Title:      Beau Sabreur
Author:     Percival Christopher Wren
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0601261h.html
Edition:    1
Language:   English
Character set encoding:     HTML--Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted:          June 2006
Date most recently updated: June 2006

This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.ca

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

 

BEAU SABREUR

by

Percival Christopher Wren

1926

"A man may escape from his enemies or even from his friends, but how shall a man escape from his own nature?"

NOTE

The Author would like to anticipate certain of the objections which may be raised by some of the kindly critics and reviewers who gave so friendly and encouraging a chorus of praise to Beau Geste, The Wages of Virtue, and The Stepsons of France.

Certain of the events chronicled in these books were objected to, as being impossible.

They were impossible.

The only defence that the Author can offer is that, although perfectly impossible, they actually happened.

In reviewing The Wages of Virtue, for example, a very distinguished literary critic remarked that the incident of a girl being found in the French Foreign Legion was absurd, and merely added an impossibility to a number of improbabilities.

The Author admitted the justice of the criticism, and then, as now, put forth the same feeble defence that, although perfectly impossible, it was the simple truth. He further offered to accompany the critic (at the latter's expense) to the merry town of Figuig in Northern Africa, and there to show him the tombstone (with its official epitaph) of a girl who served for many years, in the Spahis, as a cavalry trooper, rose to the rank of Sergeant, and remained, until her death in battle, quite unsuspected of being what she was--a European woman.

And in this book, nothing is set forth as having happened which has not happened--including the adoption of two ex-Legionaries by an Arab tribe, and their rising to Sheikdom and to such power that they were signatories to a treaty with the Republic.

One of them, indeed, was conducted over a French troopship, and his simple wonder at the marvels of the Roumi was rather touching, and of pleasing interest to all who witnessed it . . .

The reader may rest assured that the deeds narrated, and the scenes and personalities pictured, in this book, are not the vain outpourings of a film-fed imagination, but the re-arrangement of actual happenings and the assembling of real people who have actually lived, loved, fought and suffered--and some of whom, indeed, live, love, fight and suffer to this day.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

CONTENTS

PART I

FAILURE

THE MAKING OF A BEAU SABREUR

CHAPTER I

"OUT OF THE DEPTHS I RISE"

I will start at the very nadir of my fortunes, at the very lowest depths, and you shall see them rise to their zenith, that highest point where they are crowned by Failure.

Behold me, then, clad in a dirty canvas stable-suit and wooden clogs, stretched upon a broad sloping shelf; my head, near the wall, resting on a wooden ledge, a foot wide and two inches thick, meant for a pillow; and my feet near the ledge that terminates this beautiful bed, which is some thirty feet long and seven feet wide. It is as long as the room, in fact, and about two feet from the filthy brick floor.

Between my pampered person and the wooden bed, polished by the rubbing of many vile bodies, is nothing. Covering me is a canvas "bread-bag," four feet long and two wide, a sack used for the carrying of army loaves. As a substitute for sheets, blankets and eider-down quilt, it is inadequate.

The night is bitterly cold, and, beneath my canvas stable-suit, I am wearing my entire wardrobe of underclothes, in spite of which, my teeth are chattering and I shiver from head to foot as though stricken with ague.

I am not allowed to wear my warm regimentals and cloak or overcoat, for, alas! I am in prison.

There is nothing else in the prison but myself and a noisy, nouveau riche, assertive kind of odour.

I am wrong--and I wish to be strictly accurate and perfectly truthful--there are hungry and insidious insects, number unknown, industrious, ambitious, and successful.

Some of my fellow troopers pride themselves on being men of intelligence and reason, and therefore believe only in what they can see. I cannot see the insects, but I, intelligent or not, believe in them firmly.

Hullo! there is something else. . . . A rat has run across my face. . . . I am glad so rude a beast is in prison. Serve him right. . . . On the whole, though, I wish he were not in prison, for he is nibbling at my ambrosial locks. . . . If I smite at him wildly I shall administer a severe blow to the brick wall, with my knuckles. . . .

The door, of six-inch oak, is flung open, and by the light of the lantern in the hand of the Sergeant of the Guard, I see a man and a brother flung into my retreat. He falls heavily and lies where he falls, in peaceful slumber. He has been worshipping at the shrine of Bacchus, a false god. The door clangs shut and leaves the world to darkness and to me, and the drunken trooper, and the rat, and the insects.

I shiver and wriggle and scratch and wonder whether the assertive odour will conquer, or my proud stomach rise victorious over . . . Yes, it is rising . . . Victorious? . . . No . . .

Again the door opens and a trooper enters, thanking the Sergeant of the Guard, in the politest terms, for all his care and kindness. The Sergeant of the Guard, in the impolitest terms, bids the trooper remove his canvas trousers.

He does so, and confirms what the Sergeant had feared--that he is wearing his uniform trousers beneath them. The Sergeant of the Guard confiscates the nethermost garments, consigns the prisoner to the nethermost regions, gives him two extra days in this particular region, and goes out.

As the door clangs, the new-comer strikes a match, produces half a candle, lights it, and politely greets me and the happy sleeper on the floor.

"Let us put this one to bed," he suggests, sticking his candle on the pillow-shelf; and I arise, and we lift the bibulous one from the hard floor to the harder, but less damp and filthy, "bed."

Evidently a humane and kindly soul this. I stand rebuked for my callousness in leaving the drunkard on the ground.

But he does not carry these virtues to excess, for, observing that the Bacchanal has been cast into prison in his walking-out uniform (in which he was evidently brought helpless into barracks), he removes the man's tunic, and puts it on over his own canvas stable-jacket.

"The drunk feel nothing," he observes sententiously. "Why should the sober feel cold?"

I no longer stand rebuked.

By the light of his candle, I study the pleasing black hole in which we lie, its walls decorated by drawings, poems, aphorisms, and obiter dicta which do not repay study.

It is a reeking, damp and verminous cellar, some thirty feet square, ventilated only by a single grated aperture, high up in one of the walls, and is an unfit habitation for a horse or dog.

In fact, Colonel du Plessis, our Commanding Officer, would not have one of the horses here for an hour. But I am here for fifteen days (save when doing punishment-drill) and serve me jolly well right.

For I have tirée une bordée--absented myself, without leave, for five days--the longest period that one can be absent without becoming a deserter and getting three years' hard labour as such.

Mind, I am not complaining in the very least. I knew the penalty and accepted it. But there was a lady in the case, the very one who had amused us with her remark to de Lannec, anent a stingy Jew politician of her acquaintance--"When a man with a Future visits a lady with a Past, he should be thoughtful of the Present, that it be acceptable--and expensive." She had written to me, beseeching me in the name of old kindnesses, to come quickly to Paris, and saying that she knew nothing but Death would keep me from helping her in her terrible need. . . .

And Death stayed his hand until I had justified this brave and witty little lady's faith; and now, after the event, sends his fleas, and odours, and hideous cold too late. . . . Dear little Véronique Vaux! . . .

There is a great commotion without, and the candle is instantly extinguished by its owner, who pinches the wick.

Evidently one foolishly and futilely rebels against Fate, and more foolishly and futilely resists the Guard.

The door opens and the victim is flung into the cell with a tremendous crash. The Sergeant of the Guard makes promises. The prisoner makes sounds and the sounds drown the promises. He must be raging mad, fighting-drunk, and full of vile cheap canteen-brandy.

The humane man re-lights his candle, and we see a huge and powerful trooper gibbering in the corner.

What he sees is, apparently, a gathering of his deadliest foes, for he draws a long and nasty knife from the back of his trouser-belt, and, with a wild yell, makes a rush for us.

The humane man promptly knocks the candle flying, and leaps off the bed. I spring like a--well, flea is the most appropriate simile, just here and now--in the opposite direction, and take up an attitude of offensive defence, and to anybody who steps in my direction I will give of my best--where I think it will do most good. . . .

Apparently the furious one has missed the humane one and the Bacchanalian one, and has struck with such terrific force as to drive his knife so deeply into the wood that he cannot get it out again.

I am glad that my proud stomach, annoyed as I am with it, was not between the knife and the bed. . . .

And I had always supposed that life in prison was so dull and full of ennui. . . .

The violent one now weeps, the humane one snores, the Bacchanalian one grunts chokingly, and I lie down again, this time without my bread-bag.

Soon the cruel cold, the clammy damp, the wicked flea, the furtive rat, the noisy odour, and the proud stomach combine with the hard bench and aching bones to make me wish that I were not a sick and dirty man starving in prison.

And a few months ago I was at Eton! . . . It is all very amusing. . . .

CHAPTER II

UNCLE

Doubtless you wonder how a man may be an Etonian one year and a trooper in a French Hussar Regiment the next.

I am a Frenchman, I am proud to say; but my dear mother, God rest her soul, was an Englishwoman; and my father, like myself, was a great admirer of England and of English institutions. Hence my being sent to school at Eton.

On my father's death, soon after I had left school, my uncle sent for me.

He was even then a General, the youngest in the French Army, and his wife is the sister of an extremely prominent and powerful politician, at that time--and again since--Minister of State for War.

My uncle is fantastically patriotic, and La France is his goddess. For her he would love to die, and for her he would see everybody else die--even so agreeable a person as myself. When his last moments come, he will be frightfully sick if circumstances are not appropriate for him to say, "I die--that France may live"--a difficult statement to make convincingly, if you are sitting in a Bath chair at ninety, and at Vichy or Aix.

He is also a really great soldier and a man of vision. He has a mind that plans broadly, grasps tenaciously, sees clearly.

Well, he sent for me, and, leaving my mother in Devonshire, I hurried to Paris and, without even stopping for déjeûner, to his room at the War Office.

Although I had spent all my holidays in France, I had never seen him before, as he had been on foreign service, and I found him to be my beau idéal of a French General--tall, spare, hawk-like, a fierce dynamic person.

He eyed me keenly, greeted me coldly, and observed--"Since your father is spilt milk, as the English say, it is useless to cry over him."

"Now," continued he, after this brief exordium, "you are a Frenchman, the son of a Frenchman. Are you going to renounce your glorious birth-right and live in England, or are you going to be worthy of your honoured name?"

I replied that I was born a Frenchman, and that I should live and die a Frenchman.

"Good," said my uncle. "In that case you will have to do your military service. . . . Do it at once, and do it as I shall direct. . . .

"Someday I am going to be the master-builder in consolidating an African Empire for France, and I shall need tools that will not turn in my hand. . . . Tools on which I can rely absolutely. . . . If you have ambition, if you are a man, obey me and follow me. Help me, and I will make you. . . . Fail me, and I will break you. . . ."

I stared and gaped like the imbecile that I sometimes choose to appear.

My uncle rose from his desk and paced the room. Soon I was forgotten, I think, as he gazed upon his splendid Vision of the future, rather than on his splendid Nephew of the present.

"France . . . France . . ." he murmured. "A mighty Empire . . . Triumphant over her jealous greedy foes. . . . "England dominates all the east of Africa, but what of the rest--from Egypt to the Atlantic, from Tangier to the Gulf? . . . Morocco, the Sahara, the Soudan, all the vast teeming West . . .

"Algeria we have, Tunisia, and corners here and there. . . . It is not enough. . . . It is nothing. . . ."

I coughed and looked more imbecile.

"Menaced France," he continued, "with declining birthrate and failing man-power . . . Germany only awaiting The Day. . . . Africa, an inexhaustible reservoir of the finest fighting material in the world. The Sahara--with irrigation, an inexhaustible reservoir of food. . . ."

It was lunch-time, and I realized that I too needed irrigation and would like to approach an inexhaustible reservoir of food. If he were going to send me to the Sahara, I would go at once. I looked intelligent, and murmured:

"Oh, rather, Uncle!"

"France must expand or die," he continued. And I felt that I was just like France in that respect.

"The Soudan," he went on, "could be made a very Argentine of corn and cattle, a very Egypt of cotton--and ah! those Soudanese! What soldiers for France! . . .

"The Bedouin must be tamed, the Touareg broken, the Senussi won over. . . . There is where we want trained emissaries--France's secret ambassadors at work among the tribes . . .

"Shall the West come beneath the Tri-couleur of France, or the Green Banner of Pan-Islamism? . . ."

