The French Foreign Legion was established by the last French king, Louis Philippe in 1831, and still exists today. It is an army of volunteers most of whom are not French although about a quarter of the force are Frenchmen as well as the officers. Its romantic heyday was the 1920s and most of its action was in French North Africa, extending from today's Syria to Morocco. A good view of it is seen in the 1931 movie classic Morocco with Gary Cooper as an American volunteer. During the interval between WW1 and WW2 the FFL had a highly romanticized image, so much so that a whole genre of stories and movies was generated from it. The following stories are from 1929 Argosy magazines and all written by Theodore Roscoe, a master of the genre. What is fascinating about the reading in addition to the action style is the use of common Frenchisms in both French and English. Most of them are told through the voice of old Thibaut Corday, veteran Legionnaire as introduced here.
There are several stories in this section:
First: The Death Watch.
Then scroll down for the others as follows in number order:
Second: Phantom Bullets.
Third: Better Than Bullets
Fourth: The Dance of the Seven Veils
There are several stories in this section:
First: The Death Watch.
Then scroll down for the others as follows in number order:
Second: Phantom Bullets.
Third: Better Than Bullets
Fourth: The Dance of the Seven Veils
THE DEATH WATCH by Theodore Roscoe from May 1929 Argosy
PROLOGUE
Something was doing down on the square before the mosque; Djemma el Djeddid. Boulevard Sadi Carnot lay whitewashed in bright moonlight, and the bay below its ramps was spangled with tinsel silver. By day, Algiers might be pseudo-French; but the fall of dark made it mysterious, Arab-haunted African.
Tonight the square before the mosque might have been lifted from the "Arabian Nights." From our table under the Brasserie Terminus awning, old Thibaut Corday, the veteran Legionnaire, and MacDowell of the British consulate and I, could see the serried ranks of shrouded Arabs, the bobbing turbans, the waving hands. MacDowell had looked up from his wineglass to remark"
"Those beggars seem more excited than the usual evening mob. Let's stroll down an' see what's interesting 'em."
Arm in arm the three of us walked toward the mosque. We had just gained the outer fringe of the crowd when Thibaut Corday snatched me by the wrist. The gnarly fingers of the old veteran bit into my flesh and I jumped in surprise.
A look at his face made me jump again. Torch lights smoked atop poles raised in the center of the square, and the lambent glow shedding over the heads of the mob found the veteran's face a strange mouse-gray. Sudden sweat glittered on his leathery forehead. He looked ill.
"Corday!" I exclaimed. "Are you sick?"
"Sapristi!" The words streamed out of his cinnamon beard. "Sick! I guess I am. Name of Julian the Apostate! Do you see what this crowd is staring at? Uncle of Satan! Yes, I am sick."
MacDowell muttered in astonishment. "But I say, Corday, it's nothing but a beastly marionette show. A pair of blooming Arab showmen working a Punch and Judy, that's all. Haven't you seen a puppet show before? I'd call it damn amusing---"
"Amusing!" Old Thibaut Corday panted, pointing a trembly finger at the little stage under the flares.
Now, it was nothing at all to go ill about. There were the tawdry wooden puppets, yanking, dancing and fighting on their strings. There was the showman hidden behind the stand, working the dummy figures and clacking out their dialogue in shrill Arabic. Just such a Punch and Judy performance as delights audiences the world over.
But Thibaut Corday was not delighted. His face was waxen.
"Mon Dieu!" he groaned. "I can watch it no longer. Let us get away. Back to my room in the hotel. I have there a bottle of cointreau. I want a drink for by the bones of St. Pierro of Pisa, this sight has made me sick!"
Back in the veteran's little room, MacDowell and I drank in silence, mystified. Certainly the old Frenchman had become visibly distraught. He drank his liqueur at one gulp. And Frenchmen usually do not drink in a hurry.
Finishing his cointreau, old Corday bustled to a cupboard in one corner of his room. I knew that cupboard of Thibaut Corday's. Pandora's Box was never more interesting
There was a history in that cupboard, for it was crammed with relics of the old man's warrior days. Legionnaire kepis and capotes. Weird knives and guns. Canteens, cartridge boxes, brodequins, bayonets. A cupboard that echoes with the clack of gunnery; sheltered gear that was stamped with the insignia of twenty armies. For Corday's brodequins had marched him from Asuncion to Shiloh, Loango to Hanoi. And the cupboard told the tale.
Now he took from the cupboard a little book. Dust smoked from the arid bindings as he turned the volume over in his hands. Here was a bizarre relic from the wars. I could not suppress and oath of surprise as he dropped into a chair facing us, the volume clutched between his palms.
"That book," I questioned, "what has that to do with---"
"It tells the story," he muttered. "You can read it between the leaves. Look then."
A shaft of moonlight slanted through the open window. Keeping a thumb over the title, the old man held the book to face the moonbeams. MacDowell and I could see a tiny hole drilled through the pages from cover to cover.
"A bullet hole," the veteran Legionnaire confessed. "And this little book tells the story. It is a story of the French Foreign Legion. That racket in the square below recalled it to my mind, for it is also the story of a puppet show, played by Legionnaires, you comprehend, don't you? And the cast was the queerest and the bravest man who ever signed the roster of that Army of the Damned."
"But before you stay to hear the tale, I will warn you. My story sings of bravery and courage to a high note seldom attained. It sings of self-denial, valor, heroism that must have warmed the heart of le bon Dieu. But there is no sugar-coated fiction pill to sweeten its end, save the memory of that glorious hero. And if you do not want to dream tonight, you had better go."
We stayed.
"Bien. This book tells the story. But I will start it for you.
And later we dreamed.
"Sapristi!" The words streamed out of his cinnamon beard. "Sick! I guess I am. Name of Julian the Apostate! Do you see what this crowd is staring at? Uncle of Satan! Yes, I am sick."
MacDowell muttered in astonishment. "But I say, Corday, it's nothing but a beastly marionette show. A pair of blooming Arab showmen working a Punch and Judy, that's all. Haven't you seen a puppet show before? I'd call it damn amusing---"
"Amusing!" Old Thibaut Corday panted, pointing a trembly finger at the little stage under the flares.
Now, it was nothing at all to go ill about. There were the tawdry wooden puppets, yanking, dancing and fighting on their strings. There was the showman hidden behind the stand, working the dummy figures and clacking out their dialogue in shrill Arabic. Just such a Punch and Judy performance as delights audiences the world over.
But Thibaut Corday was not delighted. His face was waxen.
"Mon Dieu!" he groaned. "I can watch it no longer. Let us get away. Back to my room in the hotel. I have there a bottle of cointreau. I want a drink for by the bones of St. Pierro of Pisa, this sight has made me sick!"
Back in the veteran's little room, MacDowell and I drank in silence, mystified. Certainly the old Frenchman had become visibly distraught. He drank his liqueur at one gulp. And Frenchmen usually do not drink in a hurry.
Finishing his cointreau, old Corday bustled to a cupboard in one corner of his room. I knew that cupboard of Thibaut Corday's. Pandora's Box was never more interesting
There was a history in that cupboard, for it was crammed with relics of the old man's warrior days. Legionnaire kepis and capotes. Weird knives and guns. Canteens, cartridge boxes, brodequins, bayonets. A cupboard that echoes with the clack of gunnery; sheltered gear that was stamped with the insignia of twenty armies. For Corday's brodequins had marched him from Asuncion to Shiloh, Loango to Hanoi. And the cupboard told the tale.
Now he took from the cupboard a little book. Dust smoked from the arid bindings as he turned the volume over in his hands. Here was a bizarre relic from the wars. I could not suppress and oath of surprise as he dropped into a chair facing us, the volume clutched between his palms.
"That book," I questioned, "what has that to do with---"
"It tells the story," he muttered. "You can read it between the leaves. Look then."
A shaft of moonlight slanted through the open window. Keeping a thumb over the title, the old man held the book to face the moonbeams. MacDowell and I could see a tiny hole drilled through the pages from cover to cover.
"A bullet hole," the veteran Legionnaire confessed. "And this little book tells the story. It is a story of the French Foreign Legion. That racket in the square below recalled it to my mind, for it is also the story of a puppet show, played by Legionnaires, you comprehend, don't you? And the cast was the queerest and the bravest man who ever signed the roster of that Army of the Damned."
"But before you stay to hear the tale, I will warn you. My story sings of bravery and courage to a high note seldom attained. It sings of self-denial, valor, heroism that must have warmed the heart of le bon Dieu. But there is no sugar-coated fiction pill to sweeten its end, save the memory of that glorious hero. And if you do not want to dream tonight, you had better go."
We stayed.
"Bien. This book tells the story. But I will start it for you.
And later we dreamed.
Chapter 1
The Little Yankee
Queer characters there were in the Foreign Legion, but he was the queerest of them all. He had little deft hands and dainty feet. His hands were the hands of an artist. His feet were those of a dancing master. He might well have been either. He was not. He was the strangest character one could hope to meet.
Can you picture his face? It was small and pointed under a flourish of hair blacker than the wing of a raven.
Slim, like he was. His features were sharpened by a stiff goatee. His lips were thin, and smiled to show perfect china teeth. His eyes were the eyes of a bird.
With those robin eyes and that pointed face, and those slim, agile hands the hue of wax, he resembled nothing more than a window model one could see in the store of a Paris merchant. You comprehend?
He looked like a wax doll.
Now, there are few recruits in the Foreign Legion who look like wax dolls. Jamais de la vie! Not on your life. The most of them resemble ruffians hacked out of canned beef, with hands tough as horn and feet that know nothing of polkas but can kick like the hoof of an army mule.
This recruit, then, made a novel figure in the barracks at Sidi bel Abbes. Perhaps the strangest thing about him was his nationality. You would never have guessed it. He was, of course, an American.
He gave his name as John Smith. But every Yankee who joined the Legion called himself, you see, John Smith. To distinguish him -- though Heaven knows he could easily have been distinguished -- the company nick-named him Jacques le Bouc. Jack the Goat. Because of the tuft on his chin.
The men did not like Jack the Goat.
He did not get along well in Company Thirteen. He kept to himself, learned fast, worked like a Trojan to become a soldier. He was different, because his lips were sealed. Soldiers of the Legion are supposed never to tell their past histories. But they invariably get drunk and tell. They boast, for the most of them have pasts worth boasting about.
Jack never told a word about who he had been or what he had done or why he had joined that Hell Battalion. All that Company Thirteen could learn was that he was a Yankee. That was enough for me. I had met these Yankees before, and I knew they were men.
Those Poles and Greeks and Germans in the outfit disliked Jack because he was reserved and silent; and the under-officers set out to make life miserable for him. He was bullied, browbeaten, teased, abused, tripped up on all manner of evil detail.
In the barracks the men tortured him with brutish tricks. On the drill field the sergeants worked him like a quarry slave. He looked like a gentleman, and Legion drill sergeants do not like soldiers who are nicer than they. The drill they gave him must have disjointed his spine. The bullying he won in the barracks must have shredded his soul.
Sometimes he fought back. But he was a foot smaller than his kindly companions, and his little, thin hands were sore as boils from unaccustomed work. Jack the Goat took a good many beatings, and he never had a moment of peace. You know the American expression of "being the goat". But yes. that little Yankee was the "goat" of his company in every sense of the word.
From the first I liked the odd little Yankee; though I could not help him to conquer his unkindly comrades, save by giving advice. In the Legion a man must fight his own battles. And in the Legion, where the weapons of inner conflict are big fists and big boots, a small, quiet man such as Jack the Goat found life a misery.
Things went badly for Jack the Goat until the day when the regiment marched down into the Ouled Nail mountains to attack an Arab stronghold there. Sacre! Something happened during that battle! Something that won the American the respect of the men and made them leave him alone. It was all very strange. One of the strangest things I had ever witnessed.
The Arabs were gathered atop the crest of a hill, and the Legionnaires debouched from a ravine below, to attack.
Save for the queer, mad incident at its end, it was the usual mountain engagement. Company Thirteen moved up the hill with needle-bayonets fixed and flashing sunshine, guns spouting flame, kepis, dodging a hail of return fire. Dust rose in clouds under our pounding heels. Smoke from the steady gunnery rolled up into the clear sky.
Every crag and cliff tossed the echo of rattling rifles punctuated by the screams of smitten men, the squalls of officers, and the chilling wail of Arab tribesmen waiting the shock of our arrival.
"Yah! Yah! Yah Allah!"
The Legion can sweat when it hears that battle cry.
It made a gorgeous picture for that clement afternoon. The Legion moved up in a long, plunging, blue line. The Arabs were gray phantoms flitting from bowlder to bowlder, sharpshooting with friendless accuracy. A Legionnaire would drop out of parade with a bullet in his hide and the blue line would close in.
It took us twenty minutes of marching in the face of a scalding fire to climb that slope, and when we had covered half the distance most of my squad had fallen and I found myself elbow to elbow with the Yankee.
On the other side of John Smith the Goat marched three tall Poles. As they stalked forward pumping their Lebels, they found time to hurl taunts at the little Yankee. But Jack the Goat, I found, was deserving of no taunt. I watched him from the corner of my eye in certain admiration.
This must have been his baptism of fire; yet he closed in like a veteran, unafraid. His eyes flashed gayly, his thin lips smiled no smile of fear, his jaw stuck out with courage and his goatee fairly bristled. He could shoot like an automaton, too, and before we knew it he was all but leading our column. Napoleon was a small man. So was Jack.
"Good for you, my Jack," I shouted to him. "You do well for a recruit. Shoot low and mind your footing on the loose rocks ahead." It was the first time he had marched in mountain country where the trails were treacherous as a witch's kiss. "And watch out for their attack."
He flashed me a friendly grin and yelled:
"I like it!"
But the Arabs liked it, too. All this time they had been concentrating a force among a mount of rocks to the left of our advance. Suddenly, in typical fanatic Moslem recklessness, the whole body of wild men charged down from the rocks!
I can see those Ouled Nail devils coming at us, to this day. I can see their spitting rifles, their bobbing hoods, their dodging beards. Like antelopes they came, hurling a wicked fusillade into our serried rank.
But we knew what their wild charge meant. They were running low on ammunition. This was their shock-blow to shatter our line. True enough. After two volleys, they were dropping their long-barreled guns, and knives as grim as Turkish scimitars were sprouting in their hands.
Now, it was one thing to walk into gunfire where the bullets were invisible; it was quite another sensation to face a horde of scimitars that flashed like crescents of silver fire in the sunlight. That taxed the nerve of the Legionnaire if anything did. But not a man of our blue line faltered.
"Yah! Yah Allah!" screeched the oncoming horde.
"En avant!" shrilled our bugler.
Meet the charge with a charge! And with a whooping, whipping smash, the blue line rushed to meet the rushing gray.
You have seen cats fighting on a roof? The bodies seem suspended in the air in a sort of squalling whirl. Our fight was somewhat similar. Hand to hand it was, with bayonet - stab for knife slash,fist for fist, boot for boot, teeth for teeth.
I swear that for half a minute I could see nothing but the whirl. Dust rose in a choking cyclone. The ground shook underfoot. The screams of the combatant--- the Moslems called to Allah, while the Legionnaires called to Heaven in a dozen tongues---and the clang of steel must have deafened the ears of le bon Dieu.
Then abruptly it was over. The smoke and dust had thinned, the blue of the Legion had drowned most of the gray. Uncle of Satan! I swear we had smashed those sons of the Ouled Nail flatter than the seven cats of Assasta. With expert Legion care we had, it seemed, finished the Moslems to a man.
If an Arab scimitar was a moon of death, those needle-bayonets of ours were swords of doom. A good many of our stout veterans lay slumbering on the stones with never a guard detail to torture them again; but the Arabs cluttered the ground like piles of soiled laundry.
I stood wiping my bayonet on an Arab's burnoose, meanwhile watching the blood drip from a gash on my hand and saying to myself: "Now we have killed them to the last man."
Then I heard the Legionnaires around me yelling like maniacs, pointing, and cursing with surprise.
We had not killed the Arabs to a man. There were five of them left; and the whole five were racing like mad back up the hill. They were not retreating, however. These Ouled Nails were warriors who did not retreat. They were charging.
And when I saw whom they charged, I let out a cry, I can tell you that. They were charging with knives upraised at the little Yankee with the wax hands and the stiff goatee. Jack the Goat. You comprehend?
He was two hundred yards away.
Angels only knew how he got up there alive and alone, but there he was. Arabs marked the path of his advance like chickens would mark the trail of a speeding Renault car down a country lane.
He stood alone, I say, backed against a bowlder. An Arab lay dead at his feet. His bayonet gleamed with crimson in his hand. He watched the five attacking demons with a grin that matched the glint of their waving scimitars. He had lost his kepi, his raven hair fell in a sheaf down his forehead, and with a smile he watched death bound at him. Aunt of the Devil, what a sight!
"To his aid!" I shrieked, finding my wits. Help him. That is the Yankee. Jack the Goat.
We went to his rescue, a crowd of us. But the Arabs were closing in, running faster than rabbits. Guns spitting, we fired as we ran; but in our excitement we sent wild bullets. Those five Arabs would be at him in a second. They would cut him to monkey meat. I ran with fear in my heart, and six comrades came hard on my heels. Then, sacre nom de Dieu, if I did not stumble and bring the whole six down on top of me like a football game.
We got to our feet, screaming curses, expecting to see the Yankee cut to pieces. We saw no such thing. While we had sprawled on our faces that little Jack the Goat had done something. He had reached down and picked up the dead Arab that had spraddled before him. Now the dead one he held propped at his side.
It was not an unknown method for a soldier to protect himself with the body of a dead one. But, Uncle of Satan! Those five Arabs were not attacking. They were not dashing in to slash out with those fearful knives. No. What do you think? Just as I regained my feet I saw it all, or I never would have believed.
Those five Arabs threw down their knives as if they had been snakes of Gehenna. Then, by the bones of St. Mitrophane of Voronesh, they went down on their knees, bowed their backs and flung out their arms as they bobbed their foreheads against the ground. You understand? They salaamed!
I do not know how we Legionnaires recovered from astonishment enough to capture those prayerful five. But we got up there, rammed our bayonets into their ribs, and stood them up against the bowlder. Whereat the amazing Yankee let drop the body of the dead tribesman and saluted us with a grin.
"Thank you very much," he said, dusting off his knees. "It was a close call for a little old man, eh? Let us drive the captives into camp. They won't make trouble."
Nor did they. Do you know what they said? Parbleu! They marched off meek as lambs but before they went they pointed at the body of the Arab that Jack the Goat had got beside him. They pointed politely, saying the dead Arab was their chief.
Furthermore, they said, just as they had been about to cut down our Jack the Goat, this dead chief had spoken. They were frightened about it for dead chiefs seldom spoke to living Arabs. But this chief had talked out loud, telling them to throw down their knives and let the white soldier live for such was the will of Allah.
Queer? I should say it was queer. Jack the Goat himself offered no explanation. Leisurely he strolled off to pick up his lost kepi . I? I examined the dead Arab. The body was cold with three bullets in the skull. Arab superstitions, eh?
Somehow, the little Yankee got along well in the company after that. The Legionnaires were mighty civil to Jack the Goat; left him to his own devices. Behind his back, though, there were strange whisperings, furtive glances. I did a lot of wondering, too, you may well believe. Jack the Goat kept to himself, learned his soldiering well, and because he had somehow or other, caused the capture of five live Arabs, he was made a soldier of the first class.
I was his only friend. Even so, he would seldom talk to me about himself. Looking back it seems portentous and queer that the only time he spoke to me of himself was the first night our transport ship nosed down the Mediterranean. We stood aboard that rotting vessel, the Fleur de France, which was steaming to the aid of a Legion outpost beleaguered in French Somaliland. It was on that ship of Satan that this strangest story of the Foreign legion played to its mad end.
The Legion can sweat when it hears that battle cry.
It made a gorgeous picture for that clement afternoon. The Legion moved up in a long, plunging, blue line. The Arabs were gray phantoms flitting from bowlder to bowlder, sharpshooting with friendless accuracy. A Legionnaire would drop out of parade with a bullet in his hide and the blue line would close in.
It took us twenty minutes of marching in the face of a scalding fire to climb that slope, and when we had covered half the distance most of my squad had fallen and I found myself elbow to elbow with the Yankee.
On the other side of John Smith the Goat marched three tall Poles. As they stalked forward pumping their Lebels, they found time to hurl taunts at the little Yankee. But Jack the Goat, I found, was deserving of no taunt. I watched him from the corner of my eye in certain admiration.
This must have been his baptism of fire; yet he closed in like a veteran, unafraid. His eyes flashed gayly, his thin lips smiled no smile of fear, his jaw stuck out with courage and his goatee fairly bristled. He could shoot like an automaton, too, and before we knew it he was all but leading our column. Napoleon was a small man. So was Jack.
"Good for you, my Jack," I shouted to him. "You do well for a recruit. Shoot low and mind your footing on the loose rocks ahead." It was the first time he had marched in mountain country where the trails were treacherous as a witch's kiss. "And watch out for their attack."
He flashed me a friendly grin and yelled:
"I like it!"
But the Arabs liked it, too. All this time they had been concentrating a force among a mount of rocks to the left of our advance. Suddenly, in typical fanatic Moslem recklessness, the whole body of wild men charged down from the rocks!
I can see those Ouled Nail devils coming at us, to this day. I can see their spitting rifles, their bobbing hoods, their dodging beards. Like antelopes they came, hurling a wicked fusillade into our serried rank.
But we knew what their wild charge meant. They were running low on ammunition. This was their shock-blow to shatter our line. True enough. After two volleys, they were dropping their long-barreled guns, and knives as grim as Turkish scimitars were sprouting in their hands.
Now, it was one thing to walk into gunfire where the bullets were invisible; it was quite another sensation to face a horde of scimitars that flashed like crescents of silver fire in the sunlight. That taxed the nerve of the Legionnaire if anything did. But not a man of our blue line faltered.
"Yah! Yah Allah!" screeched the oncoming horde.
"En avant!" shrilled our bugler.
Meet the charge with a charge! And with a whooping, whipping smash, the blue line rushed to meet the rushing gray.
You have seen cats fighting on a roof? The bodies seem suspended in the air in a sort of squalling whirl. Our fight was somewhat similar. Hand to hand it was, with bayonet - stab for knife slash,fist for fist, boot for boot, teeth for teeth.
I swear that for half a minute I could see nothing but the whirl. Dust rose in a choking cyclone. The ground shook underfoot. The screams of the combatant--- the Moslems called to Allah, while the Legionnaires called to Heaven in a dozen tongues---and the clang of steel must have deafened the ears of le bon Dieu.
Then abruptly it was over. The smoke and dust had thinned, the blue of the Legion had drowned most of the gray. Uncle of Satan! I swear we had smashed those sons of the Ouled Nail flatter than the seven cats of Assasta. With expert Legion care we had, it seemed, finished the Moslems to a man.
If an Arab scimitar was a moon of death, those needle-bayonets of ours were swords of doom. A good many of our stout veterans lay slumbering on the stones with never a guard detail to torture them again; but the Arabs cluttered the ground like piles of soiled laundry.
I stood wiping my bayonet on an Arab's burnoose, meanwhile watching the blood drip from a gash on my hand and saying to myself: "Now we have killed them to the last man."
Then I heard the Legionnaires around me yelling like maniacs, pointing, and cursing with surprise.
We had not killed the Arabs to a man. There were five of them left; and the whole five were racing like mad back up the hill. They were not retreating, however. These Ouled Nails were warriors who did not retreat. They were charging.
And when I saw whom they charged, I let out a cry, I can tell you that. They were charging with knives upraised at the little Yankee with the wax hands and the stiff goatee. Jack the Goat. You comprehend?
He was two hundred yards away.
Angels only knew how he got up there alive and alone, but there he was. Arabs marked the path of his advance like chickens would mark the trail of a speeding Renault car down a country lane.
He stood alone, I say, backed against a bowlder. An Arab lay dead at his feet. His bayonet gleamed with crimson in his hand. He watched the five attacking demons with a grin that matched the glint of their waving scimitars. He had lost his kepi, his raven hair fell in a sheaf down his forehead, and with a smile he watched death bound at him. Aunt of the Devil, what a sight!
"To his aid!" I shrieked, finding my wits. Help him. That is the Yankee. Jack the Goat.
We went to his rescue, a crowd of us. But the Arabs were closing in, running faster than rabbits. Guns spitting, we fired as we ran; but in our excitement we sent wild bullets. Those five Arabs would be at him in a second. They would cut him to monkey meat. I ran with fear in my heart, and six comrades came hard on my heels. Then, sacre nom de Dieu, if I did not stumble and bring the whole six down on top of me like a football game.
We got to our feet, screaming curses, expecting to see the Yankee cut to pieces. We saw no such thing. While we had sprawled on our faces that little Jack the Goat had done something. He had reached down and picked up the dead Arab that had spraddled before him. Now the dead one he held propped at his side.
It was not an unknown method for a soldier to protect himself with the body of a dead one. But, Uncle of Satan! Those five Arabs were not attacking. They were not dashing in to slash out with those fearful knives. No. What do you think? Just as I regained my feet I saw it all, or I never would have believed.
Those five Arabs threw down their knives as if they had been snakes of Gehenna. Then, by the bones of St. Mitrophane of Voronesh, they went down on their knees, bowed their backs and flung out their arms as they bobbed their foreheads against the ground. You understand? They salaamed!
I do not know how we Legionnaires recovered from astonishment enough to capture those prayerful five. But we got up there, rammed our bayonets into their ribs, and stood them up against the bowlder. Whereat the amazing Yankee let drop the body of the dead tribesman and saluted us with a grin.
"Thank you very much," he said, dusting off his knees. "It was a close call for a little old man, eh? Let us drive the captives into camp. They won't make trouble."
Nor did they. Do you know what they said? Parbleu! They marched off meek as lambs but before they went they pointed at the body of the Arab that Jack the Goat had got beside him. They pointed politely, saying the dead Arab was their chief.
Furthermore, they said, just as they had been about to cut down our Jack the Goat, this dead chief had spoken. They were frightened about it for dead chiefs seldom spoke to living Arabs. But this chief had talked out loud, telling them to throw down their knives and let the white soldier live for such was the will of Allah.
Queer? I should say it was queer. Jack the Goat himself offered no explanation. Leisurely he strolled off to pick up his lost kepi . I? I examined the dead Arab. The body was cold with three bullets in the skull. Arab superstitions, eh?
Somehow, the little Yankee got along well in the company after that. The Legionnaires were mighty civil to Jack the Goat; left him to his own devices. Behind his back, though, there were strange whisperings, furtive glances. I did a lot of wondering, too, you may well believe. Jack the Goat kept to himself, learned his soldiering well, and because he had somehow or other, caused the capture of five live Arabs, he was made a soldier of the first class.
I was his only friend. Even so, he would seldom talk to me about himself. Looking back it seems portentous and queer that the only time he spoke to me of himself was the first night our transport ship nosed down the Mediterranean. We stood aboard that rotting vessel, the Fleur de France, which was steaming to the aid of a Legion outpost beleaguered in French Somaliland. It was on that ship of Satan that this strangest story of the Foreign legion played to its mad end.
CHAPTER II
THE FLOWER OF FRANCE
The Fleur de France, please know, was not a boat. She was the ghost of a boat. All rusty, clanking groans and wheezes and uncanny groans and smoke. The Flower of France. Bah!
They sent her down from Marseilles to load her with army supplies and ammunition at Bizerta. Then they crammed her lousy main deck with black Tirailleurs, sharpshooters. Then they sent her to Sidde bel Abbes for a squad of Legionnaires to look after the Tirailleurs.
I was among the eight Legionnaires who boarded the Fleur de France to look after the Tirailleurs. I have every good reason to remember my companions. There was the German, Schneider; De Nogales the Venezuelan; Fuertes the Spaniard; a French apache named Le Canif because his face was like a knife. There was Kalnikoff, a former Russian general of Cossacks. There was Lieutenant Gentilet, who had once been a major at St. Cyr and was now to command our detachment. Lastly there was the little Yankee, Jack the Goat.
When we knew our job, the eight of us went pretty sick. There we were aboard a transport older than Noah's Ark, stuffed with a company of African colonials to keep an eye on, bound for Somaliland to relieve an outpost and kick the devil out of a Somali rebellion.
You know French Somaliland? It is a mean little strip of Africa lying on the coast were the Red Sea spills over into the Gulf of Aden through the Strait of Bab el Mandeb. It is bound on the west by Abyssinia, on the north by Eritrea, on the south by a British protectorate.
It was going to be a long voyage down there on a rotten hulk like the Fleur de France. We Legionnaires did not like the idea. We did not like the company of black Tirailleurs crowded on the main deck below us. They looked like a lot of black gorillas just out of Congo. They were commanded by a giant negro named Ahmed.
Pacing the deck below they would turn their white eyes on the bridge where our cabin was. They carried light carbines across their massive shoulders and monstrous coupe-coupeP knives in the sashes that belted their white uniforms. They were a bad lot to be fighting under the flag of France.
"They are villains, every one," Lieutenant Gentilet assured us with a grim smile.
It was our first night at sea. The Fleur de France was staggering down the Mediterranean toward the Suez Canal. We Legionnaires were standing on the high forward bridge where we were quartered, looking down on the Tirailleurs decked below.
"They glare at us who stand up here," the officer went on, "with evil in the eye. Already I have with that Ahmed who is their captain. He is angry about the food and thinks we Legionnaires are favored with better quarters. Pah! Just try to fancy good cabins on this lousy craft."
Such a thing could not be fancied. You should have seen the boat. She had that high forward bridge where we Legionnaires were jammed in a cabin. Aft she was a canal barge. A skinny funnel stuck up amidships. Every wave that hit her boarded the forecastle under the bow where her luckless sailors lived. And every inch of her hulk was a vermin-nest.
"A lousy craft," our lieutenant snarled again. "Look at her. Her engines just about move her. Two lifeboats." He indicated the dory slung under the stern. "There is that dory and there is that rowboat over the bow. I hope to high heaven a storm does not hit us on this trip."
"And so do I," agreed Jack the Goat, after the officer and the others had gone to their cabins.
The little American and I were alone on the bridge. Wind was rising and stars were scattering down the sky. The squeak of the boat's hull, the low throb of her struggling engines, the trampling boots of the Tirailleurs on the deck below made an undertone to the sweeping sea.
