring, naked Ten, and, being a mad Englishman and
an accursed dog's-tail, saved the life of the Sergeant-Major.  That the
Ten took no vengeance upon Jean Boule was due to their lack of desire
for combat with the mighty _Americain_, le Bouckaing Bronceau, and with
those tough and determined fighters, les Lgionnaires Rupert and
'Erbiggin.  All four were masters of _le boxe_, and, if beaten, knew it
not....

The Ten went "on pump" with their wrongs unavenged, save that Blondin
stole the big automatic-pistol of the Sergeant-Major from its nail on
the wall of the orderly-room.

They took their Lebel rifles and bayonets, an accumulated store of
bread and biscuits, water, and, each man, such few cartridges as he had
been able to steal and secrete when on the rifle-range, or marching
with "sharp" ammunition.

Getting away was a matter of very small difficulty; it would be staying
away that would be the trouble.  One by one, they went over the wall of
the fort, and hid in ditches, beneath culverts, or behind cactus-bushes.

At the appointed rendezvous in the _village Ngre_, the Ten assembled,
fell in, and marched off at the _pas gymnastique_, Blondin at their
head.  After travelling for some hours, with only a cigarette-space
halt in every hour, and ere the stars began to pale, Blondin gave the
order "_Campez!_" and the little company sank to the ground, cast off
accoutrements and capotes, removed boots, and fell asleep.  Before dawn
Blondin woke them and made a brief speech.  If they obeyed him
implicitly and faithfully, he would lead them to safety and prosperity;
if any man disobeyed him in the slightest particular, he would shoot
him dead.  If he were to be their leader, as they wished, he must have
the promptest and most willing service and subordination from all.
There was a terrible time before them ere they win to the Promised
Land, but there was an infinitely worse one behind them--so let all who
hoped to attain safety and wealth look to it that his least word be
their law.

And the Ten Bad Men, desperate, unscrupulous, their hand against every
man's, knowing no restraint nor law but Expedience, set forth on their
all but hopeless venture, trusting ce cher Blondin (who intended to
clamber from this Slime-pit of Siddim on their carcases, and had chosen
them for their various utilities to his purpose).

At dawn, Blondin leading, caught sight of a fire as he topped a ridge,
sank to earth, and was at once imitated by the others.

He issued clear orders quickly, and the band skirmished toward the
fire, _en tirailleur_, in a manner that would have been creditable to
the Touaregs themselves.  It was a small Arab douar, or encampment, of
a few _felidj_ (low camel-hair tents), and a camel-enclosure.
Blondin's shot, to kill the camel-sentry and bring the Arabs running
from their tents, was followed by the steady, independent-firing which
disposed of these unfortunates.

His whistle was followed by the charge, which also disposed of the
remainder and the wounded, and left the Ten in possession of camels,
women, food, weapons, tents, Arab clothing, and money.  Fortune was
favouring the brave!  But the Ten were now Nine, for, as they charged,
the old sheikh, sick and weak though he was, fired his long gun into
the chest of Karl Anderssen at point-blank range....

An hour later the _djemels_ were loaded up with what Blondin decided to
take, the women were killed, and the Nine were again _en route_ for
Maroc, enhearted beyond words.  There is a great difference between
marching and riding, between carrying one's kit and being carried
oneself, and between having a little dry bread and having a fine stock
of goat-flesh, rice, raisins, barley, and dates when one is crossing
the desert.

In addition to the _djemels_, the baggage-camels, there were five
_mehara_ or swift riding-camels, and, on four of these, Monsieur
Blondin had mounted the four men he considered most useful to his
purposes--to wit, Jean Kebir, the Berber half-caste who spoke perfect
Arabic as well as the _sabir_ or lingua-franca of Northern Africa, and
knew the Koran by heart; Hassan Moghrabi, the Moorish negro, who
understood camels and horses; Mohamed the Turk, who also would look
very convincing in native dress; and Jacques Lejaune, who could use a
compass and steer by the stars, and who was a very brave and determined
scoundrel.

When allotting the _mehara_ to these four, after choosing the best for
himself, Blondin, hand on pistol, had looked for any signs of
discontent from Ramon Diego, Fritz Bauer, Fritz Schlantz, or Georges
Grondin, and had found none.  Also when he ordered that each man should
cut the throat of his own woman, and Hassan Moghrabi should dispose of
the three superfluous ones, no man demurred.  The Bad Men were the less
disposed to refuse to commit cold-blooded murder because the stories of
the tortures inflicted upon the stragglers and the wounded of the
Legion are horrible beyond words--though not more horrible than the
authentic photographs of the tortured remains of these carved and
jointed victims, that hang, as terrible warnings to deserters, in every
_chambre_ of the _casernes_ of the Legion.  They killed these women at
the word of Blondin--but they knew that the women would not have been
content with the mere killing of _them_, had they fallen into the hands
of this party of Arabs.

As, clad in complete Arab dress, they rode away in high spirits, le bon
Monsieur Blondin sang in English, in his droll way--

  "Ten little Lgionnaires
  Charging all in line--
  A naughty Arab shot one
  And then--there were _Nine_."

The Nine rode the whole of that day and, at evening, Blondin led them
into a _wadi_ or canyon, deep enough for concealment and wide enough
for comfort.  Here they camped, lit fires, and Georges Grondin made a
right savoury stew of kid, rice, raisins, barley, dates, and bread in
an Arab _couscouss_ pot.  The Nine slept the sleep of the just and, in
the morning, arose and called ce bon Blondin blessed.  With camels,
food, cooking-pots, sleeping-rugs, tents, clothing, extra weapons, and
much other useful loot, hope sprang strong as well as eternal in their
more or less human breasts.

Blondin led them on that day until they had made another fifty miles of
westing, and halted at a little oasis where there was a well, a _kuba_
(or tomb of some marabout or other holy person), and a small _fondouk_
or caravan rest-house.  Jean Kebir having reconnoitred and declared the
_fondouk_ empty, and the place safe, they watered their camels,
occupied the _fondouk_, and, after a pleasant evening and a good
supper, slept beneath its hospitable and verminous shelter--four of the
party being on sentry-go, for two hours each, throughout the night.

At this place, the only human beings they encountered were a horrible
disintegrating lump of disease that hardly ranked as a human being at
all, and an ancient half-witted person who appeared to combine the
duties of verger and custodian of the _kuba_ with those of caretaker
and host of the _fondouk_.  Him, Jean Kebir drove into the former
building with horrible threats.  Fortunately for himself, the aged
party strictly conformed to the orders of Kebir, for Blondin had given
the Berber instructions to dispatch him forthwith to the joys of
Paradise if he were seen outside the tomb.  Next day, as the party
jogged wearily along, Blondin heard an exclamation from Jean Kebir and,
turning, saw him rein in his _mehari_ and stare long and earnestly
beneath his hand toward the furthermost sand-hills of the southern
horizon.  On one of these, Blondin could make out a speck.  He raised
his hand, and the little cavalcade halted.

"What is it?" he asked of Kebir.

"A Targui scout," was the reply.  "We shall be attacked by
Touaregs--_now_ if they are the stronger party, to-night in any
case--unless we reach some _ksar_[4] and take refuge....  That might be
more dangerous than waiting for the Touaregs, though."


[4] Fortified village.


"How do you know the man is a Targui?" asked Blondin.

"I do not know _how_ I know, but I do know," was the reply.  "Who else
would sit all day motionless on a _mehari_ on top of a sand-hill but a
Targui?  The Touareg system is to camp in a likely place and keep their
horses fresh while a chain of slaves covers a wide area around them.
In bush country they sit up in trees, and in the desert they sit on
camels, as that fellow is doing.  Directly they spot anything, they
rush off and warn their masters, who then gallop to the attack on
horseback if they are in overwhelming strength, or wait until night if
they are not."

Even as he spoke the watcher disappeared.

"Push on hard," ordered Blondin, and debated as to whether it would be
better for the _mehari_-mounted five to desert the _djemel_-mounted
four and escape, leaving them to their fate, or to remain, a band of
nine determined rifles.  Union is strength, and there is safety in
numbers--so he decided that the speed of the party should be that of
the well-flogged _djemels_.

"Goad them on, _mes enfants_," cried he to Diego, Bauer, Schlantz, and
Grondin.  "I will never desert you--but you must put your best leg
foremost.  We are nine, and they may be ninety or nine hundred, these
_sacrs chiens_ of Touaregs."  An hour of hard riding, another--with
decreasing anxiety, and suddenly Blondin's sharp, clear order:

"_Halte! ... Formez le carr! ... Attention pour les feux de salve!_"
as, with incredible rapidity, an avalanche of horsemen appeared over a
ridge and bore down upon them in a cloud of dust, with wild howls of
"_Allah Akbar_" ... "_Lah illah il Allah!_" and a rising united chant
"_Ul-ul-ul-ul Ullah Akbar_."

Swiftly the trained legionaries dismounted, knelt their camels in a
ring, took cover behind them, and, with loaded rifles, awaited their
leader's orders.  Coolly Blondin estimated the number of this band of
The-Forgotten-of-God, the blue-clad, Veiled Men of the desert....  Not
more than twenty or thirty.  They would never have attacked had not
their scout taken the little caravan to be one of traders, some portion
of a migrating tribe, or, perchance, a little gang of smugglers,
traders of the Ouled-Ougouni or the Ouled-Sidi-Sheikhs, or possibly
gun-running Chambaa taking German rifles from Tripoli to Morocco--a
rich prey, indeed, if this were so.  Each Chambi would fight like Iblis
himself though, if Chambaa they were, for such are fiends and devils,
betrayers of hospitality, slayers of guests, defilers of salt, spawn of
Jehannum, who were the sons and fathers of murderers and liars.
Moreover, they would be doubly watchful, suspicious, and resolute if
they, French subjects, were smuggling German guns across French
territory into Morocco under the very nose of the Bureau Arabe....
However, there were but nine of them, in any case, so _Ul-ul-ul-ul-ul
Ullah Akbar_!

"Don't fire till I do--and then at the horses, and don't miss," shouted
Blondin.

The avalanche swept down, and lances were lowered, two-handed swords
raised, and guns and pistols presented--for the Touareg fires from the
saddle at full gallop.

Blondin waited.

Blondin fired....  The leading horse and rider crashed to the ground
and rolled like shot rabbits.  Eight rifles spoke almost
simultaneously, and seven more men and horses spun in the dust.  At the
second volley from the Nine, the Touaregs broke, bent their horses
outward from the centre of the line, and fled.  All save one, who
either could not, or would not, check his maddened horse.  Him Blondin
shot as his great sword split the skull of Fritz Bauer, whose poor
shooting, for which he was notorious, had cost him his life.  "_Cessez
le feu_," cried Blondin, as one or two shots were fired after the
retreating Arabs.  "They won't come back, so don't waste cartridges....
See what hero can catch me a horse."

As he coolly examined the ghastly wound of the dying Fritz Bauer, he
observed to the faithful Jean Kebir "_Habet!_" and added--

  "Nine little Lgionnaires--
  But one fired late
  When a Touareg cut at him--
  And so there were _Eight_."


"_Eh bien, mon Capitaine?_" inquired Kebir.

"_N'importe, mon enfant!_" smiled Monsieur Blondin, and turned his
attention to the property and effects of the dying man....

"We shall hear more of these Forsaken-of-God before long," observed
Jean Kebir when the eight were once more upon their way.

They did.  Just before sunset, as they were silhouetted against the
fiery sky in crossing a sandhill ridge, there was a single shot, and
Georges Grondin, the cook, grunted, swayed, observed "_Je suis bien
touch_"," and fell from his camel.

Gazing round, Blondin saw no signs of the enemy.  The plain was empty
of life--but there might be hundreds of foemen behind the occasional
aloes, palmettos, and Barbary cacti; crouching in the _driss_, or the
thickets of lentisks and arbutus and thuyas.  Decidedly a place to get
out of.  If a party of Touaregs had ambushed them there, they might
empty every saddle without showing a Targui nose....

A ragged volley was fired from the right flank.

"Ride for your lives," he shouted, and set an excellent example to the
other seven.

"What of Grondin?" asked Kebir, bringing his _mehari_ alongside that of
Blondin.

"Let the dead bury their dead," was the reply.  (Evidently the fool had
not realized that the _raison d'tre_ of this expedition was to get
one, Jean Blondin, safe to Maroc!)

An hour or so later, in a kind of little natural fortress of stones,
boulders, and rocks, they encamped for the night, a sharp watch being
kept.  But while Monsieur Blondin slept, Jean Kebir, who was attached
to Georges Grondin, partly on account of his music and partly on
account of his cookery, crept out, an hour or so before dawn, and stole
back along the track, in the direction from which they had come.

He found his friend at dawn, still alive; but as he had been neatly
disembowelled and the abdominal cavity filled with salt and sand and
certain other things, he did not attempt to move him.  He embraced his
cher Georges, bade him farewell, shot him, and returned to the little
camp.

As the cavalcade proceeded on its way, Monsieur Blondin, stimulated by
the brilliance and coolness of the glorious morning, and by high hopes
of escape, burst into song.

  "Eight little Lgionnaires
  Riding from 'ell to 'eaven,
  A wicked Targui shot one--
  And then there were _Seven_,"

improvised he.

Various reasons, shortness of food and water being the most urgent,
made it desirable that they should reach and enter a small _ksar_ that
day.

Towards evening, the Seven beheld what was either an oasis or a
mirage--a veritable eye-feast in any case, after hours of burning
desolate desert, the home only of the horned viper, the lizard, and the
scorpion.

It proved to be a small palm-forest, with wells, irrigating-ditches,
cultivation, pigeons, and inhabitants.  Cultivators were hoeing,
blindfolded asses were wheeling round and round _noria_ wells, veiled
women with red _babooshes_ on their feet bore brightly coloured
water-vases on their heads.  Whitewashed houses came into view, and the
cupola of an adobe-walled _kuba_.

Jean Kebir was sent on to reconnoitre and prospect, and to use his
judgment as to whether his six companions--good men and true, under a
pious vow of silence--might safely enter the oasis, and encamp.

While they awaited his return, naked children came running towards them
clamouring for gifts.  They found the riders dumb, but eloquent of
gesture--and the gestures discouraging.

Some women brought clothes and commenced to wash them in an irrigation
stream, on some flat stones by a bridge of palm trunks.  The six sat
motionless on their camels.

A jet-black Haratin boy brought a huge basket of Barbary figs and
offered it--as a gift that should bring a reward.  At a sign from
Blondin, Mohamed the Turk took it and threw the boy a _mitkal_.

"Salaam," said he.

"_Ya, Sidi, Salaam aleikoum,_" answered the boy, with a flash of
perfect teeth.

Blondin glared at Mohamed.  Could not the son of a camel remember that
the party was dumb--pious men under a vow of silence?  It was their
only chance of avoiding discovery and exposure as accursed Roumis[5]
when they were near the habitations of men.


[5] Europeans.


A burst of music from tom-tom, derbukha, and raita broke the heavy
silence, and then a solo on the raita, the "Muezzin of Satan," the
instrument of the provocative wicked voice.  Some one was getting born,
married, or buried, apparently.

Fritz Schlantz, staring open-mouthed at cyclamens, anemones, asphodels,
irises, lilies, and crocuses between a little cemetery and a stream,
was, for the moment, back in his Tyrolese village.  He shivered....

Jean Kebir returned.  He recommended camping on the far side of the
village at a spot he had selected.  There were strangers, heavily armed
with yataghans, lances, horse-pistols, flissas, and _moukalas_ in the
_fondouk_.  In addition to the flint-lock moukalas there were several
repeating rifles.  They were all clad in _burnous_ and _chechia_, and
appeared to be half-trader, half-brigand Arabs of the Table-land,
perhaps Ouled-Ougouni or possibly Ait-Jellal.  Anyhow, the best thing
to do with them was to give them a wide berth.

The Seven passed through the oasis and, camping on the other side, fed
full upon the proceeds of Kebir's foraging and shopping.

That night, Fritz Schlantz was seized with acute internal pains, and
was soon obviously and desperately ill.

"Cholera!" said Monsieur Blondin on being awakened by the sufferer's
cries and groans.  "Saddle up and leave him."

Within the hour the little caravan had departed, Jacques Lejaune
steering by the stars.  To keep up the spirits of his followers
Monsieur Blondin sang aloud.

First he sang--

  "Des marches d'Afrique
  J'en ai pleine le dos.
  On y va trop vite.
  On n'y boit que de l'eau.
  Des lauriers, des victoires,
  De ce songe illusoire
  Que l'on nomine 'la gloire,'
  J'en ai plein le dos,"

and then _Derrire l'Htel-Dieu_, and _Pre Dupanloup en chemin de
fer_.  In a fine tenor voice, and with great feeling, he next rendered
_L'Amour m'a rendu fou_, and then, to a tune of his own composition,
sang in English--

  "Seven little Lgionnaires
  Eating nice green figs,
  A greedy German ate too much--
  And then there were _Six_."


Day after day, and week after week, the legionaries pushed on,
sometimes starving, often thirsty, frequently hunted, sometimes living
like the proverbial _coq en pte_, or, as Blondin said, "Wee peegs in
clover," after ambushing and looting a caravan.

Between Amang and Illigh lie the bones of Jacques Lejaune, who was shot
by Blondin.  As they passed out of the dark and gloomy shade of a great
cedar forest, there was a sudden roar, and a lioness flung herself from
a rock upon Lejaune's camel.  Lejaune was leading as the sun had set.
Blondin, who was behind him, fired quickly, and the bullet struck him
in the spine and passed out through his shattered breast-bone.  He had
been getting "difficult" and too fond of giving himself airs on the
strength of his navigating ability, and, moreover, Monsieur Blondin had
learnt to steer by the stars, having located the polar star by means of
the Great Bear.

It was a sad "accident," but Blondin had evidently recovered his
spirits by morning, as he was singing again.

He sang--

  "Six little Lgionnaires
  Still all alive,
  But one grew _indisciplin_--
  And then there were _Five_." ...

Distinctly of a _galgeade_ wit and a _macabre_ humour was Monsieur
Blondin, and even as his eye roamed over the scrubby hill-sides and he
thought fondly of the _mussugues_, the cistus-scrub hillocks of his
dear Provence, he calculated the total sum of money now divided among
the said Five, and reflected that division, where money is concerned,
is deplorable.  Also, as he gazed upon the tracts of thorn that
recalled the _argeras_ of Hyres, he decided that, all things
considered, it would be as well for him to reach Marakesh alone.  He
understood the principle of rarity-value, and knew that either one of
two new-comers would not fetch a quarter of the price of a single
new-comer to a war-harassed Sultan whose crying need was European
drill-sergeants and centurions.

Jean Blondin would rise to be a second Kaid McLeod, and would amass
vast wealth to boot....

At Ait-Ashsba, bad luck overtook Ramon Diego.  At the _fondouk_ he
smote a burly negro of Sokoto who jostled him.  The negro, one of a
band of departing wayfarers, was a master of the art of _rabah_, the
native version of _la savate_, and landed Ramon a most terrible kick
beneath the breast-bone.  As he lay gasping and groaning for breath,
the negro whipped out his razor-edged yataghan and bent over the
prostrate man.  Holding aloof, Blondin saw the negro spit on the back
of Ramon Diego's neck, and with his finger draw a line thereon.
Stepping swiftly back, the gigantic black then smote with all his
strength, and the head of Ramon Diego rolled through the doorway and
down the stony slope leading from the _fondouk_.  As the negro mounted
his swift Filali camel, Blondin investigated the contents of a leather
bag which Ramon always wore at the girdle, beneath his _haik_.  On
being told of the mishap, Jean Kebir was all for pursuit and vengeance.
This, Blondin vetoed sternly.  There were now only four of them, and
henceforth they must walk delicately and be _miskeen_, modest, humble
men.  Only four now!

  "Five little Lgionnaires,
  Each man worth a score;
  But a big nigger 'it one--
  And then there were _Four_,"

sang Monsieur Blondin.

But what a four!  Jean Kebir, the genuine local article, more or less;
Hassan Moghrabi, near his native heath and well in the picture; Mohamed
the Turk, a genuine Mussulman, able to enter any mosque or _kuba_ and
display his orthodoxy; and himself, a pious man hooded to the eyes,
under a vow of silence.

In due course, the Four reached the Adrar highlands, and tasted of the
hospitality of this grim spot, with its brigands' _agadirs_ or castles
of stone.  Having no _mezrag_, no token of protection from some Chief
of Many Tents, and the thrifty Blondin refusing Kebir's request to be
permitted to buy one, they had to trust to speed and secrecy.  As it
was, a band swooping down upon them from an _agadir_ (obviously of
Phoenician origin), pursued them so closely and successfully, that
Mohamed, the worst mounted, bringing up the rear, was also brought to
earth by a lance thrust through his back and ended his career hanging
by the flesh of his thigh from a huge hook which protruded from the
wall above the door of the _agadir_.

Though greatly incensed at the loss of the Turk's camel and cash,
Monsieur Blondin was soon able to sing again.

  "Four little Lgionnaires
  Out upon the spree,
  The Adrar robbers caught one--
  And soon there were _Three_," ...

he chanted merrily.

As the Three watched some hideous Aissa dervishes dancing on glowing
charcoal, skewering their limbs and cheeks and tongues, eating fire,
and otherwise demonstrating their virtue one night, near El Goundafi, a
_djemel_, thrusting forth his head and twisting his snaky neck, neatly
removed the right knee-cap of Hassan Moghrabi, and he was of no further
use to Monsieur Blondin.  He was left behind, and died in a ditch some
three days later, of loss of blood, starvation, gangrene, and grief.

Clearly Jean Blondin was reserved for great things.  Here were the Ten
reduced to Two, and of those two he was one--and intended to be the
only one when he was safe in Maroc.  Singing blithely, he declared
that--

  "Three little Lgionnaires
  Nearly travelled through,
  When a hungry camel ate one--
  And now there are but _Two_." ...


On through the beautiful Adrar, past its forests of arbutus, lentisk,
thuya, figs, pines, and palmettos to its belt of olive groves, walnut,
and almond; on toward Djebel Tagharat, the Lord of the Peaks, the
Two-Headed.  On through the Jibali country, called the "Country of the
Gun" by the Arabs, as it produces little else for visitors, toward the
Bled-el-Maghzen, the "Government's Territory," experiencing many and
strange adventures and hair-breadth escapes.  And, all the way, Jean
Kebir served his colleague and leader well, and often saved him by his
ready wit, knowledge of the country and the _sabir_, and his good
advice.

And in time they reached the gorge of Wad Nafiz, and rode over a carpet
of pimpernels, larkspur, gladiolus, hyacinths, crocuses, wasp-orchids,
asphodels, cyclamens, irises, and musk-balsams; and Blondin realized
that it was time for Jean Kebir to die, if he were to ride to Marakesh
alone and to inherit the whole of what remained of the money looted in
the fifteen-hundred-mile journey, that was now within fifteen hours of
its end....

He felt quite sad as he shot the sleeping Jean Kebir that night, but by
morning was able to sing--

  "Two little Lgionnaires
  Travelling with the sun,
  Two was one too many--
  So now there is but _One_,"

and remarked to his camel, "_'Finis coronat opus,' mon gars._" ...

Even as he caught sight, upon the horizon, of the sea of palms in which
Marakesh is bathed, he was aware of a rush of yelling, gun-firing,
white-clad lunatics bearing down upon him....  A Moorish _harka_!  Was
this a _lab-el-baroda_, a powder-play game--or what?  They couldn't be
shooting at _him_....  What was that Kebir had said? ... "The Moors are
the natural enemies of the Arabs.  We must soon get Moorish garb or
hide"--when ... a bullet struck his camel and it sprawled lumberingly
to earth.  Others threw up spouts of dust.  Blondin sprang to his feet
and shouted.  Curse the fools for thinking him an Arab!  _Oh, for the
faithful Jean Kebir to shout to them in the_ sabir _lingua franca!_ ...
A bullet struck him in the chest.  Another in the shoulder.  He fell.

As the Moors gathered round to slice him in strips with flissa,
yataghan, and sword, they found that their prey was apparently
expending his last breath in prayers and pans to Allah.  He gasped:

  "One little Lgionnaire,
  To provide _le bon Dieu_ fun,
  Was killed because he killed his friend--
  And now there are _None_."  ...

There were.

Decidedly of a _galgeade_ wit and a _macabre_ humour to the very
last--ce bon Jean Blondin.

"_Que voulez-vous?  C'est la Legion!_" ...




II

 LA NINON DE L'ENCLOS

It was one of La Cigale's good days, and the poor "Grasshopper" was
comparatively sane.  He was one of the most remarkable men in the
French Foreign Legion in that he was a perfect soldier, though a
perfect lunatic for about thirty days in the month.  When not a
Grasshopper (or a Japanese lady, a Zulu, an Esquimaux dog or a Chinese
mandarin) he was a cultured gentleman of rare perception,
understanding, and sympathy.  He had been an officer in the Belgian
Corps of Guides, and military attach at various courts....

From a neighbouring group talking to Madame la Cantinire, in the
canteen, came the words, clearly heard, "_Ah!  Oui!  Oui!  Dans la Rue
des Tournelles._" ...

"Now, why should the words 'Rue des Tournelles' bring me a distinct
vision of the Caf Marsouins in Hano by the banks of the Red River in
Tonkin?" asked the Grasshopper a minute later, in English.

"Can't tell you, Cigale; there is no such _rue_ in Hano," replied Jean
Boule.

"No, _mon ancien_," agreed the Grasshopper, "but there was Fifi
Fifinette's place.  Aha!  I have it!"

"Then give us a bit of it, Cocky," put in 'Erb (le Lgionnaire
'Erbiggin--one, Herbert Higgins from Hoxton).

"Yep--down by the factory, near Madame Ti-Ka's joint, it were,"
observed the Bucking Bronco.

"Aha!  I have it.  I remember me why the words 'Rue des Tournelles'
reminded me all suddenly of the Caf Marsouins in Hano," continued the
Grasshopper.  "It was there that I heard from Old Dubeque the truth of
the story of Ninon Drlonnklau, who was Fifi Fifinette's predecessor.
She was a reincarnation of Ninon de l'Enclos, and of course Ninon dwelt
in the Rue des Tournelles in Old Paris a few odd centuries back."

"Did they call the gal Neenong de Longclothes because she wore tights,
Ciggy?" inquired 'Erb.

"Put me wise to Neenong's little stunts before I hit it for the
downy,"[1] requested the Bucking Bronco.


[1] Go to bed.


"Ninon de l'Enclos was a lady of the loveliest and frailest," said the
Grasshopper.  "Oh! but of a charm.  _Ravissante_!  She was, in her
time, the well-beloved of Richelieu, Captain St. Etienne, the Marquis
de Sevign, Cond, Moissins, the Duc de Navailles, Fontenelle, Des
Yveteaux, the Marquis de Villarceaux, St. Evrmonde, and the Abb
Chaulieu.  On her eightieth birthday she had a devout and impassioned
lover.  On her eighty-fifth birthday the good Abb wrote to her, 'Cupid
has retreated into the little wrinkles round your undimmed eyes.'"...

"_Some_ girl," opined the Bucking Bronco.

"And she lived in the Rue des Tournelles, and so the mention of that
street called the Caf Marsouins of Hano in Tonkin to my mind (for
there did I hear the truth of the fate of Ninon Drlonnklau, the
predecessor of Fifi Fifinette whom some of us here knew)....

"And the chevalier de Villars, the son of Ninon de l'Enclos, was her
lover also, not knowing that Ninon was his mother, nor she that de
Villars was her son--until too late.  Outside her door a necromancer
prophesied the death of de Villars to his face.  An hour later Ninon
knew by a birth-mark that de Villars was her son, and cried aloud, 'You
are my son!'  So he fulfilled the prophecy of the necromancer.  He
drove his dagger through his throat--just where this birth-mark was.
What you call _mole_, eh? ... Shame and horror?  No ... Love.  They who
loved Ninon de l'Enclos _loved_.  Her arms or those of death.  No other
place for a lover of Ninon.  You Anglo-Saxons could _never_
understand....

"And in Hano lived her reincarnation, Ninon Drlonnklau, supposed to
be the daughter of one Drlonnklau, a German of the Legion, and of a
perfect flower of a Lao woman.  And, mind you, _mes amis_, there is
nothing in the human form more lovely than a beautiful Lao girl from
Upper Mekong.

"And _this_ Ninon!  Beautiful?  Ah, my friends--there are no words.
Like yourselves, I seek not the bowers of lovers--but I have the great
love of beauty, and I have seen Ninon Drlonnklau.  Would I might have
seen Ninon de l'Enclos that I might judge if she were one half so
lovely and so fascinating.  And when I first beheld the Drlonnklau she
was no _jeune fille_....

"She had been the well-beloved of governors, generals, and officials
and officers--and there had been catastrophes, scandals, suicides ...
the usual _affaires_--before she became the hostess of legionaries,
marsouins,[2] sailors....


[2] Colonial infantry.


"She had herself not wholly escaped the tragedy and grief that followed
in her train, for at the age of seventeen she had a son, and that son
was kidnapped when at the age that a babe takes the strongest grip upon
a mother's heart and love and life....  And after a madness of grief
and a long illness, she plunged the more recklessly into the pursuit of
that pleasure and joy that must ever evade the children of pleasure,
_les filles de joie_."

'Erb yawned cavernously.

"Got a gasper, Farver?" he inquired of John Bull.

The old soldier produced a small packet of vile black Algerian
cigarettes from his _kpi_, without speaking.

"Quit it, Dub!" snapped the deeply interested Bucking Bronco.
"_Pro_duce silence, and then some, or beat it."[3]


[3] Go away.


"Awright, Bucko," mocked the unabashed 'Erb, imitating the American's
nasal drawl and borrowing from his vocabulary.  "You ain't got no call
ter git het up none, thataway.  Don't yew git locoed an rip-snort--'cos
I guess I don' stand fer it, any."

"Stop it, 'Erb," said John Bull, and 'Erb stopped it.  There would be
trouble between these two one hot day....

"The Legion appropriated her to itself at last," continued the
Grasshopper, "and picketed her house.  Marsouins, sailors,
_pkins_[4]--all ceased to visit her.  It was more than their lives
were worth, and there were pitched battles when whole _escouades_ of
_ces autres_ tried to get in, before it was clearly understood that
Ninon belonged to the Legion.  And this was meat and drink to Ninon.
She loved to be La Reine de la Lgion trangre.  This was not Algiers,
mark you, and she had been born and bred in Hano.  She had not that
false perspective that leads the women of the West to prefer those of
other Corps to the sons of La Lgion.  And there were one or two
moneyed men hiding in our ranks just then.  She loved one for a time
and then another for a time, and frequently the previous one would act
rashly.  Some took their last exercise in the Red River.  An unpleasant
stream in which to drown.


[4] Civilians.


"Then came out, in a new draft, young Villa, supposed to be of Spanish
extraction--but he knew no Spanish.  I think he was the handsomest
young devil I have ever seen.  He had coarse black hair that is not of
Europe, wild yellow eyes, and a curious, almost gold complexion.  He
was a strange boy, and of a temperament decidedly, and he loved flowers
as some women do--especially ylang-ylang, jasmine, magnolia, and those
of sweet and sickly perfume.  He said they stirred his blood, and his
pre-natal memories....

"And one night old Dubeque took him to see La Belle Drlonnklau.

"As he told it to me I could see all that happened, for old Dubeque had
the gift of speech, imagination, and the instinct of the drama....  Old
Dubeque--the drunken, depraved scholar and _gentilhomme_.

"Outside her door a begging soothsayer whined to tell their fortunes.
It was the Annamite New Year, the Tht, when the native _must_ get
money somehow for his sacred jollifications.  This fellow stood making
the humble _la_ or prolonged salaam, and at once awoke the interest of
young Villa, who tossed him a piastre.

"Old Dubeque swears that, as he grabbed it, this _diseur de bonne
aventure_, a scoundrel of the Delta, said, 'Missieu French he die
to-night,' or words to that effect in pigeon-French, and Villa rewarded
the Job-like Annamite with a kick....  They went in....

"As they entered the big room where were the Mekong girls and Madame
Drlonnklau, the boy suddenly stopped, started, stared, and stood with
open mouth gazing at La Belle Ninon.  He had eyes for no one else.  She
rose from her couch and came towards him, her face lit up and exalted.
She led him to her couch and they talked.  Love at first sight!  _Love_
had come to that so-experienced woman; to that wild _farouche_ boy.
Later they disappeared into an inner room....

"Old Dubeque called for a bottle of wine, and drank with some of the
girls.

"He does not know how much later it was that the murmur of voices in
Madame's room ceased with a shriek of '_Mon fils_,' a horrid, terrific
scream, and the sound of a fall.

"Old Dubeque was not so drunk but what this sobered him.  He entered
the room.

"Young Villa had fulfilled the prophecy of the necromancer.  He had
driven his bayonet through his throat--just where a large birthmark
was.  What you call _mole_, eh?  It was exposed when his shirt-collar
was undone....  Ninon Drlonnklau lived long, may be still
alive--anyhow, I know she lived long--in a _maison de sant_.  Yes--a
reincarnation....

"That is of what the words _la Rue de Tournelles_ reminded me."

"'Streuth!" remarked le Lgionnaire 'Erbiggin, and scratched his
cropped head.




III

AN OFFICER AND--A LIAR

Little Madame Gallais was always a trifle inclined to the occult, to
spiritualism, and to dabbling in the latest thing psychic and
metaphysical.  At home, in Marseilles, she was a prominent member and
bright particular star of a Cercle which was, in effect, a Psychical
Research Society.  She complained that one of the drawbacks of
accompanying her husband on Colonial service was isolation from these
so interesting pursuits and people.

Successful and flourishing occultism needs an atmosphere, and it is
difficult for a solitary crier in the wilderness to create one.
However, Madame Gallais did her best.  She could, and would, talk to
you of your subliminal self, your subconscious ego, your true psyche,
your astral body, and of planes.  On planes she was quite at home.  She
would ask gay and sportive _sous-lieutenants_, fresh from the
boulevards of Paris, as to whether they were mediumistic, or able to
achieve clairvoyant trances.  It is to be recorded that, at no dance,
picnic, garden-party, "fiv' o'clock," or dinner did she encounter a
French officer who confessed to being mediumistic or able to achieve
clairvoyant trances.

Nor was big, fat Adjudant-Major Gallais any better than the other
officers of the Legion and the _Infanterie de la Marine_ and the
_Tirailleurs Tonkinois_ who formed the circle of Madame's acquaintance
in Eastern exile.  No--on the contrary, he distinctly inclined to the
materialistic, and preferred red wines to blue-stockings--(not blue
silk stockings, _bien entendu_).  For mediums and ghost-seers he had an
explosive and jeering laugh.  For vegetarians he had a contempt and
pity that no words could express.

A teetotaller he regarded as he did a dancing dervish.

He had no use for ascetics and self-deniers, holding them mad or
impious.

No, it could not be said that Madame's husband was mediumistic or able
to achieve clairvoyant trances, nor that he was a tower of strength and
a present help to her in her efforts to create the atmosphere which she
so desired.

When implored to gaze with her into the crystal, he declared that he
saw things that brought the blush of modesty to the cheek of Madame.

When begged to take a hand at "planchette" writing, he caused the
innocent instrument to write a naughty _guinguette_ rhyme, and to sign
it Eugnie Yvette Gallais.

When besought to witness the wonders of some fortune-teller, seer,
astrologer or yogi, he put him to flight with fearful grimaces and
gesticulations.

And this was a great grief unto Madame, for she loved astrologers and
fortune-tellers in spite of all, or rather of nothing.  And yet
_malgr_ the fat Adjudant-Major's cynicism and hardy scepticism, the
very curious and undeniable fact remained, that Madame had the power to
influence his dreams.  She could, that is to say, make him dream of
her, and could appear to him in his dreams and give him messages.  The
Adjudant-Major admitted as much, and thus there is no question as to
the fact.  (Indeed, when Madame died in Marseilles many years later, he
announced the fact to us in Algeria, more than forty-eight hours before
he received confirmation of what he knew to be the truth of his dream.)

Two people less alike than the gallant Adjudant-Major and his wife you
could not find.  Perhaps that is why they loved each other so devotedly.

"I wonder if my boy will be mediumistic," murmured little Madame
Gallais, as she hung fondly over the cot in which reposed little
Edouard Andr.  "Oh, to be able to hold communion with him when we are
parted and I am in the spirit-world."

"Give the little _moutard_ plenty of good meat," said the big man.  "We
want _le petit Gingembre_ to be a heavy-weight--a born and bred
cuirassier." ...

"_Mon ange_, do you see any reason why twin souls, united in the bonds
of purest love and closest relationship, should not be able to
communicate quite freely when far apart?" Madame Gallais would reply.

"Save postage, in effect?" grinned the Adjudant-Major.

"I mean by medium of rappings, 'planchette,' dreams--if not by actual
appearance and communication in spirit guise?"

"Spirit guys?" queried the stronger and thicker vessel.

"Yes, my soul, spirit guise."

"Oh, ah, yes....  Better not let me catch the young devil in spirit
guise, or I'll teach him to stick to good wine and carry it like a
gentleman....  He must learn his limit....  How soon do you think we
could put him into neat little riding-breeches? ... Cavalry for him....
Not but what the Legion is the finest regiment in the world....  Still
Cuirassiers for him."