At the moment I did not greatly care. The schemes of irrigation and food-supply interested me more. Corn and cattle . . . suitably prepared, and perhaps a little soup, fish and chicken too. . . .

"We must have safe Trans-Saharan Routes; and then Engineering and Agricultural Science shall turn the desert to a garden--France's great kitchen-garden. France's orchard and cornfield. And the sun's very rays shall be harnessed that their heat may provide France with the greatest power-station in the world. . . ."

"Oh, yes, Uncle," I said. Certainly France should have the sun's rays if I might have lunch.

"But conquest first! Conquest by diplomacy. . . . Divide and rule--that Earth's poorest and emptiest place may become its richest and fullest--and that France may triumph. . . ."

Selfishly I thought that if my poorest and emptiest place could soon become the richest and fullest, I should triumph. . . .

"Now, Boy," concluded my uncle, ceasing his swift pacing, and impaling me with a penetrating stare, "I will try you, and I will give you such a chance to become a Marshal of France as falls to few. . . . Listen. Go to the Headquarters of the military division of the arrondissement in which you were born, show your papers, and enlist as a Volontaire. You will then have to serve for only one year instead of the three compulsory for the ordinary conscript--because you are the son of a widow, have voluntarily enlisted before your time, and can pay the Volontaire's fee of 1,500 francs. . . . I will see that you are posted to the Blue Hussars, and you will do a year in the ranks. You will never mention my name to a soul, and you will be treated precisely as any other private soldier. . . .

"If you pass out with high marks at the end of the period, come to me, and I will see that you go to Africa with a commission in the Spahis, and your foot will be on the ladder. . . . There, learn Arabic until you know it better than your mother-tongue; and learn to know the Arab better than you know yourself. . . . Then I can use you!"

"Oh, yes, Uncle," I dutifully responded, as he paused.

"And some day--some day--I swear it--you will be one of France's most valuable and valued servants, leading a life of the deepest interest, highest usefulness and greatest danger. . . . You will be tried as a cavalryman, tried as a Spahi officer, tried as my aide-de-camp, tried as an emissary, a negotiator, a Secret-Service officer, and will get such a training as shall fit you to succeed me--and I shall be a Marshal of France--and Commander-in-Chief and Governor-General of the great African Empire of France. . . .

"But--fail in any way, at any one step or stage of your career, and I have done with you. . . . Be worthy of my trust, and I will make you one of France's greatest servants. . . . And, mind, Boy--you will have to ride alone, on the road that I shall open to you. . . ." He fell silent.

His fierce and fanatical face relaxed, a sweet smile changed it wholly, and he held out his hand.

"Would you care to lunch with me, my boy?" he said kindly.

"Er--lunch, Uncle?" I replied. "Thank you--yes, I think I could manage a little lunch perhaps. . . ."

CHAPTER III

THE BLUE HUSSAR

Excellent! I would be worthy of this uncle of mine, and I would devote my life to my country. (Incidentally I had no objection to being made a Marshal of France, in due course.)

I regarded myself as a most fortunate young man, for all I had to do was my best. And I was lucky, beyond belief--not only in having such an uncle behind me, but in having an English education and an English training in sports and games. I had won the Public Schools Championship for boxing (Middle-weight) and for fencing as well. I was a fine gymnast, I had ridden from childhood, and I possessed perfect health and strength.

Being blessed with a cavalry figure, excellent spirits, a perfect digestion, a love of adventure, and an intense zest for Life, I felt that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. As for "riding alone"--excellent . . . I was not going to be the sort of man that allows his career to be hampered by a woman!

§ 2

A few weeks after applying at the proper military headquarters, I received orders to appear before the Conseil de Revision with my papers, at the Town Hall of my native district; and, with a hundred or so other young men of every social class and kind, was duly examined, physically and mentally.

Soon after this, I received a notice directing me to present myself at the cavalry barracks, to be examined in equitation. If I failed in the test, I could not enter a cavalry regiment as a one-year Volontaire.

I passed all right, of course, and, a little later, received my feuille de route and notification that I was posted to the Blue Hussars and was to proceed forthwith to their barracks at St. Denis, and report myself.

I had spent the interval, partly with my mother and her people, the Carys; and partly in Paris with a Lieutenant de Lannec, appointed my guide, philosopher and friend by my uncle, under whom de Lannec was then working at the War Office. To this gentleman I was indebted for much good advice and innumerable hints and tips that proved invaluable. Also for the friendship of the dear clever little Véronique Vaux, and, most of all, for that of Raoul d'Auray de Redon, at a later date.

To de Lannec I owed it that if in my raw-recruit days I was a fool, I was not a sanguinary fool; and that I escaped most of the pit-falls digged for the feet of the unwary by those who had themselves only become wary by painful experience therein.

Thanks to him, I also knew enough to engage permanently a private room for myself at a hotel in St. Denis, where I could have meals and a bath; to have my cavalry boots and uniform privately made for me; and to equip myself with a spare complete outfit of all those articles of clothing and of use, the loss or lack of which brings the private soldier to so much trouble and punishment.

§ 3

And one fine morning I presented myself at the great gates of the barracks of the famous Blue Hussars, trying to look happier than I felt.

I beheld an enormous parade ground, about a quarter of a mile square, with the Riding School in the middle of it, and beyond it a huge barracks for men and horses. The horses occupied the ground-floor and the men the floors above--not a nice arrangement I thought. (I continued to think it, when I lived just above the horses, in a room that held a hundred and twenty unwashed men, a hundred and twenty pairs of stable-boots, a hundred and twenty pairs of never-cleaned blankets--and windows that had been kept shut for a hundred and twenty years, to exclude the exhalations from the stable (because more than enough came up through the floor).

I passed through the gates, and a Sergeant came out from the Guard-Room, which was just beside them.

"Hi, there! Where d'ye think you're going?" he shouted.

"I have come to report myself, Sergeant," I replied meekly, and produced my feuille de route.

He looked at it.

"One of those anointed Volontaires, are you?" he growled. "Well, my fine gentleman, I don't like them, d'you understand? . . . And I don't like you. . . . I don't like your face, nor your voice, nor your clothes, nor anything about you. D'you see? . . ."

Mindful of de Lannec's advice, I held my tongue. It is the one thing of his own that the soldier may hold. But a good Sergeant is not to be defeated.

"Don't you dare to stand there and sulk, you dumb image of a dead fish," he shouted.

"No, Sergeant," I replied.

"And don't you back-answer me either, you chattering baboon," he roared.

"You have made a bad beginning," he went on menacingly, before I could be either silent or responsive, "and I'll see you make a bad end too, you pimply pékin! . . . Get out of this--go on--before I . . ."

"But, Sergeant," I murmured, "I have come to join . . ."

"You will interrupt me, will you?" he yelled. "That's settled it! Wait till you're in uniform--and I'll show you the inside of a little stone box I know of. That'll teach you to contradict Sergeants. . . . Get out of this, you insubordinate rascal--and take your feuille de route to the Paymaster's Office in the Rue des Enfants Abandonnés. . . . I'll deal with you when you come back. Name of an Anointed Poodle, I will! . . ."

In silence I turned about and went in search of the Rue des Enfants Abandonnés, and the Paymaster's Office, feeling that I was indeed going to begin at the bottom of a fairly steep ladder, and to receive some valuable discipline and training in self-control.

I believe that, for the fraction of a second, I was tempted to seek the train for Calais and England, instead of the Street of the Abandoned Children and the Office of the Paymaster. (Were they Children of Abandoned Character, or Children who had Been Abandoned by Others? Alas, I knew not; but feeling something of a poor Abandoned Child myself, I decided that it was the latter.)

Expecting otherwise, I found the non-commissioned officer who was the Paymaster's Clerk, a courteous person. He asked me which Squadron I would like to join, and I replied that I should like to join any Squadron to which the present Sergeant of the Guard did not belong.

"Who's he?" asked the clerk.

I described the Sergeant as a ruffianly brute with a bristly moustache, bristly eyebrows, bristly hair, and bristly manners. A bullying blackguard in fact.

"Any private to any Sergeant," smiled the clerk; "but it sounds like Blüm. Did he swear by the name of an Anointed Poodle, by any chance?"

"That's the man," said I.

"Third Squadron. I'll put you down for the Second. . . . Take this paper and ask for the Sergeant-Major of the Second Squadron. And don't forget that if you can stand well with the S.S.M. and the Adjudant of your Squadron, you'll be all right. . . ."

§ 4

On my return to the Barracks, I again encountered the engaging Sergeant Blüm at the Guard-Room by the gates.

"To what Squadron are you drafted?" he asked.

"To the Second, Sergeant," I replied innocently.

"And that's the worst news I have heard this year," was the reply. "I hoped you would be in the Third. I'd have had you put in my own peloton. I have a way with aristocrats and Volontaires, and macquereaux. . . ."

"I did my best, Sergeant," I replied truthfully.

"Tais donc ta sale gueule," he roared, and turning into the Guard-Room, bade a trooper do some scavenging work by removing me and taking me to the Office of the Sergeant-Major of the Second Squadron.

I followed the trooper, a tall fair Norman, across the great parade-ground, now alive with men in stable-kit, carrying brooms or buckets, wheeling barrows, leading horses, pumping water into great drinking-troughs, and generally fulfilling the law of their being, as cavalrymen.

"Come along, you gaping pig," said my guide, as I gazed around the pleasing purlieus of my new home.

I came along.

"Hurry yourself, or I'll chuck you into the manure-heap, after the S.S.M. has seen you," added my conducting Virgil.

"Friend and brother-in-arms," said I, "let us go to the manure-heap at once, and we'll see who goes on it. . . . I don't know why you ever left it. . . ."

"Oh--you're one of those beastly bullies, are you?" replied the trooper, and knocked at the door of a small bare room which contained four beds, some military accoutrements, a table, a chair, and the Squadron Sergeant-Major, a small grey-haired man with an ascetic lean face, and moustache of grey wire, neatly clipped.

This was a person of a type different altogether from Sergeant Blüm's. A dog that never barked, but bit hard, Sergeant-Major Martin was a cold stern man, forceful and fierce, but in manner quiet, distant, and almost polite.

"A Volontaire!" he said. "A pity. One does not like them, but such things must be. . . ."

He took my papers, asked me questions, and recorded the answers in the livret or regimental-book, which every French soldier must cherish. He then bade the trooper conduct me to Sergeant de Poncey with the bad news that I was to be in his peloton.

"Follow me, bully," said the trooper after he had saluted the Sergeant-Major and wheeled from the room. . . .

Sergeant de Poncey was discovered in the exercise of his duty, giving painful sword-drill to a punishment-squad, outside the Riding School. He was a handsome man who looked as though life held nothing for him but pain. His voice was that of an educated man.

The troopers, clad in canvas uniform and clogs, looked desperately miserable.

They had cause, since they had spent the night in prison, had had no breakfast, and were undergoing a kind of torture. The Sergeant would give an order, the squad would obey it, and there the matter would rest--until some poor devil, sick and half-starved, would be unable to keep his arm, and heavy sword, extended any longer. At the first quiver and sinking down of the blade, the monotonous voice would announce:

"Trooper Ponthieu, two more days salle de police, for not keeping still," and a new order would be given for a fresh form of grief, and another punishment to the weakest.

Well--they were there for punishment, and they were certainly getting it.

When the squad had been marched back to prison, Sergeant de Poncey attended to me. He looked me over from head to foot.

"A gentleman," said he. "Good! I was one myself, once. Come with me," and he led the way to the quartiers of the Second Squadron, and the part of the room in which his peloton slept.

Two partitions, some eight feet in height, divided the room into three, and along partitions and walls were rows of beds. Each bed was so narrow that there was no discomfort in eating one's meals as one sat astride the bed, as though seated on a horse, with a basin of soupe before one. It was thus that, for a year, I took all meals that I did not have at my hotel.

At the head of each bed hung a cavalry-sword and bag of stable-brushes and cleaning-kit; while above each were a couple of shelves bearing folded uniforms covered with a canvas bag on which was painted their owner's matricule number. Crowning each edifice was a shako and two pairs of boots. Cavalry carbines stood in racks in the corners of the room. . . . As I stared round, the Sergeant put his hand on my arm.

"You'll have a rough time here," he said. "Your only chance will be to be rougher than the time."