In the air was the smell of salt and boat-tar and coal-smoke. Now and then we could get a whiff of the black men on the main deck; catch the echo of their thick voices.
The little Yankee laid a hand on my sleeve. "Lieutenant Gentilet expects trouble, eh? Trouble from the boat and from these Tirailleurs. It is a long, long way down to Somaliland."
"Too damned long," I suggested. "I do not love the idea, my friend. Here we are, eight Legionnaires on a boat filled with blacks. The Tirailleurs can be handled on land. But at sea it may be something else. And I think we'll have a stiff fight with the Somalis when we do get there."
He turned his face to me. I could see his eyes shining in the darkness, and I knew he was smiling. He put a small hand over mine.
"Look here," he explained. "You've been a friend to me, Thibaut Corday. The others do not like me. In the barracks at Sidi they made hell for me. After that battle with the Ouled Nail they left me alone, but they are not my friends. Just now they went to the cabin for a go at cards and didn't ask me to join. They think I am something strange. But you have stuck by me. I reckon you've wondered about me, eh?"
I was surprised at this speech. "But yes," I admitted. "You are not exactly like the common Legionnaire. You have not confided in them, you see, and then that fight in the mountains---"
He laughed. "But I am like the others. Look here, Corday. Why did you join the Legion, anyway? Will you tell?"
"A woman," I growled confession. "And that is why most of them have joined. A woman has driven them to hell."
"I am like the rest," he said softly. "A woman. I will confide in you, Corday. You have been a friend. Yes, a woman drove me into the Legion. She was my wife---in America. She was younger than I. We worked together for years. I loved her better than anything on earth. I love her still, even though she ran away. We were in New York City. I was just at the pinnacle of success. She left a note. She was going to another man. She had met him in Europe, I believe. She said she no longer loved me and was going to this man. It sort of finished me, Corday."
He did not cry, but his voice cried. Some men can love like that. I felt like the very devil for him and patted his shoulder. That untrue wife of his meant something to the little man. No wonder he had not spouted his story around the Legion.
"I could not stand the old life," he went on, "so I joined this army. I have enjoyed the work and care little whether I die in Africa or in hell. At all events I'm away from America---the old haunts, the echoes, the memories. Listen, Corday. Listen carefully. I carry in the pocket---this breast pocket of my tunic---a little package. Wrapped in brown paper. If---if anything ever happens to me, somehow, I'd like you to have it. Will you remember? Will you remember the little packet? It tells a story."
"I will remember," I promised him. "You want me---"
"To keep it as a souvenir. Something to remember me by. I'd like to be remembered by somebody, Corday. And somehow I've a queer feeling that something may happen on this voyage. It's in the air. This rotten boat. This trip into the tropics. Down that weird Suez Canal. Through the ancient Red Sea. Like a dream. And those black colonials below. There may be trouble."
We were silent then. The boat sneaked under the stars. Black water, slipping by abeam, glistened like ebony in the gloom. I thought of the strangeness of the world, of the little man beside me, of the wife who had snapped brutal fingers at his stout heart. I thought of that queer incident in the Ouled Nail Mountains. I thought of the little Yankee's premonition.
I thought of the black Tirailleurs on the deck below. You could not see their charcoal faces in the darkness. You could just see the white uniform. Bodies moving without heads. Trouble. Somehow I became a little ill.
That very same night Lieutenant Gentilet was stabbed in the back. We found him lying on the bridge next morning, quite, quite dead. Pardieu!
Perhaps you believe there was the very devil to pay then. There was, indeed. One grand uproar shook the steamer from stern to stem. The lieutenant of the Legion had been murdered. The head of the detachment lay dead with a knife-thrust in his spine. Trouble a-plenty.
The Fleur de France put in ashore at Monastir and staged a royal investigation. Who had killed Lieutenant Gentilet? The Legionnaires accused the Tirailleurs. The Tirailleurs accused the Legionnaires and the sailors. The ship's crew accused everybody else.
Finally the suspects were boiled down to Ahmed, the Tirailleur captain, to three sailors who had been on watch, to the French Legionnaire known as Le Canif because his face was like a knife, and to Jack the Goat and me.
The little Yankee and I had been on deck later than the others. Ahmed was under suspicion because he had quarreled with the lieutenant. The three sailors had been somewhere at hand. And Le Canif had been a criminal and looked capable of stabbing his dying mother.
All very sad. Nothing could be proved in so short a time, and the rumpus did not restore life to Lieutenant Gentilet.
Then telegrams were dispatched. The new wires along the North African coast trembled with commands. Brigade headquarters at Sidi raged in its spade beard. There were messages. A wild cry for help had come up from Somaliland. Jibouti Port, Obok and the town of Tajura had been attacked, and the Somali coast was in flames. There were women and children in those helpless towns. The Legion outposts there were out of supplies and wanted reserves badly. A handful of guns and men might save the day.
Brigade headquarters sent a raging message to the Fleur de France. We were to go on, full speed ahead. At Port Said we would stop and pick up Captain Dieudonney Daudet, who would take the detachment down. If anyone could handle the job it was Daudet. Off we steamed with smoke boiling from our funnel and the engines straining from our middle; fast for Port Said and to the rescue.
You can imagine things were not too pleasant aboard that rotten transport ship. You bet they were not. Everybody had called everybody else a murderer. The ship and the rations were bad. The Tirailleurs, standing in a solid black mass behind their giant Congo-god of a captain, were complaining. We soldiers of the Legion staged a bitter quarrel with the captain of the good ship Flower of France.
Just off the coast of Egypt a storm lashed out of the East, kicked the boat in the stomach, bent her spine, tore the lifeboat from her stern, and gave her engines the rheumatism. Now the Fleur de France could stagger along about six miles per hour. A state of affairs calculated not to enhance a feeling of good-fellowship among its passengers.
I, myself, assumed command of the Legion squad. being older in rank than the rest. If things were bad among the black colonials on the main deck, it was no Sabbath school up their in our main cabin on the bridge, where the German, the Russian, the Venezuelan and the Spaniard---ruffians all---were seasick.
Le Canif, the French apache sneaked around with hate in his crooked eyes and a sneer on his lips, pretending his feelings had been wounded because of the unjust accusation that he had killed our officer. Pah! His angular, bony face was the face of a rascal; and I was not too sure the accusation was unjust.
I fail to know what I could have done without the little Yankee at my side. Jack the Goat was a prince. He smiled all the time. He never complained. He was a strange one to see in his Legion uniform, so small and gentlemanly and bird-like. But his heart was of solid gold, that is so. And more, as you shall see,
So I was very grateful when we dropped anchor in the harbor at Port Said to pick up Captain Dieudonney Daudet. We lay in close to shore, and I was going off in a small boat to meet the officer.
"I am glad my command is finished," I told the little Yankee. This boat is dynamite waiting to be exploded. If any one can put out the fuse, it is Captain Daudet. He has been here in Port Said on some manner of special government duty. He is the giant of the Legion. The sternest officer in the army."
That was so. Captain Daudet was one terror of a man, feared in the service of French armies from East to West. I had been under his command before, and I knew him.
A big Corsican he was, with a fierce red beard, fierce blue eyes, terrific shoulders and hands. His chest was a keg of muscles and glistened with forty medals. He had been in the Legion for years and his middle name was Discipline. One whispered when one saw him coming, and instinctively snapped to attention. I was glad he was going to take us down to Somaliland.
But when I found him waiting on the pier with his wife, and learned he was going to take her with him aboard the ship, my heart sank. A woman aboard that lousy old lugger of a transport. And such a beautiful woman. Uncle of Satan! Here was a match to touch off any dynamite.
Amorette was her name. I had heard of this wife of Captain Daudet before. She had been with him in Algiers on recent date. Gossip spoke of her as the most beautiful woman in the colonies. The moment I set eyes on her, waiting on the pier with her giant husband, I knew gossip was right.
I picked up the captain's duffel and I stared. Dieu! She was a wonder. A woman who could look beautiful on a pier at Port Said would be wonderful.
I remember her yet as I saw her then. I remember her small and stately figure, her burst of gorgeous mahogany-colored hair, trapped by a little white sun-hat, her face that was like finest Carrara marble. Her sea-blue eyes would have made a saint break his promises. Her smiling scarlet mouth would have caused an artist to sell his soul. The houris whom Del Castillo had painted in the Castle of Yakub el Mansur were not half so beautiful as she.
"For the sake of Heaven, Captain Daudet," I whispered to the officer. "But you are not going to take your wife aboard ship? That boat is a weasel-coop loaded with spawn of the devil."
He withered me with a glance and an oath to remind me of my rank.
"Attend to your business," he snarled. "I am commander now. My wife goes with me to Somaliland. I am to be governor there. And I understand there has been trouble on the transport. The Tirailleurs have raised the devil, eh? Your Lieutenant Gentilet was murdered. So! by the bones of Anthony Carpetsi, things will be different from now on. Pick up my duffle, you salopard! Make for my wife a comfortable place in the small boat. What are you standing idle for?"
That was the good Captain Dieudonney Daudet. Nothing for it but must make way to the small boat. The beautiful Amorette seated herself in the bow, Captain Daudet and I stood in the stern, and the sailors from Fleur de France pulled seaward.
While we rocked toward our transport,which squatted among the clutter of boats near the canal mouth like some ugly amphibian, Captain Daudet questioned me about the murder and flung oaths and orders.
So a Legion officer has been stabbed in the back, eh? The devil! and the transport was in bad shape? Another devil! Well, those aboard the boat were going to step lively from now on.
"Your Brigade headquarters must be insane," Captain Daudet thundered, "to send only one squad of Legionnaires with a whole company of those damned colonials. But I presume they could spare no more of the Legion because of the fighting in Morocco, eh? The Paris War Department has gone mad anyway. There are those poor devils trapped in Somaliland---"
He bit off his words in his scarlet whiskers, evidently realizing he was talking to an inferior. Folding his arms across his medal-hung chest, he watched us bear down upon the Fleur de France with a bitter sneer on his lips.
His girlish wife in the bow was smiling like a lady going for a brief row in the lakes of the Bois de Bologne. Moreover, she was casting her smiles at me; something I sincerely wished she would not do, for her husband was famed for quick temper and shooting first before he asked. However, she was a woman. What do women know of war?
It made me pessimistic to think of that lovely creature being on the Fleur de France with its carousel of scoundrels.
Every one of those black Tirailleurs was lined up at the main deck rail when our small boat came alongside.
On the bridge above I could see the heads of the Legionnaires. Sailors coiling hawsers on the forecastle head stopped work to stare. All eyes were turned on the lady. It made me sweat. I caught a steely glint in the eye of Captain Daudet, which made me sweat the more. Trouble. Always more trouble.
A gangway came down from the deck; the captain, his wife and I swung aboard ship. Pompous as a rooster, the skipper marched forward to meet the famous Legion officer. Captain Daudet ignored his flamboyant gestures of greeting.
"Move this boat!" he roared. I am Captain Dieudonney Daudet, now in command of this expedition. Do not stand gaping, fool I have here papers from the War Department giving me full command. Start the engines in this damned barge. Have your clearing papers? Good! Get us on our way and through the canal. Perhaps you know we are going to fight a war? Splendid! Be on!"
"But the lady, mon capitaine? Does she go with us?"
"In the very best cabin you can provide in this stinking craft. She goes with us, yes.You comprehend? She is my wife."
I think the skipper of the Fleur de France wanted to talk back. It was irregular for ship captains to take commands from expeditionary officers. However, the captain of the Fleur de France did not talk back. There was a something in the fierce blue eyes of the giant Legion officer which stifled opposition. The captain of the Fleur de France swallowed thrice, managed and almost humble bow, and danced off.
A moment later we could hear bells tinkling in the belly of the boat, sailors shouting, winches squealing. Water churned under the steamer's blunt stern and the anchor rattled up into her prow, showering mud.
Then what do you suppose? Captain Daudet took his wife by the arm and marched her straight across the main deck through that mob of black Tirailleurs. Straight across the deck he marched her, and the African colonials did not stand in his way, you may well believe. Ahmed the commander sighted the red beard and the chevrons of the newcomer, and Ahmed snapped to attention with speed.
"Clear your black devils off this deck!" Captain Daudet screamed into the Tirailleur officer's face. "I will stand them on parade tomorrow afternoon. You know who I am? Splendid! I am given to understand that you and your detachment of men have been making a rumpus. This is the end of it. You will report to me later."
Then onward marched Captain Daudet with his wife. On to the skinny ladder leading up to the high bridge; on up the ladder. The Legionnaires on the bridge had sense enough to fall into line and stand at attention. I sprang into line myself; and the seven of us waited in a stiff row.
Captain Daudet planted himself before us, his wife beside him. Fists on hips, the captain stood, feet spread apart, head thrust forward, eyes traveling from face to face. A moment he said nothing. Then a stream of burning oaths crackled and snapped from his red beard.
"So this is the picked squad of men sent to fight the Somalis, eh? A likely bunch of ragamuffins. Of all the Legionnaires I have ever seen, you seven are the worst. Now my merry salopards, I will tell you who I am. I am Dieudonney Daudet, the toughest commissioned officer in the service. That means something. It means that things are going to click on this transport from now on. It means that the first word of trouble starts me shooting. It means that those Tirailleurs are going to shut their black mouths. It means that we are making record time to Somaliland. That is what it means. And the first man among you to start anything with me will find himself in scalding water, that is so.
"Now then, scum," Captain Daudet snarled, "this is my wife." He bowed to the lady. "She is going with us. A beautiful person for such a foul company. Make no mistake, you dogs. She is to be treated with every respect. The least disrespect will mean a death among you."
Stepping forward suddenly, Captain Daudet shot out a heavy fist. "Now we have been standing in line thus: Schneider, the German; De Nogales, the Venezuelan; Le Canif from Paris; Fuertes, the Spaniard; Kalnikoff of Russia; the little Yankee and myself. Lined up against the rail, you understand. So the fist of Captain Daudet smashed like a flung hammer into the face of the fat German named Schneider.
Legionnaire Schneider dropped to his face.
"That for you, you dog!" Captain Daudet shouted at the crumpled figure. "Instead of listening to me, you were staring at my wife. Learn not to do so."
His fist swept out again. Smack! Squarely on the chin of the tall Venezuelan. De Nogales fell like a sack of old clothing.
"You," bellowed Captain Daudet, "stared, too. Learn the lesson!"
Le Canif, the apache, was next.
"I do not like your face," Captain Daudet smiled, hitting him suddenly with his left fist. "You, too, stared at my wife. Beware from now on!"
And down went the lousy Parisian. Yes. And down went Fuertes from Spain; and down went Kalnikoff of Russia. Down they went. It was like a game of nine-pins. It was Captain Dieudonney Daudet's gentle way of establishing discipline in La Legion. Those men had dared to stare at his wife.
It was a merry little scene. Captain Daudet striking out with that bludgeon fist of his. The stricken Legionnaires dropping like emptied sacks. The wife of Captain Daudet standing there with a scared smile. (Perhaps this was a lesson for her, too.) And all around us the harbor of Port Said hooting and tooting in the blazing sunshine of Africa. It was a merry scene, saddened only by the fact that I was in line for a punch on the jaw, having stared like the others.
But our Yankee had not stared at the woman. From the corner of my eye I had watched my little friend. Throughout the whole performance he had not moved a muscle. Eyes front, he waited at attention, stiff as a ramrod. The thought suddenly came over me: why should the Yankee stare at any woman? He had learned a lesson on that score.
"Do not hit him," I said impulsively, stepping forward a pace. Do not hit the American, Captain Daudet. He has been the only soldier of the lot who has---"
"I will hit him," the officer roared. "Not because he stared at my wife. Non! He did not look at her. But I shall hit him because my wife made eyes at him. It will be a lesson---"
And crack! He sent the frail Yankee spinning. I must have raised a hand against him for he hit me twice. Once in the stomach. Again on the jaw. Then I was flat on my back with the others. Dieu!
When I came to consciousness it was to stare through a headache at a sky sprinkled with early stars. The horizon was blue as the tunic of a Spahi. I could hear the throbbing of ship engines, smell the desert breeze, feel the tremble of the ship beneath me.
The little Yankee squatted beside me, calmly smoking a cigarette. On his lips there waited a sardonic smile.
"I was commanded to let you sleep," he said quietly. "Now I am to tell you to report for a guard detail."
I groaned a curse and got up on sore elbows.
The Yankee gingerly touched a finger to his jaw.
That Captain Daudet is a good soldier, at least. His wife is--- one of the loveliest women I have ever seen. But in spite of her husband, I think she will make much trouble."
His voice trailed off and his cigarette became a crimson eye in the gloom. Then he said: "We are sailing southward down the Suez Canal, Corday. We are sailing straight into hell."
When we knew our job, the eight of us went pretty sick. There we were aboard a transport older than Noah's Ark, stuffed with a company of African colonials to keep an eye on, bound for Somaliland to relieve an outpost and kick the devil out of a Somali rebellion.
You know French Somaliland? It is a mean little strip of Africa lying on the coast were the Red Sea spills over into the Gulf of Aden through the Strait of Bab el Mandeb. It is bound on the west by Abyssinia, on the north by Eritrea, on the south by a British protectorate.
It was going to be a long voyage down there on a rotten hulk like the Fleur de France. We Legionnaires did not like the idea. We did not like the company of black Tirailleurs crowded on the main deck below us. They looked like a lot of black gorillas just out of Congo. They were commanded by a giant negro named Ahmed.
Pacing the deck below they would turn their white eyes on the bridge where our cabin was. They carried light carbines across their massive shoulders and monstrous coupe-coupeP knives in the sashes that belted their white uniforms. They were a bad lot to be fighting under the flag of France.
"They are villains, every one," Lieutenant Gentilet assured us with a grim smile.
It was our first night at sea. The Fleur de France was staggering down the Mediterranean toward the Suez Canal. We Legionnaires were standing on the high forward bridge where we were quartered, looking down on the Tirailleurs decked below.
"They glare at us who stand up here," the officer went on, "with evil in the eye. Already I have with that Ahmed who is their captain. He is angry about the food and thinks we Legionnaires are favored with better quarters. Pah! Just try to fancy good cabins on this lousy craft."
Such a thing could not be fancied. You should have seen the boat. She had that high forward bridge where we Legionnaires were jammed in a cabin. Aft she was a canal barge. A skinny funnel stuck up amidships. Every wave that hit her boarded the forecastle under the bow where her luckless sailors lived. And every inch of her hulk was a vermin-nest.
"A lousy craft," our lieutenant snarled again. "Look at her. Her engines just about move her. Two lifeboats." He indicated the dory slung under the stern. "There is that dory and there is that rowboat over the bow. I hope to high heaven a storm does not hit us on this trip."
"And so do I," agreed Jack the Goat, after the officer and the others had gone to their cabins.
The little American and I were alone on the bridge. Wind was rising and stars were scattering down the sky. The squeak of the boat's hull, the low throb of her struggling engines, the trampling boots of the Tirailleurs on the deck below made an undertone to the sweeping sea.
In the air was the smell of salt and boat-tar and coal-smoke. Now and then we could get a whiff of the black men on the main deck; catch the echo of their thick voices.
The little Yankee laid a hand on my sleeve. "Lieutenant Gentilet expects trouble, eh? Trouble from the boat and from these Tirailleurs. It is a long, long way down to Somaliland."
"Too damned long," I suggested. "I do not love the idea, my friend. Here we are, eight Legionnaires on a boat filled with blacks. The Tirailleurs can be handled on land. But at sea it may be something else. And I think we'll have a stiff fight with the Somalis when we do get there."
He turned his face to me. I could see his eyes shining in the darkness, and I knew he was smiling. He put a small hand over mine.
"Look here," he explained. "You've been a friend to me, Thibaut Corday. The others do not like me. In the barracks at Sidi they made hell for me. After that battle with the Ouled Nail they left me alone, but they are not my friends. Just now they went to the cabin for a go at cards and didn't ask me to join. They think I am something strange. But you have stuck by me. I reckon you've wondered about me, eh?"
I was surprised at this speech. "But yes," I admitted. "You are not exactly like the common Legionnaire. You have not confided in them, you see, and then that fight in the mountains---"
He laughed. "But I am like the others. Look here, Corday. Why did you join the Legion, anyway? Will you tell?"
"A woman," I growled confession. "And that is why most of them have joined. A woman has driven them to hell."
"I am like the rest," he said softly. "A woman. I will confide in you, Corday. You have been a friend. Yes, a woman drove me into the Legion. She was my wife---in America. She was younger than I. We worked together for years. I loved her better than anything on earth. I love her still, even though she ran away. We were in New York City. I was just at the pinnacle of success. She left a note. She was going to another man. She had met him in Europe, I believe. She said she no longer loved me and was going to this man. It sort of finished me, Corday."
He did not cry, but his voice cried. Some men can love like that. I felt like the very devil for him and patted his shoulder. That untrue wife of his meant something to the little man. No wonder he had not spouted his story around the Legion.
"I could not stand the old life," he went on, "so I joined this army. I have enjoyed the work and care little whether I die in Africa or in hell. At all events I'm away from America---the old haunts, the echoes, the memories. Listen, Corday. Listen carefully. I carry in the pocket---this breast pocket of my tunic---a little package. Wrapped in brown paper. If---if anything ever happens to me, somehow, I'd like you to have it. Will you remember? Will you remember the little packet? It tells a story."
"I will remember," I promised him. "You want me---"
"To keep it as a souvenir. Something to remember me by. I'd like to be remembered by somebody, Corday. And somehow I've a queer feeling that something may happen on this voyage. It's in the air. This rotten boat. This trip into the tropics. Down that weird Suez Canal. Through the ancient Red Sea. Like a dream. And those black colonials below. There may be trouble."
We were silent then. The boat sneaked under the stars. Black water, slipping by abeam, glistened like ebony in the gloom. I thought of the strangeness of the world, of the little man beside me, of the wife who had snapped brutal fingers at his stout heart. I thought of that queer incident in the Ouled Nail Mountains. I thought of the little Yankee's premonition.
I thought of the black Tirailleurs on the deck below. You could not see their charcoal faces in the darkness. You could just see the white uniform. Bodies moving without heads. Trouble. Somehow I became a little ill.
That very same night Lieutenant Gentilet was stabbed in the back. We found him lying on the bridge next morning, quite, quite dead. Pardieu!
Perhaps you believe there was the very devil to pay then. There was, indeed. One grand uproar shook the steamer from stern to stem. The lieutenant of the Legion had been murdered. The head of the detachment lay dead with a knife-thrust in his spine. Trouble a-plenty.
The Fleur de France put in ashore at Monastir and staged a royal investigation. Who had killed Lieutenant Gentilet? The Legionnaires accused the Tirailleurs. The Tirailleurs accused the Legionnaires and the sailors. The ship's crew accused everybody else.
Finally the suspects were boiled down to Ahmed, the Tirailleur captain, to three sailors who had been on watch, to the French Legionnaire known as Le Canif because his face was like a knife, and to Jack the Goat and me.
The little Yankee and I had been on deck later than the others. Ahmed was under suspicion because he had quarreled with the lieutenant. The three sailors had been somewhere at hand. And Le Canif had been a criminal and looked capable of stabbing his dying mother.
All very sad. Nothing could be proved in so short a time, and the rumpus did not restore life to Lieutenant Gentilet.
Then telegrams were dispatched. The new wires along the North African coast trembled with commands. Brigade headquarters at Sidi raged in its spade beard. There were messages. A wild cry for help had come up from Somaliland. Jibouti Port, Obok and the town of Tajura had been attacked, and the Somali coast was in flames. There were women and children in those helpless towns. The Legion outposts there were out of supplies and wanted reserves badly. A handful of guns and men might save the day.
Brigade headquarters sent a raging message to the Fleur de France. We were to go on, full speed ahead. At Port Said we would stop and pick up Captain Dieudonney Daudet, who would take the detachment down. If anyone could handle the job it was Daudet. Off we steamed with smoke boiling from our funnel and the engines straining from our middle; fast for Port Said and to the rescue.
You can imagine things were not too pleasant aboard that rotten transport ship. You bet they were not. Everybody had called everybody else a murderer. The ship and the rations were bad. The Tirailleurs, standing in a solid black mass behind their giant Congo-god of a captain, were complaining. We soldiers of the Legion staged a bitter quarrel with the captain of the good ship Flower of France.
Just off the coast of Egypt a storm lashed out of the East, kicked the boat in the stomach, bent her spine, tore the lifeboat from her stern, and gave her engines the rheumatism. Now the Fleur de France could stagger along about six miles per hour. A state of affairs calculated not to enhance a feeling of good-fellowship among its passengers.
I, myself, assumed command of the Legion squad. being older in rank than the rest. If things were bad among the black colonials on the main deck, it was no Sabbath school up their in our main cabin on the bridge, where the German, the Russian, the Venezuelan and the Spaniard---ruffians all---were seasick.
Le Canif, the French apache sneaked around with hate in his crooked eyes and a sneer on his lips, pretending his feelings had been wounded because of the unjust accusation that he had killed our officer. Pah! His angular, bony face was the face of a rascal; and I was not too sure the accusation was unjust.
I fail to know what I could have done without the little Yankee at my side. Jack the Goat was a prince. He smiled all the time. He never complained. He was a strange one to see in his Legion uniform, so small and gentlemanly and bird-like. But his heart was of solid gold, that is so. And more, as you shall see,
So I was very grateful when we dropped anchor in the harbor at Port Said to pick up Captain Dieudonney Daudet. We lay in close to shore, and I was going off in a small boat to meet the officer.
"I am glad my command is finished," I told the little Yankee. This boat is dynamite waiting to be exploded. If any one can put out the fuse, it is Captain Daudet. He has been here in Port Said on some manner of special government duty. He is the giant of the Legion. The sternest officer in the army."
That was so. Captain Daudet was one terror of a man, feared in the service of French armies from East to West. I had been under his command before, and I knew him.
A big Corsican he was, with a fierce red beard, fierce blue eyes, terrific shoulders and hands. His chest was a keg of muscles and glistened with forty medals. He had been in the Legion for years and his middle name was Discipline. One whispered when one saw him coming, and instinctively snapped to attention. I was glad he was going to take us down to Somaliland.
But when I found him waiting on the pier with his wife, and learned he was going to take her with him aboard the ship, my heart sank. A woman aboard that lousy old lugger of a transport. And such a beautiful woman. Uncle of Satan! Here was a match to touch off any dynamite.
Amorette was her name. I had heard of this wife of Captain Daudet before. She had been with him in Algiers on recent date. Gossip spoke of her as the most beautiful woman in the colonies. The moment I set eyes on her, waiting on the pier with her giant husband, I knew gossip was right.
I picked up the captain's duffel and I stared. Dieu! She was a wonder. A woman who could look beautiful on a pier at Port Said would be wonderful.
I remember her yet as I saw her then. I remember her small and stately figure, her burst of gorgeous mahogany-colored hair, trapped by a little white sun-hat, her face that was like finest Carrara marble. Her sea-blue eyes would have made a saint break his promises. Her smiling scarlet mouth would have caused an artist to sell his soul. The houris whom Del Castillo had painted in the Castle of Yakub el Mansur were not half so beautiful as she.
"For the sake of Heaven, Captain Daudet," I whispered to the officer. "But you are not going to take your wife aboard ship? That boat is a weasel-coop loaded with spawn of the devil."
He withered me with a glance and an oath to remind me of my rank.
"Attend to your business," he snarled. "I am commander now. My wife goes with me to Somaliland. I am to be governor there. And I understand there has been trouble on the transport. The Tirailleurs have raised the devil, eh? Your Lieutenant Gentilet was murdered. So! by the bones of Anthony Carpetsi, things will be different from now on. Pick up my duffle, you salopard! Make for my wife a comfortable place in the small boat. What are you standing idle for?"
That was the good Captain Dieudonney Daudet. Nothing for it but must make way to the small boat. The beautiful Amorette seated herself in the bow, Captain Daudet and I stood in the stern, and the sailors from Fleur de France pulled seaward.
While we rocked toward our transport,which squatted among the clutter of boats near the canal mouth like some ugly amphibian, Captain Daudet questioned me about the murder and flung oaths and orders.
So a Legion officer has been stabbed in the back, eh? The devil! and the transport was in bad shape? Another devil! Well, those aboard the boat were going to step lively from now on.
"Your Brigade headquarters must be insane," Captain Daudet thundered, "to send only one squad of Legionnaires with a whole company of those damned colonials. But I presume they could spare no more of the Legion because of the fighting in Morocco, eh? The Paris War Department has gone mad anyway. There are those poor devils trapped in Somaliland---"
He bit off his words in his scarlet whiskers, evidently realizing he was talking to an inferior. Folding his arms across his medal-hung chest, he watched us bear down upon the Fleur de France with a bitter sneer on his lips.
His girlish wife in the bow was smiling like a lady going for a brief row in the lakes of the Bois de Bologne. Moreover, she was casting her smiles at me; something I sincerely wished she would not do, for her husband was famed for quick temper and shooting first before he asked. However, she was a woman. What do women know of war?
It made me pessimistic to think of that lovely creature being on the Fleur de France with its carousel of scoundrels.
Every one of those black Tirailleurs was lined up at the main deck rail when our small boat came alongside.
On the bridge above I could see the heads of the Legionnaires. Sailors coiling hawsers on the forecastle head stopped work to stare. All eyes were turned on the lady. It made me sweat. I caught a steely glint in the eye of Captain Daudet, which made me sweat the more. Trouble. Always more trouble.
A gangway came down from the deck; the captain, his wife and I swung aboard ship. Pompous as a rooster, the skipper marched forward to meet the famous Legion officer. Captain Daudet ignored his flamboyant gestures of greeting.
"Move this boat!" he roared. I am Captain Dieudonney Daudet, now in command of this expedition. Do not stand gaping, fool I have here papers from the War Department giving me full command. Start the engines in this damned barge. Have your clearing papers? Good! Get us on our way and through the canal. Perhaps you know we are going to fight a war? Splendid! Be on!"
"But the lady, mon capitaine? Does she go with us?"
"In the very best cabin you can provide in this stinking craft. She goes with us, yes.You comprehend? She is my wife."
I think the skipper of the Fleur de France wanted to talk back. It was irregular for ship captains to take commands from expeditionary officers. However, the captain of the Fleur de France did not talk back. There was a something in the fierce blue eyes of the giant Legion officer which stifled opposition. The captain of the Fleur de France swallowed thrice, managed and almost humble bow, and danced off.