"My Own!  Let the poor sweet angel finish with his first petticoats
before we talk of riding-breeches....  And how, pray, would the
riding-breeches accord with his so-beautiful long curls.  They would
not, _mon ange, nest ce pas_?" ...

"No--but surely the curls can be cut off in a very few moments, can't
they?" argued the Major, with the conscious superiority of the logical
sex.

But she, of the sex that needs no logic, only smiled and replied that
she would project herself into her son's dreams every night of his life.

And in the fulness of time, Edouard Andr having arrived at boy's
estate, the curse of the Colonial came upon little Madame Gallais, and
she had to take her son home to France and leave him there with her
heart and her health and her happiness.  She, in her misery, could
conceive of only one fate more terrible--separation from her large,
dull husband, whom she adored for his strength, placidity, courage,
adequacy, and, above all, because he adored her.  Separation from him
would be death, and she preferred the half-death of separation from _le
petit Gingembre_.

She wrote daily to him on her return to Indo-China--printing the words
large and clear for his easier perusal and, at the end of each weekly
budget, she added a postscript asking him whether he dreamed of mother
often.  She also wrote to her own mother by every mail, each letter
containing new and fresh suggestions for his mental, moral, and
physical welfare, in spite of the fact that the urchin already received
the entire devotion, care, and love of the little household at
Marseilles.

Their unceasing, ungrudging devotion, care and love, however, did not
prevent a gentle little breeze from springing up one summer evening,
from bulging the bedroom window-curtain across the lighted gas-jet, and
from acting as the first cause of poor little Edouard Andr being burnt
to death in his bed, before a soul was aware that the tall, narrow
house was on fire.

Big Adjudant-Major Gallais was in a terrible quandary and knew not what
to do.  He had but little imagination, but he had a mighty love for his
wife--and she was going stark, staring mad before his haggard eyes....
And, if she died, he was going to take ship from Saigon and just
disappear overboard one dark night, quietly and decently, like a
gentleman, with neither mess, fuss, nor post-mortem _enqute_.

But there was just a ghost of a chance, a shadow of a hope--this
"planchette" notion that had come to him suddenly in the dreadful
sleepless night of watching....  It could not make things worse--and it
might bring relief, the relief of tears.  If she could weep she could
sleep.  If she could sleep she could live, perhaps--and the Major
swallowed hard, coughed fiercely, and scrubbed his bristly head
violently with both big hands.

It would be a lying fraud and swindle; but what of that if it might
save her life and reason--and he was prepared to forge a cheque, cheat
at cards, or rob a blind Chinese beggar of his last _sabuk_, to give
her a minute's comfort, rest, and peace....  For clearly she must weep
or die, sleep or die, unless she were to lose her reason--and while she
was in an asylum he could not take that quiet dive overboard so that
they could all be together again in the keeping and peace of _le bon
Dieu_....  Rather death than madness, a thousand times....  But if she
died and he took steps to follow her--was there not some talk about
suicides finding no place in Heaven?

_Peste_!  What absurdity!  For surely _le bon Pre_ had as much sense
of fair-play and mercy as a battered old soldier-man of La Legion?  But
it had not come to that yet.  The Legion does not surrender--and the
Adjudant-Major of the First Battalion of The Regiment had still a _ruse
de guerre_ to try against the enemy.  He would do his best with this
"planchette" swindle, and play it for what it was worth.  While there
is life there is hope, and he had been in many a tight place before,
and fought his way out.

To think of Edouard Andr Lucien Gallais playing with "planchette"!
She had often begged him to join hands with her on its ebony board, and
to endeavour to "get into communication" with the spirits of the
departed--but he had always acted the _farceur_.

"Ask the sacred thing to tip us the next Grand Prix winner," he had
said, or "But, yes--I would question the kind spirits as to the address
of the pretty girl I saw at the station yesterday," and then he would
cause the innocent machine to say things most unspiritual.  Well--now
he would see what sort of lying cheat he could make of himself.  To lie
is not gentlemanly--but to save life and reason is.  If to lie is to
blacken the soul--let the soul of Adjudant-Major Gallais be black as
the blackest _ibn Eblis_, if thereby an hour's peace might descend upon
the tortured soul of his wife.  The good Lord God would understand a
gentleman--being one Himself..

And the Major, large, heavy, and slow-witted, entered his wife's
darkened room, and crept toward the bed whereon she lay, dry-eyed,
talking aloud and monotonously.

"... To play such a trick on me!  May Heaven reward those who play
tricks.  Of course, it is a hoax--but why does not mother cable back
that there never was any fire at all, and that she knows nothing about
the telegram? ... How could _le petit Gingembre_ be dead, when there he
is, in the photo, smiling at me so prettily, and looking so strong and
well?  What a fool I am!  Anyone can play tricks on me.  People do....
I shall tell my husband.  He would never play a trick on me, nor allow
such a thing....  A trick!  A hoax!  ... Of course, one can judge
nothing from the handwriting of a telegram.  Anybody could forge one.
A letter would be so difficult to forge....  The sender of that wicked
cable said to himself, 'Madame Gallais cannot pretend that the message
does not come from her mother on grounds of the handwriting being
different from that of her mother--because the writing is never that of
the sender, but that of the telegraph-clerk.  She will be deceived and
think that her mother has really sent it.' ... How unspeakably cruel
and wicked!  No, a letter could not be forged, and that is why there is
no letter.  Let them wait until my husband can get at them.  _Mon petit
Gingembre_!  And it is his birthday in a month....  What shall I get
for him?  I cannot make up my mind.  One cannot get just what one wants
out here, and if one sends the money for something to be bought at
Home, it is not the same thing--it does not seem to the child as though
his parents sent it at all.  How lucky I am to have mother to leave him
to.  She simply worships him, and he couldn't have a happier time, nor
better treatment, if I were there myself.  No--that's just it--the
happier a child is the less it needs you, and you wouldn't have it
unhappy so that it _did_ want you.  How the darling will..." and then
again rose the awful wailing cry as consciousness of the terrible
truth, the cruel loss, the horrible fate, and the sensation of utter
impotence of the bereaved, surged over the wearied, failing brain.  She
must cry or die.

The Major sat beside her and gently patted her, in his dull yearning to
help, to relieve the dreadful agony, to do something.

A gust of rebellious rage shook him, and he longed to fight and to
kill.  Why was he smitten thus, and why was there no tangible opponent
at whom he could rush, and whom he could hew and hack and slay?  He
rose to his feet, with clenched fists uplifted, and purpling face.

"Be calm," he said, and took a hold upon himself.

Useless to attempt to fight Fate or the Devil or whatever it was that
struck you from behind like this, stabbed you in the back, turned life
to dust and ashes....  He must grin and bear it like a man.  Like a
man--and what of the woman?

"He's happy now, _petit_, our _petit Gingembre_," said the poor wretch.

"He's just a jolly little angel, having a fte-day of a time.  He's not
weeping and unhappy.  Not he, _peaudezbie_!"

"Burning!" screamed the woman.  "My baby is burning!  My _petit
Gingembre_ is burning, and no one will help him....  My baby is burning
and Heaven looks on!  Oh, mother!--Annette!--Marie!--Grgoire!--rush up
to the bedroom! ... Quick--he is burning!  The curtain is on fire.  The
blind has caught....  The dressing-table is alight....  The blind has
fallen on the bed.  His pillow is smouldering.  He is suffocating.  The
bed is on fire..." and scream followed heartrending scream.  The
stricken husband seized the woman's hands and kissed them.

"No, _petit_, he never woke.  He never felt anything.  He just passed
away to _le bon Dieu_ in his sleep, without pain or fright, or
anything.  He just died in his sleep.  There is no pain at all about
that sort of suffocation, you know," he said.

"Oh, if I could but think so!" moaned the woman.  "If I could only for
a moment think so! ... Burning to death and screaming for mother....
Edouard!  Shoot me--shoot me!  Or let me..."

"See, Beloved of my Soul," urged her husband, gently shaking her.  "I
do solemnly swear that I know he was not hurt in the least.  He never
woke.  I happen to know it.  I am not saying it to comfort you.  I know
it."

"How could you know, Edouard? ... Oh, my little baby, my little son!
Oh, wake me from this awful _cauchemar_, Edouard.  Say I am dreaming
and am going to wake."

"The little chap's gone, darling, but he went easy, and he's well out
of this cursed world, anyhow.  He'll never have suffering and
unhappiness...  And he had such a happy little life." ...

Then, for the first time in his career, the Major waxed eloquent, and,
for the first time in his life, lied fluently and artistically.  "I
wonder if you'll believe me if I tell you how I _know_ he wasn't hurt,"
he continued.  "It's the truth, you know.  I wouldn't lie to you, would
I?"

"No, you wouldn't deceive me, and you haven't the wit if you would,"
replied his wife.

"No, dearest, that's just it.  I wouldn't and couldn't, as you say.
Well, look here, last night the little chap appeared to me.  _Le petit
Gingembre_ himself!  Faith of a gentleman, he did....  I may have been
asleep, but he appeared to me as plain as you are now....  As pretty, I
mean," he corrected with a heavy, anxious laugh and pat, peering into
the drawn and disfigured face to see if his words reached the
distraught mind, "and he said, 'Father, I want to speak to mother, and
she cannot hear because she cries out and screams and sobs.  It makes
nae so wretched that I cannot bear it.'"

The man moistened parched lips with a leathery tongue.

"And he said, 'Tell her I was not hurt a little bit--not even touched
by the flames.  I just slept on, and knew nothing....  And I couldn't
be happy, even in Heaven, while she grieves so.'"

The woman turned to him.

"Edouard, you are lying to me--and I am grateful to you.  It is as
terrible for you as for me," and she beat her forehead with clenched
fists.

"Eugnie!" cried her husband, "Do you call me a liar!  _Me_?  Did I not
give you my word of honour?"

"Aren't you lying, Edouard?  _Aren't_ you?  ... Don't deceive me,
Edouard Andr Gallais!" and she seized his wrist in a grip that hurt
him.

"I take my solemn oath I am not lying," lied the Major.  "Heaven smite
me if I am.  I swear I am speaking the absolute truth.  _Nom de nom de
Dieu_!  Would I lie to you?"

He must convince her while she had the sanity to understand him....  "I
believe you, Edouard.  You are not deceiving me.  Oh, thank God!  I
humbly thank the good merciful Father.  And it was--it was--a real and
actual communication, Edouard--and vouchsafed to you, the scoffer at
spirit communication."

"Yes, but that's not all, my Eugnie.  The little chap said, 'I cannot
come to mother while she cries out and moans.  Tell her to talk with me
by "planchette," you joining with her.'  He did," lied the Major.

"Oh!  Oh!  Edouard!  Quick!  Where is it? ... Oh, my baby!" cried
Madame Gallais, rising and rushing to a cabinet from which she produced
a heart-shaped ebony board some ten inches long and six broad, having
at the wide end two legs, an inch or so in length terminating in two
swivelled ivory wheels, and, at the other end, a pencil of the same
length as the legs.

Seating herself at her writing-table, she placed the instrument on a
large sheet of paper, while her husband brought a chair to her side.

Both placed their hands lightly on the broad part of the board and
awaited results.

The pencil did not stir.

Minute after minute passed.

The Adjudant-Major was a cunning man of war, and he was using all his
cunning now.

The woman uttered a faint moan as the tenth minute ebbed away.

"Patience, Sweetheart," said he.  "It's worth a fair trial and a little
patience, isn't it?"

"Patience!" was the scornful reply.  "I'll sit here till I die--or I'll
hear from my boy....  You _didn't_ lie to me, Edouard?"

The pencil stirred--stirred, moved, and stopped.

The woman groaned.

The pencil stirred again.  Then it moved--moved and wrote rapidly,
improving in pace and execution as the Major gained practice in pushing
it without giving the slightest impression of using "undue influence."

His wife firmly and fanatically believed that the spirit of her child
was actually present and utilizing, through their brains, the muscles
of their arms, to convey to the paper the message it could neither
speak nor write itself.

Presently the pencil ceased to move, and, after another period of
patient waiting, the stricken mother took the paper from beneath the
instrument and read the "message" of the queer, wavering writing,
feeble, unpunctuated, and fantastic, but quite legible, although
conjoined.

"My Dearest Maman," it ran.  "Why do you grieve so for me and make me
so unhappy?  How can I be joyous when you are sad?  Let me be happy by
being happy yourself.  I cannot come to you while you mourn.  Be glad,
and let me be glad and then you must be more happy still, because I am
happy.  I never felt any pain at all.  I just awoke to find myself
here, where all would be joy for me, except for your grief.  I have
left a world of pain, to wait a little while for you where we shall be
together in perfect happiness for ever.  Let me be happy, dearest
Maman, by being resigned, and then happy, yourself.  When you are at
peace I can come to you always in your dreams, and we can talk
together.  Give me happiness at once, darling Mother.  Please do.  Your
_Petit Gingembre_" ... which was not a bad effort for an unimaginative
and dull-witted man.

He had his instant reward, for on finishing the reading of the
"message," Madame Gallais threw her arms round his neck and burst into
tears--the life-giving, reason-saving, blessed relief of tears.

An hour later she slept, for the first time in five days, holding her
husband's big hand as he sat by her bed.

When she stirred and relinquished it, the next morning, the Major arose
and went out.

"What a sacred liar I am!" quoth he.  "Garon, bring me an _apritif_."


It is notorious that a tangled web we weave when first we practise to
deceive.  And Major Gallais practised hard.  Two and three and four
times daily did he manufacture "messages" from the dead child, and
strive, with his heart in his mouth, to make the successful cheat last
until the first wild bitterness of his wife's grief had worn off.

His hair went grey in the course of a month.

The mental strain of invention, the agony of rasping his own cruel
wound by this mockery--for he had loved _le petit Gingembre_ as much as
the child's mother had done--and the constant terror lest some
unconvincing expression or some unguarded pressure on the "planchette"
should betray him, were more exhausting and wearing than two campaigns
against the "pirates" of Yen Th.

But still he had his reward, for his wife's sane grief, heavy though it
was and cruel, was a very different thing from the mad abandonment and
wild insanity of those dreadful days before he had his great idea.

Many and frequent still were the dreadful throes of weeping and
rebellions against Fate--but "planchette" could always bring
distraction and comfort to the tortured mind, and the soothing belief
in real presence and a genuine communion.

But there was no anodyne for the man's bitter grief, and the
"planchette" became a hideous nightmare to him.  Even his work was no
salvation to him, for though the _Adjudant-Major_ is a regimental staff
officer, corresponding somewhat to our Adjutant--(the "Adjudant" is a
non-com. in the French army)--and a very busy man, Gallais found that
his routine duties were performed mechanically, and by one side of his
brain as it were, while, undimmed, in the fore-front of his mind,
blazed the baleful glare of a vast "planchette," in the flames of which
his little son roasted and shrieked.

And still the daily tale of "messages" must be invented, and daily grew
a greater and more distressing burden and terror.

How much longer could he go on, day after day, and several times a day,
producing fresh communications, conversations, messages, ideas?  How
much longer could he go on inventing plausible and satisfactory answers
to the questions that his wife put to the "spirit" communicant?  How
could Adjudant-Major Gallais of La Lgion trangre describe Heaven and
the environment, conditions, habits, conduct and conversations of the
inhabitants of the Beyond?  How much longer would he be able to use the
jargon of his wife's books on Occultism and Spiritualism, study them as
he might, without rousing her suspicions?  The swindle could not have
lasted a day had she not been only too anxious to believe, and only too
ready to be deceived.

What would be the end of it all?  What would his wife do if she found
out that he had cheated her?  Would she ever forgive him?  Would she
leave him?  Would the shock of the disappointment kill her?  Would she
ever believe him again?

What _could_ the end of it be?

He must stick it out--for life, if need be--and he was not an
imaginative man.

What would be the end?


The end was--that she felt she must go home to France and see her boy's
grave, tend it, pray by it, and give such comfort as she could to her
poor mother, almost as much to be pitied as herself.

Gallais encouraged the idea.  The change would be good for her, and he
would be able to join her in a few months.  Also this terrible
"planchette" strain would cease for him, and he might recover his sleep
and appetite....

"To think that we shall be parted, this time to-morrow, my dearest
Edouard," wept Madame Gallais, as they sat side by side in their
bed-sitting-room, in the _Htel de la Rpublique_ at Saigon.  "I on the
sea and you on your way back alone.  If every thing were not arranged,
I would not go.  Let us have a last 'planchette' with our son, and get
to bed.  We are having _petit djeuner_ at five, you know."

The Major racked his brain for something to write, as Madame went to
her dressing-case for the little instrument (to the Major, an
instrument of torture)--racked his brain for something he had not said
before, and racked in vain.  He grew hotter and hotter and broke into a
profuse perspiration as she seated herself beside him.  _Nom de nom de
Dieu de Dieu de sort_!  What could he write?  Why had his brain ceased
to operate?

_Nombril de Belzbuth_!  Could he not make up one more lie after
carrying on for weeks--weeks during which his waking hours--riding,
drilling, marching along the muddy causeways between the rice-fields,
working in his office, inspecting, eating, and drinking--had been
devoted to hatching "messages," conversations, communications and lies,
till he had lost health, weight, sleep, and appetite....

No....  He could not write a single word, for his mind was absolutely
blank.

Minutes passed.

Sweating, cursing, and praying, the unfortunate man sat in an agony of
misery, and could not write a single word.

Would not _le bon Dieu_ help him?  Just this one last time? ...

Minutes passed.

Not to have saved his life, not to have saved the life of his wife, not
to have brought back _le petit Gingembre_, could the poor tortured
wretch have written a single word....  What would his wife do when she
discovered the cheat--for if no words came during the next minute or
two he knew he must spring to his feet, make full confession, and throw
himself upon his wife's mercy.

That or go mad.

What would she do? .... Leave him for ever? ... Spit upon him and call
him "Liar," "Cheat," and "Heartless, cruel villain"?

Would the dreadful reaction and shock kill her?--deprive her of reason?

Suddenly he perceived that, with hands which were acres in extent, he
was endeavouring to move a "planchette" the size of Indo-China--a
"planchette" that was red-hot and of which the fire burnt into his
brain.  Its smoke and fumes were choking him; its fierce white light
was blinding him; the thing was killing him.


By the time, several weeks later, that little Madame Gallais had nursed
her husband back to sanity and consciousness, the first bitterness of
grief was past and she herself could play the comforter.

"Oh, my Edouard," she wept upon his shoulder when first the brain-fever
left him and he knew her, "we have lost our little Gingembre--but you
have me, and, oh, my brave hero-husband, I have you.  I shall weep no
more." ...

"Planchette" stands on Madame's desk--but she does not use it.




IV

THE DEAD HAND

Chubby, cherubic, and cheerful, with the pure, wholesome blood of his
native Provence yet glowing in his cheeks, Extreme Youth was the only
trouble really--and there are many worse diseases--of Lieutenant
Archambaut Thibaut d'Amienville of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, of the
glorious XIXth Army Corps of La Rpublique Franaise.

As he sat back from the table, fingering his glass, he looked
exceedingly handsome, dashing, and romantic in his beautiful pale blue
uniform.  But he had not found his level, and he was making some bad
breaks.  It does not always conduce to modesty and diffidence in a
young man that his papa is a very prominent and powerful politician,
and his mother a leader of Paris Society.  As the deft native waiters,
arrayed in spotless white, moved the table-cloth and set forth fresh
glasses, ash-trays, shapely bottles and cigarette-boxes on the shining
mahogany that reflected the electric lights like a mirror, he rushed in
once again.  There was no squashing him.

One has heard of people being young enough to know better--young
enough, that is, to have high ideals, generosity, and purity of
motive--but Lieutenant Archambaut Thibaut d'Amienville was young enough
to know best.  He was so young, so wise, and so well informed that he
was known as _Gnral_ and not _Lieutenant_ d'Amienville among his
intimates.  And he was at the moment giving generously and freely to
his seniors of the stores of his wisdom and knowledge.

Captain Gautier d'Armentires, of the First Battalion of La Lgion
trangre, scarred and war-worn hero of Tonquin, Dahomey, and
Madagascar, beloved as few officers are beloved by the wild and
desperate men he led, fine soldier and fine gentleman, remarked to the
officer on his left--a gorgeous Major of Spahis, resplendent in scarlet
cloak (huddled in which he shivered with fever), _ceinturon_, and full
baggy trousers:

"So you are going to have another try for a lion?"  But the Major had
no time to reply for "Gnral" d'Amienville had caught the ultimate
word.  (He had promised his mamma a select consignment of lion-skins of
his own procuring when he left for the wilds of Algiers and the Soudan,
and she had helped in the purchase of the battery of sporting weapons
that he had bought at the gun-shop in the Rue de la Paix, guiding his
taste to the choice of "pretty ones with nice water-marking on the
barrels," and dainty ornament in the way of engraving, chasing,
damascening and mounting.)

"Lion?" said he quickly.  "What you want for lion, d'Armentires, is
impact, concussion, force--er--weight, a-ah-stunning blow....  It is
absolutely useless, you know, for you to go and drill him through and
through with neat little holes of which he is unaware, and which
trouble him not at all....  None of your Mausers or Lebels, you know."
...

Eight pairs of eyes regarded the young gentleman without enthusiasm or
affection; nay, with positive coldness.

The strong and clever face of one of the party, a Captain of Zouaves,
looked somewhat Machiavellian, as, with a cold smile, he encouragingly
murmured "Yes?"

Colonel Leon Lebrun, famous chief of Tirailleurs and old enough to have
been the young gentleman's grandfather, assumed a
Paul-at-the-feet-of-Gamaliel air, and with humility also said "Yes?"

"Yes," continued d'Amienville, "never take one of these small-bore
toys, no matter what the muzzle-velocity.  Get something with a good
fat bore and a good fistful of cordite.  Then you know where you are
and what you are doing....  I'd as soon go with my automatic pistol as
with a small-bore....  And never go on foot--especially in those reedy
places.  And never touch a _tablier_--what the English call a _machan_
when they put them up for tiger in their Indian colonies....  No
good....  Suicide in fact....  What you want to do is to have a
platform--like a sentry's _vue_--strongly lashed in the branches of a
convenient high tree, near the 'kill,' put a mattress on it, and make
yourself comfortable."

"And if, in effect, there be no tree?" respectfully inquired
Mdecin-Major Parme, twirling his huge moustache without revealing the
expression on his thin lips.

"Oh-er-well, then, of course, you might--er--well, perhaps dig a pit
and fence yourself round.  You might, in fact, have a sort of cage....
Just as good for keeping wild beasts out as for keeping them in."

"Excellent!" murmured the Colonel.

"Now _I_ should never have thought of going lion-hunting in a cage.
But original!  Original!  Of a cleverness! ... How many lions have you
shot?"

The flush of embarrassment deepened that of youth and juiciness in the
plump cheek of the young officer.

"Oh-er-well, I have never actually _shot_ any, you know," he replied,
in some confusion, but still with a suggestion of having done something
very similar--of having ridden them down with a hog-spear, or caught
them on a rod and line.

"_Haven't_ you?" asked Captain d'Armentires in apparent surprise.
From the discomfort of his confession the youth quickly recovered with
the attempted _tu quoque_--

"Have _you_?"

"Yes," admitted the Captain, hesitatingly.

"_Oh?_--and when did you shoot one, pray?" inquired d'Amienville, with
a sceptical note, sufficiently impertinent to be irritating.

The Captain's uniform of dark blue and red was a very modest affair
beside that of the young Chasseur--and, _nom de Dieu!_ who was _he_ to
attempt a sneer at the son of Madame d'Amienville--not to mention of
Monsieur d'Amienville, politician of international fame and importance?

The young officer raised his absinthe to the light, crossed a leg,
admired a neat boot, and glanced a trifle disdainfully at the grizzled,
unfashionable old _barbare_ of whom the elegant salons of Paris had
never heard.  (A mere St. Maizent man snubbing an alumnus of St. Cyr!)

"My last, about this time last year," was the reply.

"Your _last_?  And how many, pray, have you shot?" asked d'Amienville
languidly.

"_Eighty-three_," replied the officer of the Legion, fixing a bleak and
piercing grey eye upon the youth.

Wry smiles wreathed the faces of the audience, and the "Gnral"
changed the subject forthwith.  As the fresh and verdant one was their
fellow-guest (of d'Armentires), the others forebore to laugh aloud.

Drawing a bow at a venture, the Lieutenant had a shot at the horse, he
having just purchased his very first pony.

"Excellent riding country, this," he observed patronizingly to his
neighbour, a hard-bitten, saturnine officer, hawk-eyed, hawk-nosed, and
leathern-cheeked.  "I shall do a lot of it....  Very keen on riding and
awfully fond of horses.  I love the _chasse au renard_....  Ah!
Horses!  I know something about them too....  A thing most useful--to
understand horses.  It is not given to all....  Incredible lot to learn
though....  A difficult subject....  Difficult." ...

"Very," acquiesced the neighbour, finding himself the more immediate
recipient of the information.

"But yes--very.  Any time you may be thinking of buying, let me know,
and I shall be charmed to place my knowledge and experience at your
disposal.  Charmed.  Yes, I will look the beast over....  Always best
to take advice when buying a horse.  Terrible rogues these Arabs.  You
are certain to be swindled if you rely on your own judgment.  Cunning
fellows these native _piqueurs_.  Hide any defect from inexperienced
eyes--bad hoofs, sand-crack, ring-bone, splint, wind-galls, _souffle_,
sight, teeth, age, vice--anything.  Charmed to give you my opinion at
any time....  Try him for you too." ...

"Most extremely amiable of you, I'm sure.  Most kind.  A thousand
thanks.  I realize I have a terrible lot to learn about horses yet,"
replied the favoured one.

"Yes, they take a lot of knowing," replied the "Gnral," and, as the
man rose, bade farewell to his host, saluted the company, and departed
to catch the ten-fifteen to Oran, that young but knowing gentleman
observed generously:

"An agreeable fellow that--a most amiable person.  Who is he?"

"Vtrinaire-Colonel Blois!" replied d'Armentires.  "Probably the
cleverest veterinary-surgeon in the army....  You may know his standard
work." ... But Lieutenant d'Amienville again changed the subject
hastily, and then scolded a servant for not bringing him what he had
not ordered.  Thereafter he was silent for nearly five minutes.

Some one mentioned Adjudant-Major Gallais and his curious end.  (He
dreamed that he saw his wife murdered by burglars in their little flat
at Marseilles, was distraught until news came that such a tragedy had
actually happened at the very time of the dream, and at once shot
himself.)

"A very remarkable case of coincidence, to say the least of it,"
observed Captain d'Armentires.  "Personally I should be inclined to
call it something more."

But Lieutenant d'Amienville was a modern of the moderns, an agnostic, a
sceptic.

"All bosh and rubbish," quoth he.  "_Sottise_....  There is no such
thing as this occultism, spiritualism, telepathy, and twaddle.  To the
devil with supraliminal, transliminal, subliminal, astral, and
supernatural.  There _is_ no supernatural." ...

"So?" murmured a dapper little man in scarlet breeches and a black
tunic which had the five-_galon_ed sleeve of a Colonel.

"All nonsense," continued the young gentleman.  "All this that one
hears about mysterious and inexplicable occurrences is always
second-hand.  Second-hand and third person....  Third person
singular--very singular.  Ha!  Ha! ... Yes, all rot and rubbish.  Now,
has anyone of _us_ here ever had an experience of the supernatural
sort?  Not one, I'll be bound.  Not one....  But we all know somebody
who has.  It's always the way." ...

"Well," remarked Captain d'Armentires, "I was once throttled by a Dead
Hand--if you would call that an experience."

"I was speaking seriously," replied the Lieutenant loftily.

"So was I," answered the Captain coldly.

"What do you mean?" queried the youth, fearing the, to him, worst thing
on earth--ridicule.

"Precisely what I say," was the quiet reply.  "I was once seized by the
throat, and all but killed, by a Dead Hand, in the middle of the night
as I lay in bed....  I give you my word of honour--and I request--and
advise--you not to cast any doubt on my statement."

The pointed jaw of Lieutenant d'Amienville dropped, and he stared
round-eyed and open-mouthed at the officer of the Legion, apparently
sane and obviously sober, who could say such things seriously....
Could it be a case of this _cafard_ of which he had heard so much?
No--_le cafard_ is practically confined to the rank and file--and this
man was, moreover, as cool as a cucumber and as normal as the night.
He glanced round the table at his fellow-guests.  They looked expectant
and interested.  This _vieux moustache_ was evidently a man of standing
and consideration among them.

"Tell us the story, _mon gars_," said the Major of Spahis, pouring
cognac into his coffee.

"Do," added the Captain of Zouaves.

"Let's go out into the garden and have it," proposed the Colonel of
Tirailleurs Algriens, half rising.  "May we, d'Armentires?"

"Yes--I must hear this," acquiesced the young Lieutenant with an air of
open-mindedness, but reserved judgment.

"Come on, by all means," answered d'Armentires.  "I should have
thought of it before, Colonel"; and the party rose and strolled across
the veranda out into the garden of the _Cercle Militaire_.

Lgionnaire Jean Boule, or John Bull, standing at the gate leading into
the high-road, and awaiting his officer as patiently as a good orderly
should, thought the scene extraordinarily stage-like and theatrical,
albeit he had seen it many times before.

The brilliant moonlight on the tall and beautiful plane-trees, the
cypress and the myrtle, the orange, magnolia, wistaria, bougainvillea,
the ivy-draped building of the _Cercle_ with its hundreds of lights,
the gorgeous scarlet of the Spahi, the pale blue of the Chasseur, the
yellow and blue of the Tirailleur, the scarlet and black of the
Legionary, and the other gay uniforms made up a picture as unreal as
beautiful.

Gazing upon it, he thought of days when he, too, sat in such groups in
such club-gardens when Life went very well.

In the distance, the famous band of the Legion was playing Gounod's
_Serenade_--probably in the Public Gardens outside the Porte de
Tlemen....

"_En avant, mon choux_," said the Mdecin-Major, as the party settled
into wicker chairs, and the bare-footed, silent servants ministered to
its needs with cigarettes, cheroots, and weird liqueurs.

"And forthwith," added the Colonel, puffing a vast cloud as he lay back
and gazed sentimentally at the moon.

"Well--as you like, gentlemen--but it was nothing.  Just a queer little
experience.  It won't interest you much, I'm afraid," said
d'Armentires.

Then Lieutenant d'Amienville commenced a dissertation upon
auto-suggestion, illusion, and self-deception, but the remainder of
Captain d'Armentires' guests intimated clearly to their host that they
wanted his story, and wanted it at once.

"Have it for what it is worth, then," said that officer.  "But I
request Lieutenant d'Amienville clearly to understand that what I am
about to tell you is _the absolute truth_--the plain and simple tale of
what actually occurred to me personally.  Moreover, should he, while
believing in the honesty of my belief, doubt the trustworthiness of my
observations and conclusions, I may mention that my _ordonnance_ will
be found waiting near the gate--and may be called and questioned.  For
he was concerned in the matter, and not only saw the marks upon my
throat, but actually touched the Dead Hand which all but choked the
life out of me."

The voice of the "Gnral" was stilled within him, but his face was
very eloquent indeed.  "It happened in Haiphong," continued the quiet,
cultured voice of the weary-looking man, "when the Legion sent big
drafts out to Tonkin in '83.  I was commanding a detachment then, with
the rank of Lieutenant.  We had disembarked at the mouth of the Red
River into two old three-decker river-gunboats, and I had had an
infernally busy day--what with the debarkation from the ship and then
again at Haiphong, after the six-hour journey up the river.  On top of
all I had high fever.

"Now, before getting into bed that night, I turned out the lamp that
hung on a nail on the wall, and then lay down, finished my cigarette,
and turned out the tiny hand-lamp which I had brought in from the
bathroom and placed on the little _petit-djeuner_ table beside my bed,
noting, as I did so, that the matches were beside it.  I always lock my
door at night and sleep without a light, but with the means of getting
a light easily accessible.  Funny things are apt to occur at night in
some parts of the shiny East....  I expect they've got electric light
in Haiphong by now....  Well, in two minutes I was sound
asleep--sleeping the sleep of the just and enjoying the reward of my
good conscience, virtuous life, and hard work."

... "_Va ten, blagueur,_" murmured Colonel Lebrun with a smile.

"An hour or two later, I awoke suddenly--awoke to the knowledge that I
was being murdered, was dying, and, in effect, very nearly dead.  Some
one had me by the throat and was choking my life out with as deadly and
scientific a grip as ever fastened upon a man's neck....  The human
mind is curiously constituted, and, even in that moment, I tried to
remember the name of a book about the garotters of India, the
'Thugs'--a book I had read many years before, when studying
English--written by a Colonel of the Army of India....  'Chinese
garotters,' thinks I to myself, and realized that I was in for it, for
I could no more yell for assistance than I could fly.  There was my
orderly sleeping on a rug in a little ante-chamber a few feet from me,
and I could not call to him.  I must face my fate alone and live or die
without help from outside.  I was terrified." ....

One or two of his audience glanced at the medals and decorations on the
speaker's breast (they included the _Croix de Guerre_ and the _Mdaille
Militaire_) and smiled.

"I should have felt for his eyes and blinded him!" announced Lieutenant
d'Amienville.

... "Simultaneously with the awakening to the knowledge that I was
being throttled by some silent, motionless, invisible assailant, came
my attempt to strike him, of course--to spring up, and to grapple with
him; but, simultaneously again with the attempt, came the knowledge
that my right arm was absolutely useless beneath his weight, and that I
was pinned to the pillow, like a butterfly to a cork, by the weight and
power of the hand that had me in its grip.  Finding my right immovable,
I naturally struck out with my left and hit again and again with all my
strength--to find that I struck _nothing_--until, being at my last
gasp, I grabbed at the hand that was choking me and strove to tear it
from my throat.

"Even at that terrible moment I was startled at the extraordinary
coldness of the hand I grasped.  It was as deadly cold as it was
horribly strong, and as brain reeled and senses failed, I seemed to
visualize a terrible marble statue endowed with life and superhuman
strength, leaning its cruel weight upon the frozen hand that clutched
my throat.  And I could not seize or even touch any part of this
horrible assailant but the Hand....  And I tell you the thing was
dead--dead and cold....  I was dying--throttled by a Dead Hand, and
that is the simple truth." ...

None of the party moved or spoke--not even d'Amienville.  That, and the
fact that scarcely a cigar or cigarette remained alight, were
remarkable tributes to d'Armentires' dramatic and convincing way of
speech.  And those of the party who knew him well, also knew him to be
incapable of telling a lie, when he had given his word that what he
said was the truth.

... "Well, I have never believed in taking things lying down, so I
tried once again to get up, and, putting all my heart and soul and
strength into a mighty heave, I strove to throw my assailant off before
I lost consciousness completely....  In vain....

"All this takes time in the telling, but it must have taken mighty
little time in the doing, for I was almost dead from suffocation when I
first awoke.

"As I strained and tore at the hand, I struggled to rise.  My body
writhed, but my right arm budged not a fraction of an inch, and the
grip on my throat perceptibly tightened, though I thought the limit had
surely been reached....  I must get one breath, or ears and eyes and
brain must burst....  Surely I was black in the face and my eyeballs
were on my cheek-bones? ... I lived a lifetime in a second....  So this
was the end and the finish of Gautier d'Armentires, was it?  Here were
to end all dreams of military glory and distinction, all visions of
fine, quick death in action against the foes of La France? ... A dog's
death!  To be slowly suffocated in my bed--choked to death by a cold
Dead Hand, a Hand without a tangible body....

"As my frame was convulsed and my senses finally reeled in
unconsciousness or death, I made my last wild attempt, and probably put
forth such a violent concentration of co-ordinated effort as never
before in my life--and, with a gasp and sob of thankfulness, I flung my
assailant off!

"And, as he fell, he stabbed me in the arm.

"Yes--with the last vestige of my strength I flung it off, and the
crash of falling lamp and table was the sweetest sound I ever heard,
and the pain of the stab in my arm was absolutely welcome....  For I
don't mind confessing that I prefer human, or rather _real_,
antagonists when I have to fight--and when lamp and table smashed to
the ground under its weight, and I felt myself knifed, I knew that this
cold, dead hand belonged to something actual and tangible--something
alive, something human....

"But I have never touched anything that seemed more dead and cold, for
all that.

"Well, my assailant was hardly on the ground before I was there too,
for, although my right arm was absolutely useless from the stab, I
meant to have him somehow.  I hate being choked at night when I am
getting my due and necessary sleep, and I wanted him badly.  I was
really annoyed about it all....

"But he wasn't there, and, as I sprang to my feet and struck and
grabbed and clutched, I clutched and grabbed and struck--precisely
nothing!

"My terror returned tenfold.  Was the Thing supernatural after all?  I
had fallen practically on top of it and actually holding it--and it
_was not_....  But--nonsense!  The most violent and virulent Oriental
djinn, spirit, ghost, devil, afrit, _esprit malin_, or demon, does not
stab one, even if it throttles--as some of them are said to do....