"I am going to be a real rough, Sergeant," I smiled. I liked this Sergeant de Poncey from the first.

"The worst of it is that it stays, my son," replied Sergeant de Poncey. "Habit becomes second nature--and then first nature. As I told you, I was a gentleman once; and now I am going to ask you to lend me twenty francs, for I am in serious trouble. . . . Will you?"

"No, Sergeant," I said, and his unhappy face darkened with pain and annoyance. "I am going to give you a hundred, if I may. . . . Will you?"

"You'll have a friend in me," was the reply, and the poor fellow positively flushed--I supposed with mingled emotions of gratitude, relief and discomfort.

And a good friend Sergeant de Poncey proved, and particularly valuable after he became Sergeant-Major; for though a Sergeant-Major may not have power to permit certain doings, he has complete power to prevent Higher Authority from knowing that they have been done. . . .

A Corporal entering the room at that minute, Sergeant de Poncey called him and handed me over to him with the words:

"A recruit for your escouade, Lepage. A Volontaire--but a good fellow. Old friend of mine. . . . See?"

The Corporal saw. He had good eyesight; for the moment Sergeant de Poncey was out of earshot, he added:

"Come and be an 'old friend' of mine too," and led the way out of the quartiers, across the great barrack-square, to the canteen.

Cheaply and greasily handsome, the swarthy Corporal Lepage was a very wicked little man indeed, but likeable, by reason of an unfailing sense of humour and a paradoxical trustworthiness. He had every vice and would do any evil thing--except betray a trust or fail a friend. Half educated, he was a clerk by profession, and an ornament of the city of Paris. Small, dissipated and drunken, he yet had remarkable strength and agility, and was never ill.

In the canteen he drank neat cognac at my expense, and frankly said that his goodwill and kind offices could be purchased for ten francs. I purchased them, and, having pouched the gold piece and swallowed his seventh cognac, the worthy man inquired whether I intended to jabber there the entire day, or go to the medical inspection to which he was endeavouring to conduct me.

"This is the first I have heard of it, Corporal," I protested.

"Well, it won't be the last, Mr. Snipe, unless you obey my orders and cease this taverning, chambering and wantonness," replied the good Lepage. "Hurry, you idle apprentice and worthless Volontaire."

I hurried.

Pulling himself together, Corporal Lepage marched me from the canteen to the dispensary near by.

The place was empty save for an Orderly.

"Surgeon-Major not come yet, Corporal," said the man.

Lepage turned upon me.

"Perhaps you'll let me finish my coffee in peace another time," he said, in apparent wrath, and displaying sharp little teeth beneath his waxed moustache. "Come back and do your duty."

And promising the Orderly that I would give him a cognac if he came and called the Corporal from the canteen as soon as the Surgeon-Major returned, he led the way back.

In the end, I left Corporal Lepage drunk in the canteen, passed the medical examination, and made myself a friend for life by returning and getting the uplifted warrior safely back to the barrack-room and bed.

An amusing morning.

§ 5

I shall never forget being tailored by the Sergent-Fourrier that afternoon. His store was a kind of mighty shop in which the Regimental Sergeant-Tailor, Sergeant-Bootmaker Sergeant-Saddler and Sergeant-Storekeeper were his shop-assistants.

Here I was given a pair of red trousers to try on--"for size." They were as stiff, as heavy, and nearly as big, as a diver's suit and clogs, and from the knees downwards were of solid leather.

They were not riding-breeches, but huge trousers, the legs being each as big round as my waist. As in the case of an axiom of Euclid, no demonstration was needed, but since the Sergeant-Tailor bade me get into them--I got.

When the heavy leather ends of them rested on the ground, the top cut me under the arm-pits. The top of that inch-thick, red felt garment, hard and stiff as a board, literally cut me.

I looked over the edge and smiled at the Sergeant-Tailor.

"Yes," he agreed, "excellent," and handed me a blue tunic to try on, "for size." The only faults in this case were that my hands were invisible within the sleeves, and that I could put my chin inside the collar after it had been hooked. I flapped my wings at the Sergeant-Tailor.

"Yes, you go into that nicely, too," he said, and he was quite right. That there was room for him, as well, did not seem to be of importance.

The difficulty now was to move, as the trousers seemed to be like jointless armour, but I struggled across the store to where sat the Sergeant-Bootmaker, with an entire range of boots of all sizes awaiting me. The "entire range" consisted of four pairs, and of these the smallest was two inches too long, but would not permit the passage of my instep.

They were curious leather buildings, these alleged boots. They were as wide as they were long, were perfectly square at both ends, had a leg a foot high, heels two and a half inches thick, and great rusty spurs nailed on to them. The idea was to put them on under the trousers. "You've got deformed feet, oh, espèce d'imbécile," said the Sergeant-Bootmaker, when his complete range of four sizes had produced nothing suitable. "You ought not to be in the army. The likes of you are a curse and an undeserved punishment to good Sergeants, you orphaned Misfortune of God. . . . Put on the biggest pair. . . ."

"But, Sergeant," I protested, "they are exactly five inches longer than my feet!"

"And is straw so dear in a cavalry regiment that you cannot stuff the toes with it, Most Complete Idiot?" inquired the man of ideas.

"But they'd simply fall off my feet if I tried to walk in them," I pointed out.

"And will not the straps of your trousers, that go underneath the boots, keep the boots on your feet, Most Polished and Perfected Idiot?" replied this prince of bootmakers. "And the trousers will hide the fact that the boots are a little large."

As all I had to do was to get from the barracks to my hotel, where I had everything awaiting me, it did not so much matter. But what of the poor devil who had to accept such things without alternative?

When I was standing precariously balanced inside these boots and garments, the Sergent-Fourrier gave me a Hussar shako which my ears insecurely supported; wound a blue scarf round my neck, inside the collar of the tunic, and bade me go and show myself to the Captain of the Week--who was incidentally Capitaine en Second of my Squadron.

Dressed as I was, I would not willingly have shown myself to a mule, lest the poor animal laugh itself into a state of dangerous hysteria.

Walking as a diver walks along the deck of a ship, I plunged heavily forward, lifting and dropping a huge boot, that hung at the end of a huge trouser-leg, at each step.

It was more like the progression of a hobbled clown-elephant over the tan of a circus, than the marching of a smart Hussar. I felt very foolish, humiliated and angry.

Guided by a storeroom Orderly, I eventually reached the door of the Captain's office, and burst upon his sight.

I do not know what I expected him to do. He did not faint, nor call upon Heaven for strength.

He eyed me as one does a horse offered for sale. He was of the younger school--smart, cool and efficient; a handsome, spare man, pink and white above a shaven blueness. In manner he was of a suavely sinister politeness that thinly covered real cruelty.

"Take off that tunic," he said.

I obeyed with alacrity.

"Yes, the trousers are too short," he observed, and added: "Are you a natural fool, that you come before me with trousers that are too short?"

"Oui, mon Capitaine," I replied. I felt I was a natural fool, to be there in those, or in any other, trousers.

"And look at your boots. Each is big enough to contain both your feet. Are you an unnatural fool to come before me in such boots?"

"Oui, mon Capitaine," I replied. I felt I was an unnatural fool, to be there in those, or in any other, boots.

"I will make a note of it, recruit," said the officer, and I felt he had said more than any roaring Sergeant, shouting definite promises of definite punishments.

"Have the goodness to go," he continued in his silky-steely voice, "and return in trousers twice as large and boots half as big. You may tell the Sergent-Fourrier that he will shortly hear something to his disadvantage. . . . It will interest him in you. . . ."

It did. It interested all the denizens of that horrible storeroom, that stank of stale leather, stale fustian, stale brass, and stale people.

("I would get them into trouble, would I? . . . I would bring reprimands and punishments upon senior Sergeants, would I? . . . Oh, Ho! and Ah, Ha! Let me but wait until I was in their hands . . . !")

A little later, I was sent back to the Captain's room, in the identical clothes that I had worn on the first visit. My trousers were braced to my chin, the leather ends of the legs were pulled further forward over the boots, a piece of cloth was folded and pushed up the back of my tunic, my sleeves were pulled back, and a fold or tuck of the cloth was made inside each elbow. A crushed-up ball of brown paper relieved my ears of some of the weight of my shako.

"You come back here again, unpassed by the Captain, and I swear I'll have you in prison within the week," promised the Sergent-Fourrier.

I thanked him and shuffled back.

My Captain eyed me blandly across the table, as I saluted.

"Trousers are now too big," he observed, "and the tunic too small. Are you really determined to annoy me, recruit?" he added. "If so, I must take steps to protect myself. . . . Kindly return and inform the Sergent-Fourrier that I will interview him later. . . ."

Pending that time, the Sergent-Fourrier and his myrmidons interviewed me. They also sent me back in precisely the same garments; this time with trousers braced only to my breast and with the sleeves of my tunic as they had been at first.

My Captain was not in his room, and I promptly returned and told the truth--that he had found no fault in me this time. . . .

Eventually I dragged my leaden-footed, swaddled, creaking carcase from the store, burdened with an extra tunic, an extra pair of incredible trousers, an extra pair of impossible boots, a drill-jacket, a képi, two canvas stable-suits, an overcoat, a huge cape, two pairs of thick white leather gauntlets big enough for Goliath of Gath, two terrible shirts, two pairs of pants, a huge pair of clogs, and no socks at all.

Much of this impedimenta was stuffed into a big canvas bag.

With this on my back, and looking like Bunyan's Christian and feeling like no kind of Christian, I staggered to my room.

Here, Corporal Lepage, in a discourse punctuated with brandified hiccups, informed me that I must mark each article with my matricule number, using for that purpose stencils supplied by the Sergent-Fourrier.

Feeling that more than stencils would be supplied by that choleric and unsocial person, if I again encountered him ere the sun had gone down upon his wrath, I bethought me of certain advice given me in Paris by my friend de Lannec--and cast about for one in search of lucrative employment.

Seated on the next bed to mine, and polishing his sword, was a likely-looking lad. He had a strong and pleasing face, calm and thoughtful in expression, and with a nice fresh air of countrified health.

"Here, comrade," said I, "do you want a job and a franc or two?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, "or two jobs and a franc or three . . . I am badly broke, and I am also in peculiar and particular need to square Corporal Lepage."

I found that his name was Dufour, that he was the son of a horse-dealer, and had had to do with both horses and gentlemen to a considerable extent.

From that hour he became my friend and servant, to the day when he gave his life for France and for me, nearly twenty years later. He was very clever, honest and extremely brave; a faithful, loyal, noble soul.

I engaged him then and there; and his first job in my service was to get my kit stencilled, cleaned and arranged en paquetage on the shelves.

He then helped me to make myself as presentable as was possible in the appalling uniform that had been issued to me, for I had to pass the Guard (and in full dress, as it was now noon) in order to get out to my hotel where my other uniforms, well cut by my own tailor, were awaiting me, together with boots of regulation pattern, made for me in Paris.

To this day I do not know how I managed to waddle past the Sergeant of the Guard, my sword held in a gloved hand that felt as though cased in cast iron, my big shako wobbling on my head, and the clumsy spurs of my vast and uncontrollable boots catching in the leather ends of my vaster trousers.

I did it however, with Dufour's help; and, a few minutes later, was in my own private room and tearing the vile things from my outraged person.

As I sat over my coffee, at a quarter to nine that evening, after a tolerable dinner and a bottle of Mouton Rothschild, dreaming great dreams, I was brought back to hard facts by the sudden sound of the trumpeters of the Blue Hussars playing the retraite in the Place.

That meant that, within a quarter of an hour, they would march thence back to Barracks, blowing their instant summons to all soldiers who had not a late pass--and that I must hurry.

My return journey was a very different one from my last, for my uniform, boots, and shako fitted me perfectly; my gauntlets enabled me to carry my sword easily ("in left hand; hilt turned downwards and six inches behind hip; tip of scabbard in front of left foot," etc.), and feeling that I could salute any officer or non-commissioned officer otherwise than by flapping a half-empty sleeve at him.

Once more I felt like a man and almost like a soldier. My spirits rose nearly to the old Eton level.