A moment later we could hear bells tinkling in the belly of the boat, sailors shouting, winches squealing. Water churned under the steamer's blunt stern and the anchor rattled up into her prow, showering mud.
Then what do you suppose? Captain Daudet took his wife by the arm and marched her straight across the main deck through that mob of black Tirailleurs. Straight across the deck he marched her, and the African colonials did not stand in his way, you may well believe. Ahmed the commander sighted the red beard and the chevrons of the newcomer, and Ahmed snapped to attention with speed.
"Clear your black devils off this deck!" Captain Daudet screamed into the Tirailleur officer's face. "I will stand them on parade tomorrow afternoon. You know who I am? Splendid! I am given to understand that you and your detachment of men have been making a rumpus. This is the end of it. You will report to me later."
Then onward marched Captain Daudet with his wife. On to the skinny ladder leading up to the high bridge; on up the ladder. The Legionnaires on the bridge had sense enough to fall into line and stand at attention. I sprang into line myself; and the seven of us waited in a stiff row.
Captain Daudet planted himself before us, his wife beside him. Fists on hips, the captain stood, feet spread apart, head thrust forward, eyes traveling from face to face. A moment he said nothing. Then a stream of burning oaths crackled and snapped from his red beard.
"So this is the picked squad of men sent to fight the Somalis, eh? A likely bunch of ragamuffins. Of all the Legionnaires I have ever seen, you seven are the worst. Now my merry salopards, I will tell you who I am. I am Dieudonney Daudet, the toughest commissioned officer in the service. That means something. It means that things are going to click on this transport from now on. It means that the first word of trouble starts me shooting. It means that those Tirailleurs are going to shut their black mouths. It means that we are making record time to Somaliland. That is what it means. And the first man among you to start anything with me will find himself in scalding water, that is so.
"Now then, scum," Captain Daudet snarled, "this is my wife." He bowed to the lady. "She is going with us. A beautiful person for such a foul company. Make no mistake, you dogs. She is to be treated with every respect. The least disrespect will mean a death among you."
Stepping forward suddenly, Captain Daudet shot out a heavy fist. "Now we have been standing in line thus: Schneider, the German; De Nogales, the Venezuelan; Le Canif from Paris; Fuertes, the Spaniard; Kalnikoff of Russia; the little Yankee and myself. Lined up against the rail, you understand. So the fist of Captain Daudet smashed like a flung hammer into the face of the fat German named Schneider.
Legionnaire Schneider dropped to his face.
"That for you, you dog!" Captain Daudet shouted at the crumpled figure. "Instead of listening to me, you were staring at my wife. Learn not to do so."
His fist swept out again. Smack! Squarely on the chin of the tall Venezuelan. De Nogales fell like a sack of old clothing.
"You," bellowed Captain Daudet, "stared, too. Learn the lesson!"
Le Canif, the apache, was next.
"I do not like your face," Captain Daudet smiled, hitting him suddenly with his left fist. "You, too, stared at my wife. Beware from now on!"
And down went the lousy Parisian. Yes. And down went Fuertes from Spain; and down went Kalnikoff of Russia. Down they went. It was like a game of nine-pins. It was Captain Dieudonney Daudet's gentle way of establishing discipline in La Legion. Those men had dared to stare at his wife.
It was a merry little scene. Captain Daudet striking out with that bludgeon fist of his. The stricken Legionnaires dropping like emptied sacks. The wife of Captain Daudet standing there with a scared smile. (Perhaps this was a lesson for her, too.) And all around us the harbor of Port Said hooting and tooting in the blazing sunshine of Africa. It was a merry scene, saddened only by the fact that I was in line for a punch on the jaw, having stared like the others.
But our Yankee had not stared at the woman. From the corner of my eye I had watched my little friend. Throughout the whole performance he had not moved a muscle. Eyes front, he waited at attention, stiff as a ramrod. The thought suddenly came over me: why should the Yankee stare at any woman? He had learned a lesson on that score.
"Do not hit him," I said impulsively, stepping forward a pace. Do not hit the American, Captain Daudet. He has been the only soldier of the lot who has---"
"I will hit him," the officer roared. "Not because he stared at my wife. Non! He did not look at her. But I shall hit him because my wife made eyes at him. It will be a lesson---"
And crack! He sent the frail Yankee spinning. I must have raised a hand against him for he hit me twice. Once in the stomach. Again on the jaw. Then I was flat on my back with the others. Dieu!
When I came to consciousness it was to stare through a headache at a sky sprinkled with early stars. The horizon was blue as the tunic of a Spahi. I could hear the throbbing of ship engines, smell the desert breeze, feel the tremble of the ship beneath me.
The little Yankee squatted beside me, calmly smoking a cigarette. On his lips there waited a sardonic smile.
"I was commanded to let you sleep," he said quietly. "Now I am to tell you to report for a guard detail."
I groaned a curse and got up on sore elbows.
The Yankee gingerly touched a finger to his jaw.
That Captain Daudet is a good soldier, at least. His wife is--- one of the loveliest women I have ever seen. But in spite of her husband, I think she will make much trouble."
His voice trailed off and his cigarette became a crimson eye in the gloom. Then he said: "We are sailing southward down the Suez Canal, Corday. We are sailing straight into hell."
CHAPTER III
INTO HELL!
In those days the ordinary passenger boat went down the canal in eighteen hours. Since she was only rushing to the rescue of women and children and Legionnaires in Somaliland, the Fleur de France took twenty-four hours.
She plodded through the Bitter Lake region with marsh birds wheeling over her taffrail, hooting like lost souls. She halted at Suez for coal, and received another urgent wail for help from the outposts of Somaliland. Then she staggered with a fouled rudder post into the Gulf of Suez, and it was blazing noon when was sighted Mount Sinai off her port beam. No one on board had much time for sightseeing and thinking about this barren mountain where Moses received the Law. We were receiving a little law of our own from good Captain Daudet. All morning he drilled the Tirailleurs on the main deck. All afternoon he drilled his seven Legionnaires. He made us overhaul our gear, wash down our cabin, police the bridge deck, and unlimber a Chaut-chaut automatic rifle. All evening he raged, stamped and tramped around the cabin of the ship captain, howling for more speed.
His presence aboard ship had made the Tirailleurs quiet as mice. You could see them mumbling to themselves, rolling their big white eyes up at the bridge where Daudet commanded. Were they thinking of him? Or were their minds on the beautiful white woman quartered up there in a forward cabin? During the ensuing three days I wondered. Sometimes it seemed to me those big black African colonials were too quiet.
But all things considered the Fleur de France was plowing down the Red Sea in orderly fashion. Captain Daudet had established an iron discipline over the craft and even urged a few knots extra speed out of its antediluvian engines.
Five days down the Red Sea we spotted the coast of Eritrea of our starboard bow. A junky Arab boat came scooting out from the shore, bringing the news that a platoon of Legionnaires, stationed at Taklai, was going to start a forced march down the coast and would reach our port in Somaliland a few days after we did. We lined the bridge rail and could almost see that platoon of Legion devils footing it down the mountainous shore.
"Dios!" snarled Fuertes, the Spaniard. "It gives me a feeling of companionship to know that there are Legionnaires on that coast. It has been lonely on this rat's nest lost in the Red Sea."
"Himmel!" grunted the fat German. "I am glad this cursed voyage draws to a close. Every night I have expected those Tirailleurs to mutiny and cut us by the throat. Ja! Captain Daudet has held them down, but I think they hate us. And with that woman quartered up here with us---"
"I am glad," muttered the tall Russian, "that our trip ends soon, myself. We sail tonight without mishap to our engine, and tomorrow late we should be near the Straight of Bab el Mandeb."
De Nogales, the Venezuelan, was in his cabin furbishing gear, so he could offer no comment. Le Canif, the Paris apache, simply spat in the dark water. The little Yankee, Jack the Goat, merely shrugged.
Evening with ragged clouds in a green sky, a low moon shedding silvery streamers across the calm water and the coast of Eritrea lying a line of red mountain peaks off our starboard beam.
I was standing on the bow of the ship with Jack the Goat. Three crazy native dhows had scuttled under the shadow of our prow and now were lost in the direction of Arabia. In that same easterly direction the smoke of three passenger boats from the Orient hung feathers on the horizon.
Those three tiny dhows, those three distant feathers of smoke, that low rim of mountain peaks had made the only break in a monotony of shifting water that was the loneliest sea in all the world just then.
The moon climbed higher in the sky and sneaked into a nest of gray clouds. The Fleur de France was creaking, smoking and shivery. The only sound was the occasional bell-tinkle in the pilot house on our bridge. The burble of the cut water boiling past our bows, the clatter of the sabots worn by the sailor who stood lookout near us.
The little Yankee leaned on the rail and pointed south. "By the chart in the cabin we should soon be passing the Dahlak Archipelago. Right now we are not far from that African coast, Corday. I never expected we would get this far on this bilious old ship."
"Nor I," was my confession. There has been an undercurrent of disaster ever since we left Port Said. You have felt it, too. I know. A handful of white men on a boat jammed with unreliable blacks. I---"
Jack the Goat caught the sleeve of my tunic. I felt it at the same time. So did the sailor on lookout. He swung about with an oath and peered at the pilot house.
"Parbleu!" he called. "Did you two soldiers of the damned feel that jar? Our engines have completely stopped."
"Did either of you," snarled the Yankee, think you heard a scream? There. There by Heaven---there it is again."
I should say we did hear the scream. It coiled up into the tropic dusk and lost itself in echoes against the metal sky. A shrill soprano scream such as a woman might give.
The next instant all hell broke loose on the bridge. Voices barked and bawled. Gunfire crashed out. Boot heels pounded up ladders and across dark beams. From the forecastle head where we stood paralyzed, the Yankee and I caught the flash of spitting automatics, brief glimpses of men running through shadows. A sailor came tumbling down from the wheelhouse wailing in terror.
"The Tirailleurs!" he screamed.
"They mutiny. They have smashed into the engine room. That wife of the Legion captain has started it. She walked down from the bridge, a Tirailleur smiled at her, and that captain shot the black man dead. Now they will murder us all. Holy St. Adrian!"
"Aux armes!" It was the voice of Captain Daudet somewhere amidships. "Legionnaires! Help!"
"Quick!" screeched Jack the Goat, bounding past me. "To the bridge, Corday. We must hold the bridge and the pilot house."
I was after him in a trice, and we went shin-banging up to our cabin like a pair of maniacs. All was confusion on the bridge. Powder smoke hung thick in the air with another odor---blood. Somehow or other the oil lamps had been smashed out, and it was darker than sin in the alleyways.
Amidships the vessel was a howling Gehenna. Gunfire flashed like the flame of lightning down there on the main deck. I could hear bullets thumping into wood and tearing through canvas. I could hear Captain Daudet shrieking oaths. I could hear those black Tirailleurs squalling like a den of raging tigers. I could hear a woman sobbing.
We came across her huddled at the door of her cabin.
"They are dead!" she was sobbing, her voice high with hysteria. "And I am lost!"
We did not stop to find out what she meant. Jack the Goat yanked her to her feet.
"Get into your cabin!" he shouted. "Quick! Give me the key. I will lock you in. They cannot get up here on the bridge."
She started to say something, but he clapped a hand over her mouth and flung her into the cabin, slamming and locking the door after her.
We darted on, down the infernal alley; dashed into our own cabin. A lamp was glimmering in there, and I wish it had not been. For the little Yankee stumbled over one body, and I sprawled over another. You understand? Schneider and Fuertes lay there on the floor. Dead! With their own bayonets rammed into their necks.
"The devil!" Jack the Goat panted. Someone stabbed them while they sat there at table. Look! Playing cards scattered around. Their backs were to the door. Someone yanked the bayonets from their sheaths and murdered them."
"Look!" I shouted, pointing at a bunk. "There lies the Russian. Murdered, too. Sacre nom de Dieu! Foul play!"
But we had no time to gossip. We snatched our Lebels from our own bunks and fled into the alley again. You realize how the after deck of the bridge looked down upon the main deck amidships? You know about the skinny ladder leading up to the bridge deck from the main deck below? That was where we found the foul play.
Uncle of Satan! I will not forget the picture I found there as long as I live. No. Nor after I die.
Sliding from behind a cloud the moon cruised open sky and made a spectral ray that made the face of Captain Dieudonney Daudet a devil mask. His eyes were wild, his cheeks the color of banana meat. His kepi was gone, and his red hair tossed in the salty wind. A bullet-scrape across his forehead poured crimson streams down either side of his jaw. Curse after curse was crackling from his beard.
A wild sight he made, crouching there at the top of the ladder, swinging the Chaut-chaut rifle to spray a blaze of steel at the deck below.
Can you see that raging jam of Africans on the main deck? Can you see that plunging knot of white uniforms, headless in the dark save where sudden gun-flame picked out an ebony face for a second-tick? Can you see the spiteful jets of fire squirting from their carbines, and the baleful ragged flash of those long coupe-coup knives waving aloft?
Those fiendish knives gleamed like flashes of water. Those charging white uniforms made a boiling surf on the dark deck. And their savage demoniac outcry rose like the smash of breaking seas. In a body they would rush the ladder. Rrrrrrrrrr! would roar Captain Daudet's gun. In a body they would retreat. Like waves.
Jack the Goat and I sprang out of the alleyway, and for a second could do nothing but stare as if smitten. Behind the gun that wove a brocade of white fire down those steps, Captain Daudet was magnificent. Magnificent! Do you know what he made me think of? He made me think of that gallant Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike, stemming the torrential flood.
Just as I was thinking that (with no honest time for thinking anything) I saw something else. Jack the Goat saw it, too, and caught my arm. The ladder defended by Captain Daudet fell from the starboard end of our bridge. At the port end of the bridge---right out on the wing---two men were fighting. Silently, almost secretly, they struggled in and out of shadow, bodies locked, arms trapped by arms, faces rammed together.
I would have yelled when I saw them there. De Nogales, the Venezuelan, and Le Canif, the Paris apache. Legionnaire against Legionnaire. Fighting like the very devil.
Busy at the ladder, Captain Daudet failed to see them. But the little Yankee and I saw them, that is so. We saw the evil hate-filled face of Le Canif, the stricken, knotted countenance of De Nogales. We saw ruby drops scattered from De Nogales's cheek. We saw a short, wet dirk lashing in the fist of the foul Frenchman.
Before the Yankee or I could move a foot, the Venezuelan sighted us.
"Aqui!" he screamed. Shoot him! He murdered the others. He started the mutiny. Kill him! Por Dios, I am---"
Too late. Le Canif wrenched like a tiger. Out came that short, wet knife. Into shadow and out of shadow. De Nogales pirouetted like a dancer, and crashed to his face. It was all so quick.
Jack the Goat fired and I fired. But the apache made a flying leap. Like a catamount he went past us. Like a catamount he landed on the back of Captain Daudet, who was bent, unsuspecting over his shouting Chaut-chaut gun. In and out went that devil's knife. Captain Daudet spraddled flat beside the gun. The Yankee and I hurled ourselves at the traitorous Legionnaire. Our clawing hands snatched shadows. Le Canif had thrown himself down the ladder to join the Tirailleurs at its base.
DIEU! but the little Yankee moved fast. Springing on the Chaut-chaut gun, he had it hammering in no time. Tirailleur bullets were hissing up to the bridge in a deadly rain. They did not touch Jack the Goat. He was swinging the gun, weaving a network of bullets across the main deck. His first burst of fire caught that Paris apache, Le Canif, smack in the chest, and all but knocked him to pieces. That was good. We saw Le Canif drop into a pile of white uniforms cluttering the ladder base. Then the Tirailleur charge was scattering back and away.
I had swung my Lebel into action, and was raking the shadows clinging to the engine-room house amidships where the funnel jutted skyward. The deck between that house amidships and the bridge where we hung was now clear, save for white lumps scattered here and there, and that piece of garbage in Legion uniform sprawled at the foot of our ladder.
The Yankee with his automatic gun and I with my Lebel drew a line of fire from rail to rail across that deck. Bullets whistled out of the shadows aft, winging over bridge deck. But Jack the Goat was sheltered by the body of Captain Daudet, and I was behind the canvas fence of the bridge-rail. Thus protected, they could not spot us readily.
"Quick, then," the Yankee howled at me. "Get the sailors, Corday!" Where in the name of Heaven have they been hiding? Run forward and find them. Bring guns and another drum of ammunition for the Chaut-chaut. I can hold them back. I can keep them from the ladder. They dare not cross that open deck, and they cannot go under this bridge to get forward. Tell the sailors to come up here. If once those blacks should gain the pilot house --"
The sailors! I had forgotten them. I saw the Yankee could hold those African mutineers for the moment, so I raced back into the alleyway.
As I passed the cabin door behind which Captain Daudet's wife was locked I heard her sobbing in hysteria.
The sound lent wings to my feet.
Bawling for aid, I rushed to the captain's cabin. That captain was not there. I banged into the little chart room. Empty! I scrambled into the pilot house. Not a soul to be seen; and the wheel turning idly as if maneuvered by ghostly hands.
Suspicion came suddenly. Sick with fear, I rushed down to the force deck. Not a sailor to be seen. Now I was sweating and terrified, in all honest truth. Like a maniac I went galloping to the forecastle and screamed into the forecastle companion. No answer save a scurry of rats.
By the bones of King Michael, it got me like a hand on the stomach. I flung around from the hatch, and saw!
Empty boat-davits. Yes! With a shriek I sprang to the bow rail.
Overside the water was lost in shade.
The moon above had gone, leaving the Red Sea a sweep of muttering gloom.
Far away I could hear the sound of squeaking oar-locks and muted voices.
Sapristi! That thrice-damned crew of sailors, that craven mariner captain had robbed the Fleur de France of her only accessible lifeboat, and fled.
Curse? if I ever cursed any one in my life, I cursed those sailors of the Fleur de France. But I had little time to do them justice. I hailed twice and got no answer save the slop of waves against our prow.
Then I screamed my names for them. Names that should have made vinegar of the milk in their veins. And then the sound of the Chaut-chaut gun chattering on the bridge flung me into my sense, and I raced back to that upper deck once more.
I was sweating blood as I pounded aft through the gloomy alley of the bridge. What a gay situation was this? In my mind I could see it all. That black hull of a steamboat lolling idly down a lost ocean. Those raging black troopers charging again and again from the after deck. Charging to rip apart two measly white men, lone defenders of the honor of France. Charging to capture the transport. Charging to gain a cabin where a woman his weeping---a white girl whose slim beauty they had watched and marked with their bulbous, baleful eyes.
I gained the Yankee's side just in time to fend off another charge. The Tirailleurs were learning respect for that fast-shooting Chaut-chaut gun, and they did not press the attack too far. Carbines spitting, they came forward with a wariness, like so many gorillas clad in white.
They moved down the port and starboard sides of the well-deck, intent on getting under the bridge. Not a devil of them got across the deck. The Yankee and I drew the line with withering steel slugs.
In the old days the sailors of British merchantmen would keep idle passengers off the foredeck where they worked by drawing a chalk line from rail to rail. They called this "chalking their toes." So the little American and I chalked the toes of those howling demon Tirailleurs with a line of bullets that must have sawed a strip out of that deck.
Jack the Goat ripped back and across with his rapid firer. I sharpshot into the shadows. They retreated aft of the engine room house once more. Our gunfire, not needed further, faded to an echo.
The Yankee whirled on me. "Those sailors?"
"Gone!" I panted. "But fast. Here is another drum of bullets for the Chaut-chaut. There are two more drums in our cabin. Then---"
"You mean," he panted in a strained voice. "that the sailors have deserted? They took the boat on the bow."
Suddenly he was grabbing at me.
"Corday! We're alone with that girl in the cabin. Those blacks will attack again and again and again. How can we run this boat? No doubt they have slaughtered the men of the engine-room."
He seemed stunned. C'est ca! So did I. Our silence was one of horror. We were both thinking the same thought---the girl in the cabin.
Overhead the stars smiled. The boat rolled gently on a swell and the stars walked in a brilliant arc across the sky. Amidships all was still, but aft we could hear the murmuring of angry men. Once or twice a tongue of fire spat from the shadows there and bullets whistled over our heads. Jack the Goat was panting.
Then suddenly he seized my hand in a crushing clasp. "Corday! There's a way out of this! We've got to save that girl. We've got to save this ship, too. Think, man. Down in Somaliland they're waiting. Waiting for this cargo. Food and ammunition."
"Parbleu!" I moaned. The boat is crippled. To hell with it. But you and I and the girl. Like three mice waiting for the tigers."
I believe I started to cry. The Yankee and I could have gotten along, you comprehend. But there was the wife of poor Daudet.
Do you know what the little Yankee did? He kicked me in the shin.
"Corday!" he gasped. "Listen to me. Listen, I say! Off there is the coast of Africa---Eritrea. You remember the Legion platoon starting from Taklai? They are somewhere along that coast. You must find them!"
I swore a bitter oath. Those mountain peaks were miles away. A haze under the stars.
Jack the Goat twisted my wrist. "You've got to swim for it. Look! Get a plank, a cabin bench, anything. Drop overside. Swim. You can make it. Then find those Legionnaires. Find a boat, a dhow, any craft at all. And bring them back. Our boat will not move from this position. First you must run to the pilot house and lash the wheel. You hear? You understand?" His words came in a vibrant rush.
Sacre nom de Dieu!" I swore. "Do you think I would leave you alone in this trap? Do you think I would desert you on this sink of hell to face alone those black wolves? Do you think I would leave you and that white girl---"
The little Yankee's clasp tore into my flesh. "Corday! Do as I say. It's our one chance. I can hold them from the bridge. Listen! I want to save that girl more than anything else on earth."
Sweat was wiggling down his face. His eyes sparkled like burnished points of metal.
"I want to save her I tell you," the Yankee insisted. "If we could make shore with you it would be good. But she could never swim it. I cannot swim a stroke. You must go---
"I cannot!"
"You will! First lash the wheel. Then jump and swim like all hell. I will hold the bridge until you return."
"You will never hold it," I snarled. When daylight comes and those savages see only one man up here---"
But his eyes commanded. If you could have seen his face you would have understood. A stern cord stood down his jaw, and his teeth grinned.
"Get on, Corday. I'll hold out. I'll hold out for days. Just bring me some grub and leave it to me --"
The spang of carbines snapped short his words. He trained the sights of his Chaut-chaut ready to answer the fire that had burned up from amidships. The Chaut-chaut rattled. The Africans stopped their shooting. Jack the Goat flung around at me again.
"Will you go?"
I could do nothing but nod. He clasped my hand. " You will save us all, Corday, and prove the hero I know you are. And listen, my friend. If -- if anything has happened to me when you return, will you take that little packet from my breast pocket? It will explain. You will take it?"
I promised. he thumped me bravely on the chest and I fled to the pilot house. There I lashed the wheel. After that I foraged for rations and a canteen or two of water, which I placed within easy reach of Horatius-at-the-bridge. Then I dashed to my cabin. The sight of the dead German, the dead Russian, the dead Spaniard in there all but broke my resolution. But I caught up a bench, raced up the alley, dropped to the fore deck.
Down there the Fleur de France (A gorgeous flower, was she not?) was silent as a tomb. The high bridge lifted like a ghostly square castle against the stars. I thought of the girl locked in the cabin. I thought of the little man on the after deck of the bridge crouching behind the Chaut-chaut gun.
I thought of the black swarm waiting to charge from behind the engine room house. I wondered about the packet in his pocket.
Those thoughts raced through my numbed mind. Then I said a little prayer for the Yankee and that girl -- the first prayer I had asked in years; and I said a little prayer for me. And I dropped the wooden bench overboard, stripped off from my uniform, and plunged after.
Chill water struck at my face as I pushed away. The bench bobbed before me to give me courage. Just that wooden bench and I, against the miles that reached to the coast. Just the bench and I and the memory of what lay behind.
Turning my head, I could see the dark, silent hulk of the Fleur de France drifting soundlessly into a water mist.
"I am glad," muttered the tall Russian, "that our trip ends soon, myself. We sail tonight without mishap to our engine, and tomorrow late we should be near the Straight of Bab el Mandeb."
De Nogales, the Venezuelan, was in his cabin furbishing gear, so he could offer no comment. Le Canif, the Paris apache, simply spat in the dark water. The little Yankee, Jack the Goat, merely shrugged.
Evening with ragged clouds in a green sky, a low moon shedding silvery streamers across the calm water and the coast of Eritrea lying a line of red mountain peaks off our starboard beam.
I was standing on the bow of the ship with Jack the Goat. Three crazy native dhows had scuttled under the shadow of our prow and now were lost in the direction of Arabia. In that same easterly direction the smoke of three passenger boats from the Orient hung feathers on the horizon.
Those three tiny dhows, those three distant feathers of smoke, that low rim of mountain peaks had made the only break in a monotony of shifting water that was the loneliest sea in all the world just then.
The moon climbed higher in the sky and sneaked into a nest of gray clouds. The Fleur de France was creaking, smoking and shivery. The only sound was the occasional bell-tinkle in the pilot house on our bridge. The burble of the cut water boiling past our bows, the clatter of the sabots worn by the sailor who stood lookout near us.
The little Yankee leaned on the rail and pointed south. "By the chart in the cabin we should soon be passing the Dahlak Archipelago. Right now we are not far from that African coast, Corday. I never expected we would get this far on this bilious old ship."
"Nor I," was my confession. There has been an undercurrent of disaster ever since we left Port Said. You have felt it, too. I know. A handful of white men on a boat jammed with unreliable blacks. I---"
Jack the Goat caught the sleeve of my tunic. I felt it at the same time. So did the sailor on lookout. He swung about with an oath and peered at the pilot house.
"Parbleu!" he called. "Did you two soldiers of the damned feel that jar? Our engines have completely stopped."
"Did either of you," snarled the Yankee, think you heard a scream? There. There by Heaven---there it is again."
I should say we did hear the scream. It coiled up into the tropic dusk and lost itself in echoes against the metal sky. A shrill soprano scream such as a woman might give.
The next instant all hell broke loose on the bridge. Voices barked and bawled. Gunfire crashed out. Boot heels pounded up ladders and across dark beams. From the forecastle head where we stood paralyzed, the Yankee and I caught the flash of spitting automatics, brief glimpses of men running through shadows. A sailor came tumbling down from the wheelhouse wailing in terror.
"The Tirailleurs!" he screamed.
"They mutiny. They have smashed into the engine room. That wife of the Legion captain has started it. She walked down from the bridge, a Tirailleur smiled at her, and that captain shot the black man dead. Now they will murder us all. Holy St. Adrian!"
"Aux armes!" It was the voice of Captain Daudet somewhere amidships. "Legionnaires! Help!"
"Quick!" screeched Jack the Goat, bounding past me. "To the bridge, Corday. We must hold the bridge and the pilot house."
I was after him in a trice, and we went shin-banging up to our cabin like a pair of maniacs. All was confusion on the bridge. Powder smoke hung thick in the air with another odor---blood. Somehow or other the oil lamps had been smashed out, and it was darker than sin in the alleyways.
Amidships the vessel was a howling Gehenna. Gunfire flashed like the flame of lightning down there on the main deck. I could hear bullets thumping into wood and tearing through canvas. I could hear Captain Daudet shrieking oaths. I could hear those black Tirailleurs squalling like a den of raging tigers. I could hear a woman sobbing.
We came across her huddled at the door of her cabin.
"They are dead!" she was sobbing, her voice high with hysteria. "And I am lost!"
We did not stop to find out what she meant. Jack the Goat yanked her to her feet.
"Get into your cabin!" he shouted. "Quick! Give me the key. I will lock you in. They cannot get up here on the bridge."
She started to say something, but he clapped a hand over her mouth and flung her into the cabin, slamming and locking the door after her.
We darted on, down the infernal alley; dashed into our own cabin. A lamp was glimmering in there, and I wish it had not been. For the little Yankee stumbled over one body, and I sprawled over another. You understand? Schneider and Fuertes lay there on the floor. Dead! With their own bayonets rammed into their necks.
"The devil!" Jack the Goat panted. Someone stabbed them while they sat there at table. Look! Playing cards scattered around. Their backs were to the door. Someone yanked the bayonets from their sheaths and murdered them."
"Look!" I shouted, pointing at a bunk. "There lies the Russian. Murdered, too. Sacre nom de Dieu! Foul play!"
But we had no time to gossip. We snatched our Lebels from our own bunks and fled into the alley again. You realize how the after deck of the bridge looked down upon the main deck amidships? You know about the skinny ladder leading up to the bridge deck from the main deck below? That was where we found the foul play.
Uncle of Satan! I will not forget the picture I found there as long as I live. No. Nor after I die.
Sliding from behind a cloud the moon cruised open sky and made a spectral ray that made the face of Captain Dieudonney Daudet a devil mask. His eyes were wild, his cheeks the color of banana meat. His kepi was gone, and his red hair tossed in the salty wind. A bullet-scrape across his forehead poured crimson streams down either side of his jaw. Curse after curse was crackling from his beard.
A wild sight he made, crouching there at the top of the ladder, swinging the Chaut-chaut rifle to spray a blaze of steel at the deck below.
Can you see that raging jam of Africans on the main deck? Can you see that plunging knot of white uniforms, headless in the dark save where sudden gun-flame picked out an ebony face for a second-tick? Can you see the spiteful jets of fire squirting from their carbines, and the baleful ragged flash of those long coupe-coup knives waving aloft?
Those fiendish knives gleamed like flashes of water. Those charging white uniforms made a boiling surf on the dark deck. And their savage demoniac outcry rose like the smash of breaking seas. In a body they would rush the ladder. Rrrrrrrrrr! would roar Captain Daudet's gun. In a body they would retreat. Like waves.
Jack the Goat and I sprang out of the alleyway, and for a second could do nothing but stare as if smitten. Behind the gun that wove a brocade of white fire down those steps, Captain Daudet was magnificent. Magnificent! Do you know what he made me think of? He made me think of that gallant Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike, stemming the torrential flood.
Just as I was thinking that (with no honest time for thinking anything) I saw something else. Jack the Goat saw it, too, and caught my arm. The ladder defended by Captain Daudet fell from the starboard end of our bridge. At the port end of the bridge---right out on the wing---two men were fighting. Silently, almost secretly, they struggled in and out of shadow, bodies locked, arms trapped by arms, faces rammed together.