"I crouched still and silent with restrained breathing, hoping to hear
other breathing or some movement.

"Perfect silence and stillness!

"I burst into a cold perspiration--as I imagined the thing to be behind
me, and about to seize my neck again in its frozen, vice-like grip.

"I whirled around with extended arms, and then, rising to my feet,
struck out in every direction, dealing _coups de savate_ when my arms
tired.  And then again I crouched and listened and waited--with my
hands at my throat.

"Perfect silence and stillness!

"And, do you know, my friends, it positively never occurred to me to
cry out for help! ... I suppose my faculties were all so engrossed in
this strange struggle that no corner of my brain was free to think,
'_One shout and Jean Boule will burst in your door, sword-bayonet in
hand._'" ...

"More likely you wanted to see it out all by your little self, _mon
ancien_," smiled Colonel Lebrun.

"But no, I assure you.  I never thought to shout for help....  And
then, as I put a hand to the floor, I touched the matches that had
fallen with the table.  And I thanked _le bon Dieu_....  With trembling
fingers I struck a light--wondering what would be revealed to my
staring eyes, and whether the light would be the signal for my
death-blow.  Should I get it in the back--or across the neck?  Was it a
common Chinese 'pirate'?  I hoped so, ... but they do not have dead
hands and intangible bodies.

"The match flared....

"The room was empty....

"Absolutely empty.  And, look you, my friends, the door was still
locked on the inside; there was no fireplace and chimney, and not so
much as a cat could have escaped by the window without knocking down
the articles which stood on the inner ledge of it--some little brass
ornaments, a crude vase, and one or two framed photographs or pictures.
I went cold all over.  What had throttled me?  What had stabbed me?
Where was the cold Dead Hand which I had grasped? ...

"I lit the wall-lamp.

"There lay the table, overturned in the struggle.  There lay the little
lamp which I had carried in from the neighbouring bathroom.  Its glass
chimney was shattered and oil was running from its brass reservoir.
And there, in my right arm, was the great, gaping stab.

"Going to the mirror, I saw at a glance that there were marks of
fingers on my throat....  _And I knew that nothing bigger than a rat
could have left the room!_

"I felt that I had had enough of mystery in solitude, and remembered my
orderly.  I was weak and faint from the awful struggle, and a little
sick from the stab....  Also, my friends, I was frightened....  A
murderous foe who can throttle and stab, does not lock the door on the
inside as he leaves the room, look you, and neither does he climb
through a small window in silence without disturbing bric-a-brac upon
the sill....

"I unlocked the door, and shouted to my Jean Boule.  He replied on the
instant, and came running.

"He must have thought me mad when he heard my tale--until I directed
his attention to the stab in my arm and the finger-marks on my neck....

"He stared at the debris on the floor, at the undisturbed ornaments on
the window-ledge, at the door, and finally at the marks on my person.

"'Why does not Monsieur le Capitaine bleed?' said he suddenly.  'Has he
used anything to stop the hmorrhage so successfully?' and he took my
arm in his hands.

"Sure enough--no drop of blood had flowed from the deep stab in my
forearm.

"'Why, the arm is dead,' cried Jean Boule, as he felt it.  'What have
you been doing to it, mon Capitaine? ... Excuse me' ... and he placed a
thumb on each side of the stab, opened it, and peered.  Then he laughed
in his quiet gentlemanly way, and glanced at the smashed lamp.

"'I thought so,' he said.  'Glass.  No circulation.  The hand dead,'
and he laughed again.

"'What do you mean, Lgionnaire?' I asked, nettled by his amusement.

"'Why--Monsieur le Capitaine has had a great and terrible fight _with
himself_--and won.  He went to sleep on his right side with his right
arm raised and bent over his neck--and the arm also went to sleep as
the circulation ceased, owing to the position--and Monsieur le
Capitaine got hold of his throat and choked himself.  Then he had
nightmare, _cauchemar_, turned on his back, and woke up choking, and it
was some time before he could budge the cold, stiff arm....  When he
did, he flung it straight on to the lamp, broke the thing, and cut
himself to the bone.' ...

"And so it was! ...

"But I contend that _I have been throttled by a Dead Hand_,
d'Amienville."  ...

Lieutenant d'Amienville made a strange noise in his throat and then
rose and escaped from the circle of mocking eyes.

It was felt that Captain d'Armentires had not only moved an immovable
arm, but had, as the droll English say, "pulled" an unpullable leg.




V

THE GIFT

It was Guest Night at the Spahis' mess.

"What _I_ complain of is the utter absence of gratitude among natives,"
said "Gnral" Archambaud Thibaud d'Amienville of the Chasseurs
d'Afrique of the XIXth Army Corps of La Rpublique Franaise.  "It is
highly significant that there is no word for 'Thank you' in the
vernacular, isn't it? ... If you do a native a good turn, he either
wonders what you want of him, or else casts about in his mind for the
reason why you want to propitiate him.  If you had cause to punish one
of your Spahis and did not do it, he would think you were afraid to.
Kindness is in their eyes pure weakness.  If you forego vengeance, it
must be because you think the offender may avenge that vengeance.  No,
gratitude doesn't flourish under a tropical sun." ... Lieutenant
d'Amienville was very young and therefore very cynical.

"Is it a plant of very hardy growth under a temperate one?" inquired
Captain Gautier d'Armentires of the First Battalion of the Legion.  "I
seem to have heard complaints, and I fancy that poets from the days of
Homer to those of this morning have had something to say about it."

"Quite so," agreed Mdecin-Major Parme; "but pass me the matches, and I
will promise a brief pang of gratitude....  Quite so....  If a fellow
does you a really good turn, he is strongly inclined to like you for
evermore, and you are equally strongly disposed to regard him as a
nuisance, and his mouldy face as a reminder of the time when you had to
_faire la lessive_[1] or were in some fearful scrape....  I could name
a certain absinthe-sodden old Colonel who absolutely loathes me for
having saved him, body and soul, some years ago, when he had been
betting (and, of course, losing, as all people who bet do) and had then
gone to Monte Carlo to put everything right at the gaming-tables!  What
made it worse was the fact that the departed francs were rather the
property of Madame la Rpublique than of the Colonel.  And Madame
prefers to do her own gambling.  His position, one Sunday night, was
that Monday morning must find him with gold in his pocket or lead in
his brain.  I found the gold, as I had been at school with him, and had
stayed with his people a lot, ... but I am sure he merely remembers a
very shady passage in his career every time he sees me, and loathes me
in consequence.  He paid the debt off long ago, too."


[1] Sell up everything.


"I believe you are right," agreed Colonel Lebrun.  "One uses the
expression '_debt_ of gratitude,' and nobody really likes being in
debt....  The gratitude is rarely paid though.  I suppose it is because
the creditor of gratitude occupies the higher ground, and one resents
being on the lower."

"I certainly once lost a friend by doing him a kindness," put in
Adjudant-Major Berthon of the Legion, who was also dining at the
Spahis' mess.  "This was a loan case, too, and a slight coolness ending
in a sharp frost followed immediately upon it....  And it wasn't my
fault the coolness arose, I am sure."

"Of course the benefactor always likes the beneficiary better than the
beneficiary likes the benefactor," said the cynical "Gnral"
d'Amienville, "and the kind action always dwells longer in the mind of
the doer than in that of the receiver.  Far longer.  Always."

"Not always," observed Captain d'Armentires.  "Only yesterday..."

"_Always,_" contradicted d'Amienville.

"I was about to say," continued d'Armentires, "that, only yesterday, I
reminded a man of a good turn he did me years ago, and he had clean
forgotten it....  And it was a deed I could not forget if I lived to be
a hundred years old."

"I simply don't believe a man could give you half of his kingdom, or
save your valuable life or honour, and forget all about it," replied
the "Gnral."

"I did not say he gave me a half of his kingdom or saved my valuable
life or honour," was the quiet answer.  "I said he did me a good turn
and had absolutely forgotten the incident though I have not, and never
shall.  I feel the deepest gratitude towards him and always will.  I
should be very glad of an opportunity of proving the fact." ...

"A very noble sentiment," sneered the young gentleman.

"No," said d'Armentires patiently.  "I am not concerned to exhibit my
high morality, fine nature, and noble sentiments, but am stating an
example in opposition to your theory; a fact of memory--the respective
memories of benefactor and beneficiary.  He had forgotten doing the
kindness, while I had remembered receiving it."

"What was the nature of the action, if one might inquire?" put in
Mdecin-Major Parme.

"Yes, what did he do, _mon salop_?" added Colonel Lebrun.  "Surrender
the beauteous damsel whom you both loved, with the hiccuping cry, 'Take
her.  She is thine,' and thenceforth hide a breaking heart beneath a
writhing brow or a wrinkling tunic or something?"

"Did he leap into the raging flood, or only place his huge fortune at
your disposal?  What was the noble deed?" asked Adjudant-Major Berthon.

"It was a gift," replied d'Armentires, smiling.  "A free, unsolicited,
unexpected, magnificent gift."

"And he had _forgotten_ it?" asked d'Amienville, with cold incredulity.

"Absolutely.  But I never shall," said d'Armentires.

"And pray, what was this magnificent gift?" sneered d'Amienville.  "A
priceless horse, a mistress, an estate, a connoisseur's collection, an
invaluable secret, your freedom--or what?  What wonderful thing did he
present to you and forget?"

"A sausage," was the grave answer.

The Spahis roared with laughter at their unpopular brother-officer.  He
was their guest, but they could not forbear to laugh.  A very little
goes a long way in the matter of wit in a bored mess, exiled from Home
and the larger interests of life.

The "Gnral" coloured hotly, and remarked that some people were
doubtless devilish funny--in season and out of season.

"I assure you it is my misfortune and not my fault if I am funny," was
the grave statement of the Legionary.  "I have been the recipient of
other kindnesses, but not one of them has made such a mark on the
tablets of my memory as that sausage."

"They do make marks, I know," observed Mdecin-Major Parme.  "My wife
threw one at me once, just as I was going out to call on the
Commander-in-Chief-in-Algeria.  He noticed the mark before I did."

"Tell us the touching tale," put in Colonel Lebrun.  "Were you on a
raft in mid-ocean with one sausage between you and death, and did he
say, 'Thy belly is greater than mine,' or 'Your bird,' or something?"

"Surely he'd remember that," observed the sapient d'Amienville.

"No. 'Twas thus," said d'Armentires.  "You Spahis don't, for your
sins, get sent to Indo-China.  We do.  And it can be more truly
damnable along the Red River than in any desert station in the Sahara.
You _have_ got the sun, though you grumble at it, and too much heat is
always better and less depressing than too little, to my way of
thinking.  What did Dante know of Hell when he had never been in a
place consisting wholly of muddy water and watery mud--with nothing
else for hundreds of square miles--except fever, starvation, dysentery,
and the acutest craving for suicide?  Yes.  A low black sky of wet
cotton wool, a vast river of black, muddy water, and its banks vast
expanses of black watery mud.  Nothing else to see--but much to feel.
I was a young soldier then--a private of the Legion in my first year."
...

Captain d'Armentires paused.  No one moved or spoke.  It was not easy
to "get him going"--but it was worth a lot of trouble, for
d'Armentires was a man of very great experience, very great courage,
and very great ability.  Soldier, philosopher, reformer, hero, thinker,
and something of a saint.

"Yes--you can go for weeks along the Red River of Tonkin, in an old
stinking sampan, drenched, chilled to the bone, shivering, until you
envy the Annamese boatmen in their straw hut in the stern--and see
nothing but clouds, water, and mud, save when the unceasing rain is too
heavy for you to see anything at all.  If God is very good, you _may_
perhaps see a castor-oil plant sailing along in the water to tell that
there are other human beings somewhere in the terrible world of mud,
water, fog, clouds, and rain--Annamese peasants who have sown
castor-oil plants in the mud, apparently for the pleasure of seeing
that accursed river change its course in order to engulf them.

"I remember wondering why I, why any single one of my Company,
consented to live another day....  You Spahis and Chasseurs, Zouaves
and Tirailleurs Algriens, Turcos and others of the XIXth Army Corps
talk of your desert hardships--thirst, _cafard_, Arabs, heat,
_ennui_....  Pah!  I have tried both, and I'd serve a year in the
Sahara rather than a week in the Annam jungles in the rains.  I
remember asking the man to whom I have been referring, my benefactor,
an Englishman calling himself John Bull, or Jean Boule, why _he_, for
example, went on living.

"'I don't know,' he replied, 'Partly hope of better things, I suppose.
Partly a feeling that suicide is cowardice, and partly the strongest
instinct of the human mind--that of self-preservation.'

"And yet, he was obviously a very unhappy man--as any refined person of
breeding and education must be, in the ranks of the Legion.  I pondered
this until, night falling, the boatmen steered for the shore and
anchored our junk.  The happy souls then shut themselves in their straw
hut and caroused on _shum-shum_, the poor man's absinthe in China--an
awful rice-spirit--while we huddled, foodless, sodden, and frozen in
that ceaseless rain, fog, and bitter wind....  Who would not drink
himself insensible and unconscious when there was nothing of which to
be sensible and conscious but misery of the acutest? ... It always
interests me to hear the comfortably-placed rail against the
drunkenness of the poor and wretched....  What would not the smuggest
bourgeois Bonpre not have given, had he been with us that night, to
drown his shuddering soul in the vilest form of alcohol, and escape
that bitter fog, fever, hunger, sickness, and awful ache; the
mosquitoes, stench, pain, and homeless, lonely misery....  When the
'Black Flags' came, with the full moon, I was glad, I would have
consented to fall into their hands alive rather than not die--and they
could have taught the Holy Inquisition a whole language and literature
of torture of which the Inquisition only knew the alphabet....  Yes.  I
knew I had malarial fever, and I feared I had yellow fever.  I knew I
had dysentery, and I feared I had cholera.  I knew I had an appalling
cold and cough, and I feared I had consumption.  I can now smile at
myself as I was then--but I can also make allowances, for I was a
starving, fever-wrecked child of seventeen--nearly dead with
dysentery....  The bullets of the Black Flags were striking all around
us, and it was a case of attacking them for our own safety.  They were
so close and had the range so well that I suspected our boatmen.  I
remember old Ivan Plevinski suddenly grunted hideously, heaved himself
to his feet, removed his _kpi_, and bowed toward the bank.  '_Merci,
messieurs,_' he gasped, '_Milles remerciments.  Je vous renter cie.
Slav a Bogu_,[2]' and died.  I envied old Ivan Plevinski, and, judging
by his way of life, decided that it would not be from cold that he
would suffer in the Hereafter....


[2] Glory to God.


"Meanwhile, John Bull, by right of his superior ability, experience,
personality, and force, had taken command, and the sampan was being
poled and hauled ashore.  I tried to take a hand at heaving-in the
anchor-rope, but fell on it from sheer weakness and was kicked clear of
it.  As the junk grounded in the mud, the Legionaries sprang over the
side, led by John Bull, and struggled through the mud toward the
swamp-jungle whence the bullets came.  I staggered as far as I could,
and then fell and began slowly to sink in the black clayey mud.  No--I
was not afraid, only very glad to die.  And half delirious, watched the
fight in the moonlight.  I remember being bitterly disappointed that I
could not distinguish the features of a man who, on his half-engulfed
arms and knees, was vomiting blood just in front of me.  I did so want
to know who had 'got it,' for he also would accompany me and Ivan
Plevinski to the Judgment Seat.  I wondered what St. Peter would say if
the fellow vomited blood on the doorstep of the Gates of Heaven.  Then
I became unconscious, delirious....  The junk following ours--in which
was Lieutenant Egrier, as he then was--came ashore, took the 'pirates'
in flank, and drove them off....

"All this leading up to the Sausage of Contention" (with a little bow
and smile in the direction of Lieutenant d'Amienville, fingering his
wine-glass and endeavouring to maintain a cynical smile)....  "You know
Egrier's bluff, jolly way.  'What would you like, Jean
Boule--recommendation for the _Croix de Guerre_ or one of my tinned
sausages,' he cried, as he approached Jean, who was pulling me out of
the mud.  I had broken into a perspiration, and was my own man again by
then, and desperately anxious to live.  (What was wrong with a world
that held 'recommendations,' the _Croix de Guerre_, the _Mdaille
Militaire_, promotion, a career of glory fighting for La Belle France?)

"'A sausage, mon Lieutenant,' replied Jean Boule, laying me on a bed he
had made of mangrove twigs, straw from the boat, and his _capote_.

"'Wise philosopher,' laughed Egrier.  'You shall have two--one for
distinguished conduct in the field and one for wisdom.'

"He was as good as his word.  Before our sampans resumed their way to
Phu-lang-Thuong, he gave Jean two sausages from the tin he opened.  As
I live, that gaunt, starving man cooked them both, gave one to me, and
made the rest of our boat-load cast lots for the other.

"I met him recently.  He is still _Soldat deuxime classe_, for he has
consistently refused promotion.  When I shook him by the hand, he
remembered me, but he had absolutely and completely forgotten the
episode of the sausage.

"I have not--and I regard his gift to me that day on the Red River in
Tonkin as one of the noblest ever given....  He is my orderly now....
Have you ever starved, d'Amienville? ... No?" ...




VI

THE DESERTER

As she stood on the deck beside her lover-husband and gazed upon the
thrillingly beautiful panorama of Marseilles, there was assuredly no
happier woman in the world.  As he looked at the rapt face and
wide-opened glorious eyes of the lovely girl beside him there can
scarcely have been a man as happy.

They had been married in England a week earlier, were on their way to
his vast house and vaster estate in Australia, and had come round by
sea, instead of suffering the miseries of the "special" across France
(which saves a week to leave-expired returning Anglo-Indians).

Happy!  Her happiness was almost a pain.  As a child she had childishly
adored him; and now he had returned from his wanderings, after a decade
of varied, strenuous life--to adore her.  Life was too impossibly,
hopelessly wonderful and beautiful....  He, who had been everywhere,
done everything, been everything--soldier, sailor, rancher, planter,
prospector, hunter, explorer--had come Home for a visit, and laid his
heart at the feet of a country mouse.  Happy!  His happiness frightened
him.  After more than ten years of the roughest of roughing it, he had
"made good" (exceeding good), and on top of good fortune incredible,
had, to his wondering bewilderment, won the love of the sweetest,
noblest, fairest, and most utterly lovable and desirable woman in the
world.  She whom he had left a child had grown into his absolute ideal
of Woman, and had been by some miracle reserved for him.

And which would now know the greater joy in their travels--he in
showing her the fair places of the earth and telling her of personal
experiences therein, or she in being shown them by this adored hero who
had come to make her life a blessed dream of joy?  Not that the fair
places of the earth were necessary to their happiness.  They could have
spent a happy day in London on a wet Sunday, or at the end of Southend
pier on a Bank Holiday, or in a prison-cell for that matter--for the
mind of each to the other a kingdom was.

"Would you like to go ashore? ... 'Madame, will you walk and talk with
me,' in the _Cannebire_?" he asked.

"Of _course_, we must go ashore, Beloved Snail," was the reply.  "I
have no idea what the _Cannebire is_--but," and she hugged his arm and
whispered, "you can always 'give me the keys of Heaven,' and walk and
talk with me There."  (He was "Beloved Snail" when he was a Bad Man and
late for meals; "Bill" when he was virtuous or forgiven.)

The ship being tied up, and a notice having guaranteed that she would
on no account untie before midnight, this foolish couple, who utterly
loved each other, walked down the gangway, passed the old lady who
sells balloons and the old gentleman who sells deck-chairs, the young
lady who sells glorious violets and the young gentleman who sells
un-glorious "field"-glasses; through the echoing customs-shed and out
to where, beside a railway-line, specimens of the genus _cocher_ lie in
wait for those who would drive to the boulevards and in hope for those
who know not that four francs is ample fare.

To the sights of Marseilles he took her, enjoying her enjoyment as he
had enjoyed few things in his life, and then in the _Cannebire_
dismissed the fiacre.

"In Rome you must roam like the Romans," he observed.  "In Marseilles
you must sit on little chairs in front of a caf and see the World and
his Wife (or Belle Amie) go by."

"Fancy sitting outside a public-house in Regent Street or the Strand
and watching Londoners go by!" said the girl.  "Isn't it extraordinary
what a difference in habits and customs one finds by travelling a few
miles?  Think of English officers sitting, in uniform, on the pavement,
like those are, and drinking in public," ... and she pointed to a group
of French officers so engaged.  "Do let's go and sit near them," she
added.  "I have never seen soldiers dressed in pale blue and silver,
and all the colours of the rainbow....  Aren't they pretty--dears!" ...

"Their uniforms look quaint to the insular eye, madam, I admit," he
replied, as he led the way to an unoccupied table near the brilliant
group, "but they are not toy soldiers by any means.  They all belong to
regiments of the African Army Corps, the Nineteenth, and there isn't a
finer one on earth."

"Darling, you know _everything_," smiled his wife.  "Fancy knowing a
thing like that now!  I wonder how many other Englishmen know anything
about this African Army and that it is the Ninety-Ninth.  Now _how_ do
you know?"

It was his turn to smile, and he did so somewhat wryly.

"What will you have?" he asked, as an aproned _garon_ hovered around.
"Coffee or _sirop_ or--how would you like to be devil-of-a-fellow and
taste a sip of absinthe? ... You'll hate it."

"No, thank you, Bill-man.  Is the syrup golden-syrup or
syrup-of-squills or what?  No, I'll have some coffee and see if it is."

"Is what?"

"Coffee." ...

Meanwhile an elderly, grizzled officer, with a somewhat brutal face,
was staring hard and rudely at the unconscious couple.  He wore a dark
blue tunic with red-tabbed and gold-braided collar and cuffs, scarlet
overalls, and a blue and red _kpi_.  So prolonged was his unshifting
gaze, so fierce his frown, and so obvious his interest, that his
companions noticed the fact.

"Is the old hog smitten with _la belle Anglaise_, I wonder, or what?"
murmured a handsome youth in the beautiful pale blue uniform of the
Chasseurs d'Afrique to an even more gorgeous officer of Spahis.

"I have never known Legros take the faintest interest in women,"
replied the other.  "There will be a beastly _fracas_ if the husband
glances this way.  He'll promise Legros to _ponch ees 'ead_ if he
thinks he's being rude--as he is."

Certainly the elderly and truculent-looking officer was being rude, for
not only was he staring with a hard, concentrated glare, but he was
leaning as far forward as he could, the better to do it.  Anyone--man,
woman, or child--being conscious of this deliberate, searching gaze,
must resent it.  It was that of a gendarme, examining the face of a
criminal and endeavouring to "place" him and recollect the details of
his last encounter with him, or of a _juge d'instruction_ examining a
criminal in that manner which does not find favour in England.

"It is as good as sitting in the stalls of a theatre, sitting here and
seeing all these varied types go by, isn't it, Bill?" observed the
girl.  "Oh, _do_ look at _that_--that boy in brown velvet and a forked
beard!"

"We are sitting in the Stalls of the Theatre of Life, my child," was
the sententious reply, but in reality they were sitting nearer to the
Pit.

The brutal-looking officer scratched the back of his neck slowly up and
down with the forefinger of his left hand, a sure sign that he was
wrestling with an elusive reminiscence.  For a moment he took his eyes
from the face of the Englishman and looked sideways at the pavement,
cudgelling his brains, ransacking the cells of his memory.  With a
muttered oath at failure to recapture some piece of long-stored
information, he put his hand into the inside pocket of his tunic and
produced a tiny flat case.  From this he took a pair of pince-nez and
adjusted them upon the bridge of his broad, short nose.  From the
slowness and clumsiness of his movements it was evident that he had
only just taken to glasses, or else wore them very seldom.

The latter was the case, as Lieutenant Legros considered spectacles of
any kind a most unmilitary and _pkinesque_ adjunct to uniform.

A quiet, gentlemanly-looking officer, a Captain, wearing a similar
uniform to that of Legros, observed the action.

"Evidently something interests our friend beyond ordinary," he
remarked, and followed the look that the elderly Lieutenant again fixed
upon the Englishman, whom the Captain now noticed for the first time.

Sitting with his back to the road, and almost facing Legros, he got a
better view of the Englishman's features than did that deeply
interested officer, who, without reply, continued his searching
scrutiny.  Evidently a person of great powers of concentration.  As his
glance fell upon the young couple, the Captain started slightly and
then looked away.

"Who's for a stroll?" he remarked, half rising.  But his suggestion was
not adopted, for glasses were charged, cigarettes alight, the shade of
the caf and awning very agreeable, and the sunshine hot without.

"Have an _apritif_ first, _mon ami_, and be restful," said a Zouave
officer, and tinkled the little table-bell loudly.

The Englishman half-consciously turned toward the sound, and looked
away again without noticing the baleful, steady glare fixed upon him
through the glasses of the Lieutenant.

"_Dame!_" grunted that officer, and smote his brow in an agony of
exasperation at the failure of his memory....  Curse it!  Was he
getting old?  He had the fellow's name and the circumstances of his
case on the tip of his tongue, so to speak--at the tips of his fingers,
as it were--and he could not say the word he was bursting to say; could
not lay his twitching mental fingers on the details....  He knew....
He was right....  He would have it in a minute.

A paper-boy passed the long front of the caf and shouted some wholly
unintelligible word as he gazed over the serried ranks of chairs and
loungers.

"What does he say, Bill?" asked the girl.  "It sounds like _Barin_.
How ill the poor lad looks!  Fancy having to sell papers for a living
when you are starving and horribly ill, as he obviously is," and as her
hand stole to her charitable purse, she gratefully thought of the utter
security, peace, comfort, and health of _her_ life--now that Bill had
linked it to his....  What was the phrase? ... Yes--she had "hitched
her wagon to a star"; her poor little homely wagon to the glorious and
brilliant star of her Bill's career....  The inquisitorial Lieutenant
used the paper-boy for the purposes of his tactics.  Rising, he made
his way between the chairs and the groups of _apritif_-drinking
citizens, to where the boy stood, bought a paper, and returned by a
route which brought him full face-to-face with the Englishman.
Recognition was instantaneous and mutual.  The brutal countenance of
the elderly Lieutenant was not improved by a sardonic smile and look of
mean and petty triumph as he thrust an outstretched index-finger in the
Englishman's face and harshly grunted.

"Henri Rrrobinson!" and then laughed a sneering, hideous cackle.

Staring in utter bewilderment from the French officer to her husband,
the girl saw with horror that his jaw had dropped, his mouth and eyes
were gaping wide, and he had gone as white as a sheet.

"Sergeant Legros!" he whispered.

"Lieutenant Legros," grunted the other.

What had happened?  What in the name of the Merciful Father was this?
Was she dreaming?  Her husband looked deathly.  He seemed paralysed
with fright.

The Lieutenant half turned, and shouted to a couple of sombre and
mysterious-looking gens d'armes who had been standing for some time on
the little "island" under the big lamp-post in the middle of the road.
As they approached, the Englishman rose to his feet.

"Listen, darling!" he hissed.  "Get out of this quick--to the ship.
Take a _fiacre_ and say '_P. and O. bateau._'  I'll join you all right.
They have..."

The Lieutenant put a heavy hand on his shoulder and swung him round.

"Arrest this man," said he to the gens d'armes, "and take him to Fort
St. Jean.  He is a deserter, one Henri Rrrobinson, from the First
Battalion of the Foreign Legion.  Deserted from Sidi-bel-Abbs eight
years ago.  But _I_ knew the dog.  Aha!"

The group of officers whom Legros had just left, joined the gathering
crowd.

"Poor devil!" said Captain d'Armentires.  He too had recognized the
_soi-disant_ Henry Robinson....  "Poor girl!" he added.  "Poor little
soul!"  She looked like une _nouvelle marie_ too.  Of course Legros
had only done his duty--curse him.  Curse him a thousand times for a
blackguardly, brutal ruffian.  The girl was going to faint....  Her
wedding-ring looked brand-new.  "If this is his wedding-night, he'll
spend it in the _salle de police_ of Fort St. Jean," he reflected.  "If
he is on his honeymoon, he'll spend it in the _cellules_ until the
General Court-Martial at Oran gives him a few years _rabiau_ with the
Zephyrs.  If he survives that, which is improbable, he will finish his
five years of Legion service.  No--she won't see much of him during the
next decade....  Poor little soul!"

The gens d'armes duly arrested the deserter.  He caught the eye of the
Captain.

"Captain d'Armentires," said he, "you are a French gentleman.  This
lady is my wife.  We have been married a week.  I beg of you to see her
safe on board the P. and O. steamer _Maloja_, which we have just left,
for an hour's visit here."

"I will do so," said d'Armentires.

A fat and kindly Frenchman, who understood English, translated for the
benefit of the crowd.  It became intensely sympathetic--at least with
the girl.  The French, for some reason, imagine their Foreign Legion to
be composed of Germans, and the French do not love Germans....  And
then, having commended his wife to d'Armentires (whom he had liked and
admired in the past when he had played the fool's prank of joining the
Legion "for a lark"), he thought rapidly and clearly....

If they once got him inside Fort St. Jean (the clearing-house for
drafts and details going to, and coming from, Algeria--recruits,
convalescents, leave-expired, all sorts; Legionaries, Zouaves, Turcos,
Spahis, Tirailleurs) he was done.  In a short time he would be a
convict, in military-convict dress, enduring the living-death of
existence in the Zephyrs, the terrible Disciplinary Battalion, compared
with whose lot that of the British long-sentence convict at Dartmoor,
Portland, or Wormwood Scrubbs is a bed of roses in the lap of luxury.
After that--back to the Legion _if_ he were alive to finish his five
years, of which there were four unexpired.  And his wife--stranded,
without money, in Marseilles, unless d'Armentires got her to the ship.
And what would she do then--at the end of the voyage? ... God help
them! ... A few minutes ago--happiness unspeakable, safety, security,
peace, all life before them.  Now--in a few minutes he would be in gaol
and his adored, adoring wife a deserted, friendless stranger in a
strange land....  Would they _allow_ d'Armentires to take her to the
ship?  Would they want her to give evidence--put her in some kind of
prison until the Court-Martial sat?  Suppose d'Armentires had not been
there, and she had been left to the tender mercies of Legros--or
utterly deserted, fainting on a caf chair....

Well, things couldn't be much worse (or _could_ they) if he "resisted
the police," assaulted the duly-appointed officers of the law in the
execution of their duty, and made a break for liberty.  No, things
couldn't be worse.  Neither he nor she would survive the next ten
years.  And there was a _chance_, or the ghost of a shadow of a chance.
The deck of the _Maloja_ was English soil, and they could not lay a
finger on him there.  If only she were safe on board, he'd make the
attempt.  There was a chance--and he had always taken the sporting
chance, all his life....  And this vile cur of a Legros!  He had many a
score to pay off to Sergeant Legros--the prize bully of the XIXth Army
Corps.  Now _this_!  If he could only have his hands at the throat of
Legros.  As these thoughts flashed through his brain, "May I say
farewell to my wife and see her into a _fiacre_ with you, Captain
d'Armentires?" he asked.  He appeared to be as cool as he was pale.
The Captain was the senior officer present.

"Yes," he said.  "I will drive her as quickly as possible to the ship,"
and willing hands helped the fainting girl into the _fiacre_....  Was
she dying?  As she lost her hold and sank into the bottomless depths of
unconsciousness she was finally aware that her husband winked at her
violently.  That wink in a face which was a pallid, tragic mask, was
the most dreadful and heartrending thing she had ever seen.  Anyhow, it
meant some kind of reassurance which he could not put into words
without disclosing some plan to his captors.  She fainted completely,
in the act of wondering whether this was merely that he was putting a
good face on it and pretending for her benefit, or whether he really
had a plan.  Anyhow she was to go to the ship--and, in any case, she
was dying of a broken heart....

As he watched his wife driven rapidly away, the Englishman formulated
his plans.

He would delay as long as he could in order that his wife might be on
board the ship before he reached it, if ever he did.

He would go quietly and willingly--but as slowly as possible--while the
road to Fort St. Jean was the road to the ship.  He would then break
away from his pursuers and run for it.  He would show them what an old
Oxford miler and International Rugger forward could do in the way of
running and dodging, and, perchance, what sort of a fight an amateur
champion heavy-weight could put up.

But strategy first, strength and skill afterwards, for he was playing a
terrible game, with his wife's happiness at stake, not to mention his
own liberty.  With a groan, he artistically smote his knees together
and sank to the ground.  That would gain a little time anyhow, and
they'd hardly carry him to Fort St. Jean, nor waste a cab-fare on the
carcase of a Legionary.

He wasn't quite certain as to the nearest way from the _Cannebire_ to
Fort St. Jean, but he remembered that it was down by the waterfront.
Yes, he could again see its quaint old tower, like a lighthouse, and
its drawbridged moat, as he closed his eyes.  Part of the way to it
would be the way to the P. and O. wharf at Mole C, or whatever it was,
anyhow.  Would they take him by tram?  That might complicate matters.
If they were going to do that, should he make his break for liberty at
once, or on the journey, or at the end of it?  It would be
comparatively easy to make a dash before or after the tram-ride, but
they'd surely never let him escape them from a crowded tram.  Would
they handcuff him?  If so, that would settle it.  He'd fight and run
the moment handcuffs were produced.  You can't run in handcuffs,
although you think you can.  Would they shoot?  It would be Hell to be
winged in sight of the ship.  Was the P. and O. wharf British soil, as
well as the ship?

Almost certainly not.

Lieutenant Legros kicked him in the ribs.

"Get up, _tricheur_," he shouted.  He was in his element, and fairly
gloated over his victim, who only groaned and collapsed the more.

To those of the crowd who realized that he was an Englishman, he was an
object of pity; to those who concluded that, being a Legionary, he was
a German, he was merely an object of interest.

The officers who had been sitting with Legros departed in some disgust,
and the crowd changed, eddied, and thinned....  Only a sick man being
attended to by a couple of gens d'armes!

These latter grew a little impatient.  The sooner they could dispose of
this fine fellow the better, but they certainly weren't going to march
to Fort St. Jean at the request of a Lieutenant of Lgionaries.  Let
the army do its own dirty work.  They'd run him in all right to the
nearest lock-up, and he could be handed over to the military
authorities, to be dealt with, whenever they liked to fetch him.  To
the devil with all Lgionnaires, be they deserters or Lieutenants!  "He
had better be taken to the police-station on a stretcher, mon
Lieutenant," suggested one of them.  "It would appear that he has
fainted."

"Stretcher!" roared Legros, and spat.  "Pah!  That is not how we deal
with swine of Lgionnaires who sham sick.  Stretcher!  Drag him face
downward by one toe at the tail of a dust-cart more likely!"

Oho!  Police-station, was it?  Not Fort St. Jean immediately.  And
where might the nearest police-station be, wondered the prostrate
Englishman.  He must not let them get him there.  The boat would sail
at midnight, whether he were on board or not--and once the cell door
closed on him it would not open till the morning.

Perhaps he had better take his leave at once.  Unless they went in the
direction of the docks for some part of the way it would be a cruelly
punishing run....  Just as bad for them though, and he'd back himself
against any of these beefy old birds for a four-mile race....  His wife
must be half-way there by now--more, if d'Armentires urged the
_cocher_, as he would.

Was it likely that d'Armentires would collect a guard of gens d'armes,
dock police, soldiers, or customs officials at the wharf gate or the
ship's gangway, and lie in wait to see if he tried to get on board?
No--d'Armentires was not that sort.

(He was not, and when, later, Lieutenant Legros was reduced to the rank
of sergeant for what was practically the brutal murder of a Legionary,
Captain d'Armentires thought of this incident and rejoiced.)

And if he did--let them stop him if they could.  He'd break through the
scrum of them all right.  Lay some of them out too.

What was Legros saying?  Urging the gens d'armes to boot him up and lug
him off by the scruff of his neck, eh?

He groaned again, sat up with difficulty, shakily and painfully rose to
his feet, then smote Legros a smashing blow between the eyes, butted
the gendarme who stood on his right, and with a dodge, a jump, and a
wriggle was away and running like a hare.

To the end of his life he never forgot that race for life, and for more
than life.  Scores of times he lived through it again in terrible
nightmares and suffered a thousand times more than he did on the actual
run itself.  For then he was quite cool, steady, and unafraid.  He
imagined himself to be running with the ball at Blackheath or Richmond,
threading his way through the hostile fifteen, dodging, leaping,
handing-off.  But there were one or two differences.  In Rugger you may
not drive your clenched fist with all your might into the face of any
man who springs at you....  Nor do you run for miles over cobbles....

It was really surprisingly easy.  Once he had got clear and put a few
yards between himself and the uninjured gendarme, it was even betting
that he'd win--provided his wind held and he didn't get the stitch, and
that he did not slip and fall on the cursed stones.  For the folk
behind he cared nothing, and with such in front as grasped the
situation in time to do something, he could deal.  Some he dodged, some
he handed-off as at Rugger, and some he hit.  These last were slower to
rise than those he handed-off, or caused to fall by dodging them as
they sprang at him.

When he turned a sharp corner he was so well ahead of the original
pursuers that he was merely a man running, and that is not in itself an
indictable offence.  Certainly people stopped and stared at the sight
of an obvious foreigner running at top speed, but he might have a boat
to catch, he might be pursuing a train of thought or his lost youth and
innocence.  _Que voulez-vous_?  Besides, he might be English, and
therefore mad.