They sank to the new Barrack level, however, when I entered the room in which I was to live for a year, and its terrific and terrible stench took me by the throat. As I stood at the foot of my bed, as everybody else did, awaiting the evening roll-call, I began to think I should be violently unwell; and by the time the Sergeant of the Week had made his round and received the Corporal's report as to absentees (stables, guard, leave, etc.) I was feeling certain that I must publicly disgrace myself.

However, I am a good sailor, and when the roll-call (which has no "calling" whatever) was finished, and all were free to do as they liked until ten o'clock, when the "Lights out" trumpet would be blown, I fled to the outer air, and saved my honour and my dinner.

I had to return, of course, but not to stand to attention like a statue while my head swam; and I soon found that I could support life with the help of a handkerchief which I had had the fore-thought to perfume.

While I was sitting on my bed (which consisted of two trestles supporting two narrow planks, and a sausage-like roll of straw-mattress and blankets, the whole being only two feet six inches wide), gazing blankly around upon the specimen of my fellow-man in bulk, and wondering if and when and where he washed, I was aware of a party approaching me, headed by the fair trooper who had been my guide to the office of the Squadron Sergeant-Major that morning.

"That is it," said their leader, pointing to me. "It is a Volontaire. It is dangerous too. A dreadful bully. Tried to throw me into the muck-heap when I wasn't looking . . ."

"Behold it," said a short, square, swarthy man, who looked, in spite of much fat, very powerful. "Regard it. It uses a scented handkerchief so as not to smell us."

"Well, we are not roses. Why should he smell us?" put in a little rat-like villain, edging forward.

He and the fat man were pushed aside by a typical hard-case fighting-man, such as one sees in boxing-booths, fencing-schools and gymnasia.

"See, Volontaire," he said, "you have insulted the Blue Hussars in the person of Trooper Mornec and by using a handkerchief in our presence. I am the champion swordsman of the Regiment, and I say that such insults can only be washed out in . . ."

"Blood," said I, reaching for my sword.

"No--wine," roared the gang as one man, and, rising, I put one arm through that of the champion swordsman and the other through that of Trooper Mornec, and we three headed a joyous procession to the canteen, where we solemnly danced the can-can with spirit and abandon.

I should think that the whole of my peloton (three escouades of ten men each) was present by the time we reached the bar, and it was there quickly enriched by the presence of the rest of the Squadron.

However, brandy was only a shilling a quart, and red wine fourpence, so it was no very serious matter to entertain these good fellows, nor was there any fear that their capacity to pour in would exceed mine to pay out.

But, upon my word, I think the combined smells of the canteen--rank tobacco-smoke, garlic, spirits, cooking, frying onions, wine, burning fat and packed humanity--were worse than those of the barrack-room; and it was borne in upon me that not only must the soldier's heart be in the right place, but his stomach also. . . .

The "Lights out" trumpet saved me from death in the canteen, and I returned to die in the barrack-room, if I must.

Apparently I returned a highly popular person, for none of the usual tricks was played upon me, such as the jerking away (by means of a rope) of one of the trestles supporting the bed, as soon as the recruit has forgotten his sorrows in sleep.

De Lannec had told me what to expect, and I had decided to submit to most of the inflictions with a good grace and cheerful spirit, while certain possible indignities I was determined to resist to the point of serious bloodshed.

With Dufour's help, I inserted my person into the sausage precariously balanced on the planks, and fell asleep in spite of sharp-pointed straws, the impossibility of turning in my cocoon, the noisy illness of several gentlemen who had spent the evening unwisely, the stamping and chain-rattling of horses, the cavalry-trumpet snoring of a hundred cavalry noses, and the firm belief that I should in the morning be found dead from poisoning and asphyxiation.

All very amusing. . . .

CHAPTER IV

A PERFECT DAY

I found myself quite alive, however, at five o'clock the next morning, when the Corporal of the Week passed through the room bawling, "Anyone sick here?"

I was about to reply that although I was not being sick at the moment, I feared I shortly should be, when I realized that the Corporal was collecting names for the Sergeant-Major's morning report, and not making polite inquiries as to how we were feeling after a night spent in the most mephitic atmosphere that human beings could possibly breathe, and live.

There is no morning roll-call in the Cavalry, but the Sergeant-Major gets the names of those who apply for medical attention, and removes them from the duty-list of each peloton.

For half an hour I lay awake wondering what would happen if I sprang from my bed and opened a window--or broke a window if they were not made for opening. I was on the point of making this interesting discovery when the reveillé trumpets rang out, in the square below, and I was free to leave my bed--at five-thirty of a bitter cold morning.

Corporal Lepage came to me as I repressed my first yawn (fearing to inhale the poison-gas unnecessarily) and bade me endue my form with canvas and clogs, and hie me to the stables.

Hastily I put on the garb of a gutter-scavenger and guided by Dufour, hurried through the rain to my pleasing task.

In the stable was a different smell, but it was homogeneous and, on the whole, I preferred the smell of the horses to that of their riders. (You see, we clean the horses thoroughly, daily. In the Regulations it is so ordered. But as to the horsemen, it says, "A Corporal must sleep in the same room with the troopers of his escouade and must see that his troopers wash their heads, faces, hands and feet." This much would be something, at any rate, if only he carried out the Regulations.)

At the stables I received my first military order.

"Clean the straw under those four horses," said the Sergeant on stable-duty.

An unpleasing but necessary work.

Some one had to do it, and why not I? Doubtless the study of the art of separation of filthy straw from filthier straw, and the removal of manure, is part of a sound military training.

I looked round for implements. I believed that a pitchfork and shovel were the appropriate and provided tools for the craftsman in this line of business.

"What the hell are you gaping at? You . . ." inquired the Sergeant, with more liberty of speech than fraternity or equality.

"What shall I do it with, Sergeant?" I inquired.

"Heaven help me from killing it!" he moaned, and then roared: "Have you no hands, Village Idiot? D'you suppose you do it with your toe-nails, or the back of your neck?"

And it was so. With my lily-white hands I laboured well and truly, and loaded barrows until they were piled high. I took an artistic interest in my work, patting a shapely pyramid upon the barrow, until:

"Dufour," I said, "I am going to be so very sick. What's the punishment? . . ."

The good Dufour glanced hastily around.

"Run to the canteen," he whispered. "I can do the eight stalls easy. Have a hot coffee and cognac."

I picked up a bucket and rushed forth across the barrack-square, trying to look like one fulfilling a high and honourable function. If anybody stopped me, I would say I was going to get the Colonel a bucket of champagne for his bath. . . .

At the canteen I found a man following a new profession. He called himself a Saviour-from-Selfish-Sin, and explained to me that the basest thing a soldier could do was to faire Suisse, to drink alone.

No one need drink alone when he was there, he said, and he gave up his valuable time and energy to frequenting the canteen at such hours as it might be empty, and a man might come and fall into sin.

I drank my coffee and cognac and then went outside, inhaled deeply for some minutes, and soon felt better. Catching up my bucket, I returned to the stables, trying to look like one who has, by prompt and determined effort, saved the Republic.

Dufour finished our work and told me we must now return to the barrack-room in time to get our bags of grooming-implements before the trumpets sounded "Stables" at six o'clock.

"You begin on the horse that's given you, sir," said Dufour, "and as soon as the Sergeant's back is turned, clear out again, and I'll finish for you."

"Not a bit of it," I replied. "I shall be able to groom a horse all right. It was loading those barrows with my bare hands that made me feel so sea-sick."

"You'll get used to it," Dufour assured me.

But I doubted it. "Use is second nature," as de Poncey said, but I did not think it would become my second nature to scavenge with my bare hands. . . . Nor my third. . . .

At six o'clock we returned to the stables, and the Lieutenant of the Week allotted me my horse and ordered me to set about grooming him.

Now I have the horse-gift. I love and understand horses, and horses love and understand me. I was not, therefore, depressed when the horse laid his ears back, showed me a white eye, and lashed out viciously as I approached the stall. It merely meant that the poor brute had been mishandled by a bigger brute, and that fear, instead of love, had been the motive appealed to.

However, I had got to make friends with him before he could be friendly, and the first step was to enter his stall--a thing he seemed determined to prevent. I accordingly slipped into the next one, climbed over, and dropped down beside him. In a minute I was grooming him, talking to him, handling him, making much of him, and winning his confidence.

I swore to myself I would never touch him with whip nor spur: for whip and spur had been his trouble. He was a well-bred beast, and I felt certain from his colour, socks, head, eye and general "feel" that he was not really vicious. I don't know how I know what a horse thinks and feels and is, but I do know it.

I groomed him thoroughly for nearly an hour, and then fondled him and got him used to my voice, hands and smell. I rather expected trouble when I took him to water, as Dufour had put his head round the partition and warned me that Le Boucher was a dangerous brute who had sent more than one man on a stretcher to hospital.

At seven o'clock the order was given for the horses to be taken to the water-troughs, and I led Le Boucher out of his stall. Seizing a lock of his mane, I vaulted on to his bare back and prepared for trouble.

He reared until I thought he would fall; he put down his head and threw up his heels until I thought that I should; and then he bucked and bounded in a way that enabled me to give an exhibition of riding.

But it was all half-hearted. I felt that he was going through the performance mechanically, and, at worst, finding out what sort of rider I was.

After this brief period of protest he trotted off to the watering-tank, and I never again had the slightest trouble with Le Boucher. I soon changed the stupid name of "The Butcher," to "Angelique," partly in tribute to one of the nicest of girls, and partly in recognition of the horse's real temper and disposition. . . .

After "Stables," I was sent to get the rest of my kit, and was endowed with carbine, saddle, sword-belt, cartridge-box and all sorts of straps and trappings. I found my saddle to be of English make and with a high straight back, behind which was strapped the cylindrical blue portmanteau, with the regimental crest at each end.

I also found that the bridle was of the English model, not the "9th Lancer" pattern, but with bit and snaffle so made that the head-stall remained on the horse when the bit-straps were taken off.

It was ten o'clock by the time that I had received the whole of the kit for myself and horse, and that is the hour of breakfast. Our trumpets sang "Soupe" and the bucket was lowered from the hand of the soldier who crossed the wide plain--of the barrack-square.

Everybody rushed to put away whatever he held in his hand, and to join the throng that poured into the Regimental kitchen and out by another door, each man bearing a gamelle (or saucepan-shaped tin pot), of soupe and a loaf of bread. Having washed my hands, without soap, at the horse-trough, I followed.

Holding my own, I proceeded to my room, placed it on my bed, sat astride the bed with the gamelle before me, and fell to.

It wasn't at all bad, and I was very hungry in spite of my previous nausea.

The meal finished, the Orderly of the Caporal d'Ordinaire collected the pots and took them back to the kitchen.

My immediate desire now was a hot-and-cold-water lavatory and a good barber. It was the first day of my life that had found me, at eleven o'clock, unwashen and uncombed, to say nothing of unbathed. At the moment I wanted a shave more ardently than I wanted eternal salvation.

"And now, where is the lavatory, Dufour?" I asked, as that youth stowed away his spare bread behind his paquetage.

"Beside the forage-store, sir," he replied, "and it is a grain-store itself. There is an old Sergeant-pensioner at the hospital, who remembers the day, before the Franco-Prussian War, when it was used as a lavatory, but no one else has ever seen anything in it but sacks of corn."

"Isn't washing compulsory, then?" I asked.

"Yes. In the summer, all have to go, once a fortnight, to the swimming-baths," was the interesting reply.

"Do people ever wash voluntarily?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," said Dufour. "Men going on guard, or on parade, often wash their faces, and there are many who wash their hands and necks as well, on Sundays, or when they go out with their girls. . . . You must not think we are dirty people. . . ."

"No," said I. "And where can this be done?"

"Oh, under the pump, whenever you like," was the reply, and I found that it was the unsullied truth.

No one was hindered from washing under the pump, if he wished to do such a thing. . . .

At twelve o'clock, Corporal Lepage sent me to join the Medical-Inspection Squad, as I must be vaccinated.

After that operation, dubiously beneficial by reason of the probability of one's contracting tetanus or other sorrows as well as immunity from smallpox, I returned to my bright home to deal with the chaos of kit that adorned my bed-side; and with Dufour's help had it reduced to order and cleanliness by three in the afternoon, when "Stables" was again the pursuit in being.