I would have yelled when I saw them there. De Nogales, the Venezuelan, and Le Canif, the Paris apache. Legionnaire against Legionnaire. Fighting like the very devil.
Busy at the ladder, Captain Daudet failed to see them. But the little Yankee and I saw them, that is so. We saw the evil hate-filled face of Le Canif, the stricken, knotted countenance of De Nogales. We saw ruby drops scattered from De Nogales's cheek. We saw a short, wet dirk lashing in the fist of the foul Frenchman.
Before the Yankee or I could move a foot, the Venezuelan sighted us.
"Aqui!" he screamed. Shoot him! He murdered the others. He started the mutiny. Kill him! Por Dios, I am---"
Too late. Le Canif wrenched like a tiger. Out came that short, wet knife. Into shadow and out of shadow. De Nogales pirouetted like a dancer, and crashed to his face. It was all so quick.
Jack the Goat fired and I fired. But the apache made a flying leap. Like a catamount he went past us. Like a catamount he landed on the back of Captain Daudet, who was bent, unsuspecting over his shouting Chaut-chaut gun. In and out went that devil's knife. Captain Daudet spraddled flat beside the gun. The Yankee and I hurled ourselves at the traitorous Legionnaire. Our clawing hands snatched shadows. Le Canif had thrown himself down the ladder to join the Tirailleurs at its base.
DIEU! but the little Yankee moved fast. Springing on the Chaut-chaut gun, he had it hammering in no time. Tirailleur bullets were hissing up to the bridge in a deadly rain. They did not touch Jack the Goat. He was swinging the gun, weaving a network of bullets across the main deck. His first burst of fire caught that Paris apache, Le Canif, smack in the chest, and all but knocked him to pieces. That was good. We saw Le Canif drop into a pile of white uniforms cluttering the ladder base. Then the Tirailleur charge was scattering back and away.
I had swung my Lebel into action, and was raking the shadows clinging to the engine-room house amidships where the funnel jutted skyward. The deck between that house amidships and the bridge where we hung was now clear, save for white lumps scattered here and there, and that piece of garbage in Legion uniform sprawled at the foot of our ladder.
The Yankee with his automatic gun and I with my Lebel drew a line of fire from rail to rail across that deck. Bullets whistled out of the shadows aft, winging over bridge deck. But Jack the Goat was sheltered by the body of Captain Daudet, and I was behind the canvas fence of the bridge-rail. Thus protected, they could not spot us readily.
"Quick, then," the Yankee howled at me. "Get the sailors, Corday!" Where in the name of Heaven have they been hiding? Run forward and find them. Bring guns and another drum of ammunition for the Chaut-chaut. I can hold them back. I can keep them from the ladder. They dare not cross that open deck, and they cannot go under this bridge to get forward. Tell the sailors to come up here. If once those blacks should gain the pilot house --"
The sailors! I had forgotten them. I saw the Yankee could hold those African mutineers for the moment, so I raced back into the alleyway.
As I passed the cabin door behind which Captain Daudet's wife was locked I heard her sobbing in hysteria.
The sound lent wings to my feet.
Bawling for aid, I rushed to the captain's cabin. That captain was not there. I banged into the little chart room. Empty! I scrambled into the pilot house. Not a soul to be seen; and the wheel turning idly as if maneuvered by ghostly hands.
Suspicion came suddenly. Sick with fear, I rushed down to the force deck. Not a sailor to be seen. Now I was sweating and terrified, in all honest truth. Like a maniac I went galloping to the forecastle and screamed into the forecastle companion. No answer save a scurry of rats.
By the bones of King Michael, it got me like a hand on the stomach. I flung around from the hatch, and saw!
Empty boat-davits. Yes! With a shriek I sprang to the bow rail.
Overside the water was lost in shade.
The moon above had gone, leaving the Red Sea a sweep of muttering gloom.
Far away I could hear the sound of squeaking oar-locks and muted voices.
Sapristi! That thrice-damned crew of sailors, that craven mariner captain had robbed the Fleur de France of her only accessible lifeboat, and fled.
Curse? if I ever cursed any one in my life, I cursed those sailors of the Fleur de France. But I had little time to do them justice. I hailed twice and got no answer save the slop of waves against our prow.
Then I screamed my names for them. Names that should have made vinegar of the milk in their veins. And then the sound of the Chaut-chaut gun chattering on the bridge flung me into my sense, and I raced back to that upper deck once more.
I was sweating blood as I pounded aft through the gloomy alley of the bridge. What a gay situation was this? In my mind I could see it all. That black hull of a steamboat lolling idly down a lost ocean. Those raging black troopers charging again and again from the after deck. Charging to rip apart two measly white men, lone defenders of the honor of France. Charging to capture the transport. Charging to gain a cabin where a woman his weeping---a white girl whose slim beauty they had watched and marked with their bulbous, baleful eyes.
I gained the Yankee's side just in time to fend off another charge. The Tirailleurs were learning respect for that fast-shooting Chaut-chaut gun, and they did not press the attack too far. Carbines spitting, they came forward with a wariness, like so many gorillas clad in white.
They moved down the port and starboard sides of the well-deck, intent on getting under the bridge. Not a devil of them got across the deck. The Yankee and I drew the line with withering steel slugs.
In the old days the sailors of British merchantmen would keep idle passengers off the foredeck where they worked by drawing a chalk line from rail to rail. They called this "chalking their toes." So the little American and I chalked the toes of those howling demon Tirailleurs with a line of bullets that must have sawed a strip out of that deck.
Jack the Goat ripped back and across with his rapid firer. I sharpshot into the shadows. They retreated aft of the engine room house once more. Our gunfire, not needed further, faded to an echo.
The Yankee whirled on me. "Those sailors?"
"Gone!" I panted. "But fast. Here is another drum of bullets for the Chaut-chaut. There are two more drums in our cabin. Then---"
"You mean," he panted in a strained voice. "that the sailors have deserted? They took the boat on the bow."
Suddenly he was grabbing at me.
"Corday! We're alone with that girl in the cabin. Those blacks will attack again and again and again. How can we run this boat? No doubt they have slaughtered the men of the engine-room."
He seemed stunned. C'est ca! So did I. Our silence was one of horror. We were both thinking the same thought---the girl in the cabin.
Overhead the stars smiled. The boat rolled gently on a swell and the stars walked in a brilliant arc across the sky. Amidships all was still, but aft we could hear the murmuring of angry men. Once or twice a tongue of fire spat from the shadows there and bullets whistled over our heads. Jack the Goat was panting.
Then suddenly he seized my hand in a crushing clasp. "Corday! There's a way out of this! We've got to save that girl. We've got to save this ship, too. Think, man. Down in Somaliland they're waiting. Waiting for this cargo. Food and ammunition."
"Parbleu!" I moaned. The boat is crippled. To hell with it. But you and I and the girl. Like three mice waiting for the tigers."
I believe I started to cry. The Yankee and I could have gotten along, you comprehend. But there was the wife of poor Daudet.
Do you know what the little Yankee did? He kicked me in the shin.
"Corday!" he gasped. "Listen to me. Listen, I say! Off there is the coast of Africa---Eritrea. You remember the Legion platoon starting from Taklai? They are somewhere along that coast. You must find them!"
I swore a bitter oath. Those mountain peaks were miles away. A haze under the stars.
Jack the Goat twisted my wrist. "You've got to swim for it. Look! Get a plank, a cabin bench, anything. Drop overside. Swim. You can make it. Then find those Legionnaires. Find a boat, a dhow, any craft at all. And bring them back. Our boat will not move from this position. First you must run to the pilot house and lash the wheel. You hear? You understand?" His words came in a vibrant rush.
Sacre nom de Dieu!" I swore. "Do you think I would leave you alone in this trap? Do you think I would desert you on this sink of hell to face alone those black wolves? Do you think I would leave you and that white girl---"
The little Yankee's clasp tore into my flesh. "Corday! Do as I say. It's our one chance. I can hold them from the bridge. Listen! I want to save that girl more than anything else on earth."
Sweat was wiggling down his face. His eyes sparkled like burnished points of metal.
"I want to save her I tell you," the Yankee insisted. "If we could make shore with you it would be good. But she could never swim it. I cannot swim a stroke. You must go---
"I cannot!"
"You will! First lash the wheel. Then jump and swim like all hell. I will hold the bridge until you return."
"You will never hold it," I snarled. When daylight comes and those savages see only one man up here---"
But his eyes commanded. If you could have seen his face you would have understood. A stern cord stood down his jaw, and his teeth grinned.
"Get on, Corday. I'll hold out. I'll hold out for days. Just bring me some grub and leave it to me --"
The spang of carbines snapped short his words. He trained the sights of his Chaut-chaut ready to answer the fire that had burned up from amidships. The Chaut-chaut rattled. The Africans stopped their shooting. Jack the Goat flung around at me again.
"Will you go?"
I could do nothing but nod. He clasped my hand. " You will save us all, Corday, and prove the hero I know you are. And listen, my friend. If -- if anything has happened to me when you return, will you take that little packet from my breast pocket? It will explain. You will take it?"
I promised. he thumped me bravely on the chest and I fled to the pilot house. There I lashed the wheel. After that I foraged for rations and a canteen or two of water, which I placed within easy reach of Horatius-at-the-bridge. Then I dashed to my cabin. The sight of the dead German, the dead Russian, the dead Spaniard in there all but broke my resolution. But I caught up a bench, raced up the alley, dropped to the fore deck.
Down there the Fleur de France (A gorgeous flower, was she not?) was silent as a tomb. The high bridge lifted like a ghostly square castle against the stars. I thought of the girl locked in the cabin. I thought of the little man on the after deck of the bridge crouching behind the Chaut-chaut gun.
I thought of the black swarm waiting to charge from behind the engine room house. I wondered about the packet in his pocket.
Those thoughts raced through my numbed mind. Then I said a little prayer for the Yankee and that girl -- the first prayer I had asked in years; and I said a little prayer for me. And I dropped the wooden bench overboard, stripped off from my uniform, and plunged after.
Chill water struck at my face as I pushed away. The bench bobbed before me to give me courage. Just that wooden bench and I, against the miles that reached to the coast. Just the bench and I and the memory of what lay behind.
Turning my head, I could see the dark, silent hulk of the Fleur de France drifting soundlessly into a water mist.
CHAPTER IV
TO THE RESCUE!
There were times when I thought I was going to die. My arms were pulling from their sockets. My legs were knotting with cramp. My spine and skull were frozen and the stomach in me burned with the sea water.
Then I would think of a little Yankee guarding the bridge of a skulking hell-ship. I would visualize the white woman locked in the cabin, the gorillas rushing across slippery decks. And I would swim.
There were times when I wanted to die. Those times were the worst. And then le bon Dieu would lend me power from unknown sources of the little dynamo that drives all men through a hard, harsh world. Le bon Dieu would float that paralyzed, stone body of mine; would move my legs and thrash my arms and hang my leaden chin on the edge of the wooden bench.
And the force which had parted the waters of that very same sea to allow an ancient people to march through, turned the wind and the waves to my aid; sent the currents toward the shore.
A blazing copper sun rolled up behind me and made of the water a blistering, metal element that strove to fight me under. I could no longer see our ship, the Fleur de France. I could barely watch the mountains of Eritrea; and they grew no larger in size, despite my efforts to near them.
Sacre! Of that terrible, terrible swim I can remember nothing more. I only know that eternities and eternities of time crawled by, that the heart shriveled inside of me, that my bones expired, that the sun finally got into my eyes, and that two coal-black, ugly fisherman who looked like angels dragged me out of the water and raced me shoreward in a crazy fishing smack.
I spent a night in a hut that smelled like a sewer and looked like one, battling for sanity, battling against fever, shrieking and fighting and all but killing the homely devils who had saved me from the sea.
They tied me in a net and rushed away, to return hours later with a tall, thin white man wearing a thin, white beard. The thin old fellow gave me something to drink. I woke with sunshine on my face, and met the thin and bearded old man.
He told me I was sane, living and a miracle under the sky to be doing so. He told me he was Doctor Augustin Jacques Edouard d'Etiennes, a medical missionary.
Was this Eritrea? Yes, it was. Had he heard of a Legionnaire platoon in the vicinity? But yes, a platoon had been on its way to the Somali coast; they had marched through the town only four hours ago.
Was that his horse waiting in the lane before his hut? It was.
Two hours later, half naked and a third mad, I galloped like a wild man into a knot of marching Legionnaires. They were dusty, footsore, weary and ragged as the ears of a hound. But their kepis were set at a jaunty angle and the barrels of their Lebel rifles shimmered in the noonday sun. They had been singing lusty discords at the top of lusty lungs. That famous marching song of the Foreign Legion of France:
The scarlet sun clambered down behind the bumboat's stern, enameling the water in our wake. The Legionnaires hauled madly at the oars. Eastward. Eastward where the Fleur de France might lie.
A few rakish dhows and fishermen bobbed past. They had not sighted the transport. The Red Sea was immense. Arab and Eritrean sailors stared in wonderment as our bumboat scuttled away. Eastward. Where the night was toiling in sweepy, greenish shadows down the skies.
"Parbleu! sobbed the Legionnaire lieutenant.
He was a boy from St. Cyr, with light blond hair and a grim, mannish jaw. A Croix de Guerre was on his chest and a scarlet fourragere on his shoulder. He must have been a hard one, to win those citations and a Legion commission in his youth. Never before, though, had he embarked on such an expedition. You could see it had him by the nerves.
"Parbleu!" I hope we get there on time. Tell me, my old one, did you hoist a distress signal?"
Miserably I shook my head. What would a soldier know of marine signals! The lieutenant cursed, fingering his automatic. The men drove their shoulders to the oars. The native in our boat scanned the horizon. Directly ahead we were raising an island. One of the Dahlak Islands. Few ships cruised this position of the Red Sea. If our transport lay out there we should sight it soon. We did not.
Night came swiftly. On high the tropic stars flashed like lanterns set in a vast dome of indigo. The island drifted near. The boats of the fisherman and the Arab dhows dropped into the sunset. A Japanese moon, the color of a hamadryad's eye, struggled up through the clouds crouching on the island.
The elliptical moon shed a pallid silver light across the restless water, and raised a fog. What a fog! At first there were ragged wisps that smelled of salt. The wisps merged into long tatters of gray haze that rolled like battle-smoke.
Finally our bumboat was plowing through a tumbling vapor, wet, sticky, and white. A vapor that swirled and coiled about us, touched ghostly fingers to our hot cheeks, deadened the sound of thrashing oars and scattered water.
Now we were engulfed.
Fog and night on the Red Sea, and a skinny Eritrean native to guide our rudder on this impossible, awful hunt.
Fog and night. Never would we find that Flower of France. Never would we sight her sinister hull. But the young lieutenant cursed in gallant French. The Legionnaires pulled away. The fog whispered around us and wrapped us in an evil cement.
At intervals the bumboat cruised fast through a "fog dog". You know the term? A hole in the vapor, it is. A rent in the pouring mist. A pocket of cleared water where the black waves glittered, stabbed by moonbeams shafting from the patch of sky above.
It was mighty weird to bob into one of those open spaces, rock across a moonlit patch of ink-like water and lunge into scene-less mist again. It was hopeless to be blinded so. Terrible.
It was weirder still when the little African cramped in our bow suddenly shot a black hand heavenward and shouted: "Bwana! Listen!"
Did we listen? Sacre! Our ear drums exploded, bursting with the effort. How we listened! The men stopped their oars. The boat chopped through a gentle swell. When we heard it we raised a yell. You bet we did. There! There it was again. The short, smart sound of rifle-fire.
"Quick!" screamed our lieutenant.
The men drove their oars into water.
Spray flew. We scudded from the fog into an open area of glimmering sea a mile abroad. There, hemmed in by the weaving shroud of mists, lolled the ship, Flower of France!
She sneaked along, her gaunt funnel poked up against that oval-shaped moon, water burbling gently under her high bows and flat stern. She sneaked across the water slowly; inching through the wan moonshine that filled the fog-less area and made the black water glint. She sneaked like a thief; her prow pointed toward that spot where the island hung hidden in the fog.
Rags of white vapor clung, coiling, about her high bridge, her deck amidships, her taffrail. Her black hull glistened as if perspiring. On her fore desk a loading-boom swung and softly groaned. In her bowels loose chain was clanking.
"Aunt of the Devil!" whispered the lieutenant. (One whispers when one sees a specter.) "There is your transport, my old one. But, nom de Dieu! Is there life aboard her?"
A volley of rifle shots answered his words. We were bearing down on the ship's starboard quarter, you understand. Rat-tat-tat-tat! came the sound.
Like hammer-taps. Like a brief flurry of hail pounding a tin roof.
The mists that wrenched the Fleur de France amidships were split by slim, sporadic tongues of red flame. Those were the carbines of the Tirailleurs.
Spang! Spang! came the reply. Bursts of fire flickered out of the vapor that hung the bridge. Shots from a Lebel rifle!
I could have screeched with joy. That was the little Yankee! By all the gods, he had held out! He had held the bridge.
For two days and two nights and a third evening he had held the bridge alone. That little Yankee who looked like a wax doll. That little Yankee called Jack the Goat. Mon Dieu! I could have wept with the grandeur of it.
"Do you hear?" I panted at the Lieutenant, "See? Lebel-fire on that bridge up there. It is the American!"
Tears were crawling down the young officer's face.
"Grand!" he muttered. " Grand!" Jerking his head, he snapped an order to his Legionnaires. The carbines were snapping on the main deck of the Fleur de France again. The Legionnaires hauled like madmen on their oars. Our bumboat sped, rocketing forward.
"Softly," growled the lieutenant. "We must not be seen. We will board her after deck. A squad of us. We will trap those mutineers."
He turned to me. " They must be gathered before that engine room house, eh? They will not see under their stern? Look! Could we plant our machine gun up there by the funnel? Good! We will mow them down like flies."
Our steersman, one of the Eritreans from Mubarek, did well. We scudded closer and closer to the ship. Now we could see her after deck was deserted. Those black mutineers were busy amidships.
Dieu! How had that lone Yankee held out so long! It suddenly occurred
to me that the mutineers were making this furious assault because the transport had drifted close on the island. Ah, what a Yankee!
Then our boat was under her taffrail. The men shipped their oars. The little black lookout on our bow---though terrified to death, I wager---had valiantly grabbed a hawser dragging from the deck above. The taffrail was not six inches above our heads.
I went up first. The after deck behind that engine room house was deserted. I motioned the others to come. The lieutenant swung up from the bumboat. Five others came, Lebels hung on their backs. The fifth man dragged up the Maxim gun.
The lieutenant gave low-voiced orders. The men remaining in the boat were to pull away, bear down on the port beam and board her there. Shoot from the water if needs must. Bien! The bumboat slid away.
I was leader now. Silently, rifles unlimbered the men followed me. In frantic haste we climbed a ladder to the roof of the engine room house. From this point of vantage we could shoot down on the main deck. We spread in a stooping line, scuttled up the low roof past the cold black funnel. The mist-hung bridge up forward we could scarcely see. We could see the flame of a Lebel up there, but that was all.
But the Tirailleurs we could see, all right. We looked right down on their heads. Their tarbooshes were bobbing. Their carbines gleamed and spouted flame.
The giant, Ahmed, moved among them bawling hoarsely, knife in hand. He was urging them to charge, but they did not charge. Why? Certainly they had not sighted us on the roof behind them. Certainly they were not afraid of one lone soldier on the bridge up there.
Our young officer growled. We planted our Maxim gun. We aimed the Maxim at the row of shoulders below; aimed our rifles. The lieutenant raised his hand to give the order to fire. His hand never fell. As if by signal a sudden breeze whipped across the Fleur de France and swept away the fog. Like that. And we saw!
"Soldats de la Legion---de la Legion
Etrangere---
N'ayant pas de nation---La France es
votre mere!"
From a distance above the clatter of my lathering mount, I had caught the drumming of their brodequins (a type of boot), and the echo of that chorus lingering against the scarlet Eritrean cliffs. It was the most beautiful song in all the universe.
“Mubarek”, I think the town was called. It was nothing of a town, at that. But in those days Eritrea was a sort of unclaimed territory. Perhaps Italy should own it. Perhaps France. Neither country was certain. The Eritreans were too black and lazy and genial to care. Certainly in Mubarek nobody cared.
There was a regiment of sick Italian troopers in the town waiting to march over and try a few shots at the fuzzy-wuzzies of Abyssinia, and the only thing they cared about was finding decent drinking water.
That afternoon when our platoon of Legionnaires darted into Mubarek the Italians were away looking for drinking water. The point is, they had a bumboat waiting in an inlet near their camp. A dried up Venetian lieutenant with furious black mustaches, and two faded soldiers from Verona, by the looks of them, guarded the big bumboat and reeled spaghetti into their unshaved faces.
The lieutenant of our Legion platoon hit the Italian officer with the black mustaches and knocked him into a pot of spaghetti. The two faded soldiers from Verona promptly bolted. Others of our Legion men scoured Mubarek and came back with three terrified ebony fishermen who could navigate the Red Sea.
All of which was not funny. It was not. We of the Legion were in a ghastly hurry to get out there across the water and locate a black scar of a boat fouled with mutiny. A boat that would be creeping down the sea with engines dead, with its main deck running crimson, with (I prayed to Heaven) a little Legionnaire defending its bridge behind a pounding, white-hot Chaut-chaut gun. A little Legionnaire with the heart of Yankee-land to keep him going and a key to a certain cabin door fast in his pocket to keep him from dying.
Soldiers of the French Foreign Legion are not seamen. But no sailors on earth ever manned the oars of a bumboat with stronger arms and stouter wills to win. The oar blades flashed silver in the blatant tropic sunlight. Spume and salted sea spurted from the bumboat's bow. A Mubarek native stood up there on lookout, warned to strain his eyes.
The young lieutenant of the Legionnaires and I stood behind the native. An automatic waited in the young lieutenant's fist. I clutched a hair-triggered Lebel. In the stern of the boat we carried a Maxim rapid-fire gun.
Sixty or more hours had gone since I left the Fleur de France. Dieu, what a lying name. And I hoped with every inch of my being for the native on lookout to sight her. Yet I feared in the pit of my soul to sight her at all.
The scarlet sun clambered down behind the bumboat's stern, enameling the water in our wake. The Legionnaires hauled madly at the oars. Eastward. Eastward where the Fleur de France might lie.
A few rakish dhows and fishermen bobbed past. They had not sighted the transport. The Red Sea was immense. Arab and Eritrean sailors stared in wonderment as our bumboat scuttled away. Eastward. Where the night was toiling in sweepy, greenish shadows down the skies.
"Parbleu! sobbed the Legionnaire lieutenant.
He was a boy from St. Cyr, with light blond hair and a grim, mannish jaw. A Croix de Guerre was on his chest and a scarlet fourragere on his shoulder. He must have been a hard one, to win those citations and a Legion commission in his youth. Never before, though, had he embarked on such an expedition. You could see it had him by the nerves.
"Parbleu!" I hope we get there on time. Tell me, my old one, did you hoist a distress signal?"
Miserably I shook my head. What would a soldier know of marine signals! The lieutenant cursed, fingering his automatic. The men drove their shoulders to the oars. The native in our boat scanned the horizon. Directly ahead we were raising an island. One of the Dahlak Islands. Few ships cruised this position of the Red Sea. If our transport lay out there we should sight it soon. We did not.
Night came swiftly. On high the tropic stars flashed like lanterns set in a vast dome of indigo. The island drifted near. The boats of the fisherman and the Arab dhows dropped into the sunset. A Japanese moon, the color of a hamadryad's eye, struggled up through the clouds crouching on the island.
The elliptical moon shed a pallid silver light across the restless water, and raised a fog. What a fog! At first there were ragged wisps that smelled of salt. The wisps merged into long tatters of gray haze that rolled like battle-smoke.
Finally our bumboat was plowing through a tumbling vapor, wet, sticky, and white. A vapor that swirled and coiled about us, touched ghostly fingers to our hot cheeks, deadened the sound of thrashing oars and scattered water.
Now we were engulfed.
Fog and night on the Red Sea, and a skinny Eritrean native to guide our rudder on this impossible, awful hunt.
Fog and night. Never would we find that Flower of France. Never would we sight her sinister hull. But the young lieutenant cursed in gallant French. The Legionnaires pulled away. The fog whispered around us and wrapped us in an evil cement.
At intervals the bumboat cruised fast through a "fog dog". You know the term? A hole in the vapor, it is. A rent in the pouring mist. A pocket of cleared water where the black waves glittered, stabbed by moonbeams shafting from the patch of sky above.
It was mighty weird to bob into one of those open spaces, rock across a moonlit patch of ink-like water and lunge into scene-less mist again. It was hopeless to be blinded so. Terrible.
It was weirder still when the little African cramped in our bow suddenly shot a black hand heavenward and shouted: "Bwana! Listen!"
Did we listen? Sacre! Our ear drums exploded, bursting with the effort. How we listened! The men stopped their oars. The boat chopped through a gentle swell. When we heard it we raised a yell. You bet we did. There! There it was again. The short, smart sound of rifle-fire.
"Quick!" screamed our lieutenant.
The men drove their oars into water.
Spray flew. We scudded from the fog into an open area of glimmering sea a mile abroad. There, hemmed in by the weaving shroud of mists, lolled the ship, Flower of France!
She sneaked along, her gaunt funnel poked up against that oval-shaped moon, water burbling gently under her high bows and flat stern. She sneaked across the water slowly; inching through the wan moonshine that filled the fog-less area and made the black water glint. She sneaked like a thief; her prow pointed toward that spot where the island hung hidden in the fog.
Rags of white vapor clung, coiling, about her high bridge, her deck amidships, her taffrail. Her black hull glistened as if perspiring. On her fore desk a loading-boom swung and softly groaned. In her bowels loose chain was clanking.
"Aunt of the Devil!" whispered the lieutenant. (One whispers when one sees a specter.) "There is your transport, my old one. But, nom de Dieu! Is there life aboard her?"
A volley of rifle shots answered his words. We were bearing down on the ship's starboard quarter, you understand. Rat-tat-tat-tat! came the sound.
Like hammer-taps. Like a brief flurry of hail pounding a tin roof.
The mists that wrenched the Fleur de France amidships were split by slim, sporadic tongues of red flame. Those were the carbines of the Tirailleurs.
Spang! Spang! came the reply. Bursts of fire flickered out of the vapor that hung the bridge. Shots from a Lebel rifle!
I could have screeched with joy. That was the little Yankee! By all the gods, he had held out! He had held the bridge.
For two days and two nights and a third evening he had held the bridge alone. That little Yankee who looked like a wax doll. That little Yankee called Jack the Goat. Mon Dieu! I could have wept with the grandeur of it.
"Do you hear?" I panted at the Lieutenant, "See? Lebel-fire on that bridge up there. It is the American!"
Tears were crawling down the young officer's face.
"Grand!" he muttered. " Grand!" Jerking his head, he snapped an order to his Legionnaires. The carbines were snapping on the main deck of the Fleur de France again. The Legionnaires hauled like madmen on their oars. Our bumboat sped, rocketing forward.
"Softly," growled the lieutenant. "We must not be seen. We will board her after deck. A squad of us. We will trap those mutineers."
He turned to me. " They must be gathered before that engine room house, eh? They will not see under their stern? Look! Could we plant our machine gun up there by the funnel? Good! We will mow them down like flies."
Our steersman, one of the Eritreans from Mubarek, did well. We scudded closer and closer to the ship. Now we could see her after deck was deserted. Those black mutineers were busy amidships.
Dieu! How had that lone Yankee held out so long! It suddenly occurred
to me that the mutineers were making this furious assault because the transport had drifted close on the island. Ah, what a Yankee!
Then our boat was under her taffrail. The men shipped their oars. The little black lookout on our bow---though terrified to death, I wager---had valiantly grabbed a hawser dragging from the deck above. The taffrail was not six inches above our heads.
I went up first. The after deck behind that engine room house was deserted. I motioned the others to come. The lieutenant swung up from the bumboat. Five others came, Lebels hung on their backs. The fifth man dragged up the Maxim gun.
The lieutenant gave low-voiced orders. The men remaining in the boat were to pull away, bear down on the port beam and board her there. Shoot from the water if needs must. Bien! The bumboat slid away.
I was leader now. Silently, rifles unlimbered the men followed me. In frantic haste we climbed a ladder to the roof of the engine room house. From this point of vantage we could shoot down on the main deck. We spread in a stooping line, scuttled up the low roof past the cold black funnel. The mist-hung bridge up forward we could scarcely see. We could see the flame of a Lebel up there, but that was all.
But the Tirailleurs we could see, all right. We looked right down on their heads. Their tarbooshes were bobbing. Their carbines gleamed and spouted flame.
The giant, Ahmed, moved among them bawling hoarsely, knife in hand. He was urging them to charge, but they did not charge. Why? Certainly they had not sighted us on the roof behind them. Certainly they were not afraid of one lone soldier on the bridge up there.
Our young officer growled. We planted our Maxim gun. We aimed the Maxim at the row of shoulders below; aimed our rifles. The lieutenant raised his hand to give the order to fire. His hand never fell. As if by signal a sudden breeze whipped across the Fleur de France and swept away the fog. Like that. And we saw!
CHAPTER V
THE DEATH WATCH!
If I live through thirteen incarnations, being reborn after thirteen deaths, I will not forget that sight. Perhaps at the thirteenth death I will forget it. If so, thirteen is a lucky number. Sapristi!
You comprehend how a breeze had abruptly dissolved the fog; lifted the curtain? Lifted the curtain, yes. Like a curtain lifting to show a stage. But yes. A stage!
There were the five Legionnaires, the young lieutenant, me---on the roof of the engine room house. Gallery seats.
Directly below us on the main deck crowded the black Tirailleurs. They were wanting like anything to rush the bridge, those Tirailleurs. They wanted to capture the wheelhouse up there. They wanted to get at a white woman in a cabin up there. They wanted to do it before the ship moved alongside an island they knew was not far away. But they never dared charge the bridge. For that bridge was the stage!
Uncle of Satan, how can I tell it? Who would believe? There were men on the bridge up there. Men, I say. They stood in a row at the rail, looking down at the deck below, But they never were men. Non! No men had eyes like those. No man ever held a rifle slung under the arm, with the stock caught under the armpit---and fired the gun without finger on trigger!