And then the blue-faced, panting gendarme would round the corner at the
head of such _gamins_, loafers, police agents, and other citizens as
saw fit to run on a hot afternoon.  Whereupon people in this sector of
street would look after the runaway and some run after him as well.  So
the pursuing crowd continually changed, as some left it and others
joined it, until there remained of the old original firm scarcely any
but the distressed and labouring gendarme--who, at last, himself gave
up, reeled to the wall, and whooping and gasping for breath, prepared
to meet his Maker.

Before the poor man had decided that this event was not yet, the
Englishman had dashed round another corner and actually leapt on to an
electric tram in full flight toward the _quais_!

_Ciel_!  How mad were these English!  Fancy a man running like that
now, just to catch a tram.  No, he would not go inside; he preferred to
stand on the platform, and stand there he would.

He did, and anon, the tram having stopped at his polite request to the
conductor, he strolled on to the P. and O. wharf and marched up the
gangway of the good ship _Maloja_.

A steward informed him that his wife were ill, 'aving been brought
aboard by a French gent and took to 'er cabing.  She were still lying
down....

She was, at that moment, very ill indeed, mentally and physically.

But not for long, when his arms had assured her that they were not
those of a vision and a ghost....

If you ever travel Home with them, you'll find they don't go ashore at
Marseilles.  No, they don't like the place--prefer to stay on board,
even through the coaling.




VII

FIVE MINUTES

Le Lgionnaire Jacques Bonhomme (as he called himself) was dying, and
Sergeant Baudr, in charge of the convoy of wounded, proceeding from
the nasty, messy fighting at Hu-Thuong to the base hospital at
Phulang-Thuong, kindly permitted a brief halt that he might die in
peace.

The good Sergeant Baudr could not accord more than an hour to the
Legionary for his dying arrangements, because he had been instructed by
his captain to get back as quickly as possible, and Phulang-Thuong lies
only twenty-four miles south of Hu-Thuong.

Sergeant Baudr had other reasons also.  For one, he was apprehensive
of attack by some wandering band of De Nam's "pirates," and the outlaw
brigands who served Monsieur De Nam, mandarin of the deposed Emperor of
Annam, Ham-Nghi, were men whose courage and skill in fighting were only
excelled by their ingenuity and pitilessness in torturing such of their
enemies as fell into their hands.  No, Sergeant Baudr had seen the
remains of some of the prisoners of these "Black Flags," and he
shuddered yet whenever he thought of them.

And what could he do, strung out over a mile, with a weak escort of
Tirailleurs Tonkinois to provide his point, cover-point, and main body
with the wounded, and an _escouade_ of Legionaries for his rearguard?
The sooner he got to Phulang-Thuong, the better.  Returning, unhampered
by the wounded, he could take care of himself, and any band of "Black
Flags" who chose to attack him could do so.  They should have a taste
of the fighting qualities of Sergeant Baudr and his Legionaries.  As
it was--Sergeant Baudr shrugged his shoulders and bade Legionary
Jacques Bonhomme die and be done with it.

"I thank you, Sergeant," murmured the dying man.  "May I speak with le
Lgionnaire Jean Boule, if he is with the squad?"

The Sergeant grunted.  He ran his eye along the halted column.  Would
those Tirailleurs Tonkinois stand, if there were a sudden rush of
howling devils from the dense jungle on either side of the track?  And
why should they be allowed to take their women about with them
everywhere, so that these should carry their kit and accoutrements for
them?  Nobody carried Sergeant Baudr's hundred-weight of kit when he
marched.  Why should these Annamese be pampered thus?  Should he send
the squad of Legionaries to the head of the column when they advanced
again?  It would be just his luck if the column was attacked in front
while the Legionaries were in the rear, or _vice vers_.

Sergeant Baudr strolled toward the rear.  He would get the opinion of
"Jean Boule" in the course of a little apparently aimless conversation.
He had been an officer before he joined the Legion, and these English
knew all there is to know about guerilla fighting....

From his remarks and replies it was clear to the good Sergeant that the
Englishman considered that any attack would certainly come from the
rear.

"Without doubt," agreed Sergeant Baudr.  "That is why I keep the
_escouade_ as rear-guard."

"By the way," he added, "Lgionnaire Bonhomme wishes to say '_Au
'voir_' to you.  He is off in a few minutes.  Go and tell him to hurry
up.  We march again as soon as we have fed.  He is the first stretcher
in front of the Tirailleurs' women."

Lgionnaire John Bull hurried to the spot.  He knew that poor Jacques
Bonhomme's number was up.  It was a marvel how he had hung on, horribly
wounded as he was--shot, speared, and staked, all at once, and all in
the abdomen.  He had been friendly with Jacques--an educated man and
once a gentleman.

A glance showed him that he was too late.  The man was delirious and
semi-conscious.  If he had any message or commission, it would never be
put into words now.

The Englishman sat on the ground beside the stretcher and took the hand
of the poor wretch.  Possibly some sense of sympathy, company,
friendship, or support might penetrate to, and comfort, the stricken
soul.

After a while the over-bright eyes turned toward him.

"Any message, Jacques, _mon ami_?" he whispered, stroking the hand he
held.

But Jacques Bonhomme talked on in the monotonous way of the
fever-smitten, though with a strange consecutiveness.  John Bull
listened carefully, in the hope that some name, rank, office, or
address might be mentioned and give a clue to relatives or the
undelivered message or last commission.

... "Only five minutes in each year!  Morel tells me there are five
hundred and twenty-five thousand and six hundred minutes in each year,
and I believe him implicitly, for he is the finest mathematical
professor the Sorbonne ever had.  I believe him implicitly.  He is no
Classic, but he has good points and can do wonderful things with
figures.  Wonderful feats!  He knows all about things like the Metric
System, Decimals, and Vulgar Fractions and similar things of which one
hears but never encounters.  He can not only add up columns of francs
and centimes, such as are found in the bills which tradesmen are fond
of writing, even when they have received payment, but he can deal with
things like pounds, shillings, and pence; dollars and cents; yen and
sabuks; or rupees, annas, and pice, not only with marvellous accuracy,
but with incredible rapidity.  This makes him an invaluable travelling
companion for a Classic who knows none of these things--apart from the
fact that he can also find out the times of trains and steamers from
railway and shipping guides.  It is wonderful to see him seize a book,
scan it for a moment, and then say unhesitatingly that a train will
leave the Gare de Lyon at a certain hour on a certain day, that it will
just catch a ship at Marseilles on the next day, and that this ship
will just catch another at Aden, so many days later, and that this one
will land you in Japan at a certain hour on a certain day.  And yet he
is not a bit proud of these things--no prouder than I am of my little
metrical translation of the Satires and Odes of Horace into Greek.  And
he thinks I travel with him for the sake of his delightful company!  A
man who cannot utter a hackneyed Latin quotation without some horrible
false quantity.  Poor Morel! ...

"And this piece of information as to the number of minutes in a year is
one of the most useful calculations he ever did on my behalf, except
the one he did in answer to my query as to how many waking minutes
there are--how many minutes in what one might call an active or waking
year.  That is to say, counting only the minutes when one is not
asleep.  He tells me there are three hundred and seventy-two thousand
and three hundred waking minutes in the year for a man who averages
seven hours sleep a day, or rather night--for he never sleeps in the
day.  How he knows I cannot tell, but I believe him absolutely, for he
is as truthful as he is clever.  So now I know that if I subtract five
from this last appalling total I can tell how many minutes of the year
I spend in thinking of the other five.  After arriving at an
aggravating variety of results, I again sought the good Morel's help,
and he assures me that, subtracting five from the last total with which
he furnished me, I have three hundred and seventy-two thousand and two
hundred and ninety-five minutes.

"Thus I can now tell you clearly, that I spend three hundred and
seventy-two thousand and two hundred and ninety-five minutes of the
year in thinking of the other five--the five I spend with _Her_....

"That is my point--do you understand?

"But although these magnificent figures give me much gratification,
they cannot be taken as what Morel calls 'final,' for though during the
majority of those minutes I am thinking of the other five consciously,
I am only thinking of them subconsciously during the remainder, when I
am lecturing, writing Greek hexameters, or reconstructing Greece and
Rome for bored students who care for none of these things so long as
they pass their absurd examinations--for we have not the spirit of
study any more in France, but only the letter, thanks to those same
examinations that prohibit thought, research, reading and culture
absolutely.  Moreover the figures are also what Morel calls 'vitiated,'
by the fact that a vast number of my sleeping moments are also given to
dreaming of those five, and dreaming, as any philosopher will tell you,
is far better and finer than thinking.  Morel stoutly denies this--but
that one would expect from so uneducated and uncultured a man.  What I
want to know is whether you think I might balance the waking moments
when I can only think of her subconsciously against the sleeping
moments when I am actually dreaming of her, and consider that the total
of three hundred and seventy-two thousand and two hundred and
ninety-five is approximately correct?  The matter is of the first
importance to me.  I hate figures, as a rule, for they give me a
headache, but in this one instance I want them correct.  As I am so
often told that I must be more scientific, accurate, and exact, I have
tried to express myself mathematically and can do no better.  To me it
seems that I might just as well have said, 'I spend all the year in
thinking of five minutes of it'--but I suppose some queer child of the
new generation of Frenchmen would at once point out that I spend nearly
a third of my time in sleeping, and much of it in working....  My head
is in a dreadful whirl and muddle about it though....

"Every year she goes to the tiny Breton village of Poldac for one week.
I suppose she feels that she must have one week's rest and communion
with her own soul if she is to live.  On the first day of every July
she goes, and her train stops at Pennebecque for five minutes.  As you
have guessed, I go to Pennebecque every year for that five minutes.  It
is the longest stop that the train makes....  And the setting of the
scene is so wonderful, it is worthy to frame such a picture.  I would
not see her in the dust and noise and bustle of the Gare de l'Ouest, or
at any ugly little wayside station.  Yes, I go to Pennebecque to see
her for five minutes every year.  The only other train that passes
through that tiny place does so at night.  So I arrive over-night and
sit on a seat and wait, almost too happy and exalted to breathe....

"I have sat on that seat, for the last night of June, for seven years.
And I have striven not to pray that the Marquis might die.  And yet
would not he be better dead--the poor, lolling-tongued, squint-eyed,
half-witted Marquis?  Think of that marvel of beauty, grace, goodness,
and wit, the Marquise de Montheureux, making herself the nurse, the
attendant, the keeper, of a lunatic!

"Yes, but for that one week in the year she is never out of his sight,
night or day.  If she but turns her back he weeps and sobs aloud.  She
tends that great, slobbering, dribbling lout, that mindless, soulless
clod--no more sentient nor responsive than a hippopotamus--as the most
devoted of young mothers tends and nurses her firstborn....

"For one week in the year she lives her own life, and for five minutes
in the year I see her.  For six months I do nothing but look forward to
that five minutes, and for six months again I do nothing but look back
upon it.

"The first time, she did not see me, or did not recognize me as the man
whom she had seen at the neighbouring chteau of the de
Grandcourts--where I was tutor to the young Comte.

"The second time I ventured to bow, having debated the matter for a
year, and she bowed and smiled, with the remark that only the other day
the Comtesse de Grandcourt was speaking of me and my good influence
over the headstrong and rather wild boy who had been in my charge.

"The next year she spoke to me and commented on the curious coincidence
of my being there again.  She is of the real and true _noblesse_, you
see, and has the kind, gentle, and unassuming manner of the genuine
aristocrat.  _Noblesse oblige_.  She was as sweetly, graciously kind to
the village cur, to her own servants, or to me, as she was to de
Grandcourt himself.  She was a noble, and her nobility was made patent
by her nobleness.  It is your bourgeois 'noble' whose nobility has to
be advertised by gilt and plush and display and rudeness to 'inferiors.'

"The fourth year she did not remark on the 'coincidence' of my presence
at the station.  She understood.  And she accepted the bunch of roses I
took.  Oh, the sleepless nights I passed in the agony of that struggle
to decide whether to take the roses!

"The year she did not come was rather terrible.  I did not know what an
eternity could be covered by two years.  The bellowing calf of a
Marquis was 'ill,' forsooth, and she never left his bedside....  Curse
him!  Had he not even the sense and understanding to see what he was
making of her life, and to die like a man?

"_Bon Dieu_!  Surely _to die_ is easy--it is living that is so hard.
But no--Monsieur le Marquis de Montheureux could not die.  He must go
on living, even though he could not wash his own face nor feed
himself....

"The sixth year she gave me so beautiful and kind and understanding a
smile!  She knew that I lived but for that five minutes.  How I sang
through the next twelve months!  She knew.  She understood.  She smiled
at me.  Why should I not love her?  It did neither her nor anyone else
any harm, and it made my life--well--glorious, and gave it all the
fineness and fulness that it possessed.

"For I simply did everything as though she were watching me, and as
though account were to be rendered to her instead of to God.  Was this
an offence against _Le Bon Dieu_? ...

"Sin?  I dare to think for myself in religious matters.  And I say that
what is absolutely good must be of God--and if it isn't, I can't help
it.  And I lived as though she were watching me.

"The seventh year she gave me her hand.  Had my heart been other than
strong I should have died....  For twelve months I pondered the
possibility of daring to put my lips to it, should she give me her hand
again.  Whenever she encountered de Grandcourt, he used to bow in the
ancient grand manner, sweeping the ground with his hat, as though it
were a great _mousquetaire_ head-dress, and as she swept him a mock
curtsey in return he could kiss her hand.  Why should not I?  No de
Grandcourt could honour her more nor love her as much....

"That eighth year, I, poor fool, had determined that, if she again gave
me her hand, I would kiss it.  What Emperor then could have the pride
and glory of the man who had kissed the hand of the Marquise de
Montheureux?  Would I, Csar Maximilien Raoul de Baillieul, then change
with any king on earth?

"The day came, and I sat in the usual place, awaiting her, and
picturing her.  She would wear, this year, a silken dust-cloak of a
lavender tint, and her glorious hair would be uncovered.  One hand
would be bare, the other gloved in a shade of lavender.  I felt certain
of these details.

"The train came at last, and yet all too soon.  When she had come and
gone there would be twelve months to live through, before I might see
her again.

"I went to the window of the nearest first-class carriage.

"There she sat alone, and, as I approached, the beautiful slow smile,
to me the loveliest thing on earth, warmed her glorious face.

"She was arrayed in lavender-coloured silk, her head was bare and so
was her hand.  She extended it towards me.  With heart beating as
though I had just run a race, I stepped to the window--_and she was
not_.  The carriage was empty, and as I clung to the handle, a little
faint, her maid, dressed in deep mourning, came to a neighbouring
window and looked out....

"Madame la Marquise had died of typhoid which had broken out in
Montheureux village.  She would stay and work among her stricken
people.  The Marquis had died within twenty-four hours.  No, not of the
disease.  Of grief.  He had grasped that she was dead, and that he
would never see her again.  The maid was on her way to Poldec to
arrange about Madame's cottage and property there.

"It appears that I fell there as one dead and lay ill for weeks.

"But no, I must not commit suicide or I might not enter the Heaven
where she is ... the Heaven that our Wise Men decided does not exist,
when they turned God out of France....  But I must crucify myself in
some way or go mad.  Physical pain and strife and stress alone can save
me.

"I shall enlist in the Foreign Legion.  Perhaps I shall earn an
honourable death against the enemies of France.

"Oh, Rose of the World.  Rosemonde, Rosemonde, Rosemonde----"


"Finished?" quoth Sergeant Baudr, approaching.  "Dump him in that
rice-mud.  He'll be more useful dead than he ever was alive."




VIII

"HERE ARE LADIES"

A sluggish, oily river with mangrove-swamp banks; a terrible September
day with an atmosphere of superheated, poisonous steam; and the two
French gunboats, _Corail_ and _Opale_, carrying a detachment of the
French Foreign Legion, part of an expeditionary force entrusted with
the task of teaching manners, and an enhanced respect for Madame la
Rpublique, to Behanzin, King of Dahomey.

The Legionaries standing, squatting, and lying on the painfully hot
iron decks, were drenched in perspiration.  The light flannel
active-service kits, served out to them at Porto Novo, clung wetly to
their bodies.  From under the big ugly pith helmets of dirty white,
dirty white faces showed cadaverous and wan.  For a month they had
forced their way through the West African jungle, sometimes achieving
as much as a mile an hour through the sucking mud of a swamp; sometimes
thrusting their stifling, choking way through elephant grass eight to
ten feet in height; and again fighting through dense tangled bush with
chopper, _coupe-coupe_, and axe.  They had travelled "light," with only
rifle and bayonet and one hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition, but
even this lightness had been too heavy for some.  The more coffee and
quinine for the rest!  To give variety to the sufferings of fatigue,
fever, hunger, thirst, and dysentery, the Dahomeyans frequently
attacked in the numerical superiority of a hundred to one.  No mean
opponents either, with their up-to-date American rifles and batteries
of Krupp guns for long range work, and their spears and machetes for
the charge.

As usual, the Legion was marking its trail with the generous
distribution of the graves of its sons.

And now the VIIth Company had left swamp and jungle for the floating
ovens _Corail_ and _Opale_.  Terrific heat, but no sunshine; the
"landscape" minatory, terrible; life, the acme and essence of
discomfort and misery.  Even the Senegalese boatmen seemed affected and
depressed.

"Say, John!  Is this-yer penny-steamboat trip fer the saloobrity of our
healths?" asked the Bucking Bronco, in a husky voice, of his neighbour
le Lgionnaire Jean Boule or John Bull.  The old soldier wiped the
sweat from his face with his sleeve.

"I overheard Commandant Faraux telling Colonel Dodds that there is a
ford up here somewhere, and that it must be found and seized," he
answered wearily.  "I expect we're looking for it now."

"Well, _I_ ain't got it.  Search me!" said the American.  "I allow Ole
Man Farrow's got another think comin' if he..."--a ragged crash of
musketry from the bank a hundred yards distant, and the ironwork of the
_Opale_ rang again under a hail of bullets.

In ten seconds the Lgionaries were lining the sand-bagged bulwarks
with loaded rifles at the "ready."

"Oh, the fools--the silly bunch o' boobs!" murmured the Bucking Bronco.
"I allow thet's torn it!  The pie-faced pikers hev sure wafted the
bloom off the little secret."

"Yes," agreed John Bull, "you'd have thought even Behanzin's generals
would have had the sense to lie low and not announce themselves until
we'd got our column fairly tied up in the middle of the ford." ...

The roar of Hotchkiss guns and Lebel rifles from the two boats drowned
his further remarks, as well as the irregular crashings of the bursts
of Dahomeyan musketry....

The debarkation of the VIIth Company was unhindered, the ford seized,
and the safe passage of the Expeditionary Force guaranteed, the
Dahomeyans having retired.

"Waal!" remarked the Bucking Bronco to his friend as half the VIIth
Company moved off next morning, as Advance Guard.  "Strike me peculiar
ef thet ain't the softest cinch I seen ever.  Guess Ole Man Behanzin
ain't been to no West Point Academy.  They say his best men is
women--an' I kin believe it!"

"Amazons," remarked Jean Boule.  "I pray we don't come across any.
Fancy shooting at women."

"You smile your kind, fatherly smile at 'em, John, an' I allow they'll
come an' eat outer yer hand....  Are they really fightin'-_gals_, with
roof-garden hats an' shirt-waists, and mittens on their pasterns? ...
Gee-whiz!  Guess I'll take a few prisoners an' walk with a proud tail!"

"They're women, all right," was the reply, "and I believe they are as
dangerous as dervishes--apart from any question of one's not shooting
to kill when they charge....  If all I've heard about them is true,
chivalry is apt to be a trifle costly."

"Waal, John, as Lgionnaires, we ain't habituated to luxury any, and
can't afford nawthen costly.  Ef any black gal lays fer me with an
axe--it's a smackin' fer hers."

"Yes--but what are we going to do if an Amazon regiment opens an
accurate and steady fire on us with Winchester repeaters and then
charges with the bayonet?"

"Burn the trail for Dixie," grinned the American.  "I guess we'd hit
the high places some, an' roll our tails for Home.  _Gee_-Whillikins!
Charged by gals!"

"That's all very well," grumbled the Englishman, "but the Legion
doesn't run, either from men or from women.  If an Amazon regiment
charges us, we've got to fight....  It would be ghastly."

Even as he spoke the deadly silent forest suddenly gave birth to
thousands of black shadows, all moving swiftly and noiselessly, and
from all directions, upon the tiny column of the Advance Guard.

With one accord, at some signal, they halted, rested the butts of their
rifles on their thighs, fired, and then, howling like devils, charged
with great _lan_, led by a number of tall, muscular women, handsome
and finely made.

"_Gals!_" gasped the American, as the column instinctively halted,
faced outwards in two ranks, and poured magazine fire into the dense
masses of the charging savages.

"_Look_ at her!" he cried, and pointed to a young woman, who, bare to
the waist, and wearing a fez cap, a short blue cotton kilt, and a
leather belt and cartridge-cases, came bounding straight toward him.
In her right hand she brandished a thick-backed, heavy chopping-sword
like a _coupe-coupe_ or machete, and in her left carried a bright new
repeating-carbine.  Nothing could have been more dashing, courageous,
and inspiring than the leading of this Fury, as she rushed straight for
the levelled rifles of the Legionaries, waving her men on and yelling
mingled words of encouragement, threat, and taunt at them as she strove
to bring them to the consummation of the charge.

Her efforts were in vain, however.  The Dahomeyan male warrior is not
of very heroic stuff, and does his best fighting in a surprised camp, a
broken square, or against a scattered line.  His _mtier_ is the
ambush, the rush at dawn, the hacking and hewing hundred-to-one fight
in dense jungle where the foe cannot form or charge, the tree-top
sniping, the trampling flat of a worn-out enemy by sheer weight of
numbers.

Before the steady fire of an unbroken line he generally wilts away, and
vanishes shadow-like into the impenetrable depths of his native jungle,
to try another surprise, another ambush, another dawn-rush of ten
thousand men, at the next opportunity.

As usual, beneath the accurate fire that mowed them down in swathes,
the Dahomeyans broke and fled, slowly followed by their Amazon leaders,
who shrilly cursed, and fiercely struck at, the retiring faint-hearts.

Just as the "cease-fire" whistle blew, the woman who had been charging
at the Bucking Bronco and John Bull (and who had stood screaming at her
followers as they halted, faltered, and broke) threw up her arms and
fell.

"That weren't _me_," quoth the Bucking Bronco, "an' I hope it was a
dod-gasted accident.  She was some gal, that gal.  Let's have a look at
her if we ain't agoin' to charge nor nawthen."

The officer commanding the Advance Guard was certainly not going to
charge.  He was only too thankful to have beaten off the sudden and
well-executed attack.  How marvellously the brutes had materialized
from the apparently uninhabited forest, still silent and gloomy as the
tomb.  But what _fools_!  That force alone, properly handled, and
attacking while the column was in the middle of the wide deep ford,
might have told a very different story.

"Bugler," called he, "blow the 'alarm' and the 'regimental-call' till
your veins crack and your lungs burst....  No--turn toward the river,
_sot_, I want the main body to hear....  Sergeant-Major, send two of
the strongest running back with this." ...

They were the last words he spoke.  The Amazons themselves were
charging this time--a whole regiment--and no regiment in this world
ever charged with greater dash, courage, violence, and determination.
Firing as they came, and utterly disregarding the steady magazine-fire
of the Legionaries, they swept down upon them like an avalanche--like
cavalry--and burst upon the little line, through it, and over it, like
a hailstorm across a wheatfield.

Rushing at Captain Roux, one fired her Spencer carbine into his chest,
while another drove a spear into his abdomen.  As he fell, a third
stooped and deliberately hacked off his head with her chopping-knife.
There was no question of "sparing women" as these furies, each as big
and strong and well-armed as any Legionary, hacked, hewed, and thrust,
or, kneeling a few yards from their victims, gave them the contents of
the magazines of their carbines.

While parrying the fierce thrusts of one stalwart virago, John Bull,
struck on the head from behind by two assailants at once, fell to the
ground, even as his eye had subconsciously taken in and registered upon
his brain a picture of his mighty friend swinging his rifle round and
round his head by the muzzle, the butt describing a circle within which
he stood unhurt as to his body, though apparently shocked in mind, to
judge from his roar of "Scat! ye shameless jumpin' Jezebels!"

Without thought of defending himself, the bugler continuously blew the
"alarm" and the "regimental call" (in the hope that it might carry back
to the main body, which apparently had delayed longer at the ford than
had been expected) until he went down with a bullet through his leg and
another in his shoulder, two of seven fired at him from a score paces
distance by a young Amazon.  A minute later, the man rose to his knees
and blew with almost undiminished strength, until the same young woman
riddled his chest, at point-blank range, with another magazineful.

Recovering consciousness, John Bull saw a gigantic Amazon make a dive
at the knees of the Bucking Bronco, ducking beneath the whirling
rifle-butt.  A moment later he was down, but, instead of being hacked
to pieces, was borne away, kicking and cursing, by a dozen powerful
women.

Knowing what that meant, he would rather have seen his friend killed
before his eyes....  As another wave of faintness swept over him, he
heard the distant strains of "Tiens!  Voil du boudin"--the March of
the Legion, and knew that the buglers of the column were sending the
encouraging notes ahead of their straining bodies, as the remainder of
the force hurried to the rescue.  Poor Bugler Langout's message had
carried on the heavy air, which seems to blanket the sound of rifle
fire while transmitting that of a whistle, bugle, or war-drum to a
surprising distance.

Heavy fire from the debouching troops saved the few survivors of the
Advance Guard--but it was not until the whole column had fought a tough
action in company squares, that the Amazons and the rallied and
reinforced Dahomeyans acknowledged defeat, for that day at any rate,
and disappeared shadow-like into the jungle as suddenly as they had
come.

John Bull and the assistant-surgeon decided that the butt-end of a
carbine had struck the former on the head, and that almost
simultaneously a chopping-sword had struck the butt of the carbine
while it was in contact with his skull, inasmuch as his head bore no
cut, there were splinters of wood in his hair, and a carbine with a
hacked stock lay beside him when he was picked up and examined.  He had
nearly been handed over to the burial-party instead of to the carriers,
and, when he realized that the Bucking Bronco had been carried off, he
almost wished that this had actually happened.  Most horrible stories
of the fate of prisoners of the Dahomeyans were current throughout the
expeditionary force, though no proofs of their truth had yet
materialized.

When a list of the killed, wounded, and missing was made out, it was
found that the Sergeant-Major had disappeared also, and one of the
survivors remembered seeing him borne off in a surging crowd of
Amazons, "like a band of big black ants carrying off an injured wasp,"
as he graphically described it.

That night John Bull, old Tant de Soif, the Grasshopper, Jan Minnaerts,
Black Gaspard, Achille Mattel, and one or two more of the _escouade_ to
which the Bucking Bronco belonged, volunteered to go out as a
scouring-party to reconnoitre for the enemy, and, incidentally, to try
to discover some traces of their missing comrade and the
_sous-officier_.

"Let Jean Boule be in charge," said Lieutenant Roberte, commanding the
remnants of the VIIth Company, _vice_ Captain Roux, killed in action,
"he has some sense, and can use the stars.  If you fall into the hands
of the enemy, I shall punish you severely--give you all a taste of the
_crapaudine_ perhaps.  _Bonne chance, mes enfants_." ...

      *      *      *      *      *

"We must turn back, _mon ami_," said Martel to John Bull at last.

"But yes," agreed old Tant de Soif, "it is useless to throw good meat
after bad....  They have died their deaths by now--or are being taken
to the sacred city of Kana for sacrifice."

"I smell smoke," suddenly said the Grasshopper, wrinkling his delicate
nostrils.  "_Nom de Dieu!_" he added, "and burning flesh."

It soon became more than evident that he was right.  Either they were
approaching the spot where flesh was being burnt, or a faint breeze had
sprung up and wafted the foul smell in their direction.

Treading like Dahomeyans themselves, they turned from the jungle track
they had discovered, along another that lay plain in the moonlight
across a little open glade, and seemed to lead in the direction of the
smell.  Thousands of bare feet must recently have made the path--the
feet of men hurrying along in single file....

      *      *      *      *      *

Although scarcely recognizable as a human being, the Sergeant-Major, a
huge stalwart Alsatian, was still alive.

Steel and fire had been used with remarkable skill, that so much could
have been done and the spark of life still kept in the unspeakably
tortured, defiled, and mangled body.  A score of Amazons were at work
upon him.

The Bucking Bronco, stark naked, but apparently uninjured, was bound to
a young palm.  Either he was merely awaiting his turn and incidentally
suffering the ghastly ordeal of seeing the tortures of the
Sergeant-Major and enduring the agonies of anticipation, or else he was
being reserved as an acceptable offering to King Behanzin and a
candidate for the wicker torture-baskets of the sacrificial
slaughter-house of Kana.

"A volley when I shout," whispered John Bull, "then a yell and the
bayonet."

A few seconds later he was killing women, driving his bayonet into
their bodies until the curved hilt struck with a thud.  The thuds gave
him infinite pleasure--and then he was violently sick.  Surprised by
the sudden volley, ignorant of the strength of their assailants, and
only partly armed, the Amazons broke and scattered into the jungle.
While John Bull, with shaking hands, prized at the Bucking Bronco's
bonds with his sword-bayonet, old Tant de Soif put a merciful bullet
into the brain of the Sergeant-Major and then busied himself about
collecting the dismembered fragments of that unfortunate.

"For all the world like picking up an old woman's packages when she has
slipped up on a banana-skin," quoth he.  He was a quaint old gentleman,
a _vieux moustache_ who had seen many queer things in his forty years
of assorted service in the Line, the Infanterie de la Marine, and the
Legion.

"We daren't stay to bury him," said Martel; "they'll rally and return
in a minute."

As the little party retreated at the _pas gymnastique_, the Bucking
Bronco remarked to his friend, panting ahead of him, "Say, John!  I
allow I'm a what-is-it henceforth--an'-a-dern-sight-more.  You know--a
Miss-Hog-you-beast."

"A _what_?"

"A Miss-Hog-you-beast."

"Yes!  What some people call a misogynist.  I don't blame you!"




IX

THE MACSNORRT

The MacSnorrt was on the downward path, and had been for many years.
Physically, mentally, and morally he was deteriorating; and as for the
other aspects--social, financial, and worldly--he had been Chief
Engineer on a Cunarder, and he was now the blackest of the black sheep
of the VIIIth Company of the First Battalion of the Legion.  From
sitting at meals with the passengers in the First Saloon of a great
liner, he had come to sitting with assorted blackguards over their tin
_gamelles_ of _soupe_; from drawing hundreds per annum, he had come to
drawing a half-penny per day; his brain was failing from lack of use
and excess of absinthe and mixed alcoholic filth, his superb health and
strength were undermined, and he was becoming a Bad Man.

The history of his fall is told in one short word--Drink; and drink had
turned a fine, useful, and honourable man into a degraded ruffian.  The
man who had thought of fame, wealth, inventions, patents,
knighthood--now thought of the successful shikarring of the next drink,
or the stealing of the wherewithal to get it.  Whether this poor soul
were married and the father of a family, I never knew, and did not care
to ask, but it is quite probable that he was.  Such men usually are.
Let us hope he was not.  Sober, he was a truculent, morose, and savage
ruffian--ashamed of his ashamedness, hating himself and everybody else,
dangerous and vile; a bad soldier till the fighting began, and then
worth two.  Drunk, he was exceedingly amusing, and one caught glimpses
of the kindly, witty, and genial original.

      *      *      *      *      *

The best of soldiers, be he Marchal or _Soldat deuxime classe_, as
was the MacSnorrt, may be overcome by a combination and alliance of
foes, any one of whom he could defeat alone.

As the MacSnorrt endeavoured to make clear to Captain d'Armentires
next day, it was merely the conjunction against him of a good dinner,
Haiphong, the stupeedity of the Annamese male in wearing a chignon and
a petticoat like a wumman, _shum-shum_, sunstroke, and his own
beautiful but ardent disposition, that had been his undoing.  With any
one of these he could have coped; by their unholy alliance he had
been--he freely admitted it--completely defeated.

Captain d'Armentires heard him with courtesy, and awarded him eight
days' _salle de police_ and the _peloton de chasse_ with sympathy.

He had known of similar fortuitous concatenations of adverse
circumstance before in connection with le Lgionnaire MacSnorrt.

It was the Captain's _ordonnance_, one Jean Boule, who had, luckily for
that reveller, discovered the MacSnortt and encompassed his capture by
a strong picket.

Passing a pagoda one night, he had heard, uplifted in monologue, a rich
voice whose accents, or accent, he had heard before, that of the
MacSnorrt, the Bad Man of the VIIIth Company, recently arrived in a
draft from Sidi-bel-Abbs to reinforce the VIIth after certain painful
dealings with the Pavilions Noirs, the "pirates" of the Yen Th.

Mingled with, but far from subduing the vinous voice and hiccups of the
MacSnorrt, were the angry murmurings, quick whispers, and the lisping
and clicking voices of a native Annamese and Chinese crowd.

Was the fool interfering with those so-tender "religious
susceptibilities," and intruding upon priests and their flock in search
of moral consolation and fortification?  He had no business in there at
all.

Following the wall and rounding a corner, Jean Boule came to a gate.
Pushing it open gently, he looked in.

Reclining majestically upon the ground, his back against the wall, was
the MacSnorrt.  In his vast left paw was a bottle of _shum-shum_, the
deadly, maddening spirit distilled from rice.  Clasped by his mighty
right arm to his colossal bosom, the MacSnorrt held--a _doi_ or
Sergeant of Tirailleurs Tonkinois![1]


[1] Known as _Les Jeunes Filles_ to the Legion, by reason of their long
hair.


The little man, his lacquered hat, with its red bonnet-strings on one
side, his chignon in grave disarray, looked even more like a devil than
was his normal wont, as he struggled violently to escape from his
degrading and undignified situation.

It was clear that, if the Annamese could get at his bayonet, there
would be a vacancy at the head of the clan of MacSnorrt and at the tail
of the VIIIth Company of the Legion.

"Lie ye still, lassie," adjured the gigantic Legionary, as his captive
struggled again vainly, for the great right arm was not only round his
waist, but round both his arms, and he could only pick at the handle of
his bayonet with ineffectual finger-tips.

"Lie ye still, ye wee prood besom, or I'll e'en tak' ane o' the ither
lasses to ma boosom," threatened the MacSnorrt, but softened the
apparent harshness of the threat by a warm lingering kiss upon the
yellow cheek of the murderously savage soldier.

He then applied the _shum-shum_ bottle to his lips, poured a libation
of the crude and poisonous spirit, and then frankly explained to his
captive that he had not selected "her" from among the other "sonsie
lassies" by reason of any superior beauty, but simply because he liked
her saucy fancy-dress--quite like a _vivaandire_, and he had always
had a tender spot in his hearrt o' hearrts for a _vivaandire_.

The enraged and half-demented Sergeant screamed to the little crowd of
priests, loafers, coolies and Haiphong citizens to knife the foreign
devil, or, taking his bayonet, to drive it in under his ear....  The
crowd allowed "I dare not" to wait upon "I would"--for the moment.

"Aye! ... Oo-aye!  It's not Jock MacSnorrt that could reseest the
blaandishments o' onny little deevil o' a _vivaandire_," confessed the
aged rou....  "It was for the sake o' the _vivaandires_ I joined the
French airrmy, ye'll ken--when I was an innocent slip o' a laddie....
Romaantic! ...

"Aye--an' they're mostly fat auld runts wi' twa chins," he added, with
a sudden fall to pessimism and confession of disillusionment.

"'Tis the ruin o' the British Airrmy, ye'll ken," he confided to the
ugly crowd that gradually closed in around him, "that they hae no
_vivaandires_ to comfort the puir laddies....  Hae the Gorrdons onny
_vivaandires_, I'll ask ye?  The Seaforrths?  The Caamerons?  The
Heelan' Light Infantry?  The Royal Scots?  ... They hanna.  It a' comes
o' such matters being in the han's o' the Southrons--the drunken an'
lasceevious deils.  Look at the Navy....  Is there a ship o' them
a'--fra' battleship to river gunboat--that has a _vivaandire_, I'm
speirin' ye, lassie?  There isna....  An' theenk o' the graan' worrk
they could do for the puir wounded--instead o' they bluidy-minded,
sick-bay orrderly deevils!

"Losh, maan!  Contemplaate it!

  "Eh, Wooman in oor 'oors o' ease
  A settin' lightly on oor knees....


"Lie still, ye haverin', snoot-cockin' besom--an' I'll tell ye a' aboot
the horrors o' a naval engagement--an' I seen hunnerds.  I'll tell ye
a' aboot the warrst o' the lot--when I lossed ma guid right arrm.  Then
conseeder what a deeference ane bonnie _vivaandire_ lassie might ha'
made..."  A violent struggle from the insanely incensed and ferocious
_doi_.