After "Stables" we stood in solemn circles around our respective Caporaux-fourriers to hear the Regimental Orders of the Day read out, while Squadron Sergeant-Majors eyed everybody with profound suspicion and sure conviction of their state of sin.

So far as I could make out, the Regimental Orders of that particular day consisted of a list of punishments inflicted upon all and sundry (for every conceivable, and many an inconceivable, military offence), including the officers themselves--which surprised me.

So far as I remember, the sort of thing was:

"Chef d'Escadron de Montreson, fifteen days' arrêts de rigueur for being drunk and disorderly in the town last night.

"Capitaine Instructeur Robert, eight days' arrêts simples for over-staying leave and returning with uniform in untidy condition.

"Adjudant Petit, four days' confinement to room for allowing that room to be untidy.

"Trooper Leduc, eight days' salle de police for looking resentful when given four days' salle de police.

"Trooper Blanc, eight days' salle de police for possessing and reading a newspaper in quartiers.

"Trooper Delamer, thirty days' extra salle de police from the Colonel for having received sixteen days' extra salle de police from his Captain because he had received four days' extra salle de police from Sergeant Blüm, who caught him sleeping in the stables when he should have been sleeping in the salle de police.

"Trooper Mangeur, eight days' confinement to Barracks for smiling when given four days' Inspection with the Guard Parade."

And so on.

When the joyous parade was finished, I was free, and having cleaned and beautified myself, I passed the Sergeant of the Guard in full-dress uniform, and sought mine inn for dinner, peace, and privacy.

But oh! how my heart ached for any poor soul who, being gently nurtured, had to remain in that horrible place for three years, and without the privilege, even if he could afford it, of a private place to which he could retire to bathe and eat, to rest and be alone.

CHAPTER V

BECQUE--AND RAOUL D'AURAY DE REDON

I settled into the routine of my new life very quickly, and it was not long before I felt it was as though I had known no other.

At times I came near to desperation, but not so near as I should have come had it not been for my private room at the hotel, the fact that I did much of my work with other Volontaires in a special class, and the one great certainty, in a world of uncertainty, that there are only twelve months in a year.

From 6.30 to 8 we Volontaires were in "school"; from 8 to 10 we drilled on foot; from 10 to 11 we breakfasted; from 11 to 12 we were at school again; from 12 to 1 we had gymnastics; from 1 to 2 voltige (as though we were going to be circus riders); from 2.30 to 5 "school" once more; from 5 to 6 dinner; from 6 to 8 mounted drill--and, after that, kit-cleaning!

It was some time before my days grew monotonous, and shortly after they had begun to do so, I contrived to brighten the tedium of life by pretending to kill a man, deliberately, in cold blood, and with cold steel. I fear I give the impression of being a bloodthirsty and murderous youth, and I contend that at the time I had good reason.

It happened like this.

Dufour came to me one night as I was undressing for bed, and asked me whether I would care to spend an interesting evening on the morrow.

Upon inquiry it turned out that he had been approached by a certain Trooper Becque, a few days earlier, and invited to spend a jolly evening with him and some other good fellows.

Having accepted the invitation, Dufour found that Becque and the good fellows were a kind of club or society that met in a room above a little wine-shop in the Rue de Salm.

Becque seemed to have plenty of money and plenty of ideas--of an interesting and curious kind. Gradually it dawned upon the intrigued Dufour that Becque was an "agent," a Man with a Message, a propagandist, and an agitator.

Apparently his object was to "agitate" the Regiment, and his Message was that Law and Order were invented by knaves for the enslavement of fools.

Dufour, I gathered, had played the country bumpkin that he looked; had gathered all the wisdom and wine that he could get; and had replied to Becque's eloquence with no more than profound looks, profounder nods, and profoundest hiccups as the evening progressed; tongues were loosened, and, through a roseate, vinous glow, the good Becque was seen for the noble friend of poor troopers that he professed to be.

Guided by a proper love of sound political philosophy and sound free wine, Dufour had attended the next meeting of this brave brotherhood, and had so far fallen beneath the spell of Becque's eloquence as to cheer it to the echo, to embrace him warmly and then to collapse, very drunk, upon a bench; and to listen with both his ears.

After his third or fourth visit, he had asked the good Becque if he might formally join his society, and bring a friend for whom he could vouch as one who would listen to Becque's sentiments with the deepest interest. . . . Would I come?

I would--though I feared that if Becque knew I was a Volontaire, it would be difficult to persuade him that I was promising anarchistic material. However, I could but try, and if I failed on my own account, I could still take what action I thought fit, on the word of Dufour.

On the following evening, having arrayed myself in the uniform that had been issued to me by the Sergent-Fourrier when I joined, I accompanied Dufour to the rendezvous. Becque I did not know, nor he me, and I received a hearty welcome. Watching the man, I decided that he was a half-educated "intelligent." He had an evil, fanatical face and a most powerful muscular frame.

I played the gullible brainless trooper and took stock of Becque and his gang. The latter consisted of three classes, I decided: First, the malcontent dregs of the Regiment--men with grievances, real or imaginary, of the kind known as "hard cases" and "King's hard bargains," in England; secondly, men who in private life were violent and dangerous "politicians"; and thirdly, men who would go anywhere, agree with anything, and applaud anybody--for a bottle of wine.

Becque's talk interested me.

He was clearly a monomaniac whose whole mental content was hate--hate of France; hate of all who had what he had not; hate of control, discipline and government; hate of whatsoever and whomsoever did not meet with his approval. I put him down as one of those sane lunatics, afflicted with a destruction-complex; a diseased egoist, and a treacherous, dangerous mad dog. Also a very clever man indeed, an eloquent, plausible and forceful personality. . . . The perfect agent-provocateur, in fact.

After a certain amount of noisy good fellowship in the bar of this low wine-shop, part of the company adjourned to the room above, the door was locked, and the business of the evening began.

It appeared that Dufour had not taken the Oath of Initiation, and it was forthwith administered to him and to me. We were given the choice of immediate departure or swearing upon the Bible, with terrific oaths and solemnities, that we would never divulge the secret of the Society nor give any account whatsoever of its proceedings.

The penalty for the infringement of this oath was certain death.

We took the oath, and settled ourselves to endure an address from Becque on the subject of The Rights of Man--always meaning unwashen, uneducated, unpatriotic and wholly worthless Man, bien entendu.

Coming from the general to the particular, Becque inveighed eloquently against all forms and manifestations of Militarism, and our folly in aiding and abetting it by conducting ourselves as disciplined soldiers. What we ought to do was to "demonstrate," to be insubordinate, to be lazy, dirty, inefficient, and, for a start, to be passively mutinous. By the time we had spread his views throughout the Regiment and each man in the Regiment had written unsigned letters to a man in another Regiment, with a request that these might again be forwarded to other Regiments, the day would be in sight when passive mutiny could become active.

Who were a handful of miserable officers, and more miserable N.C.O.'s, to oppose the will of eight hundred united and determined men? . . .

After the address, as proper to an ignorant but inquiring disciple, I humbly propounded the question:

"And what happens to France when her army has disbanded itself? What about Germany?"

The reply was enlightening as to the man's honesty, and his opinion of our intelligence.

"The German Army will do the same, my young friend," answered Becque. "Our German brothers will join hands with us. So will our Italian and Austrian and Russian brothers, and we will form a Great Republic of the Free Proletariat of Europe. All shall own all, and none shall oppress any. There shall be no rich, no police, no prisons, no law, no poor. . . ."

"And no Work," hiccupped a drunken man, torn from the arms of Morpheus by these stirring promises.

As the meeting broke up, I buttonholed the good Becque, and, in manner mysterious, earnestly besought him to meet me alone outside the Hôtel Coq d'Or to-morrow evening at eight-fifteen. I assured him that great things would result from this meeting, and he promised to come. Whereupon, taking my sword, I dragged my mighty boots and creaking uniform from his foul presence, lest I be tempted to take him by the throat and kill him.

§ 2

At eight-fifteen the next evening I was awaiting Becque outside my hotel, and when he arrived I led him, to his great mystification, to my private room.

"So you are a Volontaire, are you?" he began. "Are you a spy--or--"

"Or what?" I asked.

He made what I took to be a secret sign.

With my left hand I patted my right elbow, each knee, the top of my head, the back of my neck and the tip of my nose.

Becque glared at me angrily.

I raised my eyebrows inquiringly, and with my right hand twice patted my left shin, my heart, my stomach, and the seat of my trousers. . . . I also could make "secret signs"! I then rang for a bottle of wine wherewith I might return his hospitality of the previous night--before I dealt with him.

When the waiter retired I became serious, and got down to business promptly.

"Are you a Frenchman?" I asked.

"I am, I suppose," replied Becque. "My mother was of Alsace, my father a Parisian--God curse him! . . . Yes . . . I am a Frenchman. . . ."

"Good," said I. "Have you ever been wrongfully imprisoned, or in any way injured or punished by the State?"

"Me? . . . Prison? . . . No! What d'you mean? . . . Except that we're all injured by the State, aren't we? There didn't ought to be any State."

"And you hold your tenets of revolution, anarchy, murder, mutiny, and the overthrow and destruction of France and the Republic, firmly, and with all your heart and soul, do you?" I asked.

"With all my heart and soul," replied Becque, and added, "What's the game? Are you fooling--or are you from the Third Central? Or--or--"

"Never mind," I replied. "Are you prepared to die for your faith? That's what I want to know."

"I am," answered Becque.

"You shall," said I, and arose to signify that the conversation was ended.

Opening the door, I motioned to the creature to remove itself.

§ 3

At that time, you must know, duelling was not merely permitted but, under certain conditions, was compulsory, in the French Army, for officers and troopers alike.

It was considered, rightly or wrongly, that the knowledge that a challenge to a duel would follow insulting conduct, must tend to prevent such conduct, and to ensure propriety of behaviour among people of the same rank.

(Unfortunately, no one was allowed to fight a duel with any person of a rank superior to his own. There would otherwise have been a heavy mortality among Sergeants, for example!)

I do not know whether it may be the result or the cause of this duelling system, but the use of fists is regarded, in the French cavalry, as vulgar, ruffianly and low. Under no circumstances would two soldiers "come down and settle it behind the Riding School," in the good old Anglo-Saxon way. If they fought at all, they would fight with swords, under supervision, with seconds and surgeons present, and "by order."

A little careful management, and I should have friend Becque where I wanted him, give him the fright of his life, and perhaps put him out of the "agitating" business for a time.

I told Dufour exactly what I had in mind, and, on the following evening, instead of dining at my hotel, I went in search of the scoundrel.

He was no good to me in the canteen, on the parade-ground, nor in the street. I needed him where the eye of authority would be quickly turned upon any unseemly fracas.

Dufour discovered him doing a scavenging corvée in the Riding School, under the eye of Sergeant Blüm. This would do excellently. . . .

As the fatigue-party was dismissed by the Sergeant, Dufour and I strolled by, passing one on either side of Becque, who carried a broom. Lurching slightly, Dufour pushed Becque against me, and I gave him a shove that sent him sprawling.

Springing up, he rushed at me, using the filthy broom as though it had been a bayonet. This I seized with one hand, and, with the other, smacked the face of friend Becque right heartily. Like any other member of the snake tribe, Becque spat, and then, being annoyed, I really hit him.

As he went head-over-heels, Sergeant Blüm rushed forth from the Riding School, attracted by the scuffling and the shouts of the fatigue-party and of Dufour, who had certainly made noise enough for six.

"What's this?" he roared. "Are you street curs, snapping and snarling and scrapping in the gutter, or soldiers of France? . . . Take eight days' salle de police both of you. . . . Who began it, and what happened?"

The excellent Dufour gabbled a most untruthful version of the affair, and Sergeant Blüm took notes. Trooper Becque had publicly spat upon Volontaire de Beaujolais, who had then knocked him down. . . .

The next evening's orders, read out to the troopers by the Caporaux-Fourriers, contained the paragraph, by order of the Colonel:

"The Troopers Becque and de Beaujolais will fight a duel on Monday morning at ten o'clock, with cavalry-swords, in the Riding School, in the presence of the Major of the Week, the Captain of the Week, and of the Second Captains of their respective Squadrons, of Surgeon-Major Philippe and Surgeon-Major Patti-Reville, and of the Fencing-Master, in accordance with Army Regulation 869:--If a soldier has been gravely insulted by one of his comrades, and the insult has taken place in public, he must not hesitate to claim reparation for it by a duel. He should address his demand to his Captain Commanding, who should transmit it to the Colonel. But it must not be forgotten that a good soldier ought to avoid quarrels. . . .