The devil! They stood in a row you understand, on the after deck of that high bridge. Side by side. Their chests leaning against the rail. Their rifles poked over the rail. Their kepis hung over their ears jauntily. Their chins on their chests, not so jauntily. But there they were in the line. Schneider the German, Kalnikoff the Russian, Fuertes the Spaniard, De Nogales of Venezuela. And all dead! Every one!
Yet, they were alive. The German fired his gun. The Russian fired his gun. The Spaniard fired his gun. De Nogales fired his gun. One, two, three, four---like that. The bullets went awry, but those Tirailleurs all screamed as if they had been hit.
"Name of fourteen saints!" groaned the lieutenant at my side. Look at that! Look at that! Those Legionnaires on the bridge---"
How I looked! Their eyes moved. Their heads nodded clumsily. Their guns fired again.
The Tirailleurs sent up a moan. We on the engine room house sent up a moan. We did not want to believe those four on the bridge were dead. But I knew they were. My companions knew it. The black Tirailleurs knew it. They wore the color of death, those four. It is hot on the Red Sea, no matter the chill of the moon. You would know had you seen us sweat. Sacre! Ice water from our veins.
And while we stared the play went on. Two men strolled out of the alleyway up there. Arm in arm they came. Step by step. They stalked out on that deck and they moved to the top of the ladder. Captain Dieudonney Daudet and the little Yankee.
The American looked like a wax doll. The captain looked like the devil. He carried his sword under his arm and held his head high. The Yankee held an automatic and was smiling.
At the ladder top they halted. And then---by the name of Boniface!---Captain Daudet let out a yell. He yelled, I say, and the Legionnare last in the row at the rail yelled back.
Back and forth they yelled, and in half a split minute-tick those Tirailleurs below were yelling, too. Down on their faces they went. They bobbed their heads, flattened their bodies and clawed at the slippery deck. And right then---as if unable to restrain its nerve longer---the Maxim gun beside me let go; and flung reality to the scene. Our machine gun roared and roared.
It seemed to snap a thread. Captain Daudet and the little Yankee came tumbling down the ladder.
Ah, that Flower of France! The little Yankee was dead, but he told the secret. Or part of it. For his left leg had been lashed to the right leg of his captain. The four on the bridge had been tied standing against that rail. Ropes from the gun triggers led to the alleyway where the living had hidden. Ropes from their arms. Ropes from their collars. What a show!
And the gallant Yankee who had planned it all? The gallant little American who had told me he would hold out somehow? Because he had finally been shot, he could not explain.
But I remembered the packet in his breast pocket. , and sought it out with quavering fingers. The little package told the story. I read it to myself. I read it to the young lieutenant. I read it to the white girl safe in her cabin. We wept. Think of the bravery of it all! Think of the jest!
And so before the curtain came down for the last time, the young lieutenant stooped and pinned his Croix de Guerre on the Yankee's breast and hung the scarlet cord across the Yankee's shoulder.
And the Fleur de France, drifting into the fog bank, wrapped him in a kindly, cool mist.
Yet, they were alive. The German fired his gun. The Russian fired his gun. The Spaniard fired his gun. De Nogales fired his gun. One, two, three, four---like that. The bullets went awry, but those Tirailleurs all screamed as if they had been hit.
"Name of fourteen saints!" groaned the lieutenant at my side. Look at that! Look at that! Those Legionnaires on the bridge---"
How I looked! Their eyes moved. Their heads nodded clumsily. Their guns fired again.
The Tirailleurs sent up a moan. We on the engine room house sent up a moan. We did not want to believe those four on the bridge were dead. But I knew they were. My companions knew it. The black Tirailleurs knew it. They wore the color of death, those four. It is hot on the Red Sea, no matter the chill of the moon. You would know had you seen us sweat. Sacre! Ice water from our veins.
And while we stared the play went on. Two men strolled out of the alleyway up there. Arm in arm they came. Step by step. They stalked out on that deck and they moved to the top of the ladder. Captain Dieudonney Daudet and the little Yankee.
The American looked like a wax doll. The captain looked like the devil. He carried his sword under his arm and held his head high. The Yankee held an automatic and was smiling.
At the ladder top they halted. And then---by the name of Boniface!---Captain Daudet let out a yell. He yelled, I say, and the Legionnare last in the row at the rail yelled back.
Back and forth they yelled, and in half a split minute-tick those Tirailleurs below were yelling, too. Down on their faces they went. They bobbed their heads, flattened their bodies and clawed at the slippery deck. And right then---as if unable to restrain its nerve longer---the Maxim gun beside me let go; and flung reality to the scene. Our machine gun roared and roared.
It seemed to snap a thread. Captain Daudet and the little Yankee came tumbling down the ladder.
Ah, that Flower of France! The little Yankee was dead, but he told the secret. Or part of it. For his left leg had been lashed to the right leg of his captain. The four on the bridge had been tied standing against that rail. Ropes from the gun triggers led to the alleyway where the living had hidden. Ropes from their arms. Ropes from their collars. What a show!
And the gallant Yankee who had planned it all? The gallant little American who had told me he would hold out somehow? Because he had finally been shot, he could not explain.
But I remembered the packet in his breast pocket. , and sought it out with quavering fingers. The little package told the story. I read it to myself. I read it to the young lieutenant. I read it to the white girl safe in her cabin. We wept. Think of the bravery of it all! Think of the jest!
And so before the curtain came down for the last time, the young lieutenant stooped and pinned his Croix de Guerre on the Yankee's breast and hung the scarlet cord across the Yankee's shoulder.
And the Fleur de France, drifting into the fog bank, wrapped him in a kindly, cool mist.
EPILOGUE
OLD Thibaut Corday, veteran of Legionnaires, poured himself a drink with shaking hands; and gulped it down the way no Frenchman should. MacDowell and I drank, too. The mat of moonlight had moved across the floor. Now the pale light played on the old man's face, and the eyes in his leathery head were burnished blue stones.
"Nom de Dieu!" he breathed. But there was a puppet show for you! Think of that little Jack the Goat holding off those tigers by lining up those soldiers who had died. The Tirailleurs could perhaps brave a corpse that shot a gun. But they could not face a corpse who yelled. No more than could those tribesmen of the Ouled Nail. And thus did the strange little American hold the Fleur de France on her way to Somaliland. Thus did he save the transport and the wife of Captain Daudet."
"But," muttered MacDowell, how about those dead Legionnaires---"
"Yelling?" Old Thibaut Corday smiled. "Look, then."
He held out the thin little book that had come from his cupboard of memories; the little book with the hole drilled through its leaves from cover to cover.
"This," said the veteran with a smile," was the packet in the Yankee's breast pocket. You see that bullet hole? Sardonic is it not? Our Legion had lost its head and killed one of the bravest men who ever honored its ranks. That bullet-hole, my friend, was made by our Maxim gun. A wild, terror-driven shot! See, too---the title of the book."
We read the title, MacDowell and I. The Britisher made a noise in his throat. I spoke it out to make sure.
MY FORTY YEARS AS A SHOWMAN
By Professor John Smith
Famous Maker of Marionettes, and America's
Greatest Ventriloquist
MacDowell got to his feet. "An astonishing story, Corday." he acknowledged. "And you were right---a story to make one dream. But I don't like your yarn, old top. I don't like to have the Yankee shot down at the end."
"The only way for it to have been," murmured the old Frenchman, getting to his feet with a sigh. "Look here."
He opened the book to the title page. Moonbeams slanted across the yellow paper. MacDowell and I saw a photograph printed on the leaf. A picture of a doll-like little man wearing a stiff goatee and a high hat and a cut-away. Posed beside him in the rigid manner of those "family-album" times was a girl. Despite the fading of the print, despite the outlandish costume of the day, we could see the girl was of marked beauty. And here was a strange thing:
The bullet which had sped through the book had clipped through that picture on its fly leaf, making a hole through that lady's heart. Below the photograph ran the legend: "Professor John Smith and His Wife."
Now Thibaut Corday spoke softly. "Do you remember he told me of that wife? She had left him on the very night of his triumph in New York. That was why he had joined La France Legion. So. But listen, my friends" this picture cannot affect you the way it affected me when first I saw it that dreadful night aboard the Fleur de France. For then I knew. The little Yankee had purposely thrown himself down that ladder to stop our Maxim bullets. Le bon Dieu knows how to exact justice. Think of the punishment it would give that false wife of his to learn of that heroism, that sacrifice. And she did learn of it, most certainly. C'est ca! For that Amorette, that beautiful woman of Captain Daudet's---that lovely lady who had waited in the cabin while a lone, brave Yankee Legionnaire defended the bridge with the greatest courage---I have ever known---but yes! She was the girl of this photograph! She was the American's wife. "
Old Thibaut Corday's voice went silent in his beard. Outside, the moonlit city of Algiers was a city of the "Arabian Nights." Down on the square before the mosque the crowd of Arabs was dispersing, murmurous in the perfumed dark. We could catch a note of laughter. The puppet show was done.
THE END of The Death Watch
* * *
PHANTOM BULLETS by from 1 June 1929 Argosy
End Comment by Stim: The final chapter of The Death Watch illustrates, I think, how a good fiction writer by use of exciting prose may divert the reader’s attention from the extreme implausibility of the denouement, i.e., the action becomes so enjoyably exciting that it gets separated from the reality. That the dead legionnaires as Jack the Goat’s puppets might continue to fire their rifles and appear alive for days, when one sits back an considers the end, is simply an impossibility. But in the excitement of the moment most readers overlook plausibility and opt for enjoyment in completing an ace of an adventure story. Only a master could get away with this, once in a lifetime, as Theodore Roscoe has here.
PHANTOM BULLETS by from 1 June 1929 Argosy
DOWN in the desert an Arab was killed. Dawn was painting a mauve pool between jagged peaks that jutted where the sun would rise, when the bullet took the Arab squarely behind the left ear. The Arab's pink tongue poked from his beard. He spun around in his path, stumbled, spraddled flat in the sand. Blood squirted from the hole in his skull; and before the echo of the shot had wandered away he was dead.
Now this Arab had been guilty of nothing save the sin of appearing on the right scene at the right time. Otherwise he had been the most innocent of innocent bystanders, bent on nothing more than locating a flock of mangy goats that meandered from his camp during the night. In point of fact he had just finished scratching at a peculiarly persistent flea that had been burrowing in his smelly clothing, and was about to remove his sandals to start his morning bows to Allah when the bullet smashed into his head. He never knew what struck him. He never knew that he died for the honor of France.
And this was the way of it: Cafard is one of the deadly enemies of the French Foreign Legion. A sort of madness it is; a brand of insanity bred by drudgery, bad food, heat, and other unpleasantnesses suffered by men shut away from the world in some desert outpost long since forgotten by God, Allah and the War Department in Paris. Perhaps the chief cause of the madness is monotony -- the awful sameness of the drill, the invariable faces across the mess table, the lonely, endless reaches of eye-blinding sand. For life in a Legion outpost is seldom the romantic, battling, Tricolor-waving existence led by the Foreign Legions of Hollywood and the best sellers. It is a life of peeling onions, scrubbing floors, furbishing gear, saluting, marching on hot drill grounds, digging latrines. A humdrum, hard working, monotonous soldier life.
Perhaps the only thing to break this monotony is the cafard itself. The strange disorder manifests itself in peculiar ways. Usually its victims go for a promenade, and, deserting, are found rotting on the desert where thirst or the sun has brought them down. Sometimes they run amok, stabbing or shooting one of their fellows. Sometimes they go about mumbling to themselves. Or they may go raving mad, trying to incite mutiny, murder, or wholesale suicides. A sinister thing, cafard, and feared by those who knew it. Colonel Thibaut Meilhac, for example, was afraid of it.
Colonel Thibaut Meilhac commanded the garrison at Fort Avant-poste.
Certainly Fort Avant-poste, squatting in utter solitude on that desolate corner of the Sahara, was the dreariest, most cheerless spot in Allah's world. Once a Touareg stronghold, the place had been captured and de-loused by the soldiers of France; changed into a cluster of brown plaster house set in the middle of a brown drill ground surrounded by a brown plaster wall. So the fort was baked and brown, and its surrounding landscape was baled and brown. Southward, westward, northward, stretched a sandy monotone -- a naked waste, quiet as the graves of its dead Touareg defenders, hot as the hell whither they had gone.
Only to eastward was the skyline cleft by a lift of mountainland. On this side of the fort the desert gave rise to ragged, rusty-colored hills knifed through by dry watercourses and bowlder-stream canyons. Thirsty palm groves shadowed the dust at the mouth of several canyons. There, one might see a straggling camel caravan or a shabby group of nomad goatherds to remind that there were other humans in the world.
A forlorn place, then, Fort Avant-poste and its landscape. The Arabs claimed Allah made that landscape in a fit of anger.
The Legionnaires claimed the Arabs were right. More; they believed that Allah had cast a curse upon the outpost; the fort was haunted. Had not, during the last six months, five of their number been shot and killed while mounting guard? Phantom bullets, whose? The victims had fallen with lead in their skulls when never a shot was heard nor gunner seen. One had been killed in April, one in June, three in the past week of July.
Interest in this ghost story, and the kindly hand of Colonel Meilhac, the post commander, were the main factors in keeping the Legionnaires of the God-lost garrison from going cafard, and making of the fort a charnel house. If the mysterious killings were a bad antidote, Colonel Meilhac was a good one. Thibaut Meilhac was a veteran warrior and handler of men. Long a member of France's illustrious Legion of Honor, he had served with the Foreign Legion in almost every cranny of the republic's far-flung border line. He had served France, and he had served his men.
Nobody could guess the old soldier's age. The weepy mustaches above his kindly mouth were white as snow. The brows above the twinkly eyes with the nests of humorous wrinkles in the corners were white as cotton and as thick.
Wisps of hair straying across his forehead became strands of silver against the leathery skin. He must have been sixty and he might have been a hundred. If he had been a hundred, he owned a medal for every year of his existence and a friend for every day.
Soldiers loved him and died grinning for Colonel Meilhac. From Bel-Abbes to Tonkin he was the hero of many a gallant story, and the men of his company knew him only as "Father Thibaut." He was that kind of man. The kind of man, they said, who was so devoted to his troops he was lenient; so lenient he never could be military enough to become a marshal of France. Strict? Mais oui! What officer of the Legion is not strict? But always he had been justice itself. And justice was as rare in the Legion as in any other portion of man's world. And Colonel Meilhac was kind in a rare way, too, and brave. He had been brave enough to retreat against orders to save his company from useless annihilation. He had been known to give the last water-drop from his canteen to a dying Legionnaire, one who had once sworn to cut his liver out. That was in a Dahomey jungle; and the tale had lasted thirty years.
Possibly the greatest compliment paid his powers as a leader of men lay in the fact that during his twenty months as commandant at Fort Avant-poste there had been no attempts at desertion.
"But this is because I have striven to combat cafard, he told a commissioner who had dropped of for a two-day visit late that July. "I keep my men amused. In all my years of command, as God well knows, I have never ridden my men. They box in the barracks every night, play games, enjoy athletics. My officers are never permitted to abuse. I do not drill the recruits to death. Keep them interested---that is the way to prevent cafard. If their minds are occupied they do not go stale and mad. But, Sacre Nom de Dieu! They have had more than enough to occupy their minds of late, and so have I! Name of St. Anthony! Something terrible and strange has begun to happen here of late, and the good God knows what I shall write in my reports. I am an old man and do not believe in ghosts and phantoms, but --- No shot was heard! No enemy seen! Yet something, some one had been shooting down my sentinels. One was killed in April, one in June. And, name of a name of a name! three last week.
MOONLIGHT shed spectral shadows down the dunes; tipped the crags that marched the eastern horizon with delicate silver. Emblem of the Moslem world, it lighted, the moon cruised low, blown by chill night winds. Out where the palm trees spread black pompoms toward the stars, a jackal mourned doleful threnody. The wail but served to emphasize the quiet; failed to disturb the vast sand meadow in its dream. The desert slept.
Legionnaire of the first class, John Goodwin did not sleep. The gaunt, hard American with the hard, gaunt face made friendly by the easy blue eyes was very much awake. Mounting guard, of late, had become a spine-tickling business. Years of bucking an unfriendly world on its unfriendliest of its frontiers had left little of fear in the American's soul, but he had been a navy man before renting his life to France and the spines of sailors are apt to tickle where superstitions are involved. Superstition had lent its clammy hand on Fort Avante-post these last few weeks.
"I ain't a man who believes in ghosts an' such," John Goodwin had confided to his buddy, English Bill, that afternoon in the barracks. But wasn't I mounting guard last week when that last killin' was pulled off? Here was the big Russian patrollin' the wall as nice as you please. Suddenly he keels over with a bloody face same as them others did. Shot square between the eyes. I glare out across the desert but there ain't a sound or soul to be seen. An' if a phantom bullet, like these Frenchies call it, didn't knock that big Slav off, I'm triple-damned if I know what did!"
Nobody knew what did. The Legionnaires had been routed from their cots and scattered out across the sands to hunt for---what? Not a foot track had been discovered within a radius of five miles of the fort. The nearest Arab had been located at a palm grove eight miles eastward.
"That's th' fifth one been popped off, Bill," the American had reminded his friend. "An' I'm mountin' guard again tonight. So are you. Lemme tell you, buddy, we better step around sharp. I'm keepin' wide awake!"
He was. So was his buddy, English Bill; and so were the other sentinels. Ordinarily there were only two on the sentry detail, but tonight in view of the previous episodes enacted the previous week, the commandant had posted four. Two of these men remained stationary at the center of the east and west walls. Marching down the firing step, the mobile sentries reported to the stationary men at regular intervals.
John Goodwin, a mobile sentinel, marched the firing step along the wall. This wall came only shoulder high, and despite himself the American Legionnaire suffered a continual desire to get his head and shoulders out of the way. Yet, he really did not believe in ghosts. To north, south and west the desert lay smooth as a floor. No living thing was there. There were bowlders and rocks within gunshot, but to be attained by an enemy, open reaches of sand would have to be crossed, and only jackals had crossed them. What enemy, then, could strike him down?
Patrolling the opposite section of wall, English Bill reported nothing stirring. So did the stationary sentry at the middle of the west wall, a ratty little Frenchman named Proust. The same report was given by the Swiss Legionnaire, one Emil Stehli, posted on the east wall. "All well?" the mobile sentries would ask. "Anything to report?" and inevitably they would get the same reply. "Nothing!"
"It's mighty queer," Goodwin muttered to English Bill when they paced up to the Swiss guard for the eighth time after midnight. "That Russian was killed last week on such a night as this. Moonlight. Nothin' stirrin' across th' sand. Quiet as a tomb. Gives me th' creeps to think about it. I was alone with him that night. Say, I'm mighty glad Father Thibaut posted four of us to-night."
WHEN he mentioned the name of Colonel Meilhac, the American's voice was reverent. Eight years, John Goodwin had spent in the Legion and always in the company of the old French soldier. English Bill, too, had put in a similar time with the company. He spoke, too, reverently of the old commander. A character, this English Bill. Signed on the Legion rolls as Bill Breck, but known to certain forgotten clubs in London as Tracy DeForest, disappeared. Somewhere his life had snarled, and he had cut the knot by joining the Legion and teaching hands schooled for a surgeon's scalpel to wield a paring knife and Lebel gun. Three boasts he would make from a thin-lipped, sardonic mouth. One of them was that he knew Colonel Meilhac. One of them was that he was John Goodwin's buddy. One of them was that he was the only soldier in the French Foreign Legion to wear a monocle.
Now, as he stood on the firing step, beside the American, he drew the disk of glass from the bosom of his capote, and flipped it into his eye. The monocle glistened where it caught a moonbeam straying beneath the visor of his kepi. The gaunt American hitched his rifle; grunted.
"Look here, Bill. I'd take that damn fool trinket outa my face if I was you. You can't never tell. Even a phantom may have to draw a bead on somethin', an' you might get plugged square in the eye. Say, what are you starin' at, anyhow?"
English Bill was frowning. At Goodwins query he fluorished a slim hand to indicate the Swiss Legionnaire, Stehli, who stood at the wall some four feet away. The American glared. The Swiss was leaning against the wall staring fixedly out across the barren ad teetering ever so slightly on his toes. English Bill screwed his monocle a half turn; coughed. As he did so the little Swiss let fall his rifle; swung around with an uncertain gesture. A split-minute tick he stood there smiling. Then, a fount of blood spouted from a hole in the middle of his forehead, and he collapsed on his face like an empty balloon.
Blood splattered over Goodwin's shoes and he jumped as if he had been kicked. English Bill's voice came from away off somewhere. "My Good, John! He was shot while we stood talkin' here. Been dead on his feet for the last two minutes. Where th' bloody hell---"
A tear of sweat sprang down Goodwin's lean nose. English Bill swung his Lebel rifle at the moon, and let go. The explosion clamored off across the sands and clattered faintly against the distant eastern cliffs. Hopping over the corpse at his feet, Goodwin started down the firing step yelling hoarsely for the remaining sentery. Proust.
But the sound of the signal gun and the shouts of the American did not arouse the sentry named Proust. A thousand cannons and a million shouting Yankees could not have roused him. Rounding a corner of the wall, Goodwin saw the ratty little French sentry squatting down on the firing step as if asleep. His rifle lay across his bony knees, his chin lay on his chest.
The man was grinning but Goodwin squawked when he saw that face. The lips were drawn, the eys were popping, and from ear to chin the throat was enameled red by the blood that bubbled from the nape of the neck and gushed around the collar of the overcoat.
"Dead! Shot through the back of the neck! Deader'n hell!"
Whispering queer words the American leaned a gaunt, sick body against a wall; wiped water from his cheeks.
Out across the parade ground the barrack buildings showed showed patches of canary-yellow light and shouted with growing commotion. But out across the desert where the moonlight lay, not a movement disturbed the dream.
A WAVE of consternation broke over Fort Avant-poste with the news of the latest killings. Officers and men alike were baffled, uneasy, scared. Headquarters staged thorough grillings. Search parties raked across the desert and found nothing but a few strayed goats. The Legionnaires looked at one another; swore. One cannot trace phantoms!
The little community of forty men, isolated from a world of modern things, fell back on speculations out of the Dark Ages when confronted by mystery and the unknown. Gossip of ghosts, phantoms, voodoos, evil eye, witch-curses, banshees, demons and werewolves occupied every tongue.
Embellishments were added. A Bavarian in the company claimed he had seen three ghost horsemen riding away in the night just after the first man was killed in April. A fat little Dane claimed an Arab in Oran told him he would find the fort accursed, placed under an evil spell by the souls of the dead Touregs from whom it had been wrenched. Most of the French Legionnaires were inclined to believe that some Arab jinni was haunting the place revenging the French occupation.
"But I," claimed English Bill to his buddy, John Goodwin, when they were alone together in the barracks," don't believe a word of this bally tommyrot about ghosts and what not. Have some of this rotten red wine, John, my boy, and listen to me. I don't believe in these bloody ghost yarns."
It was torrid mid afternoon. The two Legionnaires, just come from the rigors of a military funeral, sat bared to the waist after a stiffling full-dress parade. Goodwin, the American, tossed down his wine with a grunt.
"I certainly believe them lads were killed las' night," he declared, "after the funeral we give 'em this noon. Sun most took my head off, an' I began to realize them boys lyin' in their flags was dead after all. Whew! Hope no more of 'em gets dropped durin' this hot spell, that's a fact." He laughed uneasily. For a while I couldn't believe they was dead last night. Couldn't believe it till we buried 'em to-day. An' say, a royal buryin' the old colonel gave 'em didn't he? You'd have thought they was heroes. An' there was Father Thibaut in his full-dress uniform, havin' us fire salutes an' all. The colonel looked pretty upset, didn't he? Thought he might keel over when he gave us that speech, standin' there in full outfit, loaded down with his decorations an' medals. Boys sure gave him a big cheer after for his talk when he told 'em to keep up nerve. But he looked kinda shaky when he mentioned the killings,eh? Reckon he don't know quite how to handle the affair, no more than the rest of us. An' if you don't believe in ghosts, English Bill, what the almighty hell do you think has been knockin' off these men?"
The Englishman licked a film of sweat from his upper lip. "I know what's been knocking 'em off," he declared. "A bullet fired from a rifle, that's what. But the way of it, I can't say just yet.
Fumbling at his blue sash, he extracted his monocle and flickered it into his eye. Kepi tilted on the back of his yellow head, thumbs thrust into the sash, he leaned back in his chair and watched a lizard scoot down the ceiling. When he leaned forward again, it was with a queer exclamation. Goodwin, who had been engaged in rolling a cheap rice-paper cigarette, looked up in surprise.
"Yankee!" English Bill demanded, "you don't believe in phantom bullets and ghost marksmen, either. Come out of it, old man. These murders can be explained. That's what they are -- murders. Now there haven't been any murderers seen, have there? Nor shots heard fired? Not a bally one. But -- by Jove, old chap, I've got an idea. Put two an' two together, that's all."
Muttering an oath, the American ex-sailor grabbed his friend's bare arm. "Out with it, Bill! You got a clew to this dog gone business -- "
"All I've got," explained the Englishman, rising from his chair, "is to go an' get dressed for th' bleedin' afternoon drill. But, John!" He lowered his voice, leaned down to squeeze the American's wrist. "You and me are going to investigate, old man. Talkin' here has handed me an idea. Tell you later. We're goin' to jump barracks after taps to-night, anyway. You'll see, old man. Two an' two make four, even on the Sahara."
"Two an' two make four? You ain't gone cafard, have you, Bill?"
"You'll see, old chap. I got some things to look into this afternoon. Hmmm. By Jove! Listen, Yankee! Didn't this bloody fort use to be a Touareg stronghold? Gad, I thought so! Fits in! I say! I'll be right off, John. See you later. Don't forget about to-night."
John Goodwin was astonished when his buddy, English Bill, found the door. It was dark with moonlight around there behind the ammunition sheds and the cook house. The Englishman had been fumbling along a section of low plaster wall that sheltered the refuse cans of the kitchen. A thick wall it was, a remnant of the foundations of the original Touareg fort, left standing in case it might be handy as a rampart should an enemy smash the outpost gates. English Bill had sneaked along the wall, tapping at random with the butt of his heavy blue-steel servcie automatic. And the improbable had happened! A three-foot square of plaster had swung inward with a gentle sigh. A yawning hole exhaled a dank breath. There, in the center of the strip of thick wall, opened a door!
Goodwin, still sleepy from his recent desertion of a barrack-bed, stared with jaw dropping in amazement. But English Bill did not seem so surprised. Fastening monocle to eye, he surveyed the aperture his gun had opened with a casual nod.
"There you are, Yank!" he whispered. " Two an' two make four. Here it is. I figured something of the sort. Used to read Sherlock Holmes in my day, an' it's helped. Get your automatic out, old man. We may bloody well need it. An' be quick. We're goin' through this door. Come on before that sentry gets around this way. Into the wall!"
Tugging his kepi over his eyes, the English legionnaire ducked into the black square gaping in the wall. Swearing under his breath, Goodwin yanked his ponderous automatic and followed suit. It was cool in the wall, but oppressive with the stale air, and tarblack. Where the soldiers crouched there was scarcely room for two to squeeze. English Bill told Goodwin to hunch past him and close the door. The plaster square swung to, and themen were locked in a packed blackness. English Bill was chuckling. Goodwin heard him fumbling about, saw a match flutter in his fingers. Weak yellow light scattered the dark, and, to the American's further astonishment, he saw they were crouching at the top of a crude plaster stairway that tunneled an easy descent into the earth.
English Bill held high the flickering match, nodding.
"Arabian nights," was his laconic comment. "I expected it."
Goodwin relieved himself of a pungent curse. His eyes were wide in his sweat-wet face, and he snatched his companion's sleeve. "What's all this mean, English Bill? When'd you find this here tunnel? Come through, Bill, How'd you get on to this here, an' where does it go?"
The Englishman lit another match. The wiggling flame made of the glass disk beneath his visor an ogling, shiny moon. "Where does it go? God alone knows, Yankee, but I can guess. It's goin' to lead into a bloody beastly surprise, an' I can tell you that. How did I find it? Pure mathematics, John. An' guesswork. Two times two. Equals four. But we haven't found the total yet. Damn it, old chap, can't you see? Listen! You know bloody well, as I said, there weren't any phantoms who were murdered; they died with bullets in'em. Why they were shot I can't imagine. But I know this an'everybody else in the fort would know it if they would think like men instead of kids. Bullets are fired from guns. Human hands fire guns. An' the beggar popping off our men was a bloody good marksman, we can figure that."
His match whisked out, and he struck another. His voice rasped out through the close shadows, and his monocle gleamed. "So a good marksman had been doin' some damn fine sharpshootin', an' picking off our men. A bloody fine marksman,Yankee! His victims were hit in the head every time, an' from a good distance, too. I knew that sharpshooter was out on the desert when he got the Swiss squarely between the eyes. The Swiss was on the east wall, an' the gunner was somewhere out among those rocks. An' he made the finest shot in the world when he picked off the Frenchman, Proust, way on the other side of the fort. Got him right through the back of his head. See what kind of a marksman that fellow is?"
"But this here tunnel, Bill? An' how---?"
ENGLISH BILL talked fast.
"Well, John, no Arab can shoot like that. Besides, no Arab could have got out behind those bowlders facin' our east wall without bein' seen or leaving tracks. Two times two, then. A phantom isn't shooting our men. An Arab can't be doin' it. But a bleedin' good sharpshooter is! Who is it, then? Who're the best shots in this country? We are! Legionnaires! See? One of us has been doin' this sharpshooting. One of us legionnaires has been getting out there on the desert off the east wall and knocking down our sentries. I've been puzzling over this ever since that first killing in April.
"How'd he get out there without leaving any trace? Underground passage, of course. Why the bloody hell I never guessed it before I can't imagine. But this used to be an old Touareg fort. An' these Arab forts were always honeycombed with secret tunnels. See? Then, if there was a tunnel, it had to lead from the ancient wall left standin' behind the cookhouse."
John Goodwin swore a gorgeous oath of the sea. "Bill!" I think you got it figgered! He had to have a way to get out there and a way to get back here quick so's he could get back in the barracks the time the rumpus started when the dead man was found. "
"That's it, John. That's why I guessed the door would be in a wall near the center of the fort. Made it easy to locate, then."
Abruptly, English Bill stopped talking, held high another flaring match, and scrutinized the steps before him.