"Wull ye bide quiet, ma bonnie wean?  Or shall I send ye awa' oot into
the cauld warrld to airrn yere ain leevin'?  Ye're awfu' sma' for sic a
fate, ye'll ken, ma bairnie!  An' this is no Sauchiehall Street, I'm
tellin' ye....  Did ye see the wee-bit gunboats we came in, the morrn?
Well, imaagine ane o' they ten times increased and multiplied, an', in
fact, made a hantle bigger.  I sairved in ane o' yon, but I shall not
disclose in what capaacity--save an' except that it was honourable to
me on the ane side an' to her Majesty on the ither....  _Wull_ ye bide
quiet like a respeckitable _tai-tai_ or I'll hae ye awa' ....

"Eh! maan, a naval engagement's graand.  Watter everywheer!  On board,
I mean.  Everywheer.  Gaallons o' it." ...

"May a cat tread on your heart!" hissed the struggling _doi_.  "May
dragons tear you!  May the bellies of mud-fish be your grave!  May you
be cast on a Mountain of Knives." ...

"What did ye say, lassie?  _Why_ do they want watter on booarrd?  _To
hide the awfu' things that fall aboot_!  Eyes, arrms, legs, noses,
ears, toes, fingers--ye wouldna hae them lying there plain for the eye
o' man to see?  No!  Gaallons o' watter...."

"Bide ye quiet, _kuniang_, or ye won't be a _kuniang_ much longer, I'm
thinkin'.  Aye!  Dozens o' gaallons o' watter.  Everywheer.  Hoses
playin' a' aboot the plaace.  Pumps squirrtin' it.  Inches o' it on the
decks.  An' _blood_!  Ma certie!  Lassie--ye'd never believe.  Hunnerds
o' gaallons o' watter, an' as the shells burrst a' aroond--what falls
into the watter in a pairrfect hail?" ...

"Devils draw your entrails!" panted the writhing _doi_.

"Eh?  Bullets, d'ye say?  That's wheer ye're wrang, lassie.  Na!
Na!--Eyes, arrms, legs, noses, ears, toes, fingers!  Ye'd scarcely
credit it.  An' thousands o' gaallons o' watter!  Juist to hide the
awfu' sichts and sounds....  There'll be a gun-team working their gun
in watter.  Thousan's o' gaallons o' watter.  Feet deep.  An' a maan
wull stoop to fish up a shell for the gun--an' what'll he bring up
belike?"

"Be the graves of your ancestors torn open by pariah dogs and their
bones devoured!" cursed the Sergeant, getting one arm free at last.

"Bring up a shell, d'ye say, ma wean?  More likely an eye or an arrm or
a leg, or a nose or an ear or a toe or a finger frae beneath that
fearfu' flood....  Oo-aye!  Meelions o' gaallons o' water!  Feet deep.
An' the bed o' that awfu' sea, a wrack o' spare-parts o' the human
forrm divine!  Meelions o' gaallons o' watter.  Yarrds deep on the
decks.  They always hae it the like o' that in a naval engagement.
Aye--I seen hunnerds ..." and the _doi_ had got at his bayonet at last.
Then the _bonze_ struck heavy blows upon the big bell hanging near in
its bamboo-frame support, and the crowd closed in.  If the _doi_
struck, they would hack and tear this foreign devil to pieces.

With a _weeeep_ of steel on steel the bayonet cleared the scabbard and
the _doi_ struck at his captor's throat as John Bull sprang forward.
But the sound of the drawing of the bayonet had an extraordinary effect
on the MacSnorrt--and it was with the weapon held only in his left hand
that the _doi_ struck--and missed.  Seizing him by the throat with both
huge hands the Lgionnaire scrambled to his feet and used him as a
battering-ram in his headlong roaring drive at the closing
knife-drawing crowd.

With a yell of "Ye dommed dirrty Jael!" he wrenched the bayonet from
the little Annamese and flung him head-long as the crowd gave back.

John Bull sprang to his side, and the two in a whirling, punching,
struggling plunge fought their way to the gate, burst through it--and
were promptly arrested by the picket, opportunely passing.

With these new enemies the MacSnorrt did further battle, until a tap on
the head from a Gras rifle in the skilful hands of Sergeant Legros
brought him to that state in which he was perhaps best--unconsciousness.




X

"BELZBUTH"

We were heavy sportsmen ( l'Anglaise) at Bellevue at that time.  Not
only did we lay out a race-course, but we imported hounds and performed
the _Chasse au renard_.  We got up point-to-point races and
paperchases.  There were actually Ladies' races, and some folk went so
far as to talk about pig-sticking.

"Of course, Madame Merlonorot will ride when she comes out to Algeria?"
asked Madame Pas.

"_Dieu_!  Rather!" replied Colonel Merlonorot of the Zouaves.  "I am on
the look-out for a good thing for her now.  She wants all the equine
perfections embodied in one Arab pony.  Won't keep a string....  Too
much bother....  Must have won a good race or two, must have been
hunted by a lady, must hack quietly in both saddles, must trap, and be
trusted to take no exception to camels, Arab music, whirling dervishes,
or fireworks.  Also he must make the promenade in the governess-cart
upon occasion!  What?"

"It's a far cry from the race-course to the governess-cart, isn't it?"
inquired Madame Pas.

"Yes.  But she'll expect me to produce all that in the next month--and
not to spend more than about three thousand francs! ... Let's know if
you hear of anything that might meet most of the requirements--and
available within the month, will you, dear Madame?  Must be a racer,
though--and that limits the field when you're looking for a hack....
She's great on Ladies' Point-to-Points, Hunt-races, _Chasse au renard_,
and everything you can do on a horse.  She would play _le polo_ and
would pursue the pig with a spear if I would consent!"

"I will remember, Colonel--and I have an idea....  Three thousand
francs for a pony that meets all the specifications?"

"About that, and a thousand thanks.  Must be young, thoroughbred, and
something to look at--and be vetted sound all over, of course." ...

Three thousand francs!  It would mean Home this year instead of next.
Paris in Spring!  It would mean avoiding the awful prostrating heat of
_la canicule_ for the babies--neither of them robust, both of them
showing the signs of French babyhood kept too long in Africa's
forcing-house.  It might mean life to one or both of them, especially
with the usual cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and dysentery epidemics
about, as they grew weaker.  And Guillaume needed his long-overdue
leave badly.  He was overworked, run down, ill, and his temper--never
very good--was getting unbearable.  Fancy having leave and being too
poor to take it!  What a shame it was that the condition of the
majority of married junior officers of the XIXth Army Corps should be
one of cruel grinding poverty, pitiful shifts to keep up appearances,
and a weary, heart-breaking struggle to make ends meet.  Well, one must
"drag the lengthening chain" and, having once clasped it on, must take
the consequences.  One can't start life afresh in France at thirty
odd--and, well, one can always hope, or nearly always.  And one might
win a prize in the Lottery.  (Think of it!  One's chief hope for a
brighter future, a chance of winning a prize in the Lottery!) ... Three
thousand francs!

But young Belzbuth had never run a race in his life and never taken
part in the _Chasse au renard_ nor the pursuit of the spear-threatened
pig, unless, perhaps, when he had had an English master in Maroc.
Still, he was a real picture, was rising seven, sound as a bell, quiet
as a mouse, and undoubtedly thoroughbred.

He hacked in both saddles and was a fast and steady trapper--and took
the babies for an airing daily.  Certainly he had a turn of speed--and
there was simply no tiring him.

He would take Guillaume (a very bad and nervous rider) for a ride in
the morning, and in the trap to the barracks after breakfast.  He would
bring him home to lunch, and then take the babies for their drive in
the evening.

Sometimes he would finish up the day by taking the trap to a distant
villa when a dinner-party was toward.  And when Guillaume was away on
manoeuvres or marches, Madame Pas, horse-woman born and bred, got her
only riding.

Three thousand francs!  And Guillaume had bought him for two hundred
francs when Lieutenant d'Amienville--who ought not to be allowed to
keep a pig or a pariah dog, much less a horse--went away.  Starved,
neglected, and dying for want of work, Belzbuth had looked a bad
bargain at 200 fcs.  A man ought not to go unprosecuted who buys a
horse and uses a motor-car, leaving the horse to the mercy of a
rascally _homard_ who feeds it on offal and never takes it out of the
stall.  Her heart had ached when she had seen the staring coat, blear
eye, and overgrown hoofs of the walking skeleton that Lieutenant
d'Amienville swore had cost him, raw, a couple of thousand francs.  She
could have hung her sun-hat on him in a dozen places.  But she knew a
good horse when she saw one.  Had not her father run his own horses at
Longchamps and Auteuil before he went bankrupt?

And, under her care, Belzbuth had soon changed into a picture of
bright, sleek, healthy happiness, and had served them exceedingly well.

Could she make him worth three thousand francs before Guillaume
returned from manoeuvres, sell him to Colonel Merlonorot (her father's
old comrade), and put the money into Guillaume's hand, saying, "Book
the passages for Marseilles to-morrow, _mon ange_."

Could she?  For, the utmost screwing and scraping, the most optimistic
view of the saleable value of the few goods and chattels, the
estimating the cheapest and nastiest journey to Paris--left a gaping
chasm of a good thousand francs between hope and realization of a
holiday in La Ville Lumire.  No, nothing could bridge it--unless
Belzbuth would fetch three thousand francs instead of the three or
four hundred they had expected.  Five hundred was the highest Guillaume
had ever dreamed of--and that was after a cheery dinner at some Mess
and a little champagne.

Even five hundred would be a profit of a hundred and fifty per cent.
she believed.

Yes--four hundred would be cent. per cent., and five would be half as
much again.

What would three thousand be on two hundred?  Fifteen per cent.?  No,
of course not.  Fifteen hundred per cent.?  It sounded impossible.

And of course it was impossible.

Still--she would add five pounds of _avoine_ daily to Belzbuth's _bl_
and _son_, and start training him while Guillaume was away.  She would
join the club of the _Chasse au renard_ at once, and she would enter
for the Ladies' Race in the Desert Point-to-Point, which would be run
just three weeks hence at Bellevue.

But what a terrible plunge!  A hundred francs to the _cercle_, and
Heaven alone knew what oats were fetching.  Or perhaps she could hunt
three or four times only, and pay a small donation or something?  And
she could certainly avoid getting the Beaune that Mdecin-Major Parme
had ordered her to take, since she had had malarial fever, and use the
money for oats.  But what a speculation!  It is an ill-wind that blows
no good at all--the fever had reduced her weight, and she could ride at
about seven stone now.

But what would Guillaume say of the wasted money--if she failed?  Well,
it wouldn't be all waste, for Belzbuth's value would go up, in any
case, if she hunted him well and he got a place in the Point-to-Point.

The proverbs say that where there is a will there is a way, and that
Heaven helps those that help themselves.

She would simply _live_ to sell Belzbuth to dear rich old Colonel
Merlonorot for three thousand francs, as a racer, hunter, hack in both
saddles, bright trapper, and confidential nursery-pony!  For the next
month she would give mind, soul, and body to winning the Desert
Point-to-Point....

      *      *      *      *      *

Belzbuth was taken for a long quiet ride next morning, and for another
in the evening, and his mistress personally superintended his feed and
toilet.

Next day he was introduced to a new and glorious place where the going
was beautiful and you went straight ahead between railings, with plenty
of room and no obstacles.

He took his furlong burst on the race-course at a good pace, and
improved daily at two, three, and four furlongs.

Madame Pas' notions of training were original, but based on the sound
principle, "Train for what you have to do by repeatedly doing it--and
work up gradually to the first doing."

After a week Belzbuth was doing his mile on the race-course and doing
it uncommon well (as one or two observers noted).  Also he went down
the lane of jumps cleverly and willingly, beautifully schooled.

One morning, Colonel Merlonorot noticed Madame Pas at the meet, on a
very likely-looking bay Arab--good in the legs, well ribbed up, high in
the withers, and with a blood look about him.  ("He liked the look of
that beast.  _Nom d'un pipe_, he did!")

Madame Pas had not hunted since she had scrambled about with the North
Devons in Angleterre--a long-legged, long-haired Diana of fourteen (at
a Devonshire school) on a fat pony.

She was now a tiny, slim, pale, big-eyed Diana of twenty-four--and as
good as a jockey.  But she looked as though she had been too long in
Exile (which was exactly the case), and fitter for a deck-chair on a
homeward-bound liner than for a saddle in the hunting-field....

When would they get off?  How would Belzbuth behave?  Would he belie
his nursery mildness and go _fou_ when it was a case of full cry and
all away?  Would the unwonted oats and the rousing on the race-course
and over the jumps react unfavourably now for the weak-backed, weary
rider?  He was certain to be _mchant_, and might buck or bolt.  Would
trembling hands and aching arms be unable to hold him?  How her back
ached, too! ... Dear old Belzbuth, be good!  It's for the babies and
Guillaume....  God knew she'd sooner be in bed than in the midst of
this gay throng of strong and happy men and women, well-content,
well-clad, well-fed....

Well-fed!  A melancholy fact.  Madame Pas, wife of a French
commissioned officer, was not well fed.  A woman of the unselfish sort
does not buy costly tonic-foods, dainties, and wines, and eat the money
that is sorely needed for other things.  For plain food she had no
appetite.  To people who have been brought up in a chteau atmosphere,
an income--which to _ci-devant_ dwellers in Montmartre or the bourgeois
suburbs is wealth--may be degrading poverty.

The Pas had expenses which it was due to their honour and proper pride
to have--and which are not due to the honour and proper pride of the
bourgeoisie....  And these expenses and the health of Guillaume and the
babies came before food and clothes for Madame Pas, in Madame Pas'
opinion.

A note of music from the clump of jungle that had swallowed up the
hounds.  A crash of the grand wild music.  A line!  Hounds are off and
the first "run" is on.

Belzbuth commenced by a series of bounds, the outcome of a high and
joyous heart, good feeding, and good condition.  He felt a touch of the
curb, arched his back in protest, and went along at a smart canter, a
vision of dainty horse-flesh.

The jackal got into a vineyard, was put out again, and had to make for
open country.

It was fine going, and Madame Pas let Belzbuth go.  He went--and in
five minutes the first rider behind the Master was Madame Pas, and she
was holding Belzbuth in, or he would have passed the Master's big
Syrian-Barb who was doing his possible under Colonel de Longueville's
fifteen stone.

When the end came, Madame Pas was in at the death, lengths ahead of
the second arrival, and minutes ahead of the field.  Belzbuth had
hardly turned a hair, and the Master presented the rider with the brush
and a compliment.  Madame Pas took her pony home, the while the field
jogged on to the next likely cactus covert.

In another week Belzbuth was doing two kilometres on the race-course,
morning and evening.

At the next meet, a very long run (twenty-two kilometres, the Master
said) was finished by a field of four arriving thus: the Master and
Madame Pas together; Captain Dutoit of the Spahis, seconds later;
fourth man, Major Bruil of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, minutes later.
Rest nowhere--and strung out for miles.  Belzbuth had been held, while
the other horses had been spurred.

Belzbuth hunted twice more, and the hunt-correspondent of the "Depche
Algrienne" singled him out for high praise.

Madame Pas dropped race-course practice and hunting, and let him do
exercise walks in the compound on one day, and a point-to-point run on
another.

Riding out alone to some scrubby, sandy jungle, she would endeavour to
estimate a two-kilometre distance, note a clump of palms, a tree, a
hut, a hillock, and other natural landmarks, and then ride from one to
the other at Belzbuth's best speed.

Once she had a narrow escape of settling the question of Belzbuth's
value, and all other values, finally.  Emerging at a furious gallop
from a cactus-strewn area, in which pace could only be maintained and
disaster avoided by skilful "bending," she came upon a beautiful smooth
patch with a gentle rise ending in--a wadi or gully, thirty feet deep
and fifty wide.  She realized the fact in time to bring Belzbuth round
in a curve that missed the precipice by inches.

On the Wednesday before the Saturday on which the race would be run,
Madame Pas took Belzbuth out for his last training gallop.  In the
middle of it she put him at a _terrasse_, a "bund," or low earthen
embankment, round what had once been a cultivated field.

The three-foot banks Belzbuth preferred to clear.  The four-foot
variety he liked to treat as on-and-offs--alighting on the two-foot top
and leaving it like a bird.

This particular bank was a delusion and a snare.

Though fair-seeming to the eye on Madame Pas' side of it, on the other
it was eroded, crumbling, beetling.

Belzbuth landed beautifully on the top--and horse and rider went down
in a cloud of dust and an avalanche of clods and stones.

The horse turned a complete somersault across the woman.

But the flood that had caused the erosion had made some amends by
scooping a channel at the base of the undermined bank, and instead of
breaking every bone in Madame Pas' body and crushing her chest,
Belzbuth's weight forced her into this channel and rested on its sides.

He arose and stood steady as a troop-horse.

His mistress lay still and white.

Soon she stirred, sat up--and straightened her tricorne hat.  Then, too
shaken to stand, sick and faint, giddy and stunned, not knowing whether
she was seriously injured, she crawled to Belzbuth and examined his
knees.

"_Oh!  Thank God!_" she whispered, on finding that, instead of being
broken as she had expected, they were unmarked.

What did her own injuries matter so long as Belzbuth's knees were
right?

A blemish there--and two hundred francs was his price.

An hour later, Madame Pas, looking like death on a bay horse, rode
into the compound of her villa and went straight to bed.

Next day she could not move.

On the Friday she was better, but unable to get up.

On Saturday she would leave her bed and, if necessary, be carried
downstairs, driven to the starting-point, and lifted on to Belzbuth.

Who could ride him for her at seven stone--and ride him as she would?
Nobody.

All Bellevue was _en route_ for the scene of the famous Bellevue
Point-to-Point races, consisting of team-races for horses, another for
ponies, a handicap, and an open race for quadrupeds of any size and
bipeds of any weight.

Then came the Ladies' Point-to-Point, over two and a half kilometres of
fairly good course and a few jumps.

The ordinary course was a stiff one, and so arranged that a really bold
and resolute rider could shorten the distance on the average man by
taking _wadis_, and the other "places" that discretion would ride round.

The Ladies' Course included nothing that gave the stout heart and
strong seat a marked advantage.  So much the worse for Madame Pas, who
was out, not so much to win a race and glory, as to win health and
happiness, possibly life itself, for her children and husband.

A large crowd, on horseback for the most part, surrounded the tents
(where the officers of the _Chasseurs d'Afrique_ were "At Home"), the
starting-point, and neighbouring winning-post.

Madame Pas lay in a long chair, with closed eyes--while the men's four
races were run--limp, relaxed, and weary to death.

Oh, for a cushion to put under her weak and aching back!--and oh, for a
_petit verre_ of _eau de vie_ to give her heart and strength!  But her
idolized Guillaume (a prig of the first water and petty domestic
tyrant) did not "approve" of alcohol for ladies.  There were so many
things of which Guillaume did not "approve" for other people, though he
appeared to approve of most things for Guillaume.

At last!  The bell for the Ladies' Point-to-Point, the most popular and
famous race in the Colony.

Madame Pas mounted Belzbuth and walked him to the starting-point.

Nine competitors.

Colonel Lebrun's wife on the pride of the Chasseurs (but a heavy,
bumping, mouth-sawing rider who would spoil any horse's chance).

Madame Maxin on a characterless, unreliable racer.

Little Anglique Dandin, on her brother's one and only pony.

Madame Malherbe, cool, quiet, neat, and businesslike, on a light and
dainty black mare with slender legs but powerful quarters.

Major Parme's wife on the best horse that her money could buy--but a
woman who thought far more of hat, habit, and figure than of seat and
hands.

Madame Deville, riding (astride) her husband's charger and intending to
win if spur and quirt would do it.

Colonel de Longueville's wife, a fine horse-woman, handsome, smart, and
clever, on the pick of her husband's racing-stable.  And a couple of
quidnuncs.

A bad field to beat.

Betting was on Madame Maxin if her horse "behaved."  If he didn't,
Madame de Longueville must win in a common canter.

Strangers liked the look of Madame Malherbe, but local wisdom knew her
mare couldn't live with the other two.

General Blanc, starter, drew the attention of the ladies to a pair of
red flags half a kilometre away, a pair of blue ones to the right of
these and half a kilometre from them, another pair of red to the right
of the "field," and a pair of white, at present behind their backs and
some three furlongs distant.

"You must pass between the red flags, then between the blue, then the
red, and lastly between the white, and finish here," said he.  "There
is nothing serious in the way of ditch or wall.  Pick your own
route--and any competitor not passing between the flags is, of course,
disqualified."

A silly question from Madame Lebrun--politely answered.

All ready? ... The flag falls.

Madame Pas thanked Heaven they were away at last.

A hundred yards from the starting-point is a brush-wood jump which must
be taken--or a large patch of dense cactus-jungle skirted to the left
or right.

Should she try and take it first of all?

She hated jumping in company.  Yes.  A flick told Belzbuth he might
stretch himself for a bit, and he cleared the jump ten lengths ahead of
the next horse.

"_Nom de Dieu_!  It's an 'outsider's year,'" said General Blanc.  "Bar
accidents, that's the winner.  Who is she?"

Madame Lebrun's horse--with a round dozen stone hanging on his
mouth--refused; the lady and the animal parted company, and the
subsequent proceedings interested them no more.

Madame Parme elected to skirt the jungle, and was out of the race from
that moment.

A quidnunc took alarm at the pace and pulled with all her strength.

The virtueless and evil-reputed racer drew level with Belzbuth, Madame
Maxin spurring, and Madame de Longueville passed both.

Madame Pas was holding Belzbuth in from the moment he had cleared the
first jump.

Madame Deville began flogging, like a jockey, in the first quarter-mile
of the race, and passed Madame de Longueville with a spurt.  Shortly
after she took fifth place and kept it....

Between the first flags passed Madame de Longueville with the wicked
racer at her girth and Belzbuth at her tail, Madame Malherbe a dozen
lengths behind, and Madame Deville thirty.

Angelique Dandin came later in the day, having lost her way.  Neither
quidnunc continued her wild career to this point....

Gradually the distance between the leading three and the following two
lengthened--and, for a kilometre, Madame Pas, Madame de Longueville,
and Madame Maxin ran neck and neck.

Suddenly the bad-charactered racer took a line of his own, missed the
next flags by a few metres, and bolted into the desert.  At the second
flags, Madame de Longueville led, Belzbuth consenting--or, rather,
being made to consent; Madame Malherbe, creeping up, passed the flags
three lengths behind, and Angelique Dandin, catching Madame Deville,
led her through, a score lengths in rear....

Madame Pas was filled with hope.

Should she let Belzbuth out yet?  No, not till the last flags--if she
could live so long--if her heart would beat instead of stabbing--if her
brain would not reel so--if the blue mist would clear from her eyes.

(Those who had climbed to points of vantage shouted that Madame de
Longueville would win in a walk--had led from the start--was going
strong--except for that dark horse which seemed to manage to hang
on....)

A fairish jump ahead--should she pass Madame de Longueville?  No, let
her take it first, and let Belzbuth save himself for the three-furlong
run home.

At the last flags Madame de Longueville led by twenty lengths, Madame
Pas second, Madame Malherbe third, Angelique Dandin a neck behind, and
Madame Deville, still flogging, a safe fifth.

And then Madame Pas gave Belzbuth a sharp flick, raised her bridle
hand, and called to him.

The roar of applause and welcome to Madame de Longueville died down
with curious suddenness as Belzbuth sprang forward, passed Madame de
Longueville's lathered grey Arab as though he were standing, forged
rapidly and steadily ahead, and, finishing in a quiet canter, won the
race by a good furlong.  Madame Pas reeled in the saddle and fell
heavily into the arms of Colonel Merlonorot, who came forward to help
her to dismount.

"Splendid!  Splendid!" said he.  "_Mon Dieu_!  If I hadn't just bought
my wife a horse, I'd ask if that pony of yours is for sale.  You should
run him at Longchamps!"

... "_If I hadn't just bought my wife a horse_" ... what was he saying?
"_If I hadn't just bought my wife a horse_, I'd ask if that pony of
yours is for sale." ...

Then it was all for nothing--and money wasted!

Madame Pas fainted quietly and privately in a comfortable chair at the
back of the empty reception-tent of the Spahis.

Colonel Merlonorot drove her home in his uncomfortable high
dogcart--(quite _ l'Anglaise_).

Just time to change and rest before Guillaume arrived....

He burst into her room, looking fagged, white, and weary--and his
greeting, after five weeks' absence, was--

"What on earth have you been doing with my horse?  It's as lame as a
tree, and the valet has got its near fore in a bucket of hot water....
It's a shame, I say....  The only horse I have got, and you can't take
a little care of it!  What am I to do to-morrow?  I suppose it doesn't
trouble you that I must cycle to barracks in the sun? ... _Peste_! ...
_Nom d'un Nom_! ..." and much more.

Poor Guillaume!  He was so overworked and ill--but she wept bitterly,
and, lying awake all night, wished she were dead.  But a note was
handed in at breakfast, next morning, from Colonel de Longueville,
which ran:


"DEAR MADAME,

"I should like to offer my very hearty congratulations on your, and
your pony's performance yesterday, and to ask whether your husband
would take 4,000 fcs. for him.

"I gave that for the pony that Belzbuth left standing yesterday--so
it's not a very brilliant offer.  I should train him for bigger things.

"With my most distinguished regards and compliments,

"HENRI DE LONGUEVILLE,
    "Colonel."


Madame Pas, being very weak and tired, wept again.




XI

THE QUEST

_Ex_-No. 32867, _Soldat premire classe_, shuffled out of the main gate
of the barracks of the First Battalion of La Lgion trangre at
Sidi-bel-Abbs for the last time, and without a farewell glance at that
hideous yellow building.  He had once been Geoffry Brabazon-Howard,
Esquire, of St. James's Street and the United Service Club, but no one
would have thought it of the stooping, decrepit creature in the
ill-fitting blue suit of ready-made (and very badly made) mufti, the
tam-o'-shanter cap and blue scarf, from the _fourrier-sergent's_ store.
He looked more like a Basque bear-leader whose bear has been impounded,
or an Italian organ-grinder who has had to pawn his organ--save that
the rather vacant eye in the leathern face was grey and the hair,
beneath the _beret_, of a Northern fairness.  A careful observer (such
as a mother or wife, had he had one to observe him) would have noticed
that his hands shook like those of an old man, that his eyes were heavy
and blood-shot, as though from sleeplessness, and that his legs did not
appear to be completely under control.  A casual passer-by might have
supposed him to be slightly drunk, or recovering from a drunken bout.

He had that day received his discharge from the Legion, his bonus as
holder of the _mdaille_ and _croix_, his papers and travelling-warrant
to any place in France, the blessing of his Captain, and the cheery
assurance of Mdecin-Major Parme that he was suffering from
cerebro-spinal sclerosis, and would gradually but surely develop into a
paralysed lunatic.

Certainly he felt very ill.  He was in no great pain, and he regretted
the fact.  He would far rather have felt the acutest pain than the
strange sensation that there was a semi-opaque veil between himself and
his fellow-men, that he lived quite alone and unapproachable in a
curious cloud, and that, although he slept but little, he lived in a
dream.  He was also much distressed by the feeling that his hands were
as large and thick as boxing-gloves, that his feet had soles of thick
felt, and that he had _fourmis_ (pins-and-needles) in his legs.  He
would gladly have exchanged the terrible feeling of weakness (and
imminent collapse) in the small of his back for any kind of pain.  And,
above all things, he wanted _rest_.  Not sleep!  Heaven forbid.  Sleep
was the portal of a Hell unnameable and unimaginable, and the worst of
it was that insomnia led to the very same place, and one lived on the
horns of a dilemma.  If one did things to keep oneself awake, they
either lost their efficacy and one slept (and fell into Hell) or one
got insomnia (and crawled there with racking, bursting head and eyes
that burnt the brain).

Rest!  That was it.  Well--he had done his five years in the Legion and
got his discharge.  Why shouldn't he rest?  He would rest forthwith,
before he set out upon his Quest, the last undertaking of his life.

He sat down on the _pav_ in the shade of the Spahis' barracks and
leant against the wall.  In five seconds he was asleep.

Later, two gens d'armes passed.  One turned back and kicked him.  "Get
out of this," said he tersely.

_Ex_-No. 32867 of the Premire Lgion trangre staggered to his feet
with what speed he might.

"I _beg_ your pardon," said he in English.  "I am afraid...." and then
he realized who and what and where he was.

Mechanically he walked back to barracks and made to enter the great
main gate.  The sentry stopped him, and the Sergeant of the Guard came
up.

"By no means, verminous _pekin_,"[1] quoth Sergeant Legros.  "Is this a
doss-house for every dirty tramp of a broken-down _pkin_ that chooses
to enter and defile it?" and he ordered the sentry to fling the thing
out.  "But that a French bayonet must not be used as a stable-fork, I
would..." he began again, but _Ex_-No. 32867 perceived that this was
not the place of Rest, and shuffled away again.


[1] _Pkin_ = civilian.


Sergeant Legros spat after him.  If there was one thing he hated more
than a Legionary, it was a time-expired man, a vile dog who had
survived his treatment and escaped his clutches....

_Ex_-No. 32867 passed along the barrack wall, his eyes staring vaguely
ahead.  If he might not sit on the ground and could not get back to his
_chambre_ and cot, where could he go for rest?  He could not set forth
upon his Quest until he had rested.  His back was too near the
breaking-point, his knees too weak, his feet too uncertain.  There were
seats in the gardens by the Porte de Tlemen, if he could get so far.
But in the Place Sadi Carnot he suddenly found that he had sat down.
Well--he would....  He fell asleep at once....

The gendarme seemed very suspicious, but that is only natural in a
gendarme.  Yes--the papers were apparently in order, but he would do
well to remember that the gendarme had his eye upon him.  He could go,
this time--so, _Marche_!--and sit down no more for a siesta in the
middle of the road....

Where was it he had been going for a rest? ... A bright
idea--_Carmelita's_!  She would let him rest, and, if not too busy,
would see that he did not fall asleep and go to Hell....

"Bon jour, mon ami!" cried Carmelita, as he entered the little Caf de
la Legion.  "Che cosa posse offrirve?  Seet daown.  What you drink?"

_Ex_-No. 32867 raised his _beret_, bowed, smiled, and fell asleep
across a table.  Carmelita raised puzzled brows.  Drunk at this time of
day?  She pulled him backward on to the wooden bench, untied his scarf,
and, going to her room behind the bar, returned with an old cushion
which she thrust beneath his head.  He at once sat up, thanked her
politely, and walked out of the caf.

"Eh!  Madonna!  These English," shrugged Carmelita, and resumed her
work.  If one stopped to notice the eccentricities of every half-witted
Lgionnaire, one might spend one's life at it....

_Ex_-No. 32867 strolled slowly along to the railway-station, showed his
papers to the Sergeant of the Guard on duty there, sat him down, and
went to sleep.  Five minutes later he arose, approached the
ticket-office, tried hard for a minute to penetrate the half-opaque
veil that hung between him and his fellow-men, and then sat down
beneath the _guichet_ and went to sleep....

The station-master was doing his best to make it clear that he hated
filth, dust, dead leaves, stray pariah dogs, discharged Legionaries,
and similar kinds of offal to remain unswept from the clean floor of
his station.

The awakened man peered hard through the half-opaque veil that hung
between him and the great man, made a mighty effort of concentration,
and then said quite distinctly:

"I want a third single to Oran.  I am starting on my Quest, after
waiting five years."

"Then wait another five hours, Mr. Discharged Legionary," said the
functionary, "and come again at 9.20 for your third single to Oran--if
you are not too drunk.  Meanwhile, you cannot sleep here, unless it is
in the permanent-way with your ugly neck across a rail."

The time-expired considered this.

"No, I go on a Quest," said he, and the station-master, with a gesture
of a spatulate thumb in the direction of the door, indicated that the
sooner the son of a camel commenced it the better for all concerned.

He was an unsympathetic person--but then he was held responsible when
unconsidered trifles of Government property were stolen from the
station precincts.  And it is well known that a Legionary will steal
the wall-paper from your wall while your back is turned, cut it up
small, and try to sell it back to you as postage-stamps as soon as
darkness sets in.

_Ex_-No. 32867 got to his feet once more, marched mechanically to
barracks, was somewhat roughly handled by the guard at the order of
Sergeant Legros, and, having staunched the bleeding from his nose,
split lip, and cut cheek with the lining of his _beret_, made his way
to the Caf de la Legion.  Entering, he bowed to Carmelita with a
dignified flourish of his pulpy _beret_, fell at full length on the
floor, and went to sleep.

"Queer, how differently drink takes different people," mused Carmelita,
as she again applied the cushion to supporting the battered head--and
yet she had hitherto known this Guillaume Iyon or Dhyoni (or William
Jones!) of the IIIrd Company, as a soldier of the soberest and
quietest.  Quite like old Jean Boule of the VIIth.  Doubtless he had
been "wetting his discharge papers."  Apparently he had done it to the
point of drowning them.

At _l'heure verte, l'heure de l'absinthe_, the caf began to fill, and
for a time the sleeper was undisturbed by the _va et vient_ of
Carmelita's customers....

"'Ullo, Cocky!" remarked le Lgionnaire 'Erbiggin ("'Erb"), entering
with his compatriots Rupert and John Bull, followed by the Grasshopper
and the Bucking Bronco.  "Gorn to yer pore 'ed, 'as it?  Come
_hup_--an' 'ave s'more," and he sought to rouse the sleeper.

"Strike me strange ef it 'ent thet _com_-patriot o' yourn, John," said
the Bucking Bronco.  "Willie the Jones, o' the IIIrd Company....  Guess
he's got a hard cider jag.  Didn't know he ever fell off the water-cart
any."

"William Jones" sat up.

"Really, I _beg_ your pardon," he said, "I thought I..." and then
peered through the heavy blanketing veil that was daily thickening
between him and his fellow-men.

"He's no more drunk than I am," said John Bull....  "I suppose he's
just discharged.  I thought he was in hospital....  Looks as though he
ought to be, anyhow."

"I have rested, and I must begin my Quest," said "William Jones,"
_Ex_-No. 32867.  "I have a glorious Quest to undertake, and I have
little time.  I..."

"Yus.  _Ingk_quest's abaht your mark, Cocky," observed 'Erb.
"Crowner's ingkquest."

"Help me up," added the sick man.  "I must begin my Quest."

"_De sot homme, sot songe_," murmured La Cigale, shaking his head
mournfully.  "I too have Quests, but they tangle and jangle in my
brain--and folk say I am mad or drunk....  Some will say you are mad,
_mon ami_, and some will say you are drunk."

"Are you going to England?" asked John Bull, as he helped the man to
his feet.

"England? ... England? ... Oh, yes.  I am going to England.  Where
_should_ I go?  She lives in England," was the reply.

"Have you friends?"

"She is my Friend.  Of Friendship she is the Soul and the Essence."

"_Chacun aime comme il est_," remarked the Grasshopper.  "This is a
gentleman," and added, "_Il n'y a guere de femme assez habile pour
connatre tout le mal qu'elle fait._"

"I allow we oughter take him daown town to the railway deept and see
him on the cars," put in the Bucking Bronco.  "Ef we don't tote him
thar an' tell him good-bye, it's the looney-house for his.  He'll set
down in the bazaar and go as _maboul_[2] as a _kief_[3]-smoker." ...


[2] Mad.

[3] Hemp.


"I was going to say we'd better see him off," agreed John Bull.  "If he
gets to England, he'll have more chance than as a discharged Legionary
in Algiers--or France either.  Wish we could get an address from him.
We could tie a label on him."

But they could not, and after the Bucking Bronco had procured him food
from Carmelita's "pie-foundry," as he termed her modest _table d'hte_,
they took him to the station and, under the cold eye of the Sergeant of
the Guard at the platform gate, saw him off....

As one in a dream, as one seeing through a glass darkly and beholding
men as trees walking, _Ex_-No. 32867, William Jones, _alias_ Geoffry
Brabazon-Howard, Esquire, made his way to London.  There is a
providence that watches over children and drunken men, and _Ex_-No.
32867 was as a compound of both.  He knew he was exceeding ill and
quite abnormal in some directions, such as never being _quite_ certain
as to whether he was really doing and experiencing things, or was
dreaming; but what he did not realize was that, concurrently with
severe insomnia, he was liable at any moment to fall suddenly asleep
for a few minutes, wherever he might be, and whatever he might be
doing.  He was aware that he had brief periods of "abstraction," but
was quite unaware that they were periods of profound slumber.
Unfortunately they only endured for a few seconds or a few minutes,
and, though serving to place him in endless dangerous, ridiculous, and
awkward situations, did not amount to anything approaching a
"living-wage" of sleep--rarely to more than an hour in the twenty-four
and generally to much less.

At times he was, for a few hours perhaps, entirely normal, to all
appearances; and could talk, behave, and transact business in such a
way that no casual observer would be aware of anything unusual in the
man.  He himself, however, when at his best, was still aware of the
isolating-medium in which he moved and lived and had his being; the
slowly thickening cloud, the imponderating veil, that shut him in, and
cut him off, with increasing certainty and speed.

What would happen when he could no longer pierce and penetrate this
fog, or wall, of cloudy glass; this vast extinguisher of sombre web,
and could hold no communication with the outer world?

Was he becoming an idiot before becoming a paralytic, and thus having
the gross presumption to reverse the order of things foretold by
Mdecin-Major Parme?