"The successful combatant in this duel will receive fifteen days' imprisonment, and the loser will receive thirty days'."

On hearing the order, I was of opinion that the loser would disappear from human ken for more than thirty days.

§ 4

On entering the Riding School with Dufour on the Monday morning, I was delighted to see Sergeant Blüm in the place of the Fencing-Master, who was ill in hospital.

This was doubly excellent, as my task was rendered easier and Sergeant Blüm was placed in an unpleasant and risky situation. For it was the Fencing-Master's job, while acting as Master of Ceremonies and referee, to stand close by, with a steel scabbard in his hand, and prevent either of the combatants from killing, or even dangerously wounding the other!

Severe punishment would follow his failing to do his duty in this respect--and the noisy, swaggering Blüm was no maitre d'armes.

As instructed, we were "in stable kit, with any footwear preferred," so I had tucked my canvas trousers into socks, and put on a pair of gymnasium shoes.

Scrutinizing Becque carefully, I came to the conclusion that he would show the fierce and desperate courage of a cornered rat, and that if he had paid as much attention to fencing as to physical culture and anarchistic sedition, he would put up a pretty useful fight. I wondered what sort of a swordsman he was, and whether he was in the habit, like myself and a good many troopers, of voluntarily supplementing the compulsory attendance at fencing-school for instruction in "foils and sabres." . . .

When all the officers and official spectators were present, we were ordered to strip to the waist, were given heavy cavalry-swords, and put face to face, by Sergeant Blüm, who vehemently impressed upon us the imperative duty of instantly stopping when he cried "Halt!"

Blüm then gave the order "On guard," and stood with his steel scabbard beneath our crossed swords. Throughout the fight he held this ready to parry any head-cuts, or to strike down a dangerous thrust. (And they called this a duel!)

My great fear was, that with the clumsy lout sticking his scabbard into the fight and deflecting cuts and thrusts, I should scratch Becque or Becque would scratch me. This would end the preposterous fight at once, as these glorious affairs were "first-blood" duels--and my object was to incapacitate Becque, and both frighten and punish a viperous and treacherous enemy of my beloved country.

I stared hard into Becque's shifty eyes. Blüm gave the word--"Go!" and Becque rushed at me, making a hurricane attack and showing himself to be a very good and determined fighter.

I parried for dear life, and allowed him to tire his arm and exhaust his lungs. Blüm worried me nearly as much as Becque, for he leapt around yelling to us to be "careful," and swiping at both our swords. He made me laugh, and that made me angry (and him furious), for it was no laughing matter.

"Halt!" he cried, and I sprang back, Becque aiming another cut at my head, after the order had been given.

"You, Becque," he shouted, "be more careful, will you? D'you think you are beating carpets, or fighting a duel, you . . ."

Becque was pale and puffing like a porpoise. He had not attempted a single thrust or feint, but had merely slashed with tremendous speed, force and orthodoxy. He was a strong, plain swordsman, but not a really good and pretty fencer.

Provided neither of us scratched the other's arm, nor drew blood prematurely, I could put Becque where I wanted him--unless the fool Blüm foiled me. It was like fighting two men at once. . . .

"On guard!" cried Blüm. "Go!" . . .

Becque instantly cut, with a coup de flanc, and, as I parried, struck at my head. He was fighting even more quickly than in the first round, but with less violence and ferocity. He was tiring, and my chance was coming. . . . I could have touched him a dozen times, but that was not my object. . . . I was sorely tempted, a moment later, when he missed my head, and the heavy sword was carried out of guard, but the wretched Blüm's scabbard was between us in a second. . . .

Becque was breathing heavily, and it was my turn to attack. . . . Now! . . . Suddenly Becque sprang backward and thrust the point of his sword into the ground. Quite unnecessarily, Blüm struck my sword down, and stepped between us.

"What's the matter, you?" snapped Major de Montreson.

"I am satisfied," panted Becque. This was a trick to get a much-needed breathing-space.

"Well, I'm not," replied the Major sourly. "Are you?" he asked, pointing to me.

"It is a duel au premier sang, Monsieur le Majeur," I replied, "and there is no blood yet."

"Quite so," agreed the Major. "The duel will continue at once. And if you, Becque, retreat again like that, you shall fight with your back to a corner. . . ."

"On guard!" cried Sergeant Blüm, and we crossed swords again. "Go!" . . . Becque made another most violent assault. I parried until I judged that his arm was again tired, and then feinted at his head. Up went his sword and Blum's scabbard, and my feint became a thrust--beneath the pair of them, and through Becque's right breast. . . .

France, my beautiful France, my second Mother, had one active enemy the less for quite a good while.

"I'll do that for you again, when you come out of hospital, friend Becque," said I, as he staggered back.

§ 5

There was a most tremendous row, ending in a Conseil de discipline, with myself in the dock, Becque being in the Infirmary. As all was in order, however, and nothing had been irregular (except that the duellists had really fought), I was not sent, as my comrades had cheerfully prophesied, to three years' hard labour in the Compagnies de discipline in Algeria. I was merely given fifteen days' prison, to teach me not to fight when duelling another time; and, joy of joys, Sergeant Blüm was given retrogradation--reduction in rank.

I walked most warily in the presence of Corporal Blüm, until, as the result of my being second in the April examination (in Riding, Drill and Command, Topography, Voltige, Hippology and Gymnastics) for Volontaires, I became a Corporal myself.

Life, after that promotion, became a little less complex, and improved still further when I headed the list of Volontaires at the October examination, and became a Sergeant.

§ 6

After hanging between life and death for several weeks, Becque began to mend, and Surgeon-Major Patti-Reville pronounced him to be out of danger.

That same day I received an order through Sergeant de Poncey to visit the junior officer of our squadron, Sous-Lieutenant Raoul d'Auray de Redon, in his quarters, after stables.

"And what the devil does that mean, Sergeant?" I asked.

"I know no more than you," was the reply, "but I do know that Sub-Lieutenant d'Auray de Redon is one of the very finest gentlemen God ever made. . . . He has often saved me from suicide--simply by a kind word and his splendid smile. . . . If only our officers were all like him!"

I, too, had noticed the young gentleman, and had been struck by his beauty. I do not mean prettiness nor handsomeness, but beauty. It shone from within him, and illuminated a perfectly formed face. A light of truth, strength, courage and gentleness burned like a flame within the glorious lamp of his body. He radiated friendliness, kindness, helpfulness, and was yet the best disciplinarian in the Regiment--because he had no need to "keep" discipline. It kept itself, where he was concerned. And with all his gentle goodness of heart he was a strong man. Nay, he was a lion of strength and courage. He had the noble élan of the French and the cool forceful determination and bulldog tenacity of the Anglo-Saxon.

After a wash and some valeting by Dufour, I made my way to Sub-Lieutenant d'Auray de Redon's quarters. . . .

He was seated at a table, and looked up with a long appraising stare, as I saluted and stood at attention. "You sent for me, mon Lieutenant," I murmured.

"I did," replied de Redon, and the brilliant brown eyes smiled, although the strong handsome face did not.

"Why did you want to fight this Becque?" he suddenly shot at me.

I was somewhat taken aback.

"Er--he--ah--he has dirty finger-nails, mon Lieutenant," I replied.

"Quite probably," observed de Redon. "Quite. . . . And are you going to start a Clean Finger-nail Crusade in the Blue Hussars, and fight all those who do not join it and live up to its excellent tenets?"

"No, mon Lieutenant," I admitted.

"Then why Becque in particular, out of a few hundreds?" continued de Redon.

"Oh!--he eats garlic--and sometimes has a cast in his eye--and he jerks at his horse's mouth--and had a German mother--and wipes his nose with the back of his hand--and grins sideways exposing a long yellow dog-tooth, mon Lieutenant," I replied.

"Ah--you supply one with interesting information," observed my officer dryly. "Now I will supply you with some, though it won't be so interesting--because you already know it. . . . In addition to his garlic, cast, jerks, German mother, nose-wiping and dog-tooth, he is a seditious scoundrel and a hireling spy and agitator, and is trying to seduce and corrupt foolish troopers. . . . You have attended his meetings, taken the oath of secrecy and fidelity to his Society, and you have been closeted with him in private at your hotel."

I stared at de Redon in astonishment, and said what is frequently an excellent thing to say--nothing.

"Now," continued my interlocutor, "perhaps you will answer my questions a little more fully. . . . Why did you challenge Becque, after you had joined his little Society for engineering a mutiny in the Regiment, for achieving the destruction of the State, and for encompassing the ruin of France?"

"Because of the things I have already mentioned, mon ofjicier, and because I thought he would be the better for a rest," I replied. "I considered it a good way to end his little activities. My idea was to threaten him with a duel for every meeting that he held. . . ."

"Ah--you did, eh?" smiled de Redon. "And now I want you to tell me just what happened at these meetings, just what was said, and the names of the troopers who were present."

"I cannot do that, sir," I replied. . . . "As you seem to be aware, I took a solemn oath to reveal nothing whatsoever."

Sub-Lieutenant Raoul d'Auray de Redon rose from his chair, and came round to where I was standing. Was he--a gentleman--going to demand with threats and menaces that I break my word--even to such a rat as Becque?

"Stand at ease, Trooper Henri de Beaujolais," he said, "and shake hands with a brother of the Service! . . . Oh, yes, I know all about you, old chap. . . . From de Lannec--though I don't know whether your uncle is aware of the fact. . . ."

I took the proffered hand and stammered my thanks at this honour from my superior officer.

"Oh, nonsense, my dear boy. You'll be my 'superior officer' some day, I have no doubt. . . . I must say I admire your pluck in coming to Us by way of the ranks. . . . How soon will you come to Africa? . . . I am off next month . . . Spahis . . . until I am perfect in languages and disguises. . . . Isn't it a glorious honour to be one of your uncle's picked men? . . . And now about this Becque. You needn't pursue him any more. I have been giving myself a little Secret Service practice and experiment. Much easier here in France than it will be in Africa, by Jove! . . . Well, we know all about Becque, and when he leaves hospital he will go where there will be nothing to distract his great mind from his great thoughts for two or three years. . . . He may be a mad dog, as you say, but I fancy that the mad dog has some pretty sane owners and employers."

"Some one has denounced him, then?" I said.

"No, my dear de Beaujolais, not yet. But some one is going to do so. Some one who attended his last meeting--and who was too drunk to take any oaths. . . . So drunk that he could only giggle helplessly when invited to swear!"

"You?" I asked.

"Me," replied Sub-Lieutenant d'Auray de Redon. "'And no Work'! You may remember my valuable contribution to the great ideas of the evening. . . ."

Such was my first encounter with this brilliant and splendid man, whom I came to love as a brother is rarely loved. I will tell in due course of my last encounter with him.

§ 7

A letter from de Lannec apprised me of the fact that my uncle had heard of the duel, and seemed amused and far from displeased with me. . . .

Poor old de Lannec! He wrote that his very soul was dead within him, and his life "but dust and ashes, a vale of woe and mourning, a desert of grief and despair in which was no oasis of joy or hope." . . .

For he had lost his adored Véronique Vaux. . . . She had transferred her affections to a colonel of Chasseurs d'Afrique, and departed with him to Fez! . . .

CHAPTER VI

AFRICA

At the end of the year, my uncle was pleased grimly to express himself as satisfied, and to send me forthwith to the Military School of Saumur, where selected Cavalry-Sergeants of good family and superior education are made into officers.

Here nothing amusing occurred, and I was glad when, once more, wires were pulled and I was instructed to betake myself and my new commission to Algeria and present myself at the Quartier des Spahis at Sidi-bel-Abbès.

I shall never forget my first glimpse of my new home. It is indelibly etched upon the tablets of my memory.

I stood at the great gates in the lane that separates the Spahis' barracks from those of the Foreign Legion, and thought of the day--so recently passed--when I had stood, a wretched civilian, at those of the Blue Hussars in St. Denis. . . .