"By God, Yankee, I'm not on the job! Whoever's been using this tunnel has gone through already.There's a fresh footprint on that top step or I'm a bloomin' liar."
Voicing a word of caution, English Bill crept down the steps. Ancient plaster, laid, perhaps, in those days when the Apostle of Islam had not yet fluorished his scimitar west of Arabia crumbled before their treddng boots. At the bottom of the stairway English Bill held up a pointing finger, and John Goodwin saw a shoulder-wide head-high corridor wander off into Stygian darkness where the match-light failed.
"There she leads," English Bill whispered. "An' someone's been going through her, as you can see. Damned if I know who! I can't tell who because I can't figure who'd want to kill us so." A queer, frigid smle crossed the Englishman's tight lips. "But keep your gun handy, John. The man you'll find at the end of this tunnel is a bloody good shot---an' a killer!"
Goodwin nodded, tapping his automatic barrel. English Bill's last match glittered out and his sweaty, lean face vanished. Thereafter they picked their way through a darkness as thick as fudge. English Bill took the lead, moving carefully, wary of pitfall or jagged rock, panting out an occasional warning to indicate a turn in the path. Goodwin followed, automatic poised for action in a nervous fist. Sweat was leaking down the gaunt American's cheeks, and there was a curious little feeling in the stomach behind his sash.
WHEN they came to the end, it was an abrupt thing---like strolling into a pool of clean water. Standing in a well of fresh air, they looked upward at a patch of far-off indigo sky, and English Bill's monocle caught the gleam of the brilliant gold stars. The steps ascended steeply, like a ladder mounting to heaven. English Bill went first and when he reached the top he crouched as if stricken to stone. John Goodwin, the American, followed. At the top step he too petrified. Stiff and quiet as mummies, these two legionnaires crouched at the mouth of the tunnel, wrought into stone by their staring. Without flicking an eyelash, without moving a muscle, they stared. No sound did they make; therefore the ghastly figure pasted flat atop the slab of rock some six feet away never stirred in his vigil, never took his gaze from the wall of the Fort Avant-poste distant across the moonwashed sands. If the men behind him were turned to stone, the wraithlike watcher was part of the rock on which he lay. A shadow blended his recumbent figure into the flat gray slab,but straying moonbeams found a glint of steel at his side; and the spying Legionnaires discovered the outlines and stock of a long-barreled Krag-Jorgenen repeating rifle.
"Now!" breathed the Englishman.
"Now!" the American barked.
As one man they sprang. Together they leaped the six feet to the rock. The man on the stone slithered around with the speed of a catamount. For half a half second the Legionnaires glimpsed a face inhuman, eyes like twin emeralds that blazed green with fury. The wild face ducked. Up sprang the long-barreled gun.
Twisting about in his mad lunge, Goodwin trapped the barrel in his free hand, tearing the rifle from its owner’sfierce grasp. Clawing hands tangled his legs, brought him down in a blind stumble. English Bill was tumbling around somewhere. Goodwin fought to escape ripping fingers. The rifle clicked smartly in his hands, gave a muffled thump! It jerked. A faint odor of burnt powder promptly stung the air. The body beneath the American relaxed, became soft, wet. Gasping, John Goodwin lurched to his feet. English Bill had a hand digging fingers into his arm. The Englishman's monocle was ogling an expression as foolish as a verse from the Koran.
“There, Yankee! Look there! You got him right through the heart with his own gun! Shot him with that high-powered Danish gun, an' smack through his heart. An' him the finest shot in th Legion---“
There he lay, flat on his back on the slab of gray like. Blood gurgled up from his tunic, strggled in miniature rivers down to his left. Moonlight painted white as snow the mustaches above his smile. Moon beams played in his silvery hair. Dreaming up at the star-scattered sky the face of Colonel Thibaut Meilhac was kind
GOODWIN fell on his knees beside the rock.
“It can't be him,” he groaned. “It can't be Father Thibaut."
"Can't be," agreed the Englishman in a gray whisper, "but it is. Father Thibaut! Been creepin' out here through that tunnel an' takin' potshots at his own men with that Krag-Jorgensen gun muffled by a silencer. I---I guessed a silenced rifle was doin' the murders, John, but I---never---only when he came out with all his medals at the funeral and half of 'em were for sharpshooting. My God, John, old man, this is bloody awful!"
"But, colonel---colonel!" Goodwin moaned. His angular face was pinched with pain, and muscles throbbed in his throat. "Father Thibaut! An' you the finest soldier in the world. This is plain hell, English Bill. I been with him half around the world! He was my friend, a friend to all o' us poor devils. An' now why'd he do it, Bill? Whys he been doin' this---?”
English Bill wiped moisture from his monocle and screwed it into his eye. Removing his kepi, he looked reverently down on the dead, kind face . Chill desert breeze stirred the colonel's silvered hair. English Bill slowly shook his head, tapped his temple with a lean finger.
"That's why, John," he said in a low voice. "Cafard. Colonel Meilhac was pretty old, you know. Been in the service for years and probably lyin' about his age to keep off the pension list. Hard work, disappointments, bein' stationed out here---the heat an' all turned his mind. Didn't you see his eyes when he jumped around on us? Blazin' like flame! Daft! Clean daft! Men do queer things when they've gone cafard. Yankee. Insanity can't be reckoned with, and it's sometimes devil shrewd. He was shrewd enough to come out here, pick off a man, sneak back into the tunnel an' tug this flat stone into place behind him to cover up the tunnel mouth so he never left a trace. May have been out of his head for a year an' acting as rational in front of us as you please. He was always so afraid his men would go cafard. An' it finally got him, bad."
Goodwin brushed an arm across his forehead. "Poor colonel. I feel as if I shot my own dad. He was our friend, Bill. A great soldier. An' now when this leaks out---about him murderin'---"
The English Legionnaire grabbed the American Legionnaire by the hand. "Listen, John! It can't leak out! We musn't let it! It would raise bloody hell in the outpost. The colonel---they would never believe he was mad--wouldn't understand. They'd drag his body in the sand. He'd be disgraced. We can't turn him over to 'em like this. We can't let 'em know. For his honor we can't. And the honor of France!"
"But what can we do?"
"Wait! Suppose we could make it look like he'd sneaked out here durin' the night to reconnoiter. Make it look like he'd had a bally hunch, an' come out here alone. Wind's blowin' hard tonight and would've covered his tracks. The sentries would think they had missed seein' him. Well, he sneaks out here lookin' for his ghost marksman. That's what it would look like. He finds the sharpshooter and gets shot but as he drops he shoots the sharpshooter. We make it look like that, you see. Then we duck back into the passage and get ourselves out of the picture."
"But how---?”
"Don't you see? We'll shoot the first Arab who comes near here. We'll drop our fired automatic beside the colonel, an' fling his silenced rifle over beside the dead Arab. The shot from the automatic will rouse the outpost, but before they get here we're down in the tunnel. The Arab found with his rifle will look like the murderer. An' the colonel will be a hero as he was at heart."
"But---?”
"My God, John, here comes an Arab now. Down that canyon there! Here goes! For the honor of France!"
Colonel Thibaut Meilhac commanded the garrison at Fort Avant-poste.
Certainly Fort Avant-poste, squatting in utter solitude on that desolate corner of the Sahara, was the dreariest, most cheerless spot in Allah's world. Once a Touareg stronghold, the place had been captured and de-loused by the soldiers of France; changed into a cluster of brown plaster house set in the middle of a brown drill ground surrounded by a brown plaster wall. So the fort was baked and brown, and its surrounding landscape was baled and brown. Southward, westward, northward, stretched a sandy monotone -- a naked waste, quiet as the graves of its dead Touareg defenders, hot as the hell whither they had gone.
Only to eastward was the skyline cleft by a lift of mountainland. On this side of the fort the desert gave rise to ragged, rusty-colored hills knifed through by dry watercourses and bowlder-stream canyons. Thirsty palm groves shadowed the dust at the mouth of several canyons. There, one might see a straggling camel caravan or a shabby group of nomad goatherds to remind that there were other humans in the world.
A forlorn place, then, Fort Avant-poste and its landscape. The Arabs claimed Allah made that landscape in a fit of anger.
The Legionnaires claimed the Arabs were right. More; they believed that Allah had cast a curse upon the outpost; the fort was haunted. Had not, during the last six months, five of their number been shot and killed while mounting guard? Phantom bullets, whose? The victims had fallen with lead in their skulls when never a shot was heard nor gunner seen. One had been killed in April, one in June, three in the past week of July.
Interest in this ghost story, and the kindly hand of Colonel Meilhac, the post commander, were the main factors in keeping the Legionnaires of the God-lost garrison from going cafard, and making of the fort a charnel house. If the mysterious killings were a bad antidote, Colonel Meilhac was a good one. Thibaut Meilhac was a veteran warrior and handler of men. Long a member of France's illustrious Legion of Honor, he had served with the Foreign Legion in almost every cranny of the republic's far-flung border line. He had served France, and he had served his men.
Nobody could guess the old soldier's age. The weepy mustaches above his kindly mouth were white as snow. The brows above the twinkly eyes with the nests of humorous wrinkles in the corners were white as cotton and as thick.
Wisps of hair straying across his forehead became strands of silver against the leathery skin. He must have been sixty and he might have been a hundred. If he had been a hundred, he owned a medal for every year of his existence and a friend for every day.
Soldiers loved him and died grinning for Colonel Meilhac. From Bel-Abbes to Tonkin he was the hero of many a gallant story, and the men of his company knew him only as "Father Thibaut." He was that kind of man. The kind of man, they said, who was so devoted to his troops he was lenient; so lenient he never could be military enough to become a marshal of France. Strict? Mais oui! What officer of the Legion is not strict? But always he had been justice itself. And justice was as rare in the Legion as in any other portion of man's world. And Colonel Meilhac was kind in a rare way, too, and brave. He had been brave enough to retreat against orders to save his company from useless annihilation. He had been known to give the last water-drop from his canteen to a dying Legionnaire, one who had once sworn to cut his liver out. That was in a Dahomey jungle; and the tale had lasted thirty years.
Possibly the greatest compliment paid his powers as a leader of men lay in the fact that during his twenty months as commandant at Fort Avant-poste there had been no attempts at desertion.
"But this is because I have striven to combat cafard, he told a commissioner who had dropped of for a two-day visit late that July. "I keep my men amused. In all my years of command, as God well knows, I have never ridden my men. They box in the barracks every night, play games, enjoy athletics. My officers are never permitted to abuse. I do not drill the recruits to death. Keep them interested---that is the way to prevent cafard. If their minds are occupied they do not go stale and mad. But, Sacre Nom de Dieu! They have had more than enough to occupy their minds of late, and so have I! Name of St. Anthony! Something terrible and strange has begun to happen here of late, and the good God knows what I shall write in my reports. I am an old man and do not believe in ghosts and phantoms, but --- No shot was heard! No enemy seen! Yet something, some one had been shooting down my sentinels. One was killed in April, one in June. And, name of a name of a name! three last week.
MOONLIGHT shed spectral shadows down the dunes; tipped the crags that marched the eastern horizon with delicate silver. Emblem of the Moslem world, it lighted, the moon cruised low, blown by chill night winds. Out where the palm trees spread black pompoms toward the stars, a jackal mourned doleful threnody. The wail but served to emphasize the quiet; failed to disturb the vast sand meadow in its dream. The desert slept.
Legionnaire of the first class, John Goodwin did not sleep. The gaunt, hard American with the hard, gaunt face made friendly by the easy blue eyes was very much awake. Mounting guard, of late, had become a spine-tickling business. Years of bucking an unfriendly world on its unfriendliest of its frontiers had left little of fear in the American's soul, but he had been a navy man before renting his life to France and the spines of sailors are apt to tickle where superstitions are involved. Superstition had lent its clammy hand on Fort Avante-post these last few weeks.
"I ain't a man who believes in ghosts an' such," John Goodwin had confided to his buddy, English Bill, that afternoon in the barracks. But wasn't I mounting guard last week when that last killin' was pulled off? Here was the big Russian patrollin' the wall as nice as you please. Suddenly he keels over with a bloody face same as them others did. Shot square between the eyes. I glare out across the desert but there ain't a sound or soul to be seen. An' if a phantom bullet, like these Frenchies call it, didn't knock that big Slav off, I'm triple-damned if I know what did!"
Nobody knew what did. The Legionnaires had been routed from their cots and scattered out across the sands to hunt for---what? Not a foot track had been discovered within a radius of five miles of the fort. The nearest Arab had been located at a palm grove eight miles eastward.
"That's th' fifth one been popped off, Bill," the American had reminded his friend. "An' I'm mountin' guard again tonight. So are you. Lemme tell you, buddy, we better step around sharp. I'm keepin' wide awake!"
He was. So was his buddy, English Bill; and so were the other sentinels. Ordinarily there were only two on the sentry detail, but tonight in view of the previous episodes enacted the previous week, the commandant had posted four. Two of these men remained stationary at the center of the east and west walls. Marching down the firing step, the mobile sentries reported to the stationary men at regular intervals.
John Goodwin, a mobile sentinel, marched the firing step along the wall. This wall came only shoulder high, and despite himself the American Legionnaire suffered a continual desire to get his head and shoulders out of the way. Yet, he really did not believe in ghosts. To north, south and west the desert lay smooth as a floor. No living thing was there. There were bowlders and rocks within gunshot, but to be attained by an enemy, open reaches of sand would have to be crossed, and only jackals had crossed them. What enemy, then, could strike him down?
Patrolling the opposite section of wall, English Bill reported nothing stirring. So did the stationary sentry at the middle of the west wall, a ratty little Frenchman named Proust. The same report was given by the Swiss Legionnaire, one Emil Stehli, posted on the east wall. "All well?" the mobile sentries would ask. "Anything to report?" and inevitably they would get the same reply. "Nothing!"
"It's mighty queer," Goodwin muttered to English Bill when they paced up to the Swiss guard for the eighth time after midnight. "That Russian was killed last week on such a night as this. Moonlight. Nothin' stirrin' across th' sand. Quiet as a tomb. Gives me th' creeps to think about it. I was alone with him that night. Say, I'm mighty glad Father Thibaut posted four of us to-night."
WHEN he mentioned the name of Colonel Meilhac, the American's voice was reverent. Eight years, John Goodwin had spent in the Legion and always in the company of the old French soldier. English Bill, too, had put in a similar time with the company. He spoke, too, reverently of the old commander. A character, this English Bill. Signed on the Legion rolls as Bill Breck, but known to certain forgotten clubs in London as Tracy DeForest, disappeared. Somewhere his life had snarled, and he had cut the knot by joining the Legion and teaching hands schooled for a surgeon's scalpel to wield a paring knife and Lebel gun. Three boasts he would make from a thin-lipped, sardonic mouth. One of them was that he knew Colonel Meilhac. One of them was that he was John Goodwin's buddy. One of them was that he was the only soldier in the French Foreign Legion to wear a monocle.
Now, as he stood on the firing step, beside the American, he drew the disk of glass from the bosom of his capote, and flipped it into his eye. The monocle glistened where it caught a moonbeam straying beneath the visor of his kepi. The gaunt American hitched his rifle; grunted.
"Look here, Bill. I'd take that damn fool trinket outa my face if I was you. You can't never tell. Even a phantom may have to draw a bead on somethin', an' you might get plugged square in the eye. Say, what are you starin' at, anyhow?"
English Bill was frowning. At Goodwins query he fluorished a slim hand to indicate the Swiss Legionnaire, Stehli, who stood at the wall some four feet away. The American glared. The Swiss was leaning against the wall staring fixedly out across the barren ad teetering ever so slightly on his toes. English Bill screwed his monocle a half turn; coughed. As he did so the little Swiss let fall his rifle; swung around with an uncertain gesture. A split-minute tick he stood there smiling. Then, a fount of blood spouted from a hole in the middle of his forehead, and he collapsed on his face like an empty balloon.
Blood splattered over Goodwin's shoes and he jumped as if he had been kicked. English Bill's voice came from away off somewhere. "My Good, John! He was shot while we stood talkin' here. Been dead on his feet for the last two minutes. Where th' bloody hell---"
A tear of sweat sprang down Goodwin's lean nose. English Bill swung his Lebel rifle at the moon, and let go. The explosion clamored off across the sands and clattered faintly against the distant eastern cliffs. Hopping over the corpse at his feet, Goodwin started down the firing step yelling hoarsely for the remaining sentery. Proust.
But the sound of the signal gun and the shouts of the American did not arouse the sentry named Proust. A thousand cannons and a million shouting Yankees could not have roused him. Rounding a corner of the wall, Goodwin saw the ratty little French sentry squatting down on the firing step as if asleep. His rifle lay across his bony knees, his chin lay on his chest.
The man was grinning but Goodwin squawked when he saw that face. The lips were drawn, the eys were popping, and from ear to chin the throat was enameled red by the blood that bubbled from the nape of the neck and gushed around the collar of the overcoat.
"Dead! Shot through the back of the neck! Deader'n hell!"
Whispering queer words the American leaned a gaunt, sick body against a wall; wiped water from his cheeks.
Out across the parade ground the barrack buildings showed showed patches of canary-yellow light and shouted with growing commotion. But out across the desert where the moonlight lay, not a movement disturbed the dream.
A WAVE of consternation broke over Fort Avant-poste with the news of the latest killings. Officers and men alike were baffled, uneasy, scared. Headquarters staged thorough grillings. Search parties raked across the desert and found nothing but a few strayed goats. The Legionnaires looked at one another; swore. One cannot trace phantoms!
The little community of forty men, isolated from a world of modern things, fell back on speculations out of the Dark Ages when confronted by mystery and the unknown. Gossip of ghosts, phantoms, voodoos, evil eye, witch-curses, banshees, demons and werewolves occupied every tongue.
Embellishments were added. A Bavarian in the company claimed he had seen three ghost horsemen riding away in the night just after the first man was killed in April. A fat little Dane claimed an Arab in Oran told him he would find the fort accursed, placed under an evil spell by the souls of the dead Touregs from whom it had been wrenched. Most of the French Legionnaires were inclined to believe that some Arab jinni was haunting the place revenging the French occupation.
"But I," claimed English Bill to his buddy, John Goodwin, when they were alone together in the barracks," don't believe a word of this bally tommyrot about ghosts and what not. Have some of this rotten red wine, John, my boy, and listen to me. I don't believe in these bloody ghost yarns."
It was torrid mid afternoon. The two Legionnaires, just come from the rigors of a military funeral, sat bared to the waist after a stiffling full-dress parade. Goodwin, the American, tossed down his wine with a grunt.
"I certainly believe them lads were killed las' night," he declared, "after the funeral we give 'em this noon. Sun most took my head off, an' I began to realize them boys lyin' in their flags was dead after all. Whew! Hope no more of 'em gets dropped durin' this hot spell, that's a fact." He laughed uneasily. For a while I couldn't believe they was dead last night. Couldn't believe it till we buried 'em to-day. An' say, a royal buryin' the old colonel gave 'em didn't he? You'd have thought they was heroes. An' there was Father Thibaut in his full-dress uniform, havin' us fire salutes an' all. The colonel looked pretty upset, didn't he? Thought he might keel over when he gave us that speech, standin' there in full outfit, loaded down with his decorations an' medals. Boys sure gave him a big cheer after for his talk when he told 'em to keep up nerve. But he looked kinda shaky when he mentioned the killings,eh? Reckon he don't know quite how to handle the affair, no more than the rest of us. An' if you don't believe in ghosts, English Bill, what the almighty hell do you think has been knockin' off these men?"
The Englishman licked a film of sweat from his upper lip. "I know what's been knocking 'em off," he declared. "A bullet fired from a rifle, that's what. But the way of it, I can't say just yet.
Fumbling at his blue sash, he extracted his monocle and flickered it into his eye. Kepi tilted on the back of his yellow head, thumbs thrust into the sash, he leaned back in his chair and watched a lizard scoot down the ceiling. When he leaned forward again, it was with a queer exclamation. Goodwin, who had been engaged in rolling a cheap rice-paper cigarette, looked up in surprise.
"Yankee!" English Bill demanded, "you don't believe in phantom bullets and ghost marksmen, either. Come out of it, old man. These murders can be explained. That's what they are -- murders. Now there haven't been any murderers seen, have there? Nor shots heard fired? Not a bally one. But -- by Jove, old chap, I've got an idea. Put two an' two together, that's all."
Muttering an oath, the American ex-sailor grabbed his friend's bare arm. "Out with it, Bill! You got a clew to this dog gone business -- "
"All I've got," explained the Englishman, rising from his chair, "is to go an' get dressed for th' bleedin' afternoon drill. But, John!" He lowered his voice, leaned down to squeeze the American's wrist. "You and me are going to investigate, old man. Talkin' here has handed me an idea. Tell you later. We're goin' to jump barracks after taps to-night, anyway. You'll see, old man. Two an' two make four, even on the Sahara."
"Two an' two make four? You ain't gone cafard, have you, Bill?"
"You'll see, old chap. I got some things to look into this afternoon. Hmmm. By Jove! Listen, Yankee! Didn't this bloody fort use to be a Touareg stronghold? Gad, I thought so! Fits in! I say! I'll be right off, John. See you later. Don't forget about to-night."
John Goodwin was astonished when his buddy, English Bill, found the door. It was dark with moonlight around there behind the ammunition sheds and the cook house. The Englishman had been fumbling along a section of low plaster wall that sheltered the refuse cans of the kitchen. A thick wall it was, a remnant of the foundations of the original Touareg fort, left standing in case it might be handy as a rampart should an enemy smash the outpost gates. English Bill had sneaked along the wall, tapping at random with the butt of his heavy blue-steel servcie automatic. And the improbable had happened! A three-foot square of plaster had swung inward with a gentle sigh. A yawning hole exhaled a dank breath. There, in the center of the strip of thick wall, opened a door!
Goodwin, still sleepy from his recent desertion of a barrack-bed, stared with jaw dropping in amazement. But English Bill did not seem so surprised. Fastening monocle to eye, he surveyed the aperture his gun had opened with a casual nod.
"There you are, Yank!" he whispered. " Two an' two make four. Here it is. I figured something of the sort. Used to read Sherlock Holmes in my day, an' it's helped. Get your automatic out, old man. We may bloody well need it. An' be quick. We're goin' through this door. Come on before that sentry gets around this way. Into the wall!"
Tugging his kepi over his eyes, the English legionnaire ducked into the black square gaping in the wall. Swearing under his breath, Goodwin yanked his ponderous automatic and followed suit. It was cool in the wall, but oppressive with the stale air, and tarblack. Where the soldiers crouched there was scarcely room for two to squeeze. English Bill told Goodwin to hunch past him and close the door. The plaster square swung to, and themen were locked in a packed blackness. English Bill was chuckling. Goodwin heard him fumbling about, saw a match flutter in his fingers. Weak yellow light scattered the dark, and, to the American's further astonishment, he saw they were crouching at the top of a crude plaster stairway that tunneled an easy descent into the earth.
English Bill held high the flickering match, nodding.
"Arabian nights," was his laconic comment. "I expected it."
Goodwin relieved himself of a pungent curse. His eyes were wide in his sweat-wet face, and he snatched his companion's sleeve. "What's all this mean, English Bill? When'd you find this here tunnel? Come through, Bill, How'd you get on to this here, an' where does it go?"
The Englishman lit another match. The wiggling flame made of the glass disk beneath his visor an ogling, shiny moon. "Where does it go? God alone knows, Yankee, but I can guess. It's goin' to lead into a bloody beastly surprise, an' I can tell you that. How did I find it? Pure mathematics, John. An' guesswork. Two times two. Equals four. But we haven't found the total yet. Damn it, old chap, can't you see? Listen! You know bloody well, as I said, there weren't any phantoms who were murdered; they died with bullets in'em. Why they were shot I can't imagine. But I know this an'everybody else in the fort would know it if they would think like men instead of kids. Bullets are fired from guns. Human hands fire guns. An' the beggar popping off our men was a bloody good marksman, we can figure that."
His match whisked out, and he struck another. His voice rasped out through the close shadows, and his monocle gleamed. "So a good marksman had been doin' some damn fine sharpshootin', an' picking off our men. A bloody fine marksman,Yankee! His victims were hit in the head every time, an' from a good distance, too. I knew that sharpshooter was out on the desert when he got the Swiss squarely between the eyes. The Swiss was on the east wall, an' the gunner was somewhere out among those rocks. An' he made the finest shot in the world when he picked off the Frenchman, Proust, way on the other side of the fort. Got him right through the back of his head. See what kind of a marksman that fellow is?"
"But this here tunnel, Bill? An' how---?"
ENGLISH BILL talked fast.
"Well, John, no Arab can shoot like that. Besides, no Arab could have got out behind those bowlders facin' our east wall without bein' seen or leaving tracks. Two times two, then. A phantom isn't shooting our men. An Arab can't be doin' it. But a bleedin' good sharpshooter is! Who is it, then? Who're the best shots in this country? We are! Legionnaires! See? One of us has been doin' this sharpshooting. One of us legionnaires has been getting out there on the desert off the east wall and knocking down our sentries. I've been puzzling over this ever since that first killing in April.
"How'd he get out there without leaving any trace? Underground passage, of course. Why the bloody hell I never guessed it before I can't imagine. But this used to be an old Touareg fort. An' these Arab forts were always honeycombed with secret tunnels. See? Then, if there was a tunnel, it had to lead from the ancient wall left standin' behind the cookhouse."
John Goodwin swore a gorgeous oath of the sea. "Bill!" I think you got it figgered! He had to have a way to get out there and a way to get back here quick so's he could get back in the barracks the time the rumpus started when the dead man was found. "
"That's it, John. That's why I guessed the door would be in a wall near the center of the fort. Made it easy to locate, then."
Abruptly, English Bill stopped talking, held high another flaring match, and scrutinized the steps before him.
"By God, Yankee, I'm not on the job! Whoever's been using this tunnel has gone through already.There's a fresh footprint on that top step or I'm a bloomin' liar."
Voicing a word of caution, English Bill crept down the steps. Ancient plaster, laid, perhaps, in those days when the Apostle of Islam had not yet fluorished his scimitar west of Arabia crumbled before their treddng boots. At the bottom of the stairway English Bill held up a pointing finger, and John Goodwin saw a shoulder-wide head-high corridor wander off into Stygian darkness where the match-light failed.
"There she leads," English Bill whispered. "An' someone's been going through her, as you can see. Damned if I know who! I can't tell who because I can't figure who'd want to kill us so." A queer, frigid smle crossed the Englishman's tight lips. "But keep your gun handy, John. The man you'll find at the end of this tunnel is a bloody good shot---an' a killer!"
Goodwin nodded, tapping his automatic barrel. English Bill's last match glittered out and his sweaty, lean face vanished. Thereafter they picked their way through a darkness as thick as fudge. English Bill took the lead, moving carefully, wary of pitfall or jagged rock, panting out an occasional warning to indicate a turn in the path. Goodwin followed, automatic poised for action in a nervous fist. Sweat was leaking down the gaunt American's cheeks, and there was a curious little feeling in the stomach behind his sash.
WHEN they came to the end, it was an abrupt thing---like strolling into a pool of clean water. Standing in a well of fresh air, they looked upward at a patch of far-off indigo sky, and English Bill's monocle caught the gleam of the brilliant gold stars. The steps ascended steeply, like a ladder mounting to heaven. English Bill went first and when he reached the top he crouched as if stricken to stone. John Goodwin, the American, followed. At the top step he too petrified. Stiff and quiet as mummies, these two legionnaires crouched at the mouth of the tunnel, wrought into stone by their staring. Without flicking an eyelash, without moving a muscle, they stared. No sound did they make; therefore the ghastly figure pasted flat atop the slab of rock some six feet away never stirred in his vigil, never took his gaze from the wall of the Fort Avant-poste distant across the moonwashed sands. If the men behind him were turned to stone, the wraithlike watcher was part of the rock on which he lay. A shadow blended his recumbent figure into the flat gray slab,but straying moonbeams found a glint of steel at his side; and the spying Legionnaires discovered the outlines and stock of a long-barreled Krag-Jorgenen repeating rifle.
"Now!" breathed the Englishman.
"Now!" the American barked.
As one man they sprang. Together they leaped the six feet to the rock. The man on the stone slithered around with the speed of a catamount. For half a half second the Legionnaires glimpsed a face inhuman, eyes like twin emeralds that blazed green with fury. The wild face ducked. Up sprang the long-barreled gun.
Twisting about in his mad lunge, Goodwin trapped the barrel in his free hand, tearing the rifle from its owner’sfierce grasp. Clawing hands tangled his legs, brought him down in a blind stumble. English Bill was tumbling around somewhere. Goodwin fought to escape ripping fingers. The rifle clicked smartly in his hands, gave a muffled thump! It jerked. A faint odor of burnt powder promptly stung the air. The body beneath the American relaxed, became soft, wet. Gasping, John Goodwin lurched to his feet. English Bill had a hand digging fingers into his arm. The Englishman's monocle was ogling an expression as foolish as a verse from the Koran.
“There, Yankee! Look there! You got him right through the heart with his own gun! Shot him with that high-powered Danish gun, an' smack through his heart. An' him the finest shot in th Legion---“
There he lay, flat on his back on the slab of gray like. Blood gurgled up from his tunic, strggled in miniature rivers down to his left. Moonlight painted white as snow the mustaches above his smile. Moon beams played in his silvery hair. Dreaming up at the star-scattered sky the face of Colonel Thibaut Meilhac was kind
GOODWIN fell on his knees beside the rock.
“It can't be him,” he groaned. “It can't be Father Thibaut."
"Can't be," agreed the Englishman in a gray whisper, "but it is. Father Thibaut! Been creepin' out here through that tunnel an' takin' potshots at his own men with that Krag-Jorgensen gun muffled by a silencer. I---I guessed a silenced rifle was doin' the murders, John, but I---never---only when he came out with all his medals at the funeral and half of 'em were for sharpshooting. My God, John, old man, this is bloody awful!"
"But, colonel---colonel!" Goodwin moaned. His angular face was pinched with pain, and muscles throbbed in his throat. "Father Thibaut! An' you the finest soldier in the world. This is plain hell, English Bill. I been with him half around the world! He was my friend, a friend to all o' us poor devils. An' now why'd he do it, Bill? Whys he been doin' this---?”