On arrival at Charing Cross, he had strolled idly through the streets
of London, slept on a bench in Leicester Square; had thought he was in
the public gardens outside the Porte de Tlemen at Sidi-bel-Abbs, and
hoped that the Legion's famous band would come and play its sad music
in that sad place; and, being "moved on," had wandered away, dazed and
bewildered, going on and on until he reached Hammersmith.  Here he
found his way into one of those Poor Man's Hotels, a Rowton
House--vaguely under the impression that it was some kind of barrack.

Here he had a glorious time of Rest, broken only by the occasional
misfortune of having a night's sleep, or rather a nightmare in the
unnameable Hell to keep out of which he exerted all his failing
faculties.  And at the Hammersmith Rowton House he became an object of
the intensest interest to such of his fellow-inhabitants of that abode
of semi-starvation and hopeless misery as were not too deeply engulfed
in their own struggle with despair and death to notice anything at all.

For "William Jones" began to blossom forth into a "toff," a perfect
dook, until it was the generally accepted theory that he was a
swell-mobsman just out of gaol, and now working the West End in the
correct garb of that locality.

Little by little the man had replaced his old clothes by new, his
_beret_ by a correct hat, his scarf by the usual neck-wear of an
English gentleman, his _fourrier-sergent's_ suit of mufti by a Conduit
Street creation, his rough boots by the most modish of cloth-topped
kid; and generally metamorphosed William Jones, late of the Foreign
Legion, into Geoffry Brabazon-Howard, Esq., late of St. James's Street
and the United Service Club.

In one of his hours of mental clarity and vigour, he had called at his
bank and drawn the sum of ninety pounds, left at current-account there
when he disappeared into the Legion; and in another such hour (and in
his new clothes) had called at his Club, seen the secretary, and
arranged for the revival of his lapsed membership.

It had taken both the bank-manager and the secretary some time to
recognize him, but they had done so eventually, and had been shocked to
think of what the man must have been through to have changed as he had,
and to look as he did.

He had been through a good deal.  In addition to the very real
hardships of campaigning in the Sahara as a private of the Legion, he
had had black-water fever and dysentery, had been wounded in the
abdomen by an Arab lance, carried away by the Arabs while unconscious
from loss of blood from this wound, and kept until he should recover
consciousness and be eligible for torture.  (It is pointless to torture
a practically dead person.)  The badness of his wound had saved his
life, for by the time he had sufficiently recovered to be interesting
to his captors, they were attacked and routed, and "William Jones" had
been restored to the bosom of his company only slightly tortured after
all.  The shock to an enfeebled man, who was also suffering from a
hideous wound, had been considerable, however.

Thereafter, enteric had done little to improve his health, and his
resultant slowness and stupidity had earned him the special attention
of Sergeant-Major Suicide-Maker and Sergeant Legros.

So there is little wonder that his banker and club-secretary were
shocked at the change in him, and wondered how many days or weeks he
had to live.

And to the secretary, who saw him almost daily, it was clear that the
poor chap was sometimes queer in the head too--and no wonder, looking
as awfully ill as he did.

For example, one day he would walk into the Club, sit down on the
Hall-Porter's stool, and go to sleep immediately!

Another day he would do the same thing on the stairs, or even the front
steps.

If he sat down in a smoking-room arm-chair and fell asleep, as is a
member's just and proper right, he would spring up if anyone
approached, say, "I really _beg_ your pardon.  I am afraid I..." and
walk straight out of the Club.

What would the worthy secretary have thought had he known that Geoffry
Brabazon-Howard, Esquire (once of the Black Lancers), walked daily to
the Club from the Hammersmith Rowton House in the morning and back to
that same retreat in the evening; and that such food as he ate, was
eaten in his cubicle there, or at a coffee-stall?  At a Rowton House
one has the "use of the fire" in the basement for one's cooking
purposes, but Geoffry was a most indifferent cook, and it is difficult
to purchase really cookable provisions on a sum of fourpence a day.
For this was the amount that he had decided upon as the irreducible
minimum to be expended on food if he were to keep up the strength
required for the daily journey to the West End and back.  After paying
for his clothes and setting aside his club fees, he would have enough
to live on at this rate, until the London season and through it, if he
were very, very careful.  He would have to renew some of his clothing,
perhaps, later on--boots, linen, ties--and there were always incidental
and unavoidable expenses.  However, with great care and a little luck,
he could last to the end of the season and pursue his Quest.  And this
great absorbing Quest, which had made him expend his all in fine
clothing, club membership, and the appearance of being a "person of
quality" and a gentleman of means and leisure?

Merely to come face to face with, to meet on terms of equality, to have
just one encounter and conversation with--a woman.

Before he died he must see, and speak to, Peggy once again--to Lady
Margaret Hillier--because of whom he had vanished into the French
Foreign Legion, and of whom he had thought daily and nightly ever since.

He had had a thin time, he was near the end of his tether, life held
nothing for him, and he had no desire to prolong it--but before he lay
down for the last time he _would_ see Peggy again, hear her voice,
feast his eyes on her beautiful face, and his ears on the sound of her
words and laughter, yea, feast his very soul upon the banquet that it
had dreamed of--and then he would have no further use for clubs, fine
clothes, a penny chair in the Park, nor anything else.

The ass was quite mad, you perceive....

Now one _can_ live on fourpence a day, and for a very long time too.
If one starts in robust health and strength, one can maintain an
appearance of health and the power to work for a quite surprising
period.  But if one is really very ill, on the verge of a nervous
collapse, and badly in need of a rest-cure with special diet, tonic,
and drugs--fourpence a day is not enough.

They give you a surprisingly filling meal at certain coffee-shops and
cocoa-houses (like Pearce-and-Plenty or Lockhart's) for fourpence, but
one meatless meal per diem is not enough.  It is, on the whole, better
to have two penny-worth at dawn and two pennyworth at sunset, and a
good drink of water at midday.  Better still is it, if you are really
experienced in the laying-out of money, to have a pennyworth at dawn,
two pennyworth at midday and a penny-worth at sunset.  (You can go to
bed with a full stomach by supping on a quart of water.)

But Geoffry had not complete liberty in the matter.  One cannot go for
a twopenny mid-day meal in a silk hat, faultless morning coat buttoned
over the white waistcoat of a blameless laundress, and in patent
cloth-topped boots.  Geoffry was, by force of circumstances, debarred
this thrice-a-day system of feeding, and was constrained to breakfast
(in rags) at an early coffee-stall and to dine at the same, in the same
decrepit clothing, late at night.  After breakfast he would return to
his cubicle, dress for the Club, and creep forth, still in the early
hours of the morning.  (One attracts attention if, in the broad light
of naked day, one issues from a Rowton House in the correct garb of
Pall Mall and Piccadilly.)  At night he would undress, carefully fold
his immaculate clothes, don his rags, and sally forth to dine on
twopence.  The coffee-stall keeper regarded him as a broken-down torf
and eke a balmy, but coffee-stall keepers are a race blas of freaks,
social, moral, and mental.

Between these meals Geoffry Brabazon-Howard pursued his Quest.  He went
to his Club and listened eagerly for "society" gossip, and read
"society" papers (of the kind that inform the public when Lady Diana
Blathers dines at the Fritz, and photographs her inhaling the breath of
an abortive animal, apparently a bye-product of the dog-industry;
announces the glad tidings that Mrs. Bobbie Snobbie has returned to
Town; or that the Earl of Spunge was seen scratching his head in Bond
Street yesterday).  Having sought in vain for news of Lady Margaret
Hillier, he slowly paraded the fashionable shopping thoroughfares, and
then, utterly weary, turned into the Park, selected an eligible site
for seeing the pedestrians, carriage-exercisers, and riders, and sat
for hours watching and waiting, hoping against hope--as he thought.  In
point of fact he spent a great portion of this time in dropping asleep
and being awakened by nearly falling off the chair.  He was sometimes
tempted to expend this chair-penny in food, but restrained the base
cravings of his lower nature.  He pictured himself arrayed in the
correctest of dress, nonchalantly seated on a Park chair, gaily
observing the gyrations of the giddy throng of fashionable human
ephemer--suddenly seeing Peggy, and rising, accosting her with
graceful badinage, airy flippancy, and casual interest.  Peggy would
laugh and talk amusingly and lightly, he would beg her to come and
lunch with him at the Club, or take tea if such were the hour; he would
feast his eyes and ears and soul as he had promised himself--and
_then_?--then he would lay down his arms and cease to fight this
relentless Foe--sickness, disease, and death--that besieged him day and
night, and sought to prevent his walk to the Club, sought to thwart the
pursuit of his Quest.  Having seen Peggy again, heard her laugh and
speak, looked into her hopelessly perfect and wonderful eyes, he would
surrender the fortress he no longer wished to hold, and would permit
the Enemy to enter--trusting that _le bon Dieu, Le Bon Gnral_, would
see to it that, for a broken old soldier, death was annihilation,
peace, and rest....

Daily he grew thinner, as a sick man living on fourpence a day must,
and frequently he would finger the sovereign that always lay in his
waistcoat pocket--ready for the day when Peggy should lunch at the Club
with him.  It is not wholly easy to keep a sovereign intact while you
slowly starve and every fibre of your being craves for tobacco, for
brandy, for food--as you smell choice Havanas in the Club smoking-room,
see fat, healthy men drinking their whiskies and brandies, and when you
are violently smitten by rich savours of food as you pass the door of
the dining-room.

The fragrance of coffee and eggs-and-bacon!  The glimpse of noble
barons of beef on the sideboard!  The sight of tea-and-toast at four in
the afternoon when you have had nothing since four in the morning!  But
the sovereign remained intact.  With that he and Peggy could have an
excellent lunch--without wine--and Peggy never touched wine....

      *      *      *      *      *

He started to his feet.

"I really _beg_ your pardon!  I am afraid I..."  A stranger had
awakened him as he slept in a smoking-room arm-chair....  He did not
recollect how he came to do such a thing when he should have been in
the Park....  _What_ was the man saying--"Ill?"

"I was afraid you were ill.  To tell the truth, I jolly well thought
you were dead for the moment.  Let me drive you to my doctor's.
Splendid chap.  Just going that way....  No--don't run away."

"Most awfully kind," replied Geoffry, peering through the veil, "but
I'm _quite_ all right.  Just a bit tired, you know.  I am going to have
a real Rest soon....  At present I have a Quest."

The poor devil looked absolutely _starved_, thought Colonel Doddington.
Positively ghastly.

"Come and have some lunch with me," he said, "and let me tell you about
this doctor of mine, anyhow."

Geoffry flushed--though it was remarkable that there was sufficient
blood in so meagre a body and feeble a heart for the purpose.

_Lunch_!  A four-course lunch in a beautiful room--silver, crystal,
fine napery, good service--perhaps wine, certainly alcohol of some
sort, and real coffee....

It was a cruel temptation.  But he put it from him.  After all, one was
a gentleman, and a gentleman does not accept hospitality which he
cannot return, from a stranger.

"Awfully sorry--but I _must_ go," he replied.  "I'm feeding out."  He
was--late that night, on twopence.

He fled, and outside mopped his brow.  It _had_ been a terrible
temptation and ordeal.  For two pins he would go back and have a
brandy-and-soda at the cost of two days' food.  No, he dared not risk
collapse--and two days' complete starvation would probably mean
collapse.  Collapse meant expense too, and money was time to him.  The
expenditure of more than fourpence a day would shorten the time of his
Quest.  A day lost, was a chance lost.  She might pass through London
at that very time, if he lay ill in the Hammersmith Rowton House.

That night he had to take a 'bus home or lie down in the street.  Next
day, dressing took so long and his walk to the Club was so painful and
slow, that he had to omit the Bond Street, Regent Street, and
Piccadilly walk, and go straight to the Park.

There he had shocking luck.  A zealous but clumsy policeman rendered
him First Aid to the Fainting with such violence that he spoilt the
collar and shirt-front that should have lasted another two days.  Why
could not the worthy fool have left him to come out of his faint alone?
He went _into_ it alone, all right.  And there was an accursed, gaping
crowd.  Nor could he give the policeman two pennies, and so gave him
nothing--which was very distressing.  A most unlucky day!

Well--the days of his Quest were numbered, and the number was lessened.

Next day he found the Enemy very powerful and the tottering fortress
closely beset.  He would be hard put to it to walk to the Club--but
come!--an old Legionary who had done his fifty kilometres a day under a
hundred-weight kit, over loose sand, with the thermometer at 120 in
the shade; and who had lived on a handful of rice-flour and a mouthful
of selenitic water in the Sahara--surely he was not going to shirk a
stroll from Hammersmith Broadway to Pall Mall and round the Town to the
Park?

He had got as far as Devonshire House, when a lady, who was driving
from the Berkeley Hotel, where she had been lunching, to the Coburg
Hotel, where she was to have tea with friends who were taking her on to
Ranelagh, suddenly saw him and thought she saw a ghost.  As her
carriage crawled through the crush into Berkeley Street it brought her
within a yard of him.

She turned very pale and lay back on the cushions.  Immediately she sat
upright again, and then leaned towards him.  It _could_ not be!  Not
this poor wreck, this shattered ruin--her splendid _Geoff_--the Geoff
who had seemed to love her, five years ago, and had suddenly dropped
her, and so been the cause of her marrying in haste and repenting in
even greater haste, to the day of her widowhood.

"_Geoff!_" she said.

He raised his hat with a trembling hand and his face was
transfigured....  Was he dying on his feet, wondered the woman.

"Get in, Geoff," she said, and the footman half-turned and then jumped
down.

Geoffry Brabazon-Howard, with a great and almost final effort, stepped
into the victoria.

"Will you come to lunch with me at..." he began, and then burst into
tears.

Later, it was the woman who wept, tears of joy and thankfulness, after
the agonizing suspense when the great specialist staked his reputation
on his plain verdict that the man was not organically diseased.  He was
in a parlous state, no doubt, practically dying of starvation and
nervous exhaustion--but nursing could save him.

Nursing did--the nursing of Lady Peggy Brabazon-Howard.




XII

"VENGEANCE IS MINE..."

As Jean Rien expressed it, he was _bien touch_; as le Lgionnaire
'Erbiggin put it, he had got it in the neck; as the Bucking Bronco
"allowed," his monica was up; as Jean Boule saw, he was dying.

One cannot blame him, since an Arab lance had pinned him to the ground
and an Arab _flissa_ had nearly severed his arm from his shoulder.

Jean Rien evidently blamed himself however, and for many things--chief
among them a little matter of parricide, it seemed to Jean Boule, as he
bent over him in his endeavour to comfort and to soothe.

"In much pain, _mon ami_?" the old soldier asked, as he moistened the
dying man's lips and forehead.

"Little of body, but in great pain of mind....  I would confess to you,
Pre Boule....  I would ease my soul....  I would ask if you think I am
a murderer....  I have not blamed myself until now that I am dying....
Now I am afraid....  Look you, Pre Jean Boule, I was brought up by my
mother (_le bon Dieu_ rest and bless her soul) with one purpose in
life, with one end to fulfil, with one deed to do.  Nothing earlier can
I remember than her making me repeat after her the words of a promise
and an oath.  Night after night, as I went to bed, morning after
morning, as I arose, I said my prayers at her knee, and followed them
by this promise and this oath which she had taught me.  Never did we
sit down to a meal, never did we rise from one, without this formula.
From my very birth I was dedicated, and my life was devoted and avowed,
to the fulfilment of this promise, the keeping of this oath....  Hear
it....  '_I, Jean-Without-A-Name, son of Marie Duval and Ober-Leutnant
von Schlofen of the Hundred and Thirty-ninth Pomeranian Regiment, do
most solemnly swear, that from my seventeenth birthday I will devote
the whole of my mind and will, my strength and skill, my time and my
money, to finding the man who in_ 1870 _was Ober-Leutnant von Schlofen
and who is my father, the torturer of my mother and the murderer of my
mother's beloved husband, Jacques Duval.  I do most solemnly swear
that, having found him, I will call him "Father," I will torture him,
as he tortured my mother, and I will kill him even as he killed him who
should have been my father, so help me God and the Blessed Virgin.
Amen._' ...

"Yes, my friend, morning, noon, and night I repeated this after my
mother, and at the conclusion of each repetition this poor soul, who
loved and hated me, and whose heart was buried in the pit in which lay
Jacques Duval and many more, would kiss me on the brow, and say, 'Thou
art the instrument of God's vengeance.'  For sixteen years she did
this, and on my seventeenth birthday gave me a knife that had belonged
to Jacques Duval, together with her savings of seventeen years.  The
knife had killed poor Jacques, and the money was to help in his
avenging by means of the knife....  Mad?  Yes, mad as ever a human
being was, poor soul....  But think of what she saw and suffered....
Married a week before war broke out, her husband torn from her arms to
march away to fight, perhaps to be maimed and mangled, perhaps to
die....  Months of solitude....  Rumours....  Hopes....  Soul-sickening
fears....  Can you not see her in their little house--where they were
to have been so happy--waiting, hoping, fearing?  And then, one dark
night, a heavy tramp of soldiers, screams, red-reflections lighting up
the clean little room in which she slept, and then--blows on her door,
harsh guttural shouts, and the crash of the burst-in door....

"For a fortnight the Herr Ober-Leutnant von Schlofen, in command of the
detachment that had occupied the little village, made her house his
headquarters, and as, from the first moment, she had defended herself
tooth and nail, Marie Duval spent that time, bound hand and foot, and
locked in her little room.  At first, when she was untied, that she
might eat and drink, she refused, but when pain, horror, grief, and
every other anguished feeling had merged into a very madness of passion
for revenge, she ate and drank, that she might have strength to slay....

"And the night that her teeth met in the Herr Ober-Leutnant's throat,
her Jacques came back wounded, and they caught him and brought him to
this foul and filthy von Schlofen swine of Germany....

"On learning they were husband and wife, von Schlofen confronted them
in their bonds--she, half-dead with shame, exhaustion, and misery; he
half-dead with wounds and the brutality of his captors.  Then, while
two of his vile bloodhounds held the woman, four others flung the man
face downward over the kitchen table, placed a pail beneath his head,
and von Schlofen cut his throat from ear to ear with that same knife....

"Thereafter they flogged Marie Duval with the Herr Ober-Leutnant's
switch that she might learn obedience and gratitude, and that he might
find her tamer....

"Mad?  Oh yes, quite more than a little mad, this poor Marie Duval....
And when I was born, she dedicated me, as I say, her instrument of
vengeance, so that on my seventeenth birthday I took train for
Strasburg and the beginning of my quest.  I had no great difficulty in
tracking down this von Schlofen, who had become Colonel of the Hundred
and Thirty-ninth Pomeranian Regiment, and then retired to his large
estates in Silesia.

"When not hunting the boar and the deer there, he spent most of his
time in an ancient, gloomy house in Thorn.  And in Thorn I took up my
abode and worked at my trade of carpenter....

"I shall never forget my first sight of the man who was my father and
my quarry; the man who gave me birth and whom I had been brought up, by
the loving mother who hated me, to kill with the knife that had killed
the man who should have been my father.  My heart beat so fast that I
feared I should faint or suffocate and die with my life's purpose
unaccomplished.  I gripped the haft of the knife beneath my blouse, the
haft of the knife whose blade this barbarous German brute had driven
into the throat of Jacques Duval, and which I was to drive into his own
fat neck as I had been taught and trained to do....  Oh yes, taught and
trained.  Did I tell you how Madame ma mre daily practised my hand at
knife-strokes?  Never a pig was killed within miles of our village but
I must be taken to see the doing of it, while I was a child, and to do
it myself when old enough.

"No opportunity was I allowed to lose of driving my knife to the hilt
in any dead animal, into anything in which a knife could be driven.

"I can hear her thin and bitter voice at this moment, see the wild
glare in her eye as she gloated beside me while I stuck some
neighbour's pig and the blood gushed warm into the blood-tub.

"'_Oh_,' she would cry.  '_Gobbets of flesh and gouts of gore_!  So
shalt thou bleed the foulest pig in all that Prussian sty, thine own
father, thou accursed little devil.  God and the Blessed Virgin reward
and bless thee, my angel.' ...

"_Oui, man vieux_, a strange upbringing for a child, hein?

"And when I first beheld him, my father, the foulest pig in all that
Prussian sty, I looked at the spot beneath his ear where I should
strike and bleed him as he bled Jacques Duval--ere I cut his throat
from ear to ear, as he cut the throat of Jacques Duval." ...

Jean Rien closed his eyes and fell silent.

"Well, 'e might 'a finished 'is tile afore 'e 'opped it," remarked le
Lgionnaire 'Erbiggin, with apparent callousness, belied by his
sympathetic, unhappy countenance.  "So fur as I could onnerstan' 'im,
'e wos agoin' ter do 'is pore ol' farver in.....  'Ere, give 'im a suck
o' this _bapdi_," he added, as he produced a small medicine bottle
half-full of the fiery fig-spirit.

"No," replied John Bull; "only increase the bleeding, if he is not
dead.  All the better if he has fainted."

Jean Rien opened his eyes.

"I can scarcely see you, Pre Jean Boule," he murmured.  "It is as dark
as it was in that room where he lay when at last I had him at my
mercy....  Yes, at length, after months of weary waiting for my
opportunity, months of practice at the burglars' trade, months of
scheming and study of the big house where the Pettenkoferstrasse joins
the Baseler Alee, he lay before me on his bed, the moon shining on his
white face.  The hour for which I had been in training for
two-and-twenty years had struck.  I crept from the window, by which I
had entered, to the door, and turned the key, praying that the noise
might not awake him.  It did not.

"I crept back to the bedside, raised my knife on high, shouted '_My
Father_,' thrust his big head over to one side and, as I had done a
thousand times in the course of my training, drove the knife home to
the very hilt--and even as, in the one motion, my left hand turned his
head and my right hand stabbed, I knew that I had struck a stark, rigid
corpse! ... He was dead and cold! ... I laughed aloud." ...

Jean Rien laughed aloud and died.




XIII

SERMONS IN STONES

It was a truly terrible night, and, to add to his own troubles and
sufferings, John Bull had a great and growing anxiety as to the state
of his beloved comrade, the Bucking Bronco.  For that gentleman was
undoubtedly working up for a "go" of _le cafard_, the desert madness of
the Legion that so often ends in suicide, murder, or some military
"crime," the punishment for which may be death, or the worse-than-death
of the Zephyrs.

So awful was the heat of the barrack-room, and so charged was the
atmosphere with electricity and human passion and misery, that even
'Erb had succumbed, and, in a fit of rage, akin to sheer madness, had
dashed his beloved mouth-organ upon the ground and stamped it
shapeless, his face contorted with demoniac rage.  Thereafter, he set
himself to tease and enrage the big American whose mind was as much
slower, as his soul and body were greater, than those of the little
Cockney.

As he leant across Reginald Rupert's bed to reach his sack of
cleaning-rags, John Bull whispered to that legionary, "The Bronco'll
run amuck to-night if we don't watch it.  He has already said he's
going 'on pump' and also that he's going to 'lean agin the
Sergeant-Major till he moults'!  If 'Erb 'gits his goat,' he'll kill
him, and then shoot himself."

"Spin a yarn, Bull," advised Rupert....  "If 'Erb gets impossible, I'll
knock him out and we'll put him to bed.  I'm with you, Old Thing."

Before the old soldier could reply, a loud crash caused him to spring
round.  The Bucking Bronco had flung his rifle against the white-washed
wall.

"The Devil admire me if ever I clean that gosh-dinged, dod-gasted
gas-pipe again," he growled, and added, "Yep!  An' if any yaller-dog
hobo of a _Caporal_ gits fresh with me, I'll wipe his denied dial with
it!"

"You know Seven Dials, Buck?" queried 'Erb innocently.

"Yep," was the reply.

"Then stuff four of 'em up yer shirt.  Yah!" jeered 'Erb.

"You ain't offended, matey, are yer?" he added, in a tone of contrite
concern.

"Nope," said the American, staring hard.

"Then stuff up the remainin' three!" yelped his tormentor, and laughed
insultingly.

The huge American rose to his feet menacingly, but as Rupert stepped
between him and 'Erb, he sat down again.

"Wot I complains of is that all the Seven Dials rolled inter one
wouldn't make anything as ugly as _your_ dial," he grumbled.  "Why don'
youse take it to a dime-show mooseum?  It's like them faces them
Chinese guys paints on their shields to terrify their enner-mies.  Why
should you be allowed to bring it into this shack an' spile my
slumbers?  It makes me tired, an' I feel it's my painful dooty to
change it some." ...

"'Streuth!" shrilled 'Erb.  "'Ark at 'im!  An' 'im on'y alive becos 'e
ain't never see 'isself in a lookin'-glass!  'Ere, fetch a mirror,
somebody, and let 'im commit sooicide wiv a single squint in it--if it
don't break afore 'e can realize the orful troof." ...

"Shut up, 'Erb," interrupted John Bull.  "You fellows must help me, I
want to talk.  If I don't, I shall get _cafard_--and do something
that'll put me in the Sergeant-Major's hands.  I'm going to spin a
yarn....  What's the most remarkable thing you've ever seen, 'Erb?"

"The Buckin' Bronco's silly faice, Farver," replied that gentleman.

The Bucking Bronco rose and began removing his shirt as if for battle.

'Erb reached for his bayonet.

Precisely how most _cafard_ tragedies begin.

Rupert passed him a rag.

"It does want a bit of a polish," he said.

"That's right, Buck, you'll be cooler without that," remarked John
Bull, and added:

"Look here, I'm going to clean your rifle to-night--and you can do mine
to-morrow night."

"Please yerself, Johnnie," was the reply, "I'm done with chores in this
outfit.  I'm going to strip stark, and then I'm agoin' to march to
Sidi-bel-Abbs--soon as I twisted ole Suicide-Maker's head 'round three
times and catch who you can.'  His body remains at attention facin'
front while his head goes round--see? ... Guess I'm _locoed_ to-night.
Anyhaow, I'm gwine to strip naked and go 'on pump' and see Carmelita."
(Carmelita was six hundred miles to the north.)

"Well, put a turban on yer 'ead, fer modesty's saike, if you're a
callin' on lidies," sneered 'Erb.

"What's the most remarkable thing _you've_ ever seen, Bull?" asked
Rupert, taking his cue.  "That night when it was a case of pearls or
impalement must have been about your most exciting time, what?"

"You never tole us nothin' abaht that, Farver.  Wot was it?" inquired
'Erb, rising to the fly.

"Oh--rather a queer night I once spent," replied John Bull, "but it
wasn't the queerest experience I ever had."

"Well, wot was the rummiest start you ever seen, then?" pursued 'Erb.

"Oh, just some stones--and what they did," was the reply.

"Git busy at 'em both, Johnnie, the pearls an' the other stones," said
the Bucking Bronco, and added, "It looks like hell, you cleanin' my
gun.  Push it here."

Only too glad to see his friend employed, the old Legionary handed the
rifle and rag to him and gave him a cigarette.

"There isn't much to the pearl yarn," he said.  "It was before you
joined, Buck.  We were doing some unpeaceful penetration down south,
and I was laid out in an Arab charge.  They rode right through us, and
I got a kick on the head that put me to sleep for hours.  When I sat
up, the Arabs were looting the dead and killing the wounded--who hadn't
already killed themselves.  I suppose I was the only one not too badly
wounded to be of any use for affording sport under torture.  Anyhow I
was the only man marched off to the _douar_--a very large one indeed,
being that of the Sheikh Abou Moustapha ben Isa Bahr-el-Man-deb, the
great Arab guerilla leader--and by the time I got there, I was as glad
to see the place as if it had been my home.  A _mehari_ camel goes at a
good pace--and I wasn't on its back."

"Dragged?" queried 'Erb.

"Well, I ran as long as I could, of course, but the sand was very loose
and fine.  When we stopped, and everybody who wanted a whack at me had
finished, I was tied to a palm-tree, and a negro gentleman with a long
gun, a sword, three daggers and a flint-lock pistol, was set to see I
didn't get into mischief.  In the evening a gang of them came and
untied me and led me into the _douar_ of low black tents.  I thought I
was 'for it' then, and could not keep my mind off the barrack-room
photos of mutilated Legionaries.  They took me to Sheikh Abou, however,
where he sat on a carpet in front of his tent, drinking coffee and
smoking cigarettes like a Christian.  He was a fine-looking old bird,
and spoke very fair French.

"'Bon soir, chien,' says he.

"'Bon soir, chat,' says I.

"'Pourquoi "_chat_"?' says he.

"'Parce que,' says I.

"I also explained that the French dog hunts the Arab cat, but he scored
with a quiet smile and the remark that it rather looked as though the
alleged cat was going to hunt the dog of an Unbeliever.  My attempt at
driving him into a rage and earning a swift death failed altogether.
He was too big a man really, too balanced, too scholarly, too
philosophic, for petty rages and quick stabs.

"'Are you unwounded, dog?' he asked.

'"By the weapons of soldiers,' I replied.  'Only bruised by the
_matracks_ of brave Arab gentlemen who strike manacled prisoners of
war.'

"'What do the Franzawi do to Arab prisoners?' he returned.

"'They don't bind them and beat them,' I said.

"'What do they do to Arab women?' was his next question.

"'What did they do to your daughter?' I asked in turn.  I knew that she
had been sent straight to him, with a courteous letter, as soon as our
general knew who she was.

"'True,' owned the Sheikh.  'See here, dog.  My son, the bravest and
handsomest man who ever sat a horse, was shot in cold blood by you
Franzawi.  My daughter was treated as a princess--which she is--and
sent safely back to me.  At dawn to-morrow, I shall either avenge the
death of my son or else reward the kindness to my daughter.'

"He then gave orders to some of the gang, and they cut down a young
palm that grew in front of his tent, leaving a stump a couple of feet
high.  This they trimmed with axes and knives to a point like that of a
spear.

"While they were doing this, he went into his tent and came out again
with a tiny bag of soft leather.  Out of this he tipped some very
decent pearls on to the carpet in front of him.

"'See these pearls,' said he.  'In the morning you shall have them as
well as a camel and a guide to take you to your camp, _if_ I find that
gratitude for my daughter's safety is stronger than the desire to
avenge my son's murder.  Should this not be the case, however, you will
be impaled upon that stump like a date on a dagger, and with your face
to the sun--after your eyelids have been removed.  Go and ponder Life,
Death, Kismet, the Goodness of Allah--and the relative values of Pearls
and Impalement.  After all--wealth is a snare and a delusion whilst
Death may be annihilation and peace--even for a dog of a _giaour_.'

"'Which do you think it will be--pearls or death, Sheikh?' I asked.

"'_Mektoub rebib!  Inshallah!_[1] ... I positively do not know.
_Barca!_'[2] replied the old gentleman--and I was taken back to my tree
and given a gourd of water and a few dates.


[1] It is written!  As God wills!

[2] Enough.


"I had a merry night, I assure you!  I wasn't to die then, however,
for, towards dawn, the negro fell asleep, and as they had left me
unbound, after giving me the food and water, I grabbed his bag of dates
and grain, and did the record long-distance run of my life, most of it
over that stony out-crop that takes no footprints.  I put in the day in
a cave, ran all the next night, and next day reached Sefraina--an
outpost of ours."

"'Streuth!" murmured 'Erb, "an' _that_ wasn't your rummiest go, Farver?
You seen some queer things, you 'ave, since you bin a Legendary!"

"No, the most truly extraordinary thing that ever happened to me took
place before I joined the Legion.  It was in India."

"What about them stones, John?" queried the Bucking Bronco, wiping his
streaming brow with the rag that he had just used for cleaning his
rifle.

"That's what I'm going to tell you about," was the reply.

"I was a youngster then, and I had got leave from my ship to go and see
my brother who was commanding--who was--er--up country.  We were lying
in Bombay harbour and going into dock for some repairs or other.  It
took me a couple of days to get to where my brother was stationed--up
in some very hilly country.  As my train dropped down a steep incline
into the place where I was to get out, I noticed that a branch line ran
off to the left and climbed the side of a very steep rock and there
ended abruptly.  I asked my brother what this was, and he told me that
sometimes a truck or two would break away at the end of a climbing
train and come rushing down the incline, which was many miles in
length.  As it approached the station it could be switched off on to
this steeply rising branch line and expend its momentum in running up
it, instead of dashing into the first train it met on the main line.
And thereby hung a quaint and interesting tale.  Some months before my
visit, a naked Holy Man had rolled up, with his hair plastered with mud
and tow, his body smeared all over with ashes, and his soul too lofty
and enlightened to let his gross body do a job of work of any sort.  He
staked out a claim under this great rock near the line, planted himself
in the middle of the patch of hand-patted dirt that was to be his home,
and there squatted all day long, with his begging-bowl and an
ugly-looking steel spike.  The neighbouring villagers fed him of
course, and, like wise men, propitiated him in every way and gave him
anything he wanted--for, judging by his filthiness, nakedness, and
laziness, he must be a very holy man indeed, must have acquired great
merit, and be very potent to upset the apple-cart of anyone who
thwarted him.  Also he worked divers miracles, and caused a brazen
image of Kali to arise from the earth at his feet.  This he put in a
circle of red-painted stones--and straightway there was a sacred shrine
and the foundations of a great place of pilgrimage and the site of a
holy temple.

"But when June drew near, the villagers warned the Holy Man that the
rains would break soon and he'd get uncommon damp when it rained.  The
holy one replied that he would build him a hut perchance.

"The villagers smiled, and said it rained three inches a day for months
on end in those parts, when the monsoon broke.  'My hut shall be of
stone,' said His Holiness.

"The villagers laughed outright.  Where was there stone enough to make
a grindstone, let alone a house, in those grassy jungle parts?

"'Stone for my house shall fall at my feet from heaven,' said the holy
one.  Whereat the villagers stared in round-eyed wonder.  His Holiness
was going it!  Wasn't he biting off a bit more than he could chew?
This was a plain issue and no blooming oracle-mongering about it.
Either stone would fall or it would not--and the probabilities were
strongly in favour of the _not_.  Still he had done some good hefty
miracles, some of which might not have been bunkum.  '_Nous verrons!_'
said the headman, in his own vernacular.

"And, a week before the rains broke, a truck or two laden with cut
stone broke away from a train, careered gaily down the long incline,
were duly switched off on to the safety-siding, and, being unusually
heavy and swift, ran clean over the end and shot a truck-load or two of
dressed stone at the feet of the Holy Man!

"'_Voil!_' (or the equivalent thereof) said he to the villagers, and
smiled patronizingly.  You bet they turned to and built His Holiness as
eligible a family residence as Holy Man could desire, and with the
remainder of the stones they built him a nice stone platform to squat
on in the sun, and think his great thoughts.

"I know this is all true, because my brother was told of His Holiness's
daring prophecy long before the stones were safely delivered.  When I
heard the story from him, of course I must needs ride over and have a
look at this local lion.

"I arrived at a moment of domestic crisis apparently, for from the hut
of this celibate saint came the screams of a woman and the sounds of a
real handsome hiding.  Being young and foolish, I concluded that the
lowing lady was getting the handsome hiding and that I had better take
a hand.  I barged in and found I was right.  His reverence dropped the
stick and picked up his spear-headed staff, but I gave him a soother on
the point of the chin and cleared out, preceded by the lady, who
sprinted like a hare.

"I rode off rather pleased with my silly young self, and half an hour
later was crossing a perfectly level stretch of grass, when suddenly,
just as I bent to dismount to tighten my girth, a great stone missed my
head by a hair's-breadth and struck the ground with a mighty nasty
thud.  The fraction of a second earlier, it would have got me.  I
stared at it in amazement, and looked all round.  There wasn't another
stone for miles, nor, except for a clump of feathery bamboos, a tree,
nor a building, a wall, a hollow, nor a fold in the ground where anyone
could be hiding.  Absolutely nothing but level grass and a clump of
bamboos that could not conceal a small monkey--much less a man.

"I was too astounded to move for a minute or two.  Then I rode round
and round in widening circles, quartering the ground until I had
established, beyond all doubt, the fact that whoever threw the stone
had thrown it at least four hundred yards--and the man never lived who
could have thrown it forty.

"I went back and examined it--and realized, with no added comfort, that
it was a stone from my holy friend's house or platform!  I remounted my
horse--who was trembling and sweating as though he could see a
tiger--and started to ride back.  If _that_ was his game! ... And as I
bent my head to light the cigarette I badly needed, another stone
grazed my _topi_.  Like the first, it hit the turf with a thud that was
sickening to hear.  Then I was frightened, I admit, as well as enraged.
Again I circled round, this time galloping hard in a frenzy of anger
and fear.  If either of those stones had hit me, I should have been
killed--and there wasn't a sign of a human being nor of a place where
one could have hidden!  And a blight seemed to have come over the day,
chilling my very soul, and making me feel as though I were a child in a
nightmare.

"I _knew_ there would be another, and that the third one would not miss
me.  I shall never forget the feeling of utter helplessness, wrath, and
terror that possessed me.  What could I do?  There _was_ nothing to do,
and at any moment the blow might fall--literally a bolt from the blue.
And then I pulled myself together, thought of my fellow midshipmen, and
imagined the eyes of the whole of my ship's company to be upon me.

"Tactics for ever!  Dismounting and unbuckling the girth, I took off my
saddle and, holding the end of the girth in my hand, pulled the big
heavy saddle up and put it on my head and neck.  Retaining it there
with one hand, I set spurs to my horse, and rode hell-for-leather.