Outside the red-white-and-blue-striped sentry-box stood a bearded dusky giant, a huge red turban crowning the snowy linen kafiya that framed his face; a scarlet be-medalled Zouave jacket covering a gaudy waistcoat and tremendous red sash; and the most voluminous skirt-like white baggy trousers almost concealing his great spurred cavalry-boots. A huge curved cavalry-sabre hung at his left side, and in his right hand he bore a carbine.

"And so this is the type of warrior I am to lead in cavalry-charges!" thought I, and wondered if there were any to equal it in the world.

He saluted me with faultless smartness and precision, and little guessed how I was thrilled to the marrow of my bones as I returned the first salute I had received from a man of my own Regiment.

Standing at the big open window of the Salle de Rapport in the regimental offices near the gate, was a strikingly smart and masculine figure--that of an officer in a gold-frogged white tunic (that must surely have covered a pair of corsets), which fitted his wide shoulders and narrow waist as paper fits the walls of a room.

Beneath a high red tarbush smiled one of the handsomest faces I have ever seen. So charming was the smile, so really beautiful the whole man, that it could be none other than Raoul d'Auray de Redon, here a couple of years before me.

I know now that one man can really love another with the love that is described as existing between David and Jonathan. . . . I do not believe in love "at first sight," but tremendous attraction, and the strongest liking at first sight, soon came, in this case, to be a case of love at second sight. . . . To this day I can never look upon the portrait of Raoul d'Auray de Redon, of whom more anon, without a pang of bitter-sweet pain and a half-conscious prayer. . . .

By the Guard-Room stood a group that I can see now--a statuesque sous-officier in spotless white drill tunic and trousers, white shoes and a tarbush (miscalled a fez cap)--l'Adjudant Lescault; an elderly French Sergeant-Major in scarlet patrol-jacket, white riding-breeches with a double black stripe down the sides, and a red képi with a gold band; an Arab Sergeant, dressed like the sentry, save for his chevrons; and the Guard, who seemed to me to be a mixture of Arabs and Frenchmen--for some of them were as fair in complexion as myself.

Beyond this group stood a Lieutenant, examining a horse held by an Arab groom, and I was constrained to stare at this gentleman, for beneath a red tunic he wore a pair of the colossal Spahi white skirt-trousers, and these were gathered in at the ankle to reveal a pair of tiny pointed-toed patent shoes. His other extremity was adorned by a rakish peaked képi in scarlet and gold.

My future brothers-in-arms these. . . .

I glanced beyond them to the Oriental garden, tree-embowered, which lay between the gates and the distant low-colonnaded stables that housed the magnificent grey Arab horses of the Regiment; and feeling that I could embrace all men, I stepped forward and entered upon my heritage. . . .

§ 2

Nevertheless, it was not very long before life at the depôt in Sidi-bel-Abbès grew very boring indeed. One quickly grew tired of the mild dissipations of our club, the Cercle Militaire, and of the more sordid ones of the alleged haunts of pleasure boasted by that dull provincial garrison-town.

Work saved me from weariness, however, for I worked like a blinded well-camel--at Arabic--in addition to the ordinary duties of a cavalry-officer.

To the Spahis came Dufour, sent by my uncle at my request, and together we pursued our studies in the language and in disguises. Nor was I sorry when, at the earliest possible moment, my uncle again pulled wires, and I was ordered to Morocco.

In that fascinating country I was extremely lucky--lucky enough, after weary garrison-duty at Casa Blanca, or rather Ain Bourdja, outside its walls, Rabat, Mequinez, Fez, Dar-Debibagh and elsewhere--to be at the gory fight of R'fakha and to charge at the head of a squadron; and to play my little part in the Chaiova campaigns at Settat, M'koun, Sidi el Mekhi and the M'karto.

After the heavy fighting round, and in, Fez, I was a Captain, and had two pretty little pieces of metal and ribbon to hang on my tunic; and in the nasty little business with the Zarhoun tribe (who took it upon them to close the roads between Fez and Tangier and between Meknes and Rabat) I was given command of the squadron that formed part of the composite battalion entrusted with the job. . . .

With this squadron was my good Dufour, of course, a non-commissioned officer already wearing the medaille militaire for valour. Of its winning I must briefly tell the tale, because the memory of it was so cruelly and poignantly before my mind in the awful hour when I had to leave him to his death, instead of dying with him as I longed to do. . . .

On that black day I saw again, in clear and glowing colours, this picture:

I am charging a great harka of very brave and fanatical Moors, at the head of my squadron. . . . We do not charge in line as the English do, but every man for himself, hell-for-leather, at the most tremendous pace to which he can spur his horse. . . . Being the best mounted, I am naturally well ahead. . . . The earth seems to tremble beneath the thundering onrush of the finest squadron in the world. . . . I am wildly happy. . . . I wave my sabre and shout for joy. . . . As we are about to close with the enemy, I lower my point and straighten my arm. (Always use the point until you are brought to a standstill, and then use the edge with the speed and force of lightning.) The Moors are as cunning as they are brave. Hundreds of infantry drop behind rocks and big stones and into nullahs, level their long guns and European rifles, and blaze into the brown of us. Hundreds of cavalry swerve off to right and left, to take us in flank and surround us, when the shock of our impact upon the main body has broken our charge and brought us to a halt. They do not know that we shall go through them like a knife through cheese, re-form and charge back again--and even if we do not scatter them like chaff, will effectually prevent their charging and capturing our silent and almost defenceless little mountain-guns. . . .

We thunder on, an irresistible avalanche of men and horses, and, like a swimmer diving from a cliff into the sea--I am into them with a mighty crash. . . . A big Moor and his Barbary stallion go head-over-heels, as my good horse and I strike them amidships, like a single projectile; and, but for the sword-knot whose cord is round my wrist, I should have lost my sabre, pulled from my hand as I withdrew it from beneath the Moor's right arm. . . .

I spur my horse; he bounds over the prostrate horse and man; I give another big Moslem my point--right in the middle of his long black beard as I charge past him--and then run full tilt into a solid mass of men and horses. I cut and parry; slash, parry and cut; thrust and strike, and rise in my stirrups and hack and hew--until I am through and spurring again to a gallop. . . . And then I know that my horse is hit and going down, and I am flying over his head and that the earth rises up and smashes my face, and strikes my chest so cruel a blow that the breath is driven from my body, and I am a living pain. . . .

Oh! the agony of that struggle for breath, after the smashing crash that has broken half my ribs, my right arm and my jaw-bone. . . . And, oh! the torture of my dead horse's weight on my broken leg and ankle. . . .

And why was my throat not being cut? Why no spears being driven through my back? Why was my skull not being battered in? . . .

I got my dripping face from out of the dust, wiped it with my left sleeve, and got on to my left elbow. . . .

I was the centre of a terrific "dog-fight," and, standing across me, leaping over me, whirling round and round, jumping from side to side like a fiend and a madman, a grand athlete and a great hero--was Dufour. . . . Sick and shattered as I was, I could still admire his wonderful swordsmanship, and marvel at his extraordinary agility, strength, and skill. . . . Soon I realized that I could do more than admire him. I could help, although pinned to the ground by my horse and feeling sick, shattered, and smashed. . . . With infinite pain I dragged my revolver from its holster, and rejoiced that I had made myself as good a shot with my left hand as with my right.

Then, lying on my right side, and sighting as well and quickly as I could in so awkward a position, I fired at a man whose spear was driving at Dufour's back; at another whose great sword was swung up to cleave him; at a third, whose long gun was presented at him; and then, after a wave of death-like faintness had passed, into the very face of one who had sprung past him and was in the act of driving his big curved dagger into my breast. . . .

As I aimed my last shot--at the man whose sword was clashing on Dufour's sabre--the squadron came thundering back, headed by Lieutenant d'Auray de Redon, and never was I more glad to see the face of my beloved Raoul. . . .

He and several of the Spahis drew rein, scattered our assailants and pursued them, while Dufour caught a riderless troop-horse and--I am told--lifted me across the saddle, jumped on its back, behind the saddle, and galloped back to our position.

It seems that he had been behind me when my horse came down, had deliberately reined up, dismounted, and run to rescue me--when he was attacked. Nor had he striven to cut his way out from among the few who were surrounding him, but had stood his ground, defending me until he was the centre of the mob of wild fanatics from which Raoul's charge saved us in the nick of time. He was bleeding from half a dozen sword-cuts by the time he got me away, though not one of them was severe. . . .

Yes--this was the picture that burned before my eyes on the dreadful day of which I shall tell you.

Duty is a stern and jealous God. . . .

§ 3

I made a quick recovery, and thanked Heaven and our splendid surgeons when I found that I was not, as I had feared, to be lame for life.

I got back to work, and when my uncle, punctual to his life's programme, came out to Africa, I was able to join his Staff as an officer who knew more than a little about the country and its fascinating towns and people; an officer who could speak Arabic and its Moorish variant like a native; and who could wander through sūq and street and bazaar as a beggar; a pedlar; a swaggering Riffian askri of the bled; a nervous, cringing Jew of the mellah; a fanatic of Mulai Idris; a camel-man, or donkey-driver--without the least fear of discovery.

And I believe I could tell him things that no other officer in all Morocco could tell him of subterranean tribal politics; gutter intrigues of the fanatical mobs of towns that mattered (such as Meknes, for example, where I relieved my friend Captain de Lannec and where I was soon playing the Jew pedlar, and sending out messengers up to the day of its rising and the great massacre); and the respective attitudes, at different times, of various parts of the country and various classes of the people towards the Sultan Abd-el-Aziz; the would-be Sultan, Mulai Hafid; the Pretender Mulai Zine, his brother; or the great powerful marabout Ibn Nualla.

My uncle was pleased with the tool of his fashioning--the tool that would never "turn in his hand," and my name was writ large in the books of the Bureau des Affaires Indigènes at Rabat. . . .

Nor do I think that there was any jealousy or grumbling when I became the youngest Major in the French Army, and disappeared from human ken to watch affairs in Zaguig and in the disguise of a native of that mean city. . . . I entered it on foot, in the guise of a hill-man from the north, and as I passed through the tunnel of the great gate in the mighty ramparts, a camel-driver rose from where he squatted beside his beast and accosted me.

We gave what I think was an unexceptionable rendering of the meeting of two Arab friends who had not seen each other for a long time.

"Let me be the proud means of giving your honoured legs a rest, my brother," said the man loudly, as he again embraced me and patted my back with both hands. "Let my camel bear you to the lodging you honour with your shining presence. . . . God make you strong. . . . God give you many sons. . . . God send rain upon your barley crops. . . ." And he led me to where his kneeling camel snarled.

And may I be believed when I say that it was not until he had patted my back (three right hand, two left, one right, one left) that I knew that this dirty, bearded, shaggy camel-man was Raoul d'Auray de Redon, whom I was to relieve here! I was to do this that he might make a long, long journey with a caravan of a certain Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf, a Europeanized Arab merchant whom our Secret Service trusted--to a certain extent.

Raoul it was however, and, at Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf's house, he told me all he could of local politics, intrigues, under-currents and native affairs in general.

"It's high time we made a plain gesture and took a firm forward step," he concluded. "It is known, of course, that we are coming and that the Military Mission will be a strong one--and it is anticipated that it will be followed by a column that will eventually remark J'y suis--J'y reste. . . . Well, the brutes have asked for it, and they'll get it--but I think it is a case of the sooner the quicker. . . .

"I'll tell you a curious thing, my friend. I have been attending some very interesting gatherings, and at one or two of them was a heavily-bearded fanatic who harangued the audience volubly and eloquently--but methought his Arabic had an accent. . . . I got Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf to let me take his trusted old factotum, Ali Mansur, with me to a little fruit-party which the eloquent one was giving.

"When old Ali Mansur had gobbled all the fruit he could hold and we sat replete, listening to our host's harangue upon the greatness of Islam and the littleness (and nastiness) of Unbelievers--especially the Franzawi Unbelievers who have conquered Algeria and penetrated Tunisia and Morocco and intended to come to Zaguig--I asked old Ali if he thought the man spoke curious Arabic and was a foreigner himself.