English Bill wiped moisture from his monocle and screwed it into his eye. Removing his kepi, he looked reverently down on the dead, kind face . Chill desert breeze stirred the colonel's silvered hair. English Bill slowly shook his head, tapped his temple with a lean finger.
"That's why, John," he said in a low voice. "Cafard. Colonel Meilhac was pretty old, you know. Been in the service for years and probably lyin' about his age to keep off the pension list. Hard work, disappointments, bein' stationed out here---the heat an' all turned his mind. Didn't you see his eyes when he jumped around on us? Blazin' like flame! Daft! Clean daft! Men do queer things when they've gone cafard. Yankee. Insanity can't be reckoned with, and it's sometimes devil shrewd. He was shrewd enough to come out here, pick off a man, sneak back into the tunnel an' tug this flat stone into place behind him to cover up the tunnel mouth so he never left a trace. May have been out of his head for a year an' acting as rational in front of us as you please. He was always so afraid his men would go cafard. An' it finally got him, bad."
Goodwin brushed an arm across his forehead. "Poor colonel. I feel as if I shot my own dad. He was our friend, Bill. A great soldier. An' now when this leaks out---about him murderin'---"
The English Legionnaire grabbed the American Legionnaire by the hand. "Listen, John! It can't leak out! We musn't let it! It would raise bloody hell in the outpost. The colonel---they would never believe he was mad--wouldn't understand. They'd drag his body in the sand. He'd be disgraced. We can't turn him over to 'em like this. We can't let 'em know. For his honor we can't. And the honor of France!"
"But what can we do?"
"Wait! Suppose we could make it look like he'd sneaked out here durin' the night to reconnoiter. Make it look like he'd had a bally hunch, an' come out here alone. Wind's blowin' hard tonight and would've covered his tracks. The sentries would think they had missed seein' him. Well, he sneaks out here lookin' for his ghost marksman. That's what it would look like. He finds the sharpshooter and gets shot but as he drops he shoots the sharpshooter. We make it look like that, you see. Then we duck back into the passage and get ourselves out of the picture."
"But how---?”
"Don't you see? We'll shoot the first Arab who comes near here. We'll drop our fired automatic beside the colonel, an' fling his silenced rifle over beside the dead Arab. The shot from the automatic will rouse the outpost, but before they get here we're down in the tunnel. The Arab found with his rifle will look like the murderer. An' the colonel will be a hero as he was at heart."
"But---?”
"My God, John, here comes an Arab now. Down that canyon there! Here goes! For the honor of France!"
THE END
BETTER THAN BULLETS, from Argosy, 14 Sept 1929
BETTER THAN BULLETS, from Argosy, 14 Sept 1929
"BULLETS?" Chuckled old Thibaut Corday, stroking bent fingers down the affluent burst of whiskers that still retained their cinnamon for all his fourscore years. "You say, my American friends, that bullets are the best of weapons? But yes, perhaps. And with bullets I am a man most familiar. Dieu, yes! I know them backward and forward and sideways, and have had three of them in my hip and one in my throat at the same time, I have fired a million of them; fired them until the butt of my Lebel slammed my shoulder into paralysis and the gun barrel blistered my hands. Yes, I know them. Splendid for the fight. But then---I recall a battle I fought in which I used never a blade nor a single bullet. Truly, that was a battle. Two companions and I against a yowling heathen gang that was provided with bullets enough to drill a fortress into sponge. And we---the three of us---with not a knife or a bullet among us. And what a battle we gave the enemy! No soldier ever fought with weapons more strange!"
He jabbed a cigarette---one of those camel's hair infamies smoked only in Algeria, thank heavens---into the mush on his face. His old eyes became little blue stones couched in the leather and mahogany cheeks; they blinked behind a purling nimbus of gray and gaseous smoke. We listened, for that was wise when old Thibaut Corday consented to talk.
Bullets! Weapons! Fights! Those subjects he knew, perhaps, better than any living man. A vetran warrior, Thibaut Corday. He had been soldier of fortune for more than half a century. Fought in America with a New Orleans regiment for the Lost Cause. Fought with the armies of Britain, Holland, and Imperial Spain. Fought with the Foreign Legion of his own land, from Tonkin to Madagascar, Kotonu to Haiphong. Weapons and battles? The ancient warrior knew them all right.
"Truly," he repeated, "no soldiers ever fought with weapons more strange than the ones we used in that battle. I have spent a lifetime soldiering, my friends. A lifetime at wars. And Sacre Nom! That one, that battle in Morocco, waged on my side without blade or a single bullet, was the strangest, grimmest battle I ever fought. And the funniest!"
He snorted a laugh and waved his scarred old hands at the twilight slanting across the quiet bay and enameling red the water and mole of the corsairs and curtaining with soft mauve dust the cafe on Boulevard Sadi Carnot where we sat. There was a Holland-Amerika liner down at the big pier, and a busy crowd moved along the ramp. But we forgot the city of Algiers as we watched the twiglike hands a-gesture, listened to the voice from the cinnamon bush, and saw the strangest, grimmest battle that old warrior had ever fought. And the funniest.
IT was in 1907, he began, and I was in the Foreign Legion in Morocco near Casablanca. Uncle of Satan! but the country was one bad place for white faces to be. Abdul-el-Aziz, the young Sultan, had let the country fall into the savage fingers of the brigand Bou Hamara and the whole land was on fire with war. The Legion had pushed down along the coast from Rabat after a world of hard fighting against the Moorish tribes, and we got into Casablanca just after our French gunboats had shelled the town into a rubbish heap.
Our officers camped us on the edge of the town, and we were one glad regiment to drop our blankets. Mais oui! It had been a hard march down there. Bad water, no wine, and food that the devil himself would have not touched. Every Legionnaire was dropping with hunger and fatigue, and for a bidon of red wine we would have sold our souls to the devil! We would have given them away. We were one sorry lot.
It was late afternoon when our corps dropped their packs in a dusty field, and the sergeant told the men they could scramble for themselves if they wished; but by no means were the Legionnaires to go into the town. The town was still smoldering from the bombardment. We could see brown smoke clinging over the shattered roof tops of the Moorish houses, and the place looked like a tomb and stank with powder. Oui! That town was one ugly scar on the coats, but much of its northern quarter was still standing, and the houses up there looked white and cool and there were olive trees.
We had no water and not a drop of wine, and there was a clump of abandoned houses up on the slope. And we were hungry! A soldier of the Legion is always hungry, and he thirsts like no other man on earth.
And how we hungered and thirsted by the time we pitched our camp and policed that field and finished the thrice-damned odd jobs a Legionnaire must do in the making of camp! Tins of singe--- "monkey" ---which is old boot heels ground into plaster---and canteens of warm water were finally given us, but warm water and ground boot heels make food for no honest men. The stomach was knotting under my belt and my throat had dried to sand when that camp was made, and my companions had all but withered away.
"I ain't fer standin' fer it!" announced my partner as he squatted beside me on the blankets. He was a big Yankee, that fellow, from New York City, and he was an iron one. A giant made of bronze with a great black stack of hair and the brightest blue eyes ever seen and tremendous hands that could have twisted a foot from a leg. Yankee Bill the Elephant we called him. Pardieu! But he was a tough one. He had been once a baseball player and the muscles on his arms kept splitting the sleeve of his capote. And his big hands, I say! Uncle of Satan!
There was a story in Bel Abbes about his bending the barrel of a Spanish Mauser. He had grabbed my wrist in anger once, and I believed that tale! But, yes, Yankee Bill the Elephant was never the child to stand for anything unfair. You see, all the time we had been marching to Casablanca we had been planning what a gay party we would have getting into the town. And now the commandant's order keeping us in camp and forbidding us to go near the town was a hard one to swallow. Made doubly hard because a troop of black Tirailleurs had been allowed to forage all afternoon.
"I ain't standin' fer it," Yankee Bill the Elephant kept insisting to me. "There's those black devils allowed to go in an' grab all th' food an' drinks they can find, an' here we got to eat this canned willy for the next ten days. By golly, old pard, I'm goin' to do somethin' about it. You bet. Are you with me on a little stunt, pard?"
"Sure, pard, " I agreed in the language I had learned while fighting in the States. There I had learned what splendid plans these Americans could devise, for I fought with your South at that time, and there was something happening all the time -- some of the most surprising plans. And if my giant partner had a plan that would ease my parched soul and moaning stomach, I was one salopard if I would not aid him. "What is your 'stunt,' my Elephant? If it has to do with food I am enlisted at once."
Yankee Bill laughed, told me to wait a moment, and ducked from the tent. A few minutes later he returned with Christian Jensen at his heels. This Dane, Christian Jensen, was one little package of sin and dynamite. Little and made of copper wire he was, with eyes that blinked from a too-constant staring at infamy, a bright grin that fairly glowed when he was mad, and a head of the reddest hair out of hell. My partner could have chosen no better a companion for any scheme and a battle we gave the enemy! No soldiers ever fought with weapons more strange!"
IN TWO seconds the three of us had our heads together while Yankee Bill the Elephant hatched an idea.
After all, it was the simplest of plans. The easiest project in the world. We would stroll over to a wheat field that bordered the camp on its eastern edge, crawl off through the grain, circle the smashed Moorish quarter of the town, and end up in that cluster of little white houses and olive trees and shade. Assuredly we would find something worth eating, drinking, and taking away in those abandoned houses. We could scuttle back before the bugle blew for the roll-call, and nobody but the Angel Gabriel could be the wiser.
"Why," exclaimed Yankee Bill the Elephant, "it's so easy it's foolish we must promise that sentry over there a good whack o' food when we gets back, an' he lets us off into the grain. Once we get among them olive groves we're safe as canaries in a nest, see? We runs up to them houses, loads our pockets, an' dashes back. We got just three hours. Are you hyenas with me?"
He pointed at the whispering yellow wheat that lay like a moving sea between our camping ground and the olive trees hedging the town. "We ducks off in there. Of course we got to go unarmed. It'd look suspicious for us to go get our Lebels from the stack. Besides, we don't need no arms. From the looks of it they ain't a livin' soul in that quarter of the town. Are you salopards coming."
Christian Jensen and I were coming. We clasped the plan of Yankee Bill to our dry bosoms as if we had never heard of the guard house where we were sure to groan if we were caught. Hitching into our capotes, the three of us strolled from the tent over to the wheat. As the Yankee had declared, it was so easy it was foolish. A
whispered word to the poor devil standing guard and we had his mouth hanging open for the choice morsels we promised him in return. Then we were ducking away through the tall grain like schoolboys playing a game.
It did not take us long to reach the olive groves and the abandoned white houses.
we chuckled like children as we crept through the trees and strolled into an open garden bright with colorful Moroccan flowers. Mon Dieu! We were a thousand miles away from the war when we stepped into that garden among the olive trees. There was a quaint box-square house with a flat roof sitting across the garden, and the blank-face plaster walls were cool and nice as music in the dusk. Yankee Bill, the Dane and I---three ragged, starving Legionnaires in dusty capotes---stared at that house and chuckled. Yankee Bill set his kepi at a swashbuckling angle on his head. Christian Jensen's Danish face split in a joyous grin. Like three merry pirates we crossed the garden and pushed through the arched Moorish doorway.
THE house was of typical Moorish design. The outer door opened on a hall leading to a little square patio around which the house was built. A little courtyard that dreamed with the scent of orange trees. Sacre Nom! Was like stepping through the golden gates into Paradise. We stood there grinning like monkeys and panting out cheerful oaths. That court was a lovely place and if the other houses we intended to forage were going to be as pleasant our trip was going to be a happy one.
Across the court a flight of stone steps led to a balcony where we were delighted to see a door opening into the house. The three of us were about to dart up the steps when a sound beneath them halted intent. Stooping, the Yankee opened a little door beneath the stairway. And a pair of swart little pigs darted out beteen our legs, escaping from their pen.
Only the Yankee could have caught them. The little animals ran fast as rats. But they could not elude Yankee Bill the Elephant. Not that prize. He trapped them in a corner of the court; came gasping back to us with a pig squeaking under each arm. No more starving now. The Dane, the Yankee, and I went up those steps with a will---Yankee Bill carrying his pigs---and telling what juicy chops they would make. We went up those steps and plunged into a cool, dusty room hung with Arab rugs and Spanish shawls and European pictures.
"Every man for himself," laughed Yankee Bill the Elephant. I reckon they ain't a soul left in this place, Musta cleared out when the shells started to pop. Nice house, this. Europeans livin' here. We'll take a look around. Wait'll I tie up our Sunday dinner. "Catching a shawl from the wall he bound the pigs up and set them near the door. Those poor little pigs! They looked like old ladies at the Opera Comique with their black and white hides wrapped in that shawl. Then Yankee Bill was shouting once more.
"Quick! Look! Am I dreamin' pards or what do I see in that farthest corner, there? Whoops! How about it, Corday, old cochon! How about it Christianity! Look at that!"
We looked. Aunt of the devil! how we looked. Yankee Bill's eyes sparkled like tiny fires, and the Dane was staring as though he had found the pot of gold which fools think does not lie at the end of the rainbow. They should have been there in that room for us to see what we saw. Yankee Bill the Elephant was counting in an awed, religious voice; "Six -- eight -- thirteen -- fifteen. Fifteen! Wow, you cheating devils of the Legion of the Damned! Fifteen! That makes five a-piece! Whoops!" You know how a Yankee can yell "whoops!"
We yelled, too. Fifteen bottles of nice, ruby-red wine. Five bottles for each of us. We laughed. We wept. We grabbed hands and danced around the little pyre of shining glass. The Dane lost control and grabbed the first one. Yankee Bill and I snatched up one. We cracked off the necks with that little gesture executed with so much grace, so much dexterity by Legionnaires. Cross-legged, like Arab tailors, we sat down in the very middle of the floor and honored our long-insulted throats. The Dane got his second bottle. I grabbed mine, and Yankee Bill the Elephant got his.
Christian Jensen then started to croon the excellent chorus of La Casquette du Pere Bugeaud. Can you see us? Can you see us sitting there, our sunburned faces illuminated, ruby-red bottles waving in our fists, moist voices softly humming that jolly little Legion tune about Father Bugeaud and his silly sun helmet? No party of artists in Montparnasse could have been more exalted. Five bottles apiece!
It was a gay hour for us, and that is never a lie. Only, it was a gay three hours. We did not realize it until our last bottle finished the pyramid of emptied ones; and the Dane suddenly pointed out a big, round yellow moon rolling past our open roof. Yankee Bill the Elephant lurched to his feet with a genial oath, and made for the door that opened on the balcony over the patio.
Spang!
There was a shot, you understand, and the good Yankee's kepi went sailing from his head.
Have you ever looked down on a courtyard yellow under the moon and seen it suddenly fill with a howling, rampant mob of demons bristling with knives and guns and lusting for blood? Have you ever heard those soulless, shrill yellls that saw out through a Moslem's black teeth? Yells grimmer and bloodier than the curse of Cain? A sight to see and a sound to hear that will melt the spine of a stone image.
And the three of us in that room up there were not stone images. Non! Soldiers of the Foreign Legion may not look it, but they are flesh and blood. And they make splendid toys with which a Moslem gang may be entertained. What entertainment! No white man ever wants to fall in the hands of an Oriental enemy. Ideals are not known to the Oriental. Ideas are. They have a lot of them -- such as cutting off a captive's eyelids, snipping off his hands, roasting his bare heels over a slow fire, or tying mad mice on his stomach, and putting a heated bowl over the rodents so they will burrow in. Dieu! Those Moslens are not generous captors. They are not! And now they were spilling like a flood of dirty water into the courtyard, torturing the shadows with their savage yells.
The yellow moonlight gleamed on a score of brandished blades; shone like dull gold on the barrels of twenty rifles; glistened on the brown faces that snarled under their shaggy wigs and bobbing turbans. Yankee Bill the Elephant hopped backward after his kepi, and let out a cursse that heaven must have blushed to hear. Christian Jensen and I bobbed to our feet like jumping jackets. As the Yakee flung shut that balcony door a rain of bullets knocked for entry on the wood.
The face of Yankee Bill had gone white as newly-milled flour. His big hands fluttered up and down his chest. Christian Jensen was grinning fearfully; and I do not know what I did. One thing was certain. We had been on the edge of a peaceful doze, for while five quarts of wine may mean nothing to a Legionnaire who has a stomach of a rhino-hide, it certainly warms his pulse. But right at that instant we were sober and cold-blooded as icicles. C'est ca! We were sober. Aunt of the Devil, how sober we were!
"Christmas! Jumping Christmas! gasped Yankee Bill the Elephant. Only he did not say Christmas. " The whole army o'Bou Hamara must be down below. Listen t'that riot! Wow! An' we ain't got a gun nor a knife between us!" And he went on to exclaim.
I, myself, managed to think up a few passionate remarks; and Christian Jensen, the Dane, howled: "Blessed Saint Boniface! We are unarmed! Rats in a trap! Rats in a trap!"
"We ain't rats in a trap!" bellowed Yankee Bill. "We're three men in a trap. "But, he yelled, "we ain't caught yet! We --"
Bullets drummed like a fury of rain against the door. Then the lead stopped beating. We heard a commotion, and knew the Moslem demons were coming up the stairway to the balcony. I fled to a slit of window that looked out on the balcony; and saw those savage, snarling devils moving up the steps. Those stairs were not very wide, and they climbed single file. Came on warily.
From their trappings and beard-dye I recognized them, and went sick to the pit of my soul. I had seen such men before. Moslem dervishes of the Aissaoua sect, one of the most terrible holy orders in Africa. Fanatical demons who yearned from the bottom of their hearts to kill an Unbeliever. If they could finish off heir Unbeliever in a slow ad painful way so much the better. And if they died in an attempt to kill or catch the Unbeliever, Mohammed would jerk them into the front seats of Paradise, pin them with medals, and let them dance with the pick of those heavenly ladies who live in those hollow pearls up there. So they were brave, those Moroccan Aissaoua dogs because they could not lose. Fanatical to insanity. Cruel. Sacre Nom!
I went sadly sick as I saw them mount the stairs. In the meantime, Yankee Bill had ordered the Dane to lean against the bolted door while he dashed around looking for another exit. He bounced into a little dark room behind the one where we stood; came back yelling that it was empty and had no further door. He said there was something or other in there, but I did not hear him very well because those Moslem screams for blood were too unhappily loud in my ears. They were almost on the balcony.
I was sweating like sin, then, and instinctively got away from that slit of window. Yankee Bill the Elephant was swearing a long, lurid stream. Crunched against the door, Christian Jensen was grinning like a stark fool. I think we were all seeing a picture of ourelves waltzing over a toasting fire; or groaning, up to our necks in hot sand while warrior ants countermarched down our shaved heads. The Aissaona Moslems were famous for such plesant parties
"Wait," shouted Yankee Bill. Listen you two salopards. We're Legionnaires. Ain't one of us who hasn't been in a worse hole than this!" (That big Yankee Bill the Elephant lied and he knew it. We had been in terrible holes but none more terrible than this. Yet it was nice to hear him lie. That big partner of mine was a warrior if there ever was one) "We're gonna get out of here. Fight our way clear.
Get away from that door, Christianity. Listen. Fast! Grab a bottle.There's five for each of us. An' there's only twenty of those dogs outside---"
Bottles! Empty wine bottles! Pardieu! they were better than nothing. At once the big Am' with a rotten brown djeelaba spotted with blood and grime.
I think he was too surprised to croak when the door swung open and he caught sight of Yankee Bill the Elephant's huge frame. I think he was too surprised to lift his long-barreled Arab rifle.
And that Moslem devil was going to be more surprised. For the big Yankee's arm coiled and uncoiled like a monstrous thick snake. His huge right hand whipped out fast. He had been holding that glass bottle like a grenade. Now he hurled it as they hurl baseballs in America. Like a streak of red light it flashed from his hand, and struck that devil-mask squarely in the nose. There was a fearful shriek! The flung bottle exploded into a trillion pieces like a fragle bomb. Almost knocked that rotten Moslem's head from his neck. His bare heels came up in the air and he flew over backward like a crazy acrobat. Everyone on the steps tumbled to the bottom.
Yankee Bill laughed a shout as he slammed shut our door. "Quick! When they start up again, peg a bottle. It's your turn, Chistianity. By Gawd, I guess I didn't curve one over the plate---" (I think that was the expression he used) "---that time. That fellow's face won't grin at our torture party. Quick, buddy! Here they come!"
He had the door open and Christian Jensen threw like a flash. We heard a smart tinkle, a screech, and the clatter of tumbling bodies repeated. The Dane ducked away, and it was my turn.
Baseball is not a game played in France. I could not hurl my bottle as skillfully as Yankee Bill hurled his. Neither could Christian Jensen. But we had thrown scores of grenades in our day, and the throwing of bottles was not unknown to Legionnaires, either. My giant partner popped open the door. I saw a ducking turban, and let fly. A bullet whistled back at me in return but did not strike. And my bottle did. There was a smash and another screech.
YANKEE BILL the Elephant began to laugh. His face went red as a new carrot. His shoulders quivered. He had another bottle in his fist, and the Dane opened the door. Two bullets flickered in and the bottle flew out. How it flew! Dieu! That giant Yankee had a way of snapping his arm when he threw things and they went like projectiles from a mounted rifle. Zip and smash and more yells of pain. You see, that big American giant had once been a baseball player, and he knew how to throw.
"I can fast-ball these skunks to a standstill," he chortled. "Quick! More bottles! I'll stop these dogs and kill the umpire, too. Hey! Open the door, Christianity! They're comin' up again. Let's all throw together, this time. Watch out for their guns. Here goes!"
He swung the door and we all threw together. It was a splendid game. Our bottles smashed one-two-three. Bullets sped back at us and our Dane won a scratch across the ear that trip. Yankee Bill took a ball through the crown of his kepi and I got one through the sleeve of my capote.
Too close to be really good sportsmanship. The Moslems were bound not to play fair. They were wild those devils. Like a pack of tigers snapping at the heels of a child in a low tree. We heard them shrieking to Allah as we slapped shut our door. Their guns barked angrily, and furious bullets pelted into the wood.
"We got to keep them at the bottom of the steps," our Yankee yelled. "Don't let 'em get up here. I think we've put three of them pretty well into the hospital tent." He waved his third bottle. "Break their lousy heads for them. Smash 'em in the face if you can. Throw hard!"
"Saint Stephen, I hope they bleed for years," panted the Dane.
"Quick, my braves," I shouted at the door. They come up. All together, then. Let them feel our wine-wet glass! But now!"
Once more we sent three bottles whistling down those steps. I think the wine made us brave as lions. We let in a swarm of bullets when we opened the door that time, and we sent out behind our bottles a Legion yell that resounded loud above the crack of their guns. We could see the Moslems floundering, dodging at the foot of the steps; their rifles flashing like red flowers blooming in the powder-smoke that now filled the little courtyard. "They can't get up! They can't get up!" bellowed Yankee Bill, dancing from one foot to the other. And what rotten shots they are. Wow! And they think we're playing with them, too.
"They think we have a card up our sleeves, my salopards. They are almost afraid to charge. Ho, ho! More bottles! Let them come with their guns and knives! Ho, ho!
Christian Jensen cursed fluently, scrubbing his torn ear with a fist. "But, the devil! The bottles are almost gone---"
Your shoes, you dogs! Laughed the Yankee giant. We'll heave our shoes. A good brodequin across the scalp will split a skull. Quick! Off with'em! We'll give these hounds a lesson in Legion games! Fast!
Now, a Legionnaire boot is made perhaps of elephant hide and studded with iron nails. These brodequins! Once I had taken one across the scalp in a merry little Legionaire brawl in Bel Abbes. It had buried me in sleep for hours. And how I had cursed those leaded boots on a long march. But now? Those giant-soled shoes were gifts from heaven. Little Easter presents. We blessed them to the good saints as we stooped to yank them from our feet.
And what a funny picture we made, standing there with a boot dangling from each hand, peeking out of the door. Do you know what passed through my mind? Do you know what the picture reminded me of? Three little children barefeet downstairs to see the hemlock tree on the eve of Noel, the Christmas Eve. Only we were not staring into a pretty room twinkling with a hemlock tree and presents. We stared into a yowling courtyard crammed with a savage gang, and the lights we saw were shooting guns and the presents were angry bullets.
And so we hurled the last of our wine bottles; and then six nailstudded brodequins went hurtling down the steps into that savage gang. We flung our shoes carefully and with precision. First the Dane would open the door a crack, and Yankee Bill would fling a shoe. He had dynamite in that right arm of his, did Yankee Bill the Elephant. The Aissaoua devotees who were hit by him that evening must certainly have doubted the benevolence of an Allah who could allow such a disaster.
Then the Dane would hurl his bottle or boot after which I would fling mine. Mon Dieu! If we did not hold that rioting crew of fiends at the foot of those steps for fully twenty minutes. We laid some of them flat, too. We saw four of devils stretched unconscious on the ground under the orange trees, and three more who bled like stabbed cattle. Cut noses and broken heads.
But our ammunition supply had been perilously low, if not lower than that, at the start of the battle. And Christian Jensen had won a bullet scrape across the left elbow that had him screaming. Finally our bottles were gone, and we had one shoe left to throw. It was a bad moment, that. A moment that sapped much of my ambition and courage. Three Legionnaires caught in a little room offering no means of escape save a flight of steps occupied by an Aissaoua gang. One shoe left to throw.
The Moslem devils started up the steps for the tenth time. They were howling like maniacs, firing a steady tattoo at our door. Yankee Bill waited grinning until they alost reached the top. Then he flashed open our door; whipped our last boot. Pardieu! He hurled that brodequin with every ounce of muscle in his hide. I imagine that shoe gathered a crowd of bullets to its heart, for it winged out into a swarm of them. They did not slow it a whit, and it struck the leader on the steps with a smack! That did things to his ugly face, and flung him down the stairway. The mob behind him went over like nine-pins, screaming. We slammed our door.
"Held 'em again!" the American exulted. " But not for too long. They may have us figured at last. They may not believe we have a card up our cuffs now. So come on, you devils! The Legion still rides on top!" Racing over to a wall, he yanked down a beautiful Spanish shawl. What was the Yankee doing? The Dane and I glared. Had he gone mad? He was winding that silken mantle over his head and shoulders, tugging up the collar of his capote. "Hurry!" he bawled. "Get a shawl over your heads. Like this. Fast, there! Be quick!" Now he was tearing strips from another shawl; wrapping the rags around his fists. "Like this!"
"Name of Saint Andrew!" gasped Christian Jensen. "What is -- "
"We're going to charge!" shouted Yankee Bill. "Get your skin covered. Your salopards. Wind a shawl around your face. We want to get out before they start up again. Hurry! Didn't I tell you? The card up our sleeves. We'll charge at 'em, an' throw them bee-hives I found in this other room. Three of 'em. Each carry a hive. We'll rush 'em with those hornets, see? An' we got to break through! Quick! The bees!"
Now Aunt of the Devil! That giant Yankee Bill had found three little wooden cones filled with bees sitting in a corner of that other room! The owner of the house had hidden them there during the bombardment of the town. What a weapon! But Sacre Nom de Dieu, what a desparate weapon to wield! A gun, I swear, that was going to have a most deliberate and unhappy back-fire, if I knew anything about it. But with the wine and Yankee Bill's shouts and the ugly clamor of the Moslems jamming the patio urging us to action, we twined Spanish shawls about our cheeks and hands; followed the Yankee into the other room.
Carefully the giant Yankee picked up a hive. Never have I picked up anything as carefully. Never had I enjoyed as many chills trickling down my spine. You know how you feel when a bee buzzes around your head while you are picking wild flowers in the woods? You know that drilling, monotone drone? There is only one sound in the world as nasty -- that is the yelling of Asissaoua friends forming to rush a stairway.
We picked up those three hives, and ducked for the door. Sacre Nom! At the door, Yankee Bill the Elephant flung around, and made for those two pigs he had found in the courtyard. We had forgoten those pigs, had the Dane and I. But not the Yankee. Do you think he was going to leave the pigs behind? But never! The gang in the patio was crying for blood and murder. The bees were getting angry and thinking of murder, too. Our hives were droning like rising wind whiping through a valley. One or two tiny airlanes of battle had already swooped out of the room, ready to signal the fleets and begin war. But Yankee Bill could remember his pigs. He would not abandon his bacon!
He snatched up the squealing animals; ran to the door; flung it wide. Then with those screaming pigs under one arm, that humming beehive under the other, he let a wild, most fiendish bellow boom from his shawl-swaddled face and charged out onto the balcony.
History overflows with famous charges. The Light Brigade, Gibralter, Waterloo, Delhi, Rome, Gettysburg---mad, gallant charges. Not one of them could have equaled the charge we made down those steps for sheer recklessness, insanity, color and the bizarre. I do not wonder the devils in the patio stood as if bewitched as we rushed at them down the stairway. We must have been a crazy, impossible sight. I would wager ten thousand francs these Aissaowa fiends thought we were three jinn loosed from the Caves of Darkness. Demons popped from the underworld. We looked like nothing else.
Imagine that giant Yankee, his face swathed in a lustrous silk shawl embroidered with lovely scarlet and purple roses, blue and green fringe tossing before his wild eyes, bounding down the steps with two shawl-wrapped under one arm and a buzzing hive under the other. Followed by two howling madmen similarly bundled in lace and silk, and bounding like grasshoppers, too.
It is no exaggeration to say the three of us were an absinthe-drinker's dream. Nor is it an exaggeration to say we moved our bare feet with a speed. We descended quickly, shouting at the tops of our lungs. For the hives we carried had about to disgorge their contents. Their occupants poured like brown smoke from the little doors. A smoke that stabbed and knifed and buzzed and burned. Uncle of Satan! but those bees were mad.
YOU know the legend of the Spartan boy who carried a fox under his cloak and never whimpered as the animal gnawed his vitals? Believe me, there was a similarity in carrying those hives. Halfway down the steps, Yankee Bill hurled his hives. Then the Dane sent his hive sailing; and I needed no invitation to throw mine away.
Arcing downward those three angry-bee hives landed squarely in the midst of the astonished throng. In half a second it was a milling, squalling throng. Arms shot skyward. Turbans dodged and bobbed like corks on troubled water. Those Moslems sent up an outcry that punched holes in the moon as they churned into a frenzied tangle of tiny yellow darts that spread and stung.
And the three of us? We kept right on going down. Our weapons had backfired and those bees barbing our hides added no small impetus to our charge. In half a second we were in the middle of that boiling, yowling, kicking, biting mass. Fighting like inspired fiends.