"And that's all I know about it--until I came to my senses and found
myself lying in bed in my brother's bungalow!

"They told me the horse had come home riderless and unsaddled--and they
at once concluded I had come a cropper, as I had remarked, on starting,
that it was 'so long since I had seen a horse that I hardly knew the
stem from the stern, nor how to sit amidships and hold the rudder
lines.'

"My brother had ridden out and found me lying unconscious.

"'You must have taken a frightful toss,' he said, 'but how the deuce
did you come to get the saddle smashed?  How did it come to be off the
horse?  It looked as though some one had hit it with a huge
sledge-hammer.'

"'Or a stone,' said I.

"'Yes,' said he.  'Why a stone?'

"I told him exactly what had happened, and he laughed.

"'Falling on your head has made you dream dreams and see visions,' said
he.  He did _not_ laugh a fortnight later when he and I went over the
ground and found the three stones--in that stoneless place.  When we
went on, to call on the Holy Man, we learned that the gentleman had
gone for a walk--to Benares, a thousand miles away." ...

"Strike me pecooliar!" murmured the Bucking Bronco.  "That tale made
outer whole cloth, John?"

"It's every word of it true," was the reply.

"Well, you go to bed, Sonny; yore pore brain's about biled I allow,"
counselled the American; and, exchanging a glance with Rupert, the old
Legionary allowed himself to be helped on to his cot and soothed.

"We'll fan pore ole Farver wiv a noos-paper till he goes ter sleep,"
said 'Erb, getting an old _Echo d'Oran_ from his shelf.  "He's fair off
'is ole napper to-night."

And when the eyes of Jean Boule closed, apparently in slumber, the
others silently sought their respective red-hot beds.




XIV

MOONSHINE

La Cigale, the Mad "Grasshopper" of the VIIth Company, was solemnly
dancing by the light of the moon.  He was a fine soldier and a hopeless
lunatic, and had once been a Belgian Officer (Corps of Guides, the most
aristocratic in the Belgian Army) and military attach at various
Embassies.  No one knew his story, not even le Lgionnaire Jean Boule,
whom he loved and who, through great suffering, had attained great
understanding and sympathy.[1]


[1] _Vide_ "The Wages of Virtue."  John Murray.


This same gentleman, accompanied by the Bucking Bronco, Reginald
Rupert, and 'Erb, was even now looking for him, knowing that he was
always worse at the period of full moon and apt to do strange things.

They found him--solemnly dancing by the light of the moon--on a patch
of green turf by the palms of the oasis.

"Doin' a bloomin' fandango on the light fantastic toe--all on 'is
little own!" observed 'Erb.

"Funny how the moon affects madmen," said Rupert.

"Yes," agreed John Bull.  "Ancient idea too.  _Luna_ the moon,
_lunatic_.  Evidently some connection."

"Shall we butt in an' put the kibosh on it?" asked the Bucking Bronco.

"No," replied John Bull.  "Let's settle down and have a smoke.  We'll
see him to bed when he's tired of dancing.  If he wearies himself out
there'll be more chance of some sleep for us....  We can't leave him to
himself to-night."

"Nope," agreed the Bucking Bronco.  "Remember the night he went _loco_
once and for all?  When the grasshopper jumped into his _soupe_."

"Yes; but it wasn't the locust in his _gamelle_ that was really the
last straw.  He'd have had permanent _cafard_ from that day, anyhow....
Look!--he's stopped." ...

The Grasshopper, hearing voices, had ceased his posturing, bowing, and
dancing.  Crouching low, he progressed toward the shadow of the palms
by long leaps.

"Hullo, _mon ami_!" cried John Bull; "come and have a smoke."

"_She_ always danced like that to the Chaste Huntress of the skies when
she showed mortals her full face," said La Cigale, as he flung himself
down by his friend.

"'Oo did?" queried 'Erb.

"Diane de Valheureux," was the reply.  "That is why Delacroix killed
her.  That Delacroix of the artillery."

"I could onnerstand 'im killin' 'er if she _sung_, but I don' see wot
'e wanted to kill her for fer dancin'," observed 'Erb.  "Too bloomin'
pertickler, _I_ calls it."

"He was jealous," replied La Cigale, as he pressed his thin hands over
his forehead and smouldering eyes.

"Diane was born at the full of the moon out in the beautiful garden of
her father's chteau.  It was her mother's whim--a woman of fire and
moonbeams and wild fancies and poesies herself: Pan's own daughter.

"And from the day she could walk, Diane must go out and dance in the
light of the full moon.

"I loved Diane.  Also did Delacroix.  He was mad for love of her.  I
was sane for love of her, since my love showed me all Beauty and
Harmony and the utter worthlessness of the baubles that men strive for.

"She loved me--I think.  If she did not, certainly she loved no one
else.  I understood, you see.  And, on one evening, given by God, she
let me dance with her in the forest while Diana smiled full-face from
Heaven.

"And her parents gave her to Delacroix, who had great possessions and a
soul that values great possessions at their untrue value.  The soul of
a pedlar--the base suspicious mind of a ferret.

"After she was married--and broken-hearted--she still had one joy.  She
could still dance with the fairies in a glade of the forest at full
moon.  She _could_, do I say?  She could not do otherwise when Diana
and Pan and the Old Gods called--this night-born elf of night,
moonlight, and the open sky and earth.  And, returning from her
midnight dance with the fairies, by the light of the Harvest Moon, she
found that the husband whom she had left snoring, sat
glowering--awaiting her--his mind a seething cesspool of foul
suspicions.

"He killed her--of course.  Such things as Fairy Dianes _are_ killed by
such other things as Hog Delacroix.  And my heart broke.  As your fine
poet says, I think:

  'There came a mist and a blinding rain,
  And life was never the same again.'

Never.  Nor had I the satisfaction of dealing with Delacroix.  The
brave soul fled and disappeared."

"You'll cop 'im yet, Ciggy," interrupted 'Erb.  "Cheer up, Ole Cock.
We'll all lay fer 'im, an' do 'im in proper, one o' these dark nights."

"I have settled accounts with him, now, I thank you," continued La
Cigale.  "I suddenly came face to face with him on board the troopship
_L'Orient_ at Oran.  It was when the Legion sent drafts to Tonkin, to
fight the Black Flags.

"I was on sentry, and looking up, as a man came along the gangway,
beheld the evil face of Delacroix!

"By the time I had recovered my wits, and realized that it was he in
the flesh, and not his ghost, he had passed on and was swallowed up by
the part of the ship devoted to officers.

"I saw no more of him until it was again my turn for sentry duty.  By
this time we were at Port Said, and as desertion was easy here--since a
man had but to dive overboard and swim a few yards or even rush down a
gangway when we were coaling--all sentries were given ball-cartridge
and strict orders to shoot any soldier attempting to leap overboard or
make a burst for the coal-wharf and British soil.  (Once ashore, he
must not be touched, or there would be trouble with England--and he
might, with impunity, stand on the quay and deride us.)

"It was not likely that any of the French regulars would
desert--artillery, line, or _marsouins_--but there would have been but
few of the Legion who would not have made the promenade ashore but for
these precautions.

"And as I stood there--my loaded Lebel in my hands--who should approach
the head of the gangway over which I stood sentry, but this Delacroix,
this thing whose foul hands--the very hands there before my eyes--had
choked the life out of my Diane!

"Should I blow out his vile brains, or should I give myself the joy
unspeakable of plunging my bayonet into his carcase?

"Neither.  Too brief a joy for me--too brief an agony for him.

"As he passed, I held my hand with an effort that made me pale.

"The third time I saw him was in the Indian Ocean as we headed south
for our next stopping-place, Singapore.

"He was leaning on the rail of the officers' promenade-deck, smoking a
cigar after his comfortable lunch.  The deck was empty.  I ran lightly
up the companion from our troop-deck, polluted the promenade-deck with
my presence, sprang at him, seized him from behind, flung him
overboard, and sprang after him with a cry of '_Diane_'!

"I must watch him drown; I must shout that name in his ear as he died.
I must be with him at the last, and my hands must be at the throat of
the foul dog.  Not mine to fling him overboard and be clapped in irons
while they threw him life-belts, and then lowered boats!

"Swimming with powerful strokes to where he had struck the water, I
waited till he came up, and then seized him by the throat and strove to
choke the life out of him as he had done to Diane.  He struck at me
wildly, and I thrust his head again beneath the water.  But, yes! with
a shout of 'Diane!' I dragged him below and swam downward as deeply as
I could go.  With bursting lungs I swam upward again and gloated upon
his purpling face, and then--down, down, down, down, once more....

"When they dragged me into the boat, I was senseless and he was dead.
I had swum with him for nearly an hour.

"When I recovered on board the ship, I was the hero of the hour--the
man who had sprung into the sea, without stopping to divest himself of
so much as his boots, to save an Officer....

"What am I saying? ... I am sleepy....  Bon soir, mes amis," and the
Grasshopper rose and retired toward the tents.


"_Some_ story!" remarked the Bucking Bronco, as the four followed.
"Wouldn't thet jar you!  Sure it's the mos' interestin' an'
wonderfullest yarn I heerd him tell yet.  Ain't it, John?"

"M--m ... yes....  It is the more interesting and wonderful," was the
reply of John Bull, as he thoughtfully flicked the ash from the end of
his cigarette, "by reason of the fact that I happen to know--that the
Grasshopper cannot swim a stroke."




XV

THE COWARD OF THE LEGION

Jean Jacques Dubonnet had distinguished himself that day, and he lay on
his bed that night and cried.  His companion, old Jean Boule, in that
little hut of sticks and banana-leaves, had just been congratulating
him on the fact that he had almost certainly won himself the _croix de
guerre_ or the _mdaille militaire_ for his distinguished bravery.  And
he had burst into tears, his body shaken with great rending sobs.

John Bull was not only a gentleman; he was a person of understanding
and sympathy, and he had suffered enough, and seen enough of suffering,
to feel neither surprise, disgust, nor contempt.

"God!  Oh, God!  I am a coward.  I am a branded coward!" blubbered the
big man on the creaking bed of boughs and boxes.

Was this fever, reaction, drink, _le cafard_, or what?

Certainly Dubonnet had played the man, and shown great physical courage
that day against the Sakalaves, the brave Malagasy savages who have
given Madame la Rpublique a good deal of trouble and annoyance, and
filled many a shallow grave with the unconsidered carcases of
_Marsouins_[1] and Lgionnaires in the red soil of Madagascar.  As the
decimated Company had slowly fallen back from the ambush in the dense
plantations of the lovely Boueni palms, Lieutenant Roberte had fallen,
shot through the body by a plucky Sakalave who had deliberately rested
his prehistoric musket on his thigh and discharged it at a dozen yards
range, himself under heavy fire.  With insulting howls of "_Taim-poory,
taim-poory,_" half a dozen of the enemy had sprung at the fallen man,
when Dubonnet, rushing from cover, had shot two in quick succession,
bayoneted two others, kicked violently in the face a fifth, who stooped
over the Lieutenant with a _coupe-coupe_, and then, swinging his Lebel
by the butt, had put up so good a fight that he had driven the savages
back and had then partly dragged and partly carried his officer with
him, to where the Company could rally, re-form, and make their stand to
await reinforcements.  Undeniably Dubonnet had risked his life to save
that of his officer, and had fought with very great courage and
determination or he could never have reached the rallying-place with an
unconscious man, when so many of his comrades could not reach it at all.


[1] Colonial Infantry (Infanterie de la Marine).


Yet there he lay, weeping like a child, and calling upon his Maker to
ease his guilty bosom of the burden it had borne so long--the knowledge
that he was a "branded" coward.

It was terribly, cruelly hot in the tiny hull, and, to John Bull, who
arose from his camp-bed of packing-case boards, it seemed even hotter
outside, as he went to fetch the hollow bamboo water-"bottle" which
hung from the tree under which the hut was built.  Was it possible that
the Madagascan moon gave out heat-rays of its own, or reflected those
of the sun as it did the rays of light?  It really seemed hotter in the
moonlight than out of it....  Carrying the bamboo water-receptacle, a
cylinder as tall as himself--really a pipe with one end sealed with
gum, wax, or clay, when a joint of the stem does not serve the
purpose--the Englishman passed in through the doorless door-way and
delivered an ultimatum.

"Whatever may be the trouble, _mon ami_, weeping will not help it.
Enough! ... Sit up and tell me all about it, or I'll wash you off that
bed like the insect you're pretending to be....  Now then--a drink or a
drenching?"

"Give me a drink for the love of God!" said Dubonnet, sitting up.
"Absinthe, rum, cognac--anything," and he clutched at the breast of his
canvas shirt as though he feared it might open and expose his breast.

"Yes.  Good cold water," replied John Bull.

"Cold water!" mocked the other between sobs.  "Cold Englishman!  _Cold
water_!" and he bowed his head on his knees and groaned and wept afresh.

The old soldier carefully poured water from the open end of the great
pipe into a _gamelle_, and offered it to the other, who drank
feverishly.  "Are you wounded in the chest, there?" he asked.

This _cafard_, the madness that comes upon soldiers who eat out their
hearts in the monotony of exile and wear out their stomachs and brains
in the absinthe-shop, takes strange forms and reduces its victims to
queer plights.  How should le Lgionnaire Jean Jacques Dubonnet,
_Soldat premire classe_, recommended for decoration for bravery in the
field, be a coward?

"Oh, merciful God--help me to bear it.  I am a Coward--a branded
Coward!" wailed the huddled figure on the rickety, groaning bed.

"See here, comrade," said John Bull, overcoming a certain slight, but
perceptible, repugnance, and placing an arm across the bowed and
quivering shoulders, "I am no talker, as you are aware.  If it would
give you any relief to tell me all about it--rest assured that no word
of it will ever be repeated by me.  It may ease you.  I may be able to
help or comfort.  Many Lgionnaires, some on their death-beds, have
felt the better for telling me of their troubles....  But do not think
I want to pry." ...

Swiftly the wretched man turned, flung his arms about the Englishman's
neck, and kissed him.

John Bull forbore to shudder.  (Heavens!  How different is the
excellent French _poilu_ from the British Tommy!)  But if he could
bring peace and the healing, soothing sense of confession, if not of
anything approaching absolution, to this tortured soul, the night would
have been well spent--better spent than in sleep, though he was very,
very tired.

"I will tell you, _mon ami_, and will pray to you then to give me
comfort or a bullet in the temple.  A little accident as you clean your
rifle!  _I_ cannot do it.  I _dare_ not do it--and no bullet will touch
me in battle--as you have seen to-day.  I live to die, and am too big a
coward to take my life....  I am a branded coward....  See!  See!" and
he tore open the breast of his shirt.  At once he closed it again, and
hugged himself.

"No, no!  I will tell you first," he cried.  The madness of _le
cafard_, no doubt.  The man had only recently been drafted to the VIIth
Company from the dept, and had appeared a morose, surly, and
unattractive person, friendless and undesirous of friends.  Accident
had made him the stable-companion of the Englishman in this little damp
fever-stricken hell in the reeking corner of the Betsimisarake
district, in which the remains of the Company were pinned....

The deplorable and deploring Dubonnet thrust his grimy fists into his
eyes and across the end of his amorphous nose, as, with a sniff which
militated against the romantic effect of the declaration, he said, "I
swear I loved her.  I loved her madly.  It was my unfortunate and
uncontrollable love that caused the trouble in the first place....  But
it was her fault too, mind you!  Why couldn't she have _told_ me she
had a husband, away at Lyons, finishing his military service--a husband
whom she had not seen for six months, and whom she would not see for
another six? ... Too late the fool confessed it--a month before he was
coming, and a couple of months before something else was coming!  And
he famous, as I learned too late, for having all the jealous hate of
Hell in his heart, if she so much as looked at another man.  He, a
porter of the Halles, notorious for his quarrelsomeness and for his
fearful strength and savage temper.  She hated him nearly as much as
she feared him--and me, me she loved to distraction.  And I her....
Believe me, she was the loveliest flower-seller in Paris--with a foot
and ankle, an eye, a figure, ravishing, I tell you ... and he would
break her neck when he saw how she was and stab me to the heart.  _She_
would never have told him it was I she loved, but those others
would--for dozens knew that she was my _amie_, and many in my gang did
not love me.  I am not of those whom men love--but women, ah!--and
there were jealous ones in our _ruelle_ who would have gone far to see
her beauty spoiled and my throat cut....  It was all her fault, I say!
Did she not deceive me in hiding the fact that she had a husband?  She
deceived us all.  But when this _sclrat_ should turn up from Lyons,
and find her at her pitch or in the flower-market, would any of them
have held their tongues? ... Can you not see it? ... The crowd at the
door, the screams as he entered and dragged her out into the gutter by
the hair, his foot on her throat ... and, afterwards--his knife at my
breast....  Would any of the gang have stood by me?  No, they would
have licked their chops and goaded him on ... and, oh God, I am a
_coward_....  I can fight when my blood is up and I have to struggle
for my life....  I can fight as one of a regiment, a company, a crowd,
all fighting side by side, each defending the other by fighting the
common foe....  I can take my part in a mle and I can do deeds then
that I do not know I have done till afterwards....  I can fight when
the tiger in me is aroused and has smelt blood--but I am a _coward_ if
I am alone.  I, alone, dare not fight one man alone....  Were I being
tracked alone through the jungle here by but one of the six men I
attacked to-day, my knees would knock together and my legs would refuse
to bear me up.  I should flee if they would carry me, flee shrieking,
but they would not bear me a hundred metres.  They would collapse, and
I should lie shuddering with closed eyes, awaiting the blow.  I can
hunt--with the pack--but I cannot be hunted.  No.  When our band
waylaid the greasy bourgeois as he lurched homeward from his restaurant
in the Place Pigalle or his Montmartre cabaret, I was as good an
_apache_ as any in the gang, and struck my blow with the best; but if
it was a case of a row with the _agents de police_, and we were being
individually shadowed, my heart turned to water, and I lay in bed for
days.  In a fair fight between about equal numbers of anarchists and
_apaches_ on the one hand, and _messieurs les agents_ on the other, if
it came upon us suddenly as they raided our rookery, I could play a
brave man's part in the rush for the street; but I cannot be the hunted
one--I cannot fight alone with none on either side of me.  Oh God, I am
a coward," and the wretch again buried his face in his knees and wept
and sobbed afresh.

A common, cowardly gutter-hooligan apparently; an _apache_, a Paris
street-wolf, and, like all wolves, braver in the pack than when alone;
but in John Bull's gaze there was more of pity than anything.  Suppose
he, John Bull, had been born in a foul corner of some filthy cellar
beneath a Paris slum?  Would he have been so different?  Was the _man_
to blame, or the Fate that gave him the ancestry and environment that
had made him precisely what he was?

"You will be called out before the battalion and decorated with the
cross or the _mdaille, mon ami_, for your heroism to-day.  Put the
past behind, and let your life re-date from the day the Colonel pins
the decoration on your breast.  Begin afresh.  You will carry about
with you always the visible sign and recognition that you are a
hero--there on your breast, I say." ...

With a shriek of "_What do I bear on my breast now?_" the ex-_apache_
tore open his shirt and exposed two strips of strong linen
sticking-plaster, each some ten inches long and two inches wide, that
lay stuck horizontally across his broad chest.

What was this?  Had he two ghastly gashes beneath the plaster?  Had all
that he had been saying been merely the delirium of a badly-wounded
man?  Seizing their ends, the _apache_ tore them violently from his
skin, and, by the light of the little lamp, John Bull saw, deeply
branded, and most skilfully tattooed in the ineradicable burns, the
following words (in French):

  J. J. DUBONNET
  LIAR AND COWARD


The Englishman recoiled in horror, and the other thought it was in
contempt.

"Where are your fine phrases _now_?" he snarled, with concentrated
bitterness.  "'_You will carry about with you always the visible sign
and recognition that you are a hero_,'" he mocked.  "I do indeed! ...
Oh God, take it from me.  Let me sleep and wake to find it gone, and I
will become a monk and wear out my life in prayer," ... and he threw
himself face-downward on the bed and tore the covering of his straw
pillow with his teeth.

"See, _mon ami_," said John Bull, "the _mdaille_ will be above that.
It will be superimposed.  It will bury that beneath it.  Let it bury it
for ever.  That is of the past--the _mdaille_ is of to-day and the
glorious future.  That is man's revenge--the cruel punishment and
vengeance of an injured brute.  The mdaille is man's reward--the glad
recognition of those who admire courage." ...

"It is not the husband's work," growled Dubonnet.  "He never caught me.
My own gang did that--my comrades--my _friends_!  Think of their
loathing and contempt, their hatred and disgust, that they could do
that to a man and leave him to live.  Think of it! ... And I dare not
kill myself and meet _her_.  I am a coward.  I fear Death himself, and
I fear her reproachful eyes still more....  I _am_ a coward and I _am_
a liar.  I broke my faith and word and trust to her--and I feared the
death that she welcomed because _I_ was by her side to share it.  She
drank the poison in her glass, threw herself into my arms, and bade me
drink mine and come with her to the Beyond, where no brutal, hated
husband could drag her from me to his own loathed arms....  And I did
not.  I could not.  She died in my arms with those great reproachful
eyes on mine, and whispered, 'Come with me, my Beloved.  I am afraid to
go alone.'  And when I would not, she cursed me and died.  And I let
her go alone--I, who had planned our double suicide, our glorious and
romantic suicide in each other's arms--that we might not have to part,
might not have to face her husband's wrath, might be together for all
time, though it were in hell....  Before she drank, she blessed me.
Before she died, she cursed me--and still I could not drink....  And
now I have not the courage to go on living, and I have not the courage
to take my life....  And they are going to brand me as a hero, are
they? ... _That_ on my coat and _this_ beneath it!" and peals of
hysterical laughter rang out on the still night.

"Yes--_that_ on your coat," said the Englishman.  "Does it count for
nothing?  Let the one balance the other.  Put the past behind you and
start afresh....  Can you bear pain?  Physical pain, I mean?"

"Is not all my life a pain?--did I not have to bear the pain of being
branded with a red-hot iron?  What is physical pain compared with what
I bear night and day--remorse, self-loathing, the fear of the discovery
of _this_ by my comrades?  How much longer will it be before some
prying swine sees these strips and refuses to believe they hide
wounds--laughs at my tale of attempted suicide in a fit of
_cafard_--_hara-kiri_--self-mutilation with a knife." ...

"Because, if you can face the pain, we can obliterate that.  We can
remove the record of shame, and you can wear the record of courage and
duty without fear of discovery of the..."

"_What_ do you say?" cried Dubonnet, as the words penetrated his
anguished and self-centred mind.  "_What_?  Remove it?  _How_--in the
name of God?"

"Burn it out as it was burnt in," was the cool reply.  "I will do it
for you if you ask me to....  The pain will be ghastly and the mark
hideous--but it will _be_ a mark and nothing else.  Anyone seeing it
will merely see that you have been severely burnt--and they'll be about
right."

Dubonnet sat up.

"You could and would do that?" he said.

"Yes.  I should make a flat piece of iron red-hot and lay it firmly
across the writing.  It would depend on you whether it were successful
or not, and would be a good test of nerve and courage.  Have it
done--and make up your mind that cowardice and treachery were burnt out
with the words.  Then start life afresh and win another decoration." ...

"There are ansthetics," whimpered Dubonnet.  "Chloroform." ...

"Not for Legionaries in Madagascar," was the reply.  "Unless you'd like
to go to Mdecin-Major Parme with your story and ask him to operate, to
oblige a young friend?"

Dubonnet shivered, and then spat.  "_Mdecin-Major Parme!_" he growled.

"If you like to wait a few weeks or months or years, you may have the
opportunity and the money to buy chloroform," continued the Englishman,
"or the means for making local injections of cocaine or something; but
I suggest you make a kind of sacrament of the business--have the
damnable thing burnt out precisely as it was burnt in, and as you
clench your teeth on the bullet in manly silence and soldierly
stoicism, realize it is _the past_ that is being burnt also, and that
the good fire is burning out all that makes you hate yourself and hate
life.  Let it be symbolic."

John Bull knew his man.  He had met his type before.  Too much
imagination; too little ballast; the material for a first-class devil,
or a first-class man; swayed and governed by his symbols, shibboleths,
and prejudices; the slave and victim of an _ide fixe_....  If he could
get him to undergo this ordeal, he would emerge from it a new man--a
saved man.  An ansthetic would spoil the whole moral effect.  If he
would face the torture and bear it, he would regard himself as a brave
man, just as surely as he now regarded himself as a coward.  He would
recover his self-respect, and he would _be_ brave because he believed
himself to be brave.  It would literally be his regeneration and
salvation.

"It would hurt no more in the undoing than it did in the doing," he
continued.

The poor wretch shuddered.

"She had written a few words of farewell to one or two," he said, "and
told how we were going to die together, and when and where....  Her
mother and some others burst in and found me with her body in my arms
and my untasted poison beside me....  I went mad.  I raved.  I
denounced myself.  A vile woman who had once loved me, jeered at me and
bade me drink my share and rid the world of myself....  I could not....
My own gang bound me on my bed, and one of them brought an old chisel
and the half of an iron pipe split lengthways.  With the straight edge
and the semicircular one, they did their work.  I was their prisoner
for--ah! _how_ long?  And then they tattooed the scars--not satisfied
with their handiwork as it was....  Before her husband found me I had
fled to the shelter of the Legion....  I told the surgeon at Fort St.
Jean that it was done by a rival gang because I had pretended to join
them and did not.  He gave me a roll of the sticking-plaster and
advised me, for my comfort, to hide my '_endossement_' as he brutally
called it." ...

"Well, now get rid of it," interrupted John Bull.  "The flat iron
clamp, binding the corners of that packing-case, would be the very
thing.  You are _not_ a coward.  You proved that to-day.  Prove it more
highly to-night, and, when they decorate you, let there be a still more
honourable decoration beneath--the scars of a great victory....  Come
on." ...


When old Jean Jacques Dubonnet fell, many years later, at Verdun, the
Colonel of his battalion, on hearing the news, remarked, "I have lost
my bravest soldier."

The marks of a terrible burn on his chest were almost obliterated by
German bullets and bayonets.




XVI

MAHDEV RAO

The Legion's net is as wide as its meshes are close; and some rare, as
well as queer, fish find their way into it.

Possibly the rarest that it ever contained was a Mahratta soldier who,
during the Great War, found his way, always toward the rising sun,
across a hundred miles of African jungle, until he reached the sea, and
there, boarding a _dhow_ at night, was carried across hundreds of miles
of ocean.

The crew of the _dhow_ was an interesting one, among its members being
two French gentlemen, one an Intelligence Officer and the other a
kindly priest, formerly of Goa--neither of whom was in anywise
distinguishable from his sea-faring Arab colleagues.

The _dhow_, of a humble, unobtrusive and diffident disposition, had
business at a lone coastal outpost where flies the _Tricouleur_, and
where sins and suffers a small garrison, of Colonial Infantry and of
the Legion....

Here the said priest, whose fairish knowledge of the Marathi tongue had
enabled him to understand something of the soldier's story, was glad to
assist him to attain his highest ambition--to fight against his
personal and national enemies, once more.

As a trained soldier and a stout fellow, he found favour in the sight
of the Commandant of the post, was duly enrolled as a soldier of
France, and eventually found himself precisely where he desired to
be....

      *      *      *      *      *

Mahdev Rao Ramrao, son of Ramrao Krishnaji, was born in a little
mud-walled village that nestles above its rice-fields on the slope of
the Western Ghats, in the Deccan of India.

High up above the village, its outline clear-cut against the sky, was
the fort, "_Den of the Tiger_," from which Mahdev Rao's forbears, led
by Shivaji the Great, had swept down to harry the plains, to plunder
towns, and to fight the invading Mussulman....

As he toddled about the crooked streets of tiny mud-built Nagaum,
clutching the finger of his grandfather, Krishnaji Arjun, the little
fat Mahdev Rao, clad in an embroidered velvet cap and a necklace,
learned that he was a Pukka Bahadur, a mighty one, the son, grandson,
great-grandson, and general descendant of soldiers, fierce fighting
men--from the days of Shivaji the Great, three hundred years ago, to
the days of Wellesley Sahib (who had fought in those very parts),
Nicholson Sahib, Outram Sahib (whose Orderly, grandfather's own father
had been), Havelock Sahib, Roberts Sahib, even unto the days of the
Great Lat-Sahib Kitchener, the Elephant of War, whose shadow had
destroyed the _Hubshis_[1] and their prophet the Mahdi....


[1] "Woolly ones" (negroes).


And, as he grew up, Mahdev Rao understood that he was a _Kshattria_, of
the caste next to the Brahmins themselves; that he was a
cradle-ordained soldier, and that he had traditions to reverence and
maintain.  So he developed into a fine proud youth, self-respecting,
ambitious, and religious beyond the conception of the vast majority of
Europeans.

In due course, the day came when, as his father, his grandfather, and
his great-grandfather had done, he sallied forth from Nagaum, and
tramped to the recruiting-dept at Belara to take service under the
Sahibs as a Sepoy--to serve the King Emperor as his father and
grandfather had served the Queen, and his other ancestors had served
John Company or their own Rajah in due season.  His intention was to be
faithful to his salt; his ambition was to rise to be a Havildar,
possibly a Jemadar, and conceivably a Subedar; his hope was to return
to Nagaum full of honours, with medals and a pension, and to
superintend the cultivation of the family plot of land (theirs since
the days of Shivaji, the Scourge of the Deccan) and the upbringing of
his sons and grandsons....  But Fate willed otherwise, and affairs in
Nagaum were affected by the fact that an egotistical megalomaniac was
making a God in his own image, seven thousand miles away in Berlin....

      *      *      *      *      *

As a white-clad recruit at Belara, life went very well for Mahdev Rao
the Mahratta, and when he found himself a khaki-clad full private of
the Old Hundredth Bombay Rifles, he found himself indeed.

He was that happy man, the man whose day is full of work that is his
hobby, work that he loves, work that is his play.  The Jemadar of his
double-company was an old friend of his father, and his own Havildar
was a Nagaum man.  Him, Mahdev Rao cultivated with such words and gifts
as are fitting--and highly politic.  The Captain Sahib of his
double-company was a _pukka_ Sahib, a great _shikari_, horseman,
athlete and soldier.  The descendant of Pindaris could understand and
admire the descendant of Norman freebooters and Elizabethan
gentlemen-adventurers and soldiers of fortune.  The Colonel Sahib, with
his nine medal-ribbons, white moustache, and burning eye, was Mahdev
Rao's idea and ideal of a Man.  At an age when Mahdev Rao's people were
getting a little senile and more than a little shaky, he seemed as
young and active as a Mahdev himself--yea, though as old as Mahdev's
grandfather.  Sepoys who had seen him at work on the Frontier, when the
Ghazis charged home like wounded tigers, spoke of him with bated
breath.  This was a Bahadur of Bahadurs, a _Man_.  Oh, to die in battle
under his approving eye!  What bliss! ... The Adjutant Sahib, Mahdev
disliked and feared, though he respected him.  (It seems the painful
duty of a good Adjutant to make himself disliked and feared, as it is
his gratifying privilege to be respected.) ...

And, by the time war broke out, in August, 1914, the Regiment was
Mahdev Rao's happy home; the Colonel Sahib was, in his own expressive
phrase, "his Father and his Mother," and his Mahratta comrades were his
brothers.

Incidentally and severally, his _guru_, his Captain, Lieutenant,
Subedar, Jemadar and Havildar were also his Father and his Mother; and
the honour of his Regiment was the honour of Mahdev Rao.  Even the
Punjabi Mahommedans and Pathans of the other double-companies were
worthy souls, inasmuch as they were part of the Regiment; and still
more so the Sikhs, Rajputs, and Dogras; but, of course, the very salt
of the Regiment, which was the salt of the Army, which was the salt of
the Earth, was Mahdev Rao's double-company of Deccani Mahrattas.

When it was known, a few months later, that the Regiment was to go on
Active Service, Mahdev Rao's cup of happiness was already full, by
reason of the fact that he had that very day defeated Pandurang Bagu
and became champion wrestler of the Regiment--a distinction which
guarantees that its holder would give a little trouble to any wrestler
in the world, be his nationality and eminence what it might....  Judge
of the swamping, seething overflow of the said cup of happiness when
the news came, plain and indubitable, through the regimental babu, that
the Old Hundredth Bombay Rifles were to proceed forthwith to the city
of Bombay and embark for East Africa!

Here was news indeed!  News of increased saving from pay, decreased
expenses, a certain medal, the chances of decoration and promotion; and
adventure, experience, change....  Of course, to cross the Black Water
was to lose caste, but the _guru_ and the village priests would soon
put that right and provide dispensation at not too exorbitant rates.
Marvellous fellows, the Brahmins, at wangling a thing when there was
money in it....

      *      *      *      *      *

The ten days' journey from Bombay to Mombasa was very wonderful to
Mahdev Rao, who had scarcely seen the sea before, and had never set
foot on a ship or boat of any description....  The problem of how it
propelled itself without sails or wheels puzzled him exceedingly, and
still more so the problem of how it found its way, day after day, night
after night, from one spot on the coast of India to another spot on the
coast of Africa.  And not just any old spot, mark you, but a definite
given place at which it would arrive at a stated time.  Certainly the
Sahibs up on the bridge could not see across the space of a ten days'
journey with the most powerful of field-glasses....

It was a surprise to him to find that the shores of this new and
strange continent were remarkably like those of India, and that the
coconut groves of the Kilindini inlet, between the island of Mombasa
and the mainland, might have come straight from Bombay ... But then
surprises came so thick and fast, that his mind, always more tenacious
than acute, became dulled, and he ceased to be surprised at
anything--even at the fact that he was expected to fight in jungle so
dense that no human being could move through it, save along the
foot-wide paths that wound and twisted from village to village or from
ford to ford.  But how was a man to fight in such country, and what was
a double-company to do, accustomed as it was to attack in extended
order, and taught never to fire a round until there was a visible enemy
to fire at?  How _could_ it fight in single file, with an impenetrable
wall of trees, creepers, bush and thorn on either side? ...

The days between the debarkation at Mombasa and the occupation by his
double-company of an advanced outpost (days of weary marching through
jungle and swamp) passed like a dream, and Mahdev Rao settled down to
the routine of this new strange life in a swamp-jungle, and soon felt
as though he had never known any other.

It was not a pleasant life, for it was monotonous, unhealthy, and dull,
the heat was terrific, food was not all it might have been, fever and
dysentery were rife and, in his own phrase, "air and water were bad."

But Mahdev Rao was too keen a soldier to grumble.  One did not expect
Active Service to be like a furlough-trip to one's home, nor to have
the comforts and luxuries of Nagaum, Belara or Bombay, in this enemy's
country--the loathsome swamp where lived the _Hubshis_ under the rule
of their _Germani_ masters (a kind of White Men, he gathered, who were
not Sahibs).

So he trudged along cheerily when his half of the little garrison went
marching on a reconnaissance into the enemy's country; did his
sentry-go smartly; sat watching with keen untiring eyes on the _machan_
in the tree-top, when such was his duty; and scouted warily along the
jungle tracks when sent out with a comrade to patrol to the next
outpost....

"That Mahdev Rao's a good lad," remarked Captain Delamere to Lieutenant
Carr as they sat in the grass-hut "Officers' Mess" of the outpost, one
evening, and tried to masticate the tinned string and encaustic tiles,
served out to them under the name of bully-beef and biscuit.

"Always merry and bright, and chucks a chest when some of the other
blokes begin to slouch and lag a bit."

"Yes," agreed Carr; "he'll make a damgood Havildar some day....  Might
make him a Lance-Naik now....  Hardly the brains to go further than
Havildar, I am afraid ... but we c'd do with a few thousand Mahdev Raos
out here." ...

"We'll give him a stripe," said Delamere, as he tried to cut up some
black-cake ration-tobacco (horrible cheap poison), with the one and
only table-knife.

"Why the devil can't they issue tobacco a man can smoke, if they're
going to issue a tobacco-ration at all? ..." he growled, and added:
"Yes--we'll give Mahdev Rao a stripe." ... But it was some one else,
and a very different person, who gave Mahdev Rao his stripes.

For, on the following day, he and Pandurang Bagu, patrolling to meet
the patrol from the next outpost, were ambushed.

There was a sudden burst of fire from a tree-top, as well as from the
bush before and behind them, and Pandurang Bagu went down with a heavy
bullet of soft lead in his shattered hip-joint.  Almost simultaneously,
Mahdev Rao was felled by the blow of a rifle-butt, as he raised his
rifle to fire at big khaki-clad _Hubshis_, in tall khaki
grenadier-caps, who rushed at him in front.

"Good!" grunted the Swahili sergeant in charge of the squad.  "That one
will be able to talk.  Kill the other."

Seven bayonets were plunged into Pandurang Bagu as, with trembling
hands, he raised his rifle.  As one does not get the pleasure of
plunging one's bayonet into an enemy every day, the Swahilis and Yaos
made the most of their opportunity, and Pandurang Bagu's life ebbed
quickly out through dozens of wounds....  The Sergeant was a happy man,
and his ebon countenance was wreathed in smiles.  He had been sent out,
by the _Herr Offizier_, with orders to ambush a patrol and bring in at
least one member of it alive--and he had succeeded to perfection.