"'He is an Egyptian or a Moor or a Turk or something else, doubtless,' grunted Ali. 'But he is a true son of Islam and a father of the poor and the oppressed. Wallahi, but those melons and figs and dates were good--Allah reward him.'

"So I decided that I was right and that this fellow's Arabic was a little queer. . . . Well, I followed him about, and, one evening, saw him meet another man, evidently by appointment, in the Zaouia Gardens. . . . And the other man made a much quicker job of tucking his legs up under him on the stone seat, and squatting cross-legged like a true native, than my suspect did. He was a little slow and clumsy about it, and I fancied that he would have sat on the seat in European fashion, if he had been alone and unobserved. . . . Whereupon I became a wicked cut-purse robber of a mountaineer, crept up behind those two, in barefooted silence, and suddenly fetched our eloquent friend a very sharp crack on the head with my heavy matrack stick. . . . He let out one word and sprang to his feet. The hood of my dirty burnous was well over my ingenuous countenance and the evening was growing dark, but I got a clear glimpse of his face, and then fled for my life. . . . I am a good runner, as you know, and I had learned what I wanted--or most of it."

I waited, deeply interested, while Raoul paused and smiled at me.

"When a man has an exclamation fairly knocked out of him, so to speak, that exclamation will be in his mother-tongue," continued Raoul. "And if a man has, at times, a very slight cast in his eye, that cast is much enhanced and emphasized in a moment of sudden shock, fright, anger or other violent emotion."

" True," I agreed.

"My friend," said Raoul, "that man's exclamation, when I hit him, was 'Himmel!' and, as he turned round, there was a most pronounced cast in his left eye. He almost squinted, in fact. . . ."

"The former point is highly interesting," I observed. "What of the other?"

"Henri," replied Raoul. "Do you remember a man who--let me see--had dirty finger-nails, ate garlic, jerked his horse's mouth, had a German mother, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, revealed a long dog-tooth when he grinned sideways, and had a cast in his eye? . . . A man in the Blue Hussars, a dozen years and more ago? . . . Eh, do you?"

"Becque!" I exclaimed.

"Becque, I verily believe," said Raoul.

"But wouldn't he exclaim in French, under such sudden and violent shock?" I demurred.

"Not if he had been bred and born speaking the German of his German mother in Alsace," replied my friend. "German would be literally his mother-tongue. He would learn from his French father to speak perfect French, and we know that his parents were of the two nationalities."

"It may be Becque, of course," I said doubtfully.

"I believe it is he," replied Raoul, "and I also believe you're the man to make certain. . . . What about continuing that little duel--with no Sergeant Blüm to interrupt, eh?"

"If it is he, and I can manage it, the duel will be taken up at the point where it was stopped owing to circumstances beyond Monsieur Becque's control," I remarked.

"Yes. I think ce bon Becque ought to die," smiled Raoul, "as a traitor, a renegade and a spy. . . . For those things he is--as the French-born son of a Frenchman, and as a soldier who has worn the uniform of France and taken the oath of true and faithful service to the Republic."

"Where was he born?" I asked.

"Paris," replied Raoul. "Bred and born in Paris. He was known to the police as a criminal and an anarchist from his youth, and it appears that he got into the Blue Hussars by means of stolen or forged papers in this name of Becque. . . . They lost sight of him after he had served his sentence for incitement to mutiny in the Blue Hussars. . . ."

And we talked on far into the night in Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf's great moonlit garden.

Next day, Raoul departed on his journey of terrible hardships--a camel-man in the employ of Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf, to Lake Tchad and Timbuktu, with his life in his hands and all his notes and observations to be kept in his head.

§ 4

Of the man who might or might not be Becque, I saw nothing whatever in Zaguig. He may have taken fright at Raoul's sudden and inexplicable assault upon him, and thought that his secret was discovered, or he may have departed by reason of the approach of the French forces. On the other hand he may merely have gone away to report upon the situation in Zaguig, or again, he may have been in the place the whole time.

Anyhow, I got no news nor trace of him, and soon dismissed him from my mind. In due course I was relieved in turn by Captain de Lannec and returned to Morocco, and was sent thence into the far south, ostensibly to organize Mounted Infantry companies out of mules and the Foreign Legion, but really to do a little finding-out and a little intelligence-organizing in the direction of the territories of our various southern neighbours, and to travel from Senegal to Wadai, with peeps into Nigeria and the Cameroons. I was in the Soudan a long while.

Here I had some very instructive experiences, and a very weird one at a place called Zinderneuf, whence I went on leave via Nigeria, actually travelling home with a most excellent Briton named George Lawrence, who had been my very senior and revered fag-master at Eton!

It is a queer little world, and very amusing.

And everywhere I went, the good Dufour, brave, staunch and an extraordinarily clever mimic of any kind of native, went also, "seconded for special service in the Intelligence Department"--and invaluable service it was. At disguise and dialect he was as good as, if not better than, myself; and it delighted me to get him still further decorated and promoted as he deserved.

And so Fate, my uncle, and my own hard, dangerous and exciting work, brought me to the great adventure of my life, and to the supreme failure that rewarded my labours at the crisis of my career.

Little did I dream what awaited me when I got the laconic message from my uncle (now Commander-in-Chief and Governor-General):

"Return forthwith to Zaguig and wait instructions."

Zaguig, as I knew to my sorrow, was a "holy" city, and like most holy cities, was tenanted by some of the unholiest scum of mankind that pollute the earth.

Does not the Arab proverb itself say, "The holier the city, the wickeder its citizens"?

CHAPTER VII

ZAGUIG

After the cities of Morocco, the Enchantress, I hated going back to Zaguig, the last-won and least-subdued of our Saharan outposts of civilization; and after the bold Moor I hated the secretive, furtive, evil Zaguigans, who reminded me of the fat, fair and false Fezai.

Not that Zaguig could compare with Fez or Marrakesh, of course, that bright jewel sunk in its green ocean of palms, with its wonderful gardens, Moorish architecture, cool marble, bright tiles, fountains and charming hidden patios.

This Zaguig (now occupied by French troops) was an ash-heap populated with vermin, and very dangerous vermin, too.

I did not like the position of affairs at all. I did not like the careless over-confident attitude of Colonel Levasseur; I did not like the extremely scattered disposition of the small garrison, a mere advance-guard; and I did not like the fact that Miss Mary Hankinson Vanbrugh was, with her brother, the guest of the said Colonel Levasseur.

You see, I knew what was going on beneath the surface, and what I did not know from personal observation, Dufour could tell me.

(When I was not Major de Beaujolais, I was a water-carrier, and when Dufour was not Adjudant Dufour of the Spahis, he was a seller of dates and melons in the sūq. When I was here before, I had been a blind leper--when not a coolie in the garden of Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf, the friend of France.)

Nor could I do more than lay my information before Colonel Levasseur. He was Commanding Officer of the troops and Governor of the town, and I was merely a detached officer of the Intelligence Department, sent to Zaguig to make arrangements for pushing off "into the blue" (on very Secret Service) as soon as word came that the moment was ripe. . . .

Extracts from a letter, written by my uncle at Algiers, and which I found awaiting me at Zaguig, will tell you nearly as much as I knew myself.

". . . and so, my dear Henri, comes your chance--the work for which the tool has been fashioned. . . . Succeed and you will have struck a mighty blow for France (and you will not find France ungrateful). But mind--you will have to be as swift and as silent as you will have to be clever, and you must stand or fall absolutely alone. If they fillet you and boil you in oil--you will have to boil unavenged. A desert column operating in that direction would rouse such a howl in the German Press (and in one or two others) as would do infinite harm at home, and would hamper and hinder my work out here for years. The Government is none too firmly seated, and has powerful enemies, and you must not provide the stick wherewith to beat the dog.

"On the other hand, I am expecting, and only waiting for, the dispatch which will sanction a subsidy of a million francs, so long as this Federation remains in alliance with France and rejects all overtures to Pan-Islamism. That is the fear and the danger, the one great menace to our young and growing African Empire.

"God grant that you are successful and that you are before Bartels, Wassmuss or any Senussi emissaries.

"What makes me anxious, is the possibility of this new and remarkable Emir el Hamel el Kebir announcing himself to be that very Mahdi whom the Bedouin tribes of that part are always expecting--a sort of Messiah.

"As you know, the Senussi Sidi el Mahdi, the holiest prophet since Mahommet, is supposed to be still alive. He disappeared at Garu on the way to Wadai, and an empty coffin was buried with tremendous pomp and religious fervour at holy Kufara. He reappears from time to time, in the desert, and makes oracular pronouncements--and then there is a sort of 'revival' hysteria where he is supposed to have manifested himself.

"If this Emir el Hamel el Kebir takes it into his head to announce that he is the Mahdi, we shall get precisely what the British got from their Mahdi at Khartoum--(and that son of a Dongola carpenter conquered 2,000,000 square miles in two years)--for he has got the strongest tribal confederation yet known. . . .

"Well--I hope you won't be a Gordon, nor I a Wolseley-Kitchener, for it's peace we want now, peace--that we may consolidate our Empire and then start making the desert to bloom like the rose. . . .

"You get a treaty made with this Emir--whereby he guarantees the trade routes, and guarantees the friendship of his tributary tribes to us, and a 'hostile neutrality' towards the Senussi and any European power in Africa, and you will have created a buffer-state, just where France needs it most.

"Incidentally you will have earned my undying gratitude and approbation--and what you like to ask by way of recognition of such invaluable work. . . . We must have peace in the East in view of the fact that the Riffs will always give trouble in the West. . . .

". . . Sanction for the subsidy may come any day, but you will have plenty of time for your preparations. (When you get word, be gone in the same hour, and let nothing whatsoever delay you for a minute.) . . . d'Auray de Redon came through from Kufara with one of Ibrahim Maghruf's caravans and saw this Mahdi or Prophet himself. . . . He also takes a very serious view, and thinks it means a jehad sooner or later. . . . And, mind you, he may be Abd el Kadir (grandson of the Great Abd el Kadir, himself), though I believe that devil is still in Syria.

"The fellow is already a very noted miracle-monger and has a tremendous reputation as a warrior. He is to the Emir Mohammed Bishari bin Mustafha Korayim abd Rahu what the eagle is to the hawk--a dead hawk too, according to an Arab who fell in with Ibrahim Maghruf's caravan, when fleeing from a great slaughter at the Pass of Bab-el-Haggar, where this new 'Prophet' obliterated the Emir Mohammed Bishari. . . . The said Arab was so bitter about the 'Prophet,' and had such a personal grudge, that d'Auray de Redon cultivated him with talk of revenge and gold, and we may be able to make great use of him. . . . I shall send him to you at Zaguig with d'Auray de Redon who will bring you word to start, and any orders that I do not care to write. . . .

"In conclusion--regard this as THE most important thing in the world--to yourself, to me, and to France. . . ."

Attached to this letter was a sheet of notepaper on which was written that which, later, gave me furiously to think, and at the time, saddened and depressed me. I wondered if it were intended as a warning and "pour encourager les autres," for it was not like my uncle to write me mere Service news.

"By the way, I have broken Captain de Lannec, as I promised him (and you too) that I would do to anyone who, in any way, failed me. . . . A woman, of course. . . . He had my most strict and stringent orders to go absolutely straight and instantly to Mulai Idris, the Holy City, and establish himself there, relieving Captain St. André, with whom it was vitally important that I should have a personal interview within the month.

"Passing through the Zarhoun, de Lannec got word from one of our friendlies that a missing Frenchwoman was in a village among the mountains. She was the amie of a French officer, and had been carried off during the last massacre, and was in the hareem of the big man of the place. . . . It seems de Lannec had known her in Paris. . . . One Véronique Vaux. . . . Loved her, perhaps. . . . He turned aside from his duty; he wasted a week in getting the woman; another in placing her in safety; and then was so good as to attend to the affairs of his General, his Service and his Country! . . .

"Exit de Lannec. . . ."

Serve him right, of course! . . . Yes--of course. . . .

A little hard? . . . Very, very sad--for he was a most promising officer, a tiger in battle, and a fox on Secret Service; no braver, cleverer, finer fellow in the French Army. . . . But yes, it served him right, certainly. . . . He had acted very wrongly--putting personal feelings and the fate of a woman before the welfare of France, before the orders of his Commander, before the selfless, self-effacing tradition of the Service. .