One night's wait in a most admirable ambush; strict orders not to shoot
the last man of the patrol--be there a dozen or be there but two--and
to spring out at each end of the ambush and capture the survivor alive;
five seconds of smart work as per programme, and the job was done.

And done very neatly--for there are few braver or more skilful soldiers
in the world than these African Rifles, when fighting in their own
unique jungle....

When Mahdev Rao recovered consciousness (which he did very quickly,
thanks to his thick skull and thicker turban) he found himself a
prisoner.  His hands were bound behind his back, he was stripped almost
naked, and his kit and accoutrements were being examined and looted by
his captors.

He realized that he was bare-headed and that the long tuft of hair,
left among the cropped stubble (that the gods might lift him into
heaven, when his time came), was hanging down his back.

He ground his teeth at the shameful outrage these casteless sons of
pariah-dogs had put upon him, in knocking his turban off and exposing
his bare head.  He rose to his knees and staggered to his feet, only to
be knocked down again from behind.

"If you strike him senseless, you will have to carry him, Achmet Ali,"
said the Sergeant.  "He has to be in the _boma_[2] by to-morrow
morning, alive and able to answer the questions of the _Bwana
Macouba_."[3] ...


[2] Enclosure; jungle fort.

[3] Great Master.


"I am the hero who knocked him down first," said Achmet Ali, and
straightway improvised a chant.

  "I am the hero,
  The swift-striking hero,
  I am the hero
  Who knocked him down first."


"Be also the hero that drives him along with a bayonet, then,"
interrupted the Sergeant, "and you'll be the hero whose head I will
blow off if the dog escapes."

And, for the remainder of that day and all that night, the _askaris_
drove Mahdev Rao (as the potter and _dhobi_ of Nagaum drive their
donkeys) with blows and curses.

Once, during one of the brief halts, food was offered him (cold boiled
rice and a plantain), and he tried to give these foul Untouchables,
these casteless carrion-scavengers, some faint idea of the unutterable
pollution of the very thought of taking food from their defiling
hands--the filthy _Hubshi_ dogs! ...

"He is too frightened to eat, poor heathen Infidel dog," remarked the
Sergeant to Achmet Ali, as he turned towards Mecca and prostrated
himself in prayer....

While fording a river, next morning, Mahdev Rao endeavoured to drown
himself and the hero, to the boundless amusement of the rest of the
squad.  The hero revenged himself by making a pattern of cuts upon his
captive's back with the point of his bayonet.  But they were only about
an inch long and quarter of an inch deep, and not likely to affect his
value when questioned by the _Bwana Macouba_ as to the number and
disposition of the British forces.

      *      *      *      *      *

The _Germani boma_ was very similar to the one from which Mahdev Rao
had come, but considerably larger.  Dazed and starving as he was, he
noted its strength, the height of its palisades, the depth of its
trenches, the number of its machine-guns, and the strength of its
garrison of native African Rifles (_askaris_) and _Germani_ Europeans.
He was surprised to see that the majority of the latter wore beards....
He had never before seen a European officer or soldier with a beard....
Obviously the _askaris_ were well drilled and highly disciplined.

Also, everything about the place was well done.  The huts were neater
and stronger and better thatched than in his own _boma_, paths were
more neatly made and kept, the earthworks were bigger and stronger.
Evidently the _Germanis_ had more coolie-labourers and got more work
out of them, or else they gave more attention to these details.
Certainly it was a very strong _boma_, and very strongly garrisoned.
He had seen twelve machine-guns and two small quick-firers (something
like Indian mountain-battery guns) already.  He would have a lot to
tell the Captain Sahib when he escaped and got back to the outpost....
But would they not take very especial care that he did not escape,
after he had seen so much? ... And how was he to find his way back to
his Company through that dense blind jungle, if he did escape? ... It
had got to be done, anyhow--and then he could lead the Captain Sahib
and the double-company to this place, and they could rush it at dawn,
with much slaughter of black untouchable pariahs who kept a high-caste
Indian bare-headed, offered him polluted food and water with their
defiling hands, struck him, and generally behaved like the savages they
were....

Doubtless, however, their _Germani_ masters would punish them and do
justice.  Though not _pukka_ Sahibs, they were White Men, and, as such,
would have understanding and a sense of decency.

White Men do not offend against the religion of others; they understand
caste and respect it; they know that prisoners of war are to be
honourably treated....  Yes, they understand a high-caste man, and know
the difference between a dog of a low-caste negro _askari_ of Africa,
and a high-caste _Kshattria_ Sepoy of India; the difference between one
who comes next to the Brahmins themselves and one who is utterly beyond
the pale, a walking pollution to earth, air, and water, whose very
shadow is a defilement and a desecration to what it falls upon....
Yes, it would be all right when he was brought face to face with their
officers, even though they were _Germanis_....

He was hustled into a filthy grass hut in which were four
negroes--spies, defaulters and guides, the last being kept in bonds
with the criminals, by reason of their incurable desire to leave the
service of their employers and captors....

Later he was haled forth--still bare-headed, bound, and half-naked--to
where, beneath a tree, sat three Europeans, attended by a Sergeant and
guard of _askaris_, and one or two nondescript persons, including a
half-caste in European clothing, a clerk, and a servant.  On a
camp-table before the White Men were bottles of beer, glasses, a
revolver, a heavy kiboko[4] of rhinoceros-hide, a map, and a notebook.


[4] Whip.


The central figure of the three (one Von Groener), who wore a khaki
uniform, blue putties and a white-topped peaked cap, bade the
half-caste ask the prisoner the name of his regiment, the number of men
in his _boma_, and the number of machine-guns it contained--for a start.

The "half"-caste, a Negroid Goanese-Arab-Indian, put the questions in
the barbarous Hindustani of the Goanese quarter of Dar-es-Salaam.
Mahdev Rao, a Mahratta, always speaking Marathi in the Regiment, knew
little more Hindustani than he did English.

"_Tera pultan ka nam kya hai?_" said the "interpreter."  "_Kitni admi
tera boma men hain?  Kitni tup-tup tup-tup bandook hain?_"[5]


[5] "What is the name of your regiment?  How many men are there in your
outpost?  How many machine-guns?"


Madhev Rao had a fair idea as to what the man was driving at, but he
looked stupid, and, in Marathi, replied:

"I do not understand."

Mr. Alonzo Gomez had never heard Marathi in his life.

"The man does not understand the language of India, _Herr Kommandant_,"
he said, in clumsy German, to the officer who sat in the centre.

"But that is absurd," replied that worthy.  "If he comes from India he
knows the language of India.  Tell him I will _kiboko_ the flesh from
his bones if he tries to fool _me_."

"_Bwana Sahib tumko kiboko diega_,"[6] answered Gomez to the prisoner.


[6] "The Master will flog you."


"I will try him in English," said the senior officer to the others.
"The English give all drill-orders in English; therefore this animal
understands English."

"_Ja!  Ja!_" agreed the other two.  "_Ganz klein wenig._"

"Hear, pig-dog," quoth the senior gentleman, "his battalion what his
name calls?  How large are man-number of it?  How large are
gun-machine-number of it?  Isn't it?"

To Mahdev Rao, at least two of the gutturally pronounced words were
familiar.  "Sahib," he said in Marathi, "I am a Sepoy and a prisoner of
war.  I am not a spy.  And I am very tired and thirsty." ...

"The swine is contumacious," said the senior.  "He understands both
English and Hindustani.  He is shamming.  We will help him to find his
wits--and his tongue," and he gave a curt order to the _askari_
Sergeant.  (Also to the Swahili servant--concerning the replenishment
of the beer supply.)  He was a handsome man of about forty, with a
small forked beard, a cold blue eye, and a hard domineering expression.
Once he had been an ornament of Berlin and Potsdam, an _Ober-Leutnant_
of Grenadiers; but debt, drink, cards, and an unfortunate duel, had
sent him into exile.  In exile he had grown morose, bitter and savage,
loathing and blaming everything and every one--except himself.

Of his companions, one was a ne'er-do-well relation of a German General
and had been shipped to German East Africa to die of fever, beer, and
dissipation; the other was an ex-_Feldwebel_ of the Prussian Guard who
had made money as an elephant-poacher and then done exceeding well as a
trader and planter--well from the financial point of view _bien
entendu_; from the moral point of view he had not done very well.

The three were not typical of their class, and were of wholly different
fibre from their General (a great soldier and a gentleman).

They were three bad men, bad by the standards of the German colony--and
the order that _Ober-Leutnant_ von Groener had given, and that his
colleagues had applauded, was that Mahdev Rao, prisoner of war,
captured in uniform, upon his lawful occasions as a soldier, should be
tied to a tree and flogged with the terrible rhinoceros-hide _kiboko_
with which the German instils discipline into his native soldiers,
servants, coolies, criminals, and lady "housekeepers."

Mahdev Rao was seized by the _askari_ guard, and so tied that he was
hugging, with arms and legs, the big tree beneath which the "court" was
sitting.

In the hands of a huge, brawny, and most willing Sergeant of _askaris_,
the five-foot _kiboko_, tapering from the thickness of a man's wrist to
that of his little finger, supple as india-rubber, and tougher than
anything in the world, is a most terrible instrument of torture and
punishment.  The "draw" of the scientific pulling-stroke (as of one who
cuts through a stick with one slice of a knife) of the _kiboko_,
lacerates and mangles, blood leaping at every blow....

By the time the three German gentlemen considered that Mahdev Rao was
sufficiently exhorted, encouraged, and rebuked (for his
contumaciousness), he was also senseless and apparently dead....  It
was annoying, as the _Herr Ober-Leutnant_ had hoped to obtain much
interesting and useful information concerning the Indian Expeditionary
Force, and to send it to Head-Quarters....

Mahdev Rao recovered consciousness in the same prison-hut.  He was
alone, and the fact that there was no one present to see such a fall
from grace, aided the terrible pangs of thirst in inducing him to drink
from the gourd of water that stood in the corner....  Later, he ate a
couple of plantains....  As they were covered by their skins, the
interior had not been defiled--or, at any rate, one could take a
certain amount of comfort from such a theory and argument.

Later still, he bowed to the inevitable, and ate the cold boiled rice
his _askari_ gaoler brought him.  It was a terrible thing to do--but
life was dear--and revenge was dearer.  He would live, at any cost, to
be revenged upon that--that--swine, and son of swine--that offspring of
pariah curs--that carrion-eating lump of defilement and pollution--who
had had him, him, Sepoy Mahdev Rao of the Old Hundredth Bombay Rifles,
flogged, publicly flogged, by black beasts of _Hubshis_....

Great as were his physical sufferings, his mental sufferings were a
thousand times greater.  His body felt pain: his mind felt agonizing
tortures and excruciating torments unspeakable....  He ground his
teeth, clenched his fists, and cried aloud in rage and horror--and then
fell silent and still ... for no--he must not go mad, he must not lose
strength, he must not die--until he had had his revenge....

Next day he was questioned again and flogged again....

At the end of a week the _Ober-Leutnant_ decided to send him to
Head-Quarters at Mombobora.  There was a Missionary Father in the town,
who had worked in India and would know the language perfectly.  There
was also a hospital, where they would patch the dog up, that he might
be able to converse with the Father....  Anyhow--since the Colonel
seemed to think that he, the _Ober-Leutnant_, had shown little skill in
his endeavours to get information from this Indian, let him see if he
could do any better himself....

At Head-Quarters they learnt nothing from Mahdev Rao, though he learnt
much from them concerning the difference between German and British
methods of dealing with native prisoners who will not "talk."

He was not flogged, but he was abused, starved, bound, insulted, and
finally herded with a chain-gang of negro criminals, and set to such
work as road-sweeping and latrine-cleaning.

What this means to a man of caste, no one who has not lived in India
can guess, and no one but a high-caste Indian can know.  Nothing worse
can happen to him.

And, from time to time, he was brought before the Missionary, who
talked to him in excellent Marathi, promising him all kinds of rewards
if he would describe the composition and disposition of the
Expeditionary Force from India....  Were there Pathans and Gurkhas in
it? ... Were there field-batteries? ... Were there Pioneer Corps? ...
Had part of it gone by the Uganda Railway to Nairobi and the Lakes? ...
Were the Sepoys loyal? ... If he returned to them with much money and
more promises, would he be able to induce any of them to desert? ...
What was the state of feeling in India? ... And much more, until Mahdev
Rao, maddened, sullen, brutalized, barely sane, by reason of his
wrongs, cruelties, and immeasurable degradations, would lift up his
voice and curse the _padre_, the evil white _fakir_, until his guards
smote him on the mouth and dragged him away--a naked, filthy wreck of a
man....

Constantly he sought an opportunity of escape from the town, but found
none.

He must have food, a weapon of some kind, and he must get more strength
and recover his health, get rid of this fever, before he could take the
opportunity if one offered.  But when he was not road-sweeping or
road-making with the chain-gang, he was otherwise working, always under
the eye of an _askari_ guard, who asked nothing better than an excuse
to shoot him....

No--he must wait, and it was always possible that the _Germani_
officer, who had flogged him, might come to this Head-Quarters, and
save Mahdev Rao the journey to that gentleman's _boma_.

For Mahdev Rao's one idea now, his one reason for living, was to avenge
himself upon _Ober-Leutnant_ von Groener--the man who, instead of
treating him as a prisoner of war, had had him publicly flogged, and
had then sent him to this place where a high-caste Indian Sepoy was as
a cannibal negro criminal, and was herded with them....  He did not
wish to live.  He did not wish to return to India--he was too eternally
and utterly defiled, polluted, and out-caste for that.  But he did not
intend to die until he had met the _Germani_ who had had him flogged,
the man whom he regarded as the arch-type of his captors, the man who
had brought him into this living death of defilement, the man who was
the cause of all his woes....

To listen seriously to the Missionary Father's temptations to treachery
never occurred to him.  He was Sepoy Mahdev Rao of the Old Hundredth
Bombay Rifles, a soldier of the King Emperor, and son of a long line of
brave and honest fighting men, "true to salt," and loyal as hilt to
blade....

      *      *      *      *      *

One morning, with the rest of a road-sweeping gang, Mahdev Rao was
working at a spot just outside the native "town" of Mombobora, where a
little bridge crossed a muddy stream, more mud than stream, that lay
between two tracts of cultivation....

A squad of _askaris_ tramped past ... a doctor and two nurses ... a
small herd of cattle ... a German lady in a kind of rickshaw ... an
officer in a hammock slung from a stout bamboo pole, borne by four
Kavarondo natives ... a file of negresses with water-jars upon their
heads ... and then--did his eyes deceive him?--his Enemy, the man who
had had him flogged!

      *      *      *      *      *

... Strolling along, taking the morning air, came _Ober-Leutnant_ Fritz
von Groener, who had been summoned to Mombobora by the Colonel, and had
arrived on the previous day.

As he reached the little bridge, a crouching man, a filthy, half-naked
wretch of the road-gang, suddenly rose and sprang at him, drove him
sideways and backwards, before he could raise his heavy whip or draw
his automatic--and seized him in a grip, scientific and powerful, the
hold of a champion wrestler, in whom was the strength of madness and
the lust of revenge.

Before the lounging _askari_ guard heard a sound of the struggle, the
two, swaying and straining, fell against the low coping of the bridge,
toppled over it, and splashed heavily into the liquid mud beneath--the
German officer beneath the Indian soldier, whose hands were at his
throat, whose knee was on his chest, and who, slowly, strongly, surely,
thrust his head beneath the foul slime, and held it there as the
writhing bodies sank and splashed in the watery mud....

It is probable that the _Herr Ober-Leutnant_ was dead before Askari
Mustapha Moussa, in charge of the road-gang, had realized that
something was wrong, had reached the bridge-head and had made up what
must be called his mind, that it was his duty to risk a shot at the
"coolie."

Certainly he was dead enough when the hands of Mahdev Rao were at
length torn from his throat, and the two were dragged from the mud into
which they were disappearing....

      *      *      *      *      *

Rumours of the approach of an enemy force caused much confusion that
night, and Sepoy Mahdev Rao, sentenced to be shot at dawn, decided to
view the dawn elsewhere than in Mombobora, or to die in an attempt to
turn this confusion to good account....




XVII

THE MERRY LIARS

A competition in lying was proceeding, and entries were good.  (One
Lgionnaire told of his beloved pet rabbit which nibbled lead, ate
cordite, swallowed a burning match--and then went out and shot its own,
and its master's, supper.)

"Yep," growled the Bucking Bronco, as the little group of Legionaries,
from all corners of the earth and all strata of human society, turned
towards him, "I allow I can tell as big a lie as Ole Man
Dobroffski--even if I _ain't_ the Czar of Roosia's gran'pa's little
gran'chile, Wilhelmine-Bungorfski-Poporf."

Pre Jean Boule, "father" of the Second Battalion, and incidentally an
English baronet, moved uneasily.  The Bucking Bronco had always
disliked the Russian aristocrat, and had never made any secret of the
fact.  If ever they fought, there would not be two survivors of that
fight ... and the Bucking Bronco was his beloved and loving friend, and
a mine of virtues, though a Bad Man--of the best sort.  He had been,
among other things, a miner, cowboy, tramp, lumberman, professional
boxer, U.S.A. trooper, and ornament of a Wild West show, of which he
was the trick revolver-shot.

"Ah ... you allus was a purple liar, Buck," put in 'Erb, the Cockney,
as the American produced a deplorable French pipe and some more
deplorable French tobacco.  (_How_ his soul yearned for a corn-cob and
some Golden Bar, or "the makings" and a bag of Bull Durham!)

"I give a guy a picky-back once," continued the Bucking Bronco,
ignoring 'Erb, whom he usually treated as a mastiff treats a small cur.

"But how interesting!" murmured the ex-Colonel of the Imperial Guard,
who called himself "Dobroffski."

"And it killed that guy, and it killed his gal, and it sent me
bug-house--_loco_--for Devil-knows-how-long-an'-all," continued the
American, ignoring Dobroffski as he had ignored 'Erb.

"What is it that it is, then--this '_bug-'ouse_' and this '_loco_'?"
murmured le Lgionnaire Alphonse Blanc, whose English included no
American.

"Same as what you'd call 'dotty'--or 'off 'is onion'--'looney'--'balmy
on the crumpet'--in yore silly lingo," explained 'Erb helpfully.

"_Fou_," murmured La Cigale, for the benefit of Blanc and Tant-de-Soif,
whose knowledge of English was limited also.  (La Cigale, the
ex-Belgian officer, knew all there was to know about _dmence_, poor
soul.)

"Wot killed 'em?  Was it the sight o' the faices you made--doin' the
job o' work?" inquired 'Erb.

The Bucking Bronco leaned back against the wall of rough-hewn,
thickly-mortared grey stones, spread his huge legs abroad, and blew a
cloud of smoke.  He was wearing his _capote_ (the long blue great-coat)
and red trousers tucked into black leggings, but he shivered as though
cold.

"I can see that gal's face now," he said, staring out across the ocean
of sand that surrounded the fort; and the enormous powerful man, with
his long arms, big hands, leathern face, and heavy drooping moustache,
looked ill and fell silent.

"Wish _I_ could, Ole Cock," observed 'Erb.  "Where's she 'iding?"

"And Bud Conklin's feet, too, a danglin' just above me face.  Ole Bud
Conklin, what I'd bin a road-kid with, an' took the trail with
ever-since-when--ranchin'; gold-prospectin', with a rusty pan and a bag
o' flour; ridin' the blind, right across the States; lumberin';
throwin' our feet fer a two-bit poke-out, in the towns; and trampin'
through the alkali sage bush, as thirsty as a bitch with nine pups.

"Bud Conklin was a blowed-in-the-glass White Man, an' I was the death
of him.  Yes, Sir.  And his gal--a little peach, named Mame Texas....
I guess she begun life as 'Mame o' Texas,' never hevin' hed no
parients--nawthen to speak of--'cos Dago Jake had lifted her outer Ole
Pete Frisco's ranch when his gang shot th' ol' sinner up, down Texas
way (an' _he_ never hed no wife--nawthen to speak of) and burnt the
place down.

"An' when she filled out and grow'd up a bit, Dago Jake he got that sot
on the gal, he allowed as he'd give any man lead-pisenin' as looked at
her twice; an' he beat her up every time he got a whisky-jag, so' she
shouldn't look twice at nobody else.

"Marry her?  No!  There wasn't no sky-pilots around Hackberry Crossin'
by the Frio River in them prickly-pear flats; an' Dago Jake dassn't
show his ugly face near no church-bearin' city--even if he'd held with
matterimony as a pastime.

"Nope!  Nix on marryin' fer Jake.

"Then me an' Bud eventuates in Hackberry Crossin', travellin' mighty
modest and unconspishus, after arguin' with a disbelievin' roller of a
Ranger as allowed we'd found our pinto hosses before no one hadn't lost
'em.

"An' it was up to us to lose ourselves an' keep away with both feet
after we'd collected that cracker-jack's hoss, an' gun likewise, and
the financial events in the pockets of his pants.

"He was a sure annoyed boob when me an' Bud told him good-bye an' set
his erring feet fer Quatana--having took his belt and pant-suspenders
and bootlaces so's he'd hev to hold his pants up with one hand an' his
boots on with the other.  An' then we burnt the trail for Hackberry
Crossin', day an' night, and went to earth at Dago Jake's, sech being
Jake's perfession.

"Bud didn' look at Mame twice.  Nope, once was enuff, but it lasted all
the time she was in sight! ... Bud took it bad....  He wrote po'try.
An' he made me listen to it while we wolfed our mornin' _frijoles_ an
cawfy, or evenin' goat-mutton steaks an' canned termatoes, an'
forty-rod whisky.  Bud's fav'rite spasm begun:--

  "_'O Mame, which art not in reach,
  O Mame, thou art a peach!
  I fair must let a screech
  Or else my heart it will be too full for speech._'

An' there was about twenty noo verses each day.  He made 'em up outa
his silly head while we lay doggo, up in the pear-thicket along the
_arroyo_ behint Jake's adobe.

"An' by the time the Sheriff, an' the Lootenant of Rangers, an' the
Town Marshal o' Quatana begun to allow that no such suspicious
characters as me an' Bud hadn't ever crossed the Frio at Hackberry
Crossin', Bud was nearly as much in love with Mame as Mame was with Bud.

"They _hed_ got it bad.

"And soon that low-lifer coyote of a Dago Jake, he begins to smell a
rat, and afore long he smells a elephant.  Bud wants to shoot him up,
but Mame won't stand for it.  She don't want Bud to swing fer a
goshdinged tough like Jake.  '_It would be man-slaughterin' murder_,'
says she; '_besides which, Jake kin pull a gun as quick as greased
lightnin'.  Yew ain't got nawthen on Jake at that game_,' she says,
'_wherefore I holds it onlawful and calc'lated to cause a breach of the
peace--and o' yew likewise, Bud_,' an' she kisses him like hell, we-all
being in the pear-thicket, an' me lookin' the other way like I was
searchin' fer me lost youth an' innercence...."

"Wot abaht this 'ere picky-back, Buck?" interrupted 'Erb.  "Thought you
was agoin' to tell a thunderin' good lie abaht killing yer pal an' 'is
donah, through playin' picky-backs with 'em."

Le Lgionnaire Reginald Rupert, leaning forward from his place on the
bench, smote 'Erb painfully in the ribs: William Jones crushed the
little man's _kpi_ over his face: while La Cigale, in the voice of one
who chides a dog, hissed "_Tais-toi, canaille!_" in an unwonted fit of
anger at the unmannerly interruption.

"But what is it that it is, this peek-a-back?" whispered Alphonse Blanc
to John Bull, as the Bucking Bronco turned his slow contemptuous regard
upon 'Erb.

"As to say, _sur-le-dos_," replied the old Legionary, seizing the
Cockney in a grip of iron as he prepared to deal faithfully with Rupert
and Jones (who had been Captain Geoffry Brabazon-Howard of the Black
Lancers).

      *      *      *      *      *

"And the end of it was," continued the American, "that we made our
get-away, the three of us, one night; mighty clever, we thought, until
we heard Dago Jake laugh--at our very first campin' ground! ...

"I'd kep' first watch, an' then Bud the next--and Mame, she must sit up
and keep watch with him....  'Fore long they was doin' it with their
four eyes shut, being as tired as a greaser's mule, and aleanin' agin a
tree, wrop in each other's arms....

"I ain't ablamin' 'em any....  _They_ paid--most, anyhow....

"When I wakes up, hearing Dago Jake's pleasin' smile, he'd got 'em
covered with his gun, an' half-a-dozen of his gang
(blowed-in-glass-Bad-Men-from-Texas they was, too) had got me covered
also likewise.

"'_First on you as moves, and I let some daylight into the dark innards
o' that respectable young female as yore acuddlin', Bud Conklin,' says
Jake.  'Git up and hands up._'

"'_Do it smart, Buck,_' ses Bud, and we jumps up and puts our hands up,
right there.  I guess Bud hoped as how Jake might forgive the gal an'
take her back--when he'd done with Bud....

"I'd hev reached for the hip-pocket o' me pants and pulled my gun--for
I allow that no moss don't grow on me when I start in to deliver the
goods with a gun--for all his bonehead bunch o' shave-tails, but I
allowed Jake would shoot the gal up, all right; and that was where the
outfit had got the bulge on us....  Yep, it was Jake's night to howl,...

"And right here's where the picky-back eventuates, Sonny," he added,
addressing 'Erb.

"Yep.  Mr. Fresh-Tough Coyote Dago Jake had thought out a neat
cinch--cool as ice--with his black heart boilin' and bubblin' like
pitch....  In about half no-time, me an' Bud was roped-up with raw-hide
lariats--me like a trussed fowl and Bud with his hands only.  They was
bound fit to cut 'em off, but his legs was free--and all the time Dago
Jake covers the gal, and asks in his dod-gasted greasy voice--like
molasses gurglin' outer a bar'l (no, I didn't like Jake's
voice)--whether she'd hev her ears shot off or be crippled fer life
with a shot in each knee, if she stirred an inch, or me an' Bud tried
to move hand or foot....  Yes, Sir, Jake fair gave me the fantods that
bright an' shinin' morn.

"Then, when they'd done tyin' me an' Bud like parcels, they bound the
gal to the tree what we'd been campin' under.  They tied her hands
behind her; they tied her feet an' knees together; and they tied her to
that tree like windin' string round a bat-handle....  And then they
puts a halter round Bud's neck an' ties the other end to a
branch--_after settin' Bud up on my shoulders, with his legs one each
side of my head an' his feet danglin' down on my chest_....  Yes,
Sir....  And I calc'lated that if I _co_-lapsed, Bud's feet would still
dangle--about a yard from the ground or a couple o' foot, when the rope
stretched and gave a bit, or the bough bent a little....  And Mame
stood face to face with us six feet away...."

      *      *      *      *      *

The Bucking Bronco fell silent--and no member of the little group of
Legionaries broke the silence.  I could see from their faces that even
Tant-de-Soif and Alphonse Blanc grasped the situation--while from La
Cigale, Dobroffski, and the Japanese, scarcely a nuance of meaning was
hid.

It was plain that John Bull, Reginald Rupert, and William Jones
visualized the scene more clearly, and felt its poignant horror more
fully than did 'Erb, ex-denizen of the foulest slums of London.

"'_Streuth!_" 'Erb murmured at last, and scratched his head.

"And then, '_I fear I must now leave you for a spell, ladies an'
gents_,' ses Dago Jake," continued the American, "after he'd smacked
his lips some, an' pointed out our cleverness and beauty to the
grinnin' outfit--'_but I'll look in a bit later on--say this day week
or so, an' pay my respex_'--and the hull outfit rides off, laffin' fit
to bust.

"And there was we-all--Bud hevin' as long to live as I could stand up
under his weight; an' me an' Mame with as long to live as starvation
'ud let us.

"No, there wasn't no hope of nobody comin' along through them
prickly-pear flats.  That didn't eventuate to happen once in a
month--apart from Dago Jake layin' hisself out to see that it didn't
happen till we-all had got what was acomin' to us.

"He c'd fix it to detain anybody what might come to Hackberry Crossin'
plannin' to follow the trail we'd took West--which was as onlikely as
celluloid apples in Hell--an' nobody never come East along it, 'cos
there was a better one.

"Nope--we'd chose that highly onpopulous thoroughfare apurpose,
travellin' modest an' onconspishus as before, an' the more so for to
avoid onpleasantness for Mame consevent upon pursuit by Dago Jake.

"And there wouldn't be no Ranger patrol along neether.  If any come at
all, it'd be along the trail we'd reckoned as Jake'd take when he found
we'd vamoosed durin' his temp'r'y indisposition of whisky-jag....

"_Gee_-whillikins! what wouldn't I hev give fer that same Ranger, that
Bud an' I had held up an' dispoiled contumelious, to happen along--even
if it meant ten years striped pyjamas in the County Pen or in St.
Quentin with hard labour, strait-jacket an' dungeons.  I'd ha' fell
upon his neck an' kissed him frequent an' free....  Yep....  And _then_
some." ...

The irrepressible 'Erb improved the occasion, as the big American
ceased and seemed to stare into the past.

"Ah!" he moralized, "if you'd bin alivin' of a _h_onest life an'
keepin' out o' trouble wi' the plice, you'd never 'a come to trouble
like _that_....  It was all along o' yore interferin' wi' the copper as
wanted to see the receipt for them 'osses, that you come ter grief."

"An' that's where yore wrong _agin_, Sonny," replied the Bucking Bronco
with his big-dog-to-little-dog air of forbearance.  "Though I allow
youse an authority on avoidin' trouble with the perlice"--('Erb's
presence in the Legion was consequent upon his hurried leaving of his
country for his country's good)--"for it was entirely due to that same
Ranger's ferocious pussonal interest in me that I'm alive to-day.  He'd
allowed he would trail me and Bud if it took the rest of his misspent
life--an' arrest us lone-handed.  He was that mad!  Walkin' on foot
without pant-suspenders is humiliatin' to a sensitive nature what has
jest bin relieved of its gun."

He fell silent again, and nobody spoke or stirred.

"We talked a bit, at first," he continued after a long pause, "an' ole
Bud Conklin showed his grit, cheering up Mame, an' sayin' Dago Jake was
only playin' a trick on us.  But the gal _knew_ Dago Jake, an' soon she
began to lose holt on herself....  I ain't blamin' her any....  She
loved Bud Conklin, y'see....  She cried, and struggled, and screeched,
and I wished she'd stop--until she begun to laugh, and then I'd rather
she'd cried and screeched.

"And '_Come up, ol' hoss_,' says Bud to me, when fust I staggered a
bit--jest quiet like--jest like he'd said a thousand times when a tired
pony stumbled under him.

"And by-an'-by he leans down an' whispers, '_I'd kick free of yer,
pard, if it wan't for the gal._'

"An' when I begins to tremble an' sway around, he leans down agin and
says very quiet, '_Hold up till the gal faints or sleeps or su'think,
Buck,_' he says.  '_Hold up, ole pard....  She'll go mad for life if I
dances an' jerks afore her eyes!_' ... An' I know he weren't hevin' no
daisy of a dandy time up there--and that he'd have kicked clear long
ago but for the gal....

"Faint?  Sleep?  Not she....  There she stood, face to face with
us--havin' highstericks a spell; then laffin' a spell, then prayin'
some....  Then croonin' over Bud Conklin like he was her babby....
Whiles, she'd praise me fer standin' firm an' savin' her man--an' there
was a spell when the pore thing thought I was God.

"One time, 'bout mid-day, Bud Conklin swore an' cursed at Dago Jake
till I fair blushed to hear him--an' then I waded in and beat him
holler at swearin', an' cursin' the name of Dago Jake....  But _that_
didn't cut no ice--nor cut our raw-hide lariats neither.

"In all them story-books about Red Injuns an' Deadwood Dicks an' such,
the blue-eyed, golden-haired Hero _allus_ busts his bonds.  He figgers
to bust 'em on time; then to find a saddled hoss standin' ready;
likewise to pick up a new-loaded gun _and_ a square meal by the
road-side, before gallopin' a hundred miles to make a fuss o' the
Villain and make a date with the Hero_ine_--jest as that husky
hoodlum's criminile _ad_vances, drugs, stranglin's and starvin's is
gettin' irksome to the young female....

"I guess Dago Jake an' his outfit wasn't the guys as had roped up
aforesaid Hero....  Nit....  But they _was_ the guys as had roped up
us, an' we didn't bust no bonds.  Nary a bust.  And once, towards
evenin', I begun to sway so bad that I half dropped Bud, an' on'y got
him straight on my shoulders agin, jest in time ... (an' I hear the
screech that Mame let, _now_, sometimes.)  '_Air you achokin' any,
Bud?_' I ses.  '_No, pard,_' ses he, '_I ain't chokin' none, but you
couldn't git a cigarette-paper between my neck an' this derned lasso.
I allow nex' time will give little Willie a narsty cough an' a crick in
the neck._'

"An' at the same time we notices that Mame was still an' quiet, with
her eyes shut.  '_Now, Buck,_' ses Bud, '_fall down an' roll clear....
Better she sees me dead than watch me dyin'._'

"'_Fall down, nawthen,_' says I.  '_I'm agoin' to stand right here till
the Day o' Jedgement; an' then I allow I'll donate Mister Tin-horn Dago
Jake a tomato-eye._'  And right then Mame opens her eyes an' smiles
sweet, up at Bud.

"'_Hevn't we played this silly game long enuff, Buddy?_' she says.
'_I'm so tired....  Let's go git married, like we planned_'--an' I
heerd Bud cough.  She shuts her eyes agin then--an' very slow an'
careful I turns right round so's not to see her no more.

      *      *      *      *      *

"An' I stood still till it was dark....

"So whether Mame died afore Bud or not--she didn't see him die, an'
that there fact has kep' me from goin' bug-house like Cigale...

"_Her dead face an' Bud's boot-soles fer a day or two!_ ...

"Yep.  It were that Ranger as arrested us.  A dead woman tied to a
tree, a dead man danglin' from it, an' a dead man lyin' just below his
feet--on'y he wasn't quite dead.

"He was a White Man, that Ranger.  He was hoppin' mad when he figgers
out what had happened, an' gives me rye-whisky, an' dopes me to sleep,
an' lets me lie there some.

"He was young an' innercent, an' when he'd donated me some grub an'
some more whisky, I talked to him eloquential.  I _did_ wanta tell Dago
Jake good-bye, before the Ranger hiked me off to his Lieutenant, an'
they rounded Jake an' his gang up.  The Ranger allowed it was Bud what
had held him up and trated him contumelious that day, an' thet as pore
Bud had handed in his checks, an' I'd nearly done likewise, he was
agoin' to fergit me....  He on'y wanted me as witness agin Dago Jake
and Co., for the murder of Mame an' Bud....

"An' as we jogs along I talks to him some more, an' in the end he lets
me go to the adobe hut to tell Jake good-bye afore he arrests him.

      *      *      *      *      *

"'Bout four o'clock a.m. in the early mornin' it was, and Jake sleepin'
off a whisky-jag! ... But he sobers up right slick when I wakes him and
he sees my pretty face....  He didn't even reach for his gun--not that
it was still there if he had.  I allow he thought I'd come from hell
for him.

"_I had_.

"Yep.  I tells Dago Jake good-bye all-right--all-right.  An' without
usin' no gun, nor knife, nor no other lethial weepon.  I takes my
farewell o' that gentle Spani-_ard_ with my bare hands, and then I
walks outer the shack a-singin'--

  "'Roll your tail an' roll it high,
  Fer you'll be an angel by-an-by,'

an' walkin' with a proud tail accordin'.

"'How _is_ Dago Jake?' ses the Ranger.

"'He _ain't_,' ses I...."

      *      *      *      *      *

As usual it was 'Erb who spoke first.

"I b'lieve you bin tellin' the _troof_, Buck," said he, "an' that's
disqualified in a bloomin' competition for 'oo can tell the biggest
lie.  My performin' rabbit wins, bless 'is liddle 'eart!  Come along to
the canteen, and..."

"I know a performin' train wot's got yore performin' jack rabbit
skinned a mile," interrupted the American.

"Performin' _train_?" inquired 'Erb blankly.

"That's so," was the drawled reply.  "You never seen such a slick train
in Yurrup nor Africky....  I was makin' a quick get-away from that
Ranger--an' he gallops on to the platform at the deept as this U.P.R.
double-express fast train glides outa the station.  I leans well over
the side of the observation-car and plants a kiss upon his bronzed an'
manly cheek....  At least, I _begun_ the kiss there, but where did that
kiss _finish_?

"On the southern end of an ole cow abrowsin' beside the track
_thirty-three miles down the line_!  Some train, and some travellin'
that! ... You an' yore performin' rabbit!  You make me tired."

"'Streuth!" murmured 'Erb again, and scratched his cropped head, as was
his custom when endeavouring to grapple with mysteries beyond his ken.

      *      *      *      *      *

  "Soldats de la Legion,
  De la Lgion trangre,
  N'ayant pas de nation,
  La France est votre Mre."




Made and Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and
London






[End of Stepsons of France, by Percival Christopher Wren]