NOW, my friends, it is two days after the action. And Yankee Bill, the Dane, the Sentry who let us go and I are sitting in our tent feasting on roasted pig and the final bottle of wine we'd rescued from that Moslim mob. Ma foi ! It was better than bullets.
Bullets! Weapons! Fights! Those subjects he knew, perhaps, better than any living man. A vetran warrior, Thibaut Corday. He had been soldier of fortune for more than half a century. Fought in America with a New Orleans regiment for the Lost Cause. Fought with the armies of Britain, Holland, and Imperial Spain. Fought with the Foreign Legion of his own land, from Tonkin to Madagascar, Kotonu to Haiphong. Weapons and battles? The ancient warrior knew them all right.
"Truly," he repeated, "no soldiers ever fought with weapons more strange than the ones we used in that battle. I have spent a lifetime soldiering, my friends. A lifetime at wars. And Sacre Nom! That one, that battle in Morocco, waged on my side without blade or a single bullet, was the strangest, grimmest battle I ever fought. And the funniest!"
He snorted a laugh and waved his scarred old hands at the twilight slanting across the quiet bay and enameling red the water and mole of the corsairs and curtaining with soft mauve dust the cafe on Boulevard Sadi Carnot where we sat. There was a Holland-Amerika liner down at the big pier, and a busy crowd moved along the ramp. But we forgot the city of Algiers as we watched the twiglike hands a-gesture, listened to the voice from the cinnamon bush, and saw the strangest, grimmest battle that old warrior had ever fought. And the funniest.
IT was in 1907, he began, and I was in the Foreign Legion in Morocco near Casablanca. Uncle of Satan! but the country was one bad place for white faces to be. Abdul-el-Aziz, the young Sultan, had let the country fall into the savage fingers of the brigand Bou Hamara and the whole land was on fire with war. The Legion had pushed down along the coast from Rabat after a world of hard fighting against the Moorish tribes, and we got into Casablanca just after our French gunboats had shelled the town into a rubbish heap.
Our officers camped us on the edge of the town, and we were one glad regiment to drop our blankets. Mais oui! It had been a hard march down there. Bad water, no wine, and food that the devil himself would have not touched. Every Legionnaire was dropping with hunger and fatigue, and for a bidon of red wine we would have sold our souls to the devil! We would have given them away. We were one sorry lot.
It was late afternoon when our corps dropped their packs in a dusty field, and the sergeant told the men they could scramble for themselves if they wished; but by no means were the Legionnaires to go into the town. The town was still smoldering from the bombardment. We could see brown smoke clinging over the shattered roof tops of the Moorish houses, and the place looked like a tomb and stank with powder. Oui! That town was one ugly scar on the coats, but much of its northern quarter was still standing, and the houses up there looked white and cool and there were olive trees.
We had no water and not a drop of wine, and there was a clump of abandoned houses up on the slope. And we were hungry! A soldier of the Legion is always hungry, and he thirsts like no other man on earth.
And how we hungered and thirsted by the time we pitched our camp and policed that field and finished the thrice-damned odd jobs a Legionnaire must do in the making of camp! Tins of singe--- "monkey" ---which is old boot heels ground into plaster---and canteens of warm water were finally given us, but warm water and ground boot heels make food for no honest men. The stomach was knotting under my belt and my throat had dried to sand when that camp was made, and my companions had all but withered away.
"I ain't fer standin' fer it!" announced my partner as he squatted beside me on the blankets. He was a big Yankee, that fellow, from New York City, and he was an iron one. A giant made of bronze with a great black stack of hair and the brightest blue eyes ever seen and tremendous hands that could have twisted a foot from a leg. Yankee Bill the Elephant we called him. Pardieu! But he was a tough one. He had been once a baseball player and the muscles on his arms kept splitting the sleeve of his capote. And his big hands, I say! Uncle of Satan!
There was a story in Bel Abbes about his bending the barrel of a Spanish Mauser. He had grabbed my wrist in anger once, and I believed that tale! But, yes, Yankee Bill the Elephant was never the child to stand for anything unfair. You see, all the time we had been marching to Casablanca we had been planning what a gay party we would have getting into the town. And now the commandant's order keeping us in camp and forbidding us to go near the town was a hard one to swallow. Made doubly hard because a troop of black Tirailleurs had been allowed to forage all afternoon.
"I ain't standin' fer it," Yankee Bill the Elephant kept insisting to me. "There's those black devils allowed to go in an' grab all th' food an' drinks they can find, an' here we got to eat this canned willy for the next ten days. By golly, old pard, I'm goin' to do somethin' about it. You bet. Are you with me on a little stunt, pard?"
"Sure, pard, " I agreed in the language I had learned while fighting in the States. There I had learned what splendid plans these Americans could devise, for I fought with your South at that time, and there was something happening all the time -- some of the most surprising plans. And if my giant partner had a plan that would ease my parched soul and moaning stomach, I was one salopard if I would not aid him. "What is your 'stunt,' my Elephant? If it has to do with food I am enlisted at once."
Yankee Bill laughed, told me to wait a moment, and ducked from the tent. A few minutes later he returned with Christian Jensen at his heels. This Dane, Christian Jensen, was one little package of sin and dynamite. Little and made of copper wire he was, with eyes that blinked from a too-constant staring at infamy, a bright grin that fairly glowed when he was mad, and a head of the reddest hair out of hell. My partner could have chosen no better a companion for any scheme and a battle we gave the enemy! No soldiers ever fought with weapons more strange!"
IN TWO seconds the three of us had our heads together while Yankee Bill the Elephant hatched an idea.
After all, it was the simplest of plans. The easiest project in the world. We would stroll over to a wheat field that bordered the camp on its eastern edge, crawl off through the grain, circle the smashed Moorish quarter of the town, and end up in that cluster of little white houses and olive trees and shade. Assuredly we would find something worth eating, drinking, and taking away in those abandoned houses. We could scuttle back before the bugle blew for the roll-call, and nobody but the Angel Gabriel could be the wiser.
"Why," exclaimed Yankee Bill the Elephant, "it's so easy it's foolish we must promise that sentry over there a good whack o' food when we gets back, an' he lets us off into the grain. Once we get among them olive groves we're safe as canaries in a nest, see? We runs up to them houses, loads our pockets, an' dashes back. We got just three hours. Are you hyenas with me?"
He pointed at the whispering yellow wheat that lay like a moving sea between our camping ground and the olive trees hedging the town. "We ducks off in there. Of course we got to go unarmed. It'd look suspicious for us to go get our Lebels from the stack. Besides, we don't need no arms. From the looks of it they ain't a livin' soul in that quarter of the town. Are you salopards coming."
Christian Jensen and I were coming. We clasped the plan of Yankee Bill to our dry bosoms as if we had never heard of the guard house where we were sure to groan if we were caught. Hitching into our capotes, the three of us strolled from the tent over to the wheat. As the Yankee had declared, it was so easy it was foolish. A
whispered word to the poor devil standing guard and we had his mouth hanging open for the choice morsels we promised him in return. Then we were ducking away through the tall grain like schoolboys playing a game.
It did not take us long to reach the olive groves and the abandoned white houses.
we chuckled like children as we crept through the trees and strolled into an open garden bright with colorful Moroccan flowers. Mon Dieu! We were a thousand miles away from the war when we stepped into that garden among the olive trees. There was a quaint box-square house with a flat roof sitting across the garden, and the blank-face plaster walls were cool and nice as music in the dusk. Yankee Bill, the Dane and I---three ragged, starving Legionnaires in dusty capotes---stared at that house and chuckled. Yankee Bill set his kepi at a swashbuckling angle on his head. Christian Jensen's Danish face split in a joyous grin. Like three merry pirates we crossed the garden and pushed through the arched Moorish doorway.
THE house was of typical Moorish design. The outer door opened on a hall leading to a little square patio around which the house was built. A little courtyard that dreamed with the scent of orange trees. Sacre Nom! Was like stepping through the golden gates into Paradise. We stood there grinning like monkeys and panting out cheerful oaths. That court was a lovely place and if the other houses we intended to forage were going to be as pleasant our trip was going to be a happy one.
Across the court a flight of stone steps led to a balcony where we were delighted to see a door opening into the house. The three of us were about to dart up the steps when a sound beneath them halted intent. Stooping, the Yankee opened a little door beneath the stairway. And a pair of swart little pigs darted out beteen our legs, escaping from their pen.
Only the Yankee could have caught them. The little animals ran fast as rats. But they could not elude Yankee Bill the Elephant. Not that prize. He trapped them in a corner of the court; came gasping back to us with a pig squeaking under each arm. No more starving now. The Dane, the Yankee, and I went up those steps with a will---Yankee Bill carrying his pigs---and telling what juicy chops they would make. We went up those steps and plunged into a cool, dusty room hung with Arab rugs and Spanish shawls and European pictures.
"Every man for himself," laughed Yankee Bill the Elephant. I reckon they ain't a soul left in this place, Musta cleared out when the shells started to pop. Nice house, this. Europeans livin' here. We'll take a look around. Wait'll I tie up our Sunday dinner. "Catching a shawl from the wall he bound the pigs up and set them near the door. Those poor little pigs! They looked like old ladies at the Opera Comique with their black and white hides wrapped in that shawl. Then Yankee Bill was shouting once more.
"Quick! Look! Am I dreamin' pards or what do I see in that farthest corner, there? Whoops! How about it, Corday, old cochon! How about it Christianity! Look at that!"
We looked. Aunt of the devil! how we looked. Yankee Bill's eyes sparkled like tiny fires, and the Dane was staring as though he had found the pot of gold which fools think does not lie at the end of the rainbow. They should have been there in that room for us to see what we saw. Yankee Bill the Elephant was counting in an awed, religious voice; "Six -- eight -- thirteen -- fifteen. Fifteen! Wow, you cheating devils of the Legion of the Damned! Fifteen! That makes five a-piece! Whoops!" You know how a Yankee can yell "whoops!"
We yelled, too. Fifteen bottles of nice, ruby-red wine. Five bottles for each of us. We laughed. We wept. We grabbed hands and danced around the little pyre of shining glass. The Dane lost control and grabbed the first one. Yankee Bill and I snatched up one. We cracked off the necks with that little gesture executed with so much grace, so much dexterity by Legionnaires. Cross-legged, like Arab tailors, we sat down in the very middle of the floor and honored our long-insulted throats. The Dane got his second bottle. I grabbed mine, and Yankee Bill the Elephant got his.
Christian Jensen then started to croon the excellent chorus of La Casquette du Pere Bugeaud. Can you see us? Can you see us sitting there, our sunburned faces illuminated, ruby-red bottles waving in our fists, moist voices softly humming that jolly little Legion tune about Father Bugeaud and his silly sun helmet? No party of artists in Montparnasse could have been more exalted. Five bottles apiece!
It was a gay hour for us, and that is never a lie. Only, it was a gay three hours. We did not realize it until our last bottle finished the pyramid of emptied ones; and the Dane suddenly pointed out a big, round yellow moon rolling past our open roof. Yankee Bill the Elephant lurched to his feet with a genial oath, and made for the door that opened on the balcony over the patio.
Spang!
There was a shot, you understand, and the good Yankee's kepi went sailing from his head.
Have you ever looked down on a courtyard yellow under the moon and seen it suddenly fill with a howling, rampant mob of demons bristling with knives and guns and lusting for blood? Have you ever heard those soulless, shrill yellls that saw out through a Moslem's black teeth? Yells grimmer and bloodier than the curse of Cain? A sight to see and a sound to hear that will melt the spine of a stone image.
And the three of us in that room up there were not stone images. Non! Soldiers of the Foreign Legion may not look it, but they are flesh and blood. And they make splendid toys with which a Moslem gang may be entertained. What entertainment! No white man ever wants to fall in the hands of an Oriental enemy. Ideals are not known to the Oriental. Ideas are. They have a lot of them -- such as cutting off a captive's eyelids, snipping off his hands, roasting his bare heels over a slow fire, or tying mad mice on his stomach, and putting a heated bowl over the rodents so they will burrow in. Dieu! Those Moslens are not generous captors. They are not! And now they were spilling like a flood of dirty water into the courtyard, torturing the shadows with their savage yells.
The yellow moonlight gleamed on a score of brandished blades; shone like dull gold on the barrels of twenty rifles; glistened on the brown faces that snarled under their shaggy wigs and bobbing turbans. Yankee Bill the Elephant hopped backward after his kepi, and let out a cursse that heaven must have blushed to hear. Christian Jensen and I bobbed to our feet like jumping jackets. As the Yakee flung shut that balcony door a rain of bullets knocked for entry on the wood.
The face of Yankee Bill had gone white as newly-milled flour. His big hands fluttered up and down his chest. Christian Jensen was grinning fearfully; and I do not know what I did. One thing was certain. We had been on the edge of a peaceful doze, for while five quarts of wine may mean nothing to a Legionnaire who has a stomach of a rhino-hide, it certainly warms his pulse. But right at that instant we were sober and cold-blooded as icicles. C'est ca! We were sober. Aunt of the Devil, how sober we were!
"Christmas! Jumping Christmas! gasped Yankee Bill the Elephant. Only he did not say Christmas. " The whole army o'Bou Hamara must be down below. Listen t'that riot! Wow! An' we ain't got a gun nor a knife between us!" And he went on to exclaim.
I, myself, managed to think up a few passionate remarks; and Christian Jensen, the Dane, howled: "Blessed Saint Boniface! We are unarmed! Rats in a trap! Rats in a trap!"
"We ain't rats in a trap!" bellowed Yankee Bill. "We're three men in a trap. "But, he yelled, "we ain't caught yet! We --"
Bullets drummed like a fury of rain against the door. Then the lead stopped beating. We heard a commotion, and knew the Moslem demons were coming up the stairway to the balcony. I fled to a slit of window that looked out on the balcony; and saw those savage, snarling devils moving up the steps. Those stairs were not very wide, and they climbed single file. Came on warily.
From their trappings and beard-dye I recognized them, and went sick to the pit of my soul. I had seen such men before. Moslem dervishes of the Aissaoua sect, one of the most terrible holy orders in Africa. Fanatical demons who yearned from the bottom of their hearts to kill an Unbeliever. If they could finish off heir Unbeliever in a slow ad painful way so much the better. And if they died in an attempt to kill or catch the Unbeliever, Mohammed would jerk them into the front seats of Paradise, pin them with medals, and let them dance with the pick of those heavenly ladies who live in those hollow pearls up there. So they were brave, those Moroccan Aissaoua dogs because they could not lose. Fanatical to insanity. Cruel. Sacre Nom!
I went sadly sick as I saw them mount the stairs. In the meantime, Yankee Bill had ordered the Dane to lean against the bolted door while he dashed around looking for another exit. He bounced into a little dark room behind the one where we stood; came back yelling that it was empty and had no further door. He said there was something or other in there, but I did not hear him very well because those Moslem screams for blood were too unhappily loud in my ears. They were almost on the balcony.
I was sweating like sin, then, and instinctively got away from that slit of window. Yankee Bill the Elephant was swearing a long, lurid stream. Crunched against the door, Christian Jensen was grinning like a stark fool. I think we were all seeing a picture of ourelves waltzing over a toasting fire; or groaning, up to our necks in hot sand while warrior ants countermarched down our shaved heads. The Aissaona Moslems were famous for such plesant parties
"Wait," shouted Yankee Bill. Listen you two salopards. We're Legionnaires. Ain't one of us who hasn't been in a worse hole than this!" (That big Yankee Bill the Elephant lied and he knew it. We had been in terrible holes but none more terrible than this. Yet it was nice to hear him lie. That big partner of mine was a warrior if there ever was one) "We're gonna get out of here. Fight our way clear.
Get away from that door, Christianity. Listen. Fast! Grab a bottle.There's five for each of us. An' there's only twenty of those dogs outside---"
Bottles! Empty wine bottles! Pardieu! they were better than nothing. At once the big Am' with a rotten brown djeelaba spotted with blood and grime.
I think he was too surprised to croak when the door swung open and he caught sight of Yankee Bill the Elephant's huge frame. I think he was too surprised to lift his long-barreled Arab rifle.
And that Moslem devil was going to be more surprised. For the big Yankee's arm coiled and uncoiled like a monstrous thick snake. His huge right hand whipped out fast. He had been holding that glass bottle like a grenade. Now he hurled it as they hurl baseballs in America. Like a streak of red light it flashed from his hand, and struck that devil-mask squarely in the nose. There was a fearful shriek! The flung bottle exploded into a trillion pieces like a fragle bomb. Almost knocked that rotten Moslem's head from his neck. His bare heels came up in the air and he flew over backward like a crazy acrobat. Everyone on the steps tumbled to the bottom.
Yankee Bill laughed a shout as he slammed shut our door. "Quick! When they start up again, peg a bottle. It's your turn, Chistianity. By Gawd, I guess I didn't curve one over the plate---" (I think that was the expression he used) "---that time. That fellow's face won't grin at our torture party. Quick, buddy! Here they come!"
He had the door open and Christian Jensen threw like a flash. We heard a smart tinkle, a screech, and the clatter of tumbling bodies repeated. The Dane ducked away, and it was my turn.
Baseball is not a game played in France. I could not hurl my bottle as skillfully as Yankee Bill hurled his. Neither could Christian Jensen. But we had thrown scores of grenades in our day, and the throwing of bottles was not unknown to Legionnaires, either. My giant partner popped open the door. I saw a ducking turban, and let fly. A bullet whistled back at me in return but did not strike. And my bottle did. There was a smash and another screech.
YANKEE BILL the Elephant began to laugh. His face went red as a new carrot. His shoulders quivered. He had another bottle in his fist, and the Dane opened the door. Two bullets flickered in and the bottle flew out. How it flew! Dieu! That giant Yankee had a way of snapping his arm when he threw things and they went like projectiles from a mounted rifle. Zip and smash and more yells of pain. You see, that big American giant had once been a baseball player, and he knew how to throw.
"I can fast-ball these skunks to a standstill," he chortled. "Quick! More bottles! I'll stop these dogs and kill the umpire, too. Hey! Open the door, Christianity! They're comin' up again. Let's all throw together, this time. Watch out for their guns. Here goes!"
He swung the door and we all threw together. It was a splendid game. Our bottles smashed one-two-three. Bullets sped back at us and our Dane won a scratch across the ear that trip. Yankee Bill took a ball through the crown of his kepi and I got one through the sleeve of my capote.
Too close to be really good sportsmanship. The Moslems were bound not to play fair. They were wild those devils. Like a pack of tigers snapping at the heels of a child in a low tree. We heard them shrieking to Allah as we slapped shut our door. Their guns barked angrily, and furious bullets pelted into the wood.
"We got to keep them at the bottom of the steps," our Yankee yelled. "Don't let 'em get up here. I think we've put three of them pretty well into the hospital tent." He waved his third bottle. "Break their lousy heads for them. Smash 'em in the face if you can. Throw hard!"
"Saint Stephen, I hope they bleed for years," panted the Dane.
"Quick, my braves," I shouted at the door. They come up. All together, then. Let them feel our wine-wet glass! But now!"
Once more we sent three bottles whistling down those steps. I think the wine made us brave as lions. We let in a swarm of bullets when we opened the door that time, and we sent out behind our bottles a Legion yell that resounded loud above the crack of their guns. We could see the Moslems floundering, dodging at the foot of the steps; their rifles flashing like red flowers blooming in the powder-smoke that now filled the little courtyard. "They can't get up! They can't get up!" bellowed Yankee Bill, dancing from one foot to the other. And what rotten shots they are. Wow! And they think we're playing with them, too.
"They think we have a card up our sleeves, my salopards. They are almost afraid to charge. Ho, ho! More bottles! Let them come with their guns and knives! Ho, ho!
Christian Jensen cursed fluently, scrubbing his torn ear with a fist. "But, the devil! The bottles are almost gone---"
Your shoes, you dogs! Laughed the Yankee giant. We'll heave our shoes. A good brodequin across the scalp will split a skull. Quick! Off with'em! We'll give these hounds a lesson in Legion games! Fast!
Now, a Legionnaire boot is made perhaps of elephant hide and studded with iron nails. These brodequins! Once I had taken one across the scalp in a merry little Legionaire brawl in Bel Abbes. It had buried me in sleep for hours. And how I had cursed those leaded boots on a long march. But now? Those giant-soled shoes were gifts from heaven. Little Easter presents. We blessed them to the good saints as we stooped to yank them from our feet.
And what a funny picture we made, standing there with a boot dangling from each hand, peeking out of the door. Do you know what passed through my mind? Do you know what the picture reminded me of? Three little children barefeet downstairs to see the hemlock tree on the eve of Noel, the Christmas Eve. Only we were not staring into a pretty room twinkling with a hemlock tree and presents. We stared into a yowling courtyard crammed with a savage gang, and the lights we saw were shooting guns and the presents were angry bullets.
And so we hurled the last of our wine bottles; and then six nailstudded brodequins went hurtling down the steps into that savage gang. We flung our shoes carefully and with precision. First the Dane would open the door a crack, and Yankee Bill would fling a shoe. He had dynamite in that right arm of his, did Yankee Bill the Elephant. The Aissaoua devotees who were hit by him that evening must certainly have doubted the benevolence of an Allah who could allow such a disaster.
Then the Dane would hurl his bottle or boot after which I would fling mine. Mon Dieu! If we did not hold that rioting crew of fiends at the foot of those steps for fully twenty minutes. We laid some of them flat, too. We saw four of devils stretched unconscious on the ground under the orange trees, and three more who bled like stabbed cattle. Cut noses and broken heads.
But our ammunition supply had been perilously low, if not lower than that, at the start of the battle. And Christian Jensen had won a bullet scrape across the left elbow that had him screaming. Finally our bottles were gone, and we had one shoe left to throw. It was a bad moment, that. A moment that sapped much of my ambition and courage. Three Legionnaires caught in a little room offering no means of escape save a flight of steps occupied by an Aissaoua gang. One shoe left to throw.
The Moslem devils started up the steps for the tenth time. They were howling like maniacs, firing a steady tattoo at our door. Yankee Bill waited grinning until they alost reached the top. Then he flashed open our door; whipped our last boot. Pardieu! He hurled that brodequin with every ounce of muscle in his hide. I imagine that shoe gathered a crowd of bullets to its heart, for it winged out into a swarm of them. They did not slow it a whit, and it struck the leader on the steps with a smack! That did things to his ugly face, and flung him down the stairway. The mob behind him went over like nine-pins, screaming. We slammed our door.
"Held 'em again!" the American exulted. " But not for too long. They may have us figured at last. They may not believe we have a card up our cuffs now. So come on, you devils! The Legion still rides on top!" Racing over to a wall, he yanked down a beautiful Spanish shawl. What was the Yankee doing? The Dane and I glared. Had he gone mad? He was winding that silken mantle over his head and shoulders, tugging up the collar of his capote. "Hurry!" he bawled. "Get a shawl over your heads. Like this. Fast, there! Be quick!" Now he was tearing strips from another shawl; wrapping the rags around his fists. "Like this!"
"Name of Saint Andrew!" gasped Christian Jensen. "What is -- "
"We're going to charge!" shouted Yankee Bill. "Get your skin covered. Your salopards. Wind a shawl around your face. We want to get out before they start up again. Hurry! Didn't I tell you? The card up our sleeves. We'll charge at 'em, an' throw them bee-hives I found in this other room. Three of 'em. Each carry a hive. We'll rush 'em with those hornets, see? An' we got to break through! Quick! The bees!"
Now Aunt of the Devil! That giant Yankee Bill had found three little wooden cones filled with bees sitting in a corner of that other room! The owner of the house had hidden them there during the bombardment of the town. What a weapon! But Sacre Nom de Dieu, what a desparate weapon to wield! A gun, I swear, that was going to have a most deliberate and unhappy back-fire, if I knew anything about it. But with the wine and Yankee Bill's shouts and the ugly clamor of the Moslems jamming the patio urging us to action, we twined Spanish shawls about our cheeks and hands; followed the Yankee into the other room.
Carefully the giant Yankee picked up a hive. Never have I picked up anything as carefully. Never had I enjoyed as many chills trickling down my spine. You know how you feel when a bee buzzes around your head while you are picking wild flowers in the woods? You know that drilling, monotone drone? There is only one sound in the world as nasty -- that is the yelling of Asissaoua friends forming to rush a stairway.
We picked up those three hives, and ducked for the door. Sacre Nom! At the door, Yankee Bill the Elephant flung around, and made for those two pigs he had found in the courtyard. We had forgoten those pigs, had the Dane and I. But not the Yankee. Do you think he was going to leave the pigs behind? But never! The gang in the patio was crying for blood and murder. The bees were getting angry and thinking of murder, too. Our hives were droning like rising wind whiping through a valley. One or two tiny airlanes of battle had already swooped out of the room, ready to signal the fleets and begin war. But Yankee Bill could remember his pigs. He would not abandon his bacon!
He snatched up the squealing animals; ran to the door; flung it wide. Then with those screaming pigs under one arm, that humming beehive under the other, he let a wild, most fiendish bellow boom from his shawl-swaddled face and charged out onto the balcony.
History overflows with famous charges. The Light Brigade, Gibralter, Waterloo, Delhi, Rome, Gettysburg---mad, gallant charges. Not one of them could have equaled the charge we made down those steps for sheer recklessness, insanity, color and the bizarre. I do not wonder the devils in the patio stood as if bewitched as we rushed at them down the stairway. We must have been a crazy, impossible sight. I would wager ten thousand francs these Aissaowa fiends thought we were three jinn loosed from the Caves of Darkness. Demons popped from the underworld. We looked like nothing else.
Imagine that giant Yankee, his face swathed in a lustrous silk shawl embroidered with lovely scarlet and purple roses, blue and green fringe tossing before his wild eyes, bounding down the steps with two shawl-wrapped under one arm and a buzzing hive under the other. Followed by two howling madmen similarly bundled in lace and silk, and bounding like grasshoppers, too.
It is no exaggeration to say the three of us were an absinthe-drinker's dream. Nor is it an exaggeration to say we moved our bare feet with a speed. We descended quickly, shouting at the tops of our lungs. For the hives we carried had about to disgorge their contents. Their occupants poured like brown smoke from the little doors. A smoke that stabbed and knifed and buzzed and burned. Uncle of Satan! but those bees were mad.
YOU know the legend of the Spartan boy who carried a fox under his cloak and never whimpered as the animal gnawed his vitals? Believe me, there was a similarity in carrying those hives. Halfway down the steps, Yankee Bill hurled his hives. Then the Dane sent his hive sailing; and I needed no invitation to throw mine away.
Arcing downward those three angry-bee hives landed squarely in the midst of the astonished throng. In half a second it was a milling, squalling throng. Arms shot skyward. Turbans dodged and bobbed like corks on troubled water. Those Moslems sent up an outcry that punched holes in the moon as they churned into a frenzied tangle of tiny yellow darts that spread and stung.
And the three of us? We kept right on going down. Our weapons had backfired and those bees barbing our hides added no small impetus to our charge. In half a second we were in the middle of that boiling, yowling, kicking, biting mass. Fighting like inspired fiends.
NOW, my friends, it is two days after the action. And Yankee Bill, the Dane, the Sentry who let us go and I are sitting in our tent feasting on roasted pig and the final bottle of wine we'd rescued from that Moslim mob. Ma foi ! It was better than bullets.
THE DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS
DUSK was making subtle magic over the rooftops of Biskra. We sat, at the little Arab cafe, old Thibaut Corday and I, watching the legerdemain of tropic twilight. Our table faced the public triangle where Cardinal Lavigerie loomed, imposing in marble above the hooded heads of a dusky Moslem crowd. Wrapped in mauve shadow, the statue of the famous Pere Blanc missionary came to life and stalked with vestments fluttering toward the dark heart of Africa while the Arabs below turned into a murmurous cordon of wraiths.
As we watched, a yellow moon heeled from behind a fan of date palms into a sky the color of a Spahi's tunic. Cobalt shadows wandered up Rue Berthe; and the moonbeams and shadows called a faint, queer music from the Rue Sainte hard by. Softly on the wings of the dim night came the echo---the whine of flutes timed to the throb of tamtams.
Old Thibaut Corday cocked his head to catch the tenuous refrain; pushed aside his Amer-Picon (bitter-sweet French aperitif); and turned to me with a chuckle. His beard had retained its rusty cinnamon for all his fourscore years.
"Those dancers down on Rue Sainte are getting to work. Always they start with the music. Always they start with the moonrise and they are on time to-night." Staring out across the triangle, he chuckled in his beard again. "Look, then."
He pointed a finger that years of trigger-pulling had bent into a hook. For the venerable veteran had a trigger-pulling record. He had pulled triggers with Confederates out of New Orleans in the eighteen sixties, with the British in the Boer War, with the legions of Spain, Holland, to say nothing of his own beloved Legion Etrangere. Not age, but medals had stooped his shoulders; nothing had dimmed the wink of his twinkly blue eyes; and only triggers had crooked his finger.
Now he pointed the hook at the statue of the cardinal. "Look, then," he repeated. "The Arabs move off in a body and leave the good Lavigerie standing alone. Those Arabs hear the music of the dance and immediately turn for Rue Sainte.
But once: the cardinal is not lured by those dancers. A good man, the cardinal. He ignores the music. He does not even turn his head. Nothing is making him deviate from his straight and narrow path. He ignores, and keeps on his straight and narrow path to cure the heathen in the Congo."
Thibaut Corday paused, fixed me with an eye like a little blue stone. Another series of chuckles exploded from his cinnamon whiskers and he plugged them back by ramming a stubby pipe between his teeth. Cramming the pipe with what appeared to be monkey fur, he touched a match and exhaled a gaseous whorl of smoke. I anticipated a story behind this purling fog, and I was not to be disappointed. Eyes reminiscent, the old veteran settled back in his chair and flung a smoke bomb and a hand at the statue deserted in the triangle.
"Cardinal Lavigerie was a noble and splendid saint," he said slowly. "For the glory of Africa and France he held bravely to his hard way, even as now he refuses to turn his head for those dancers down on Rue Sainte. But let me tell you something. I once saw a dancer who could have turned the head of the strongest character in the world. Ma foi! I have seen my share of dancers, that is so. But never a dancer to equal the one of whom I tell. Never! Never such a dancer, or such a dance!"
He slammed a fist against the table and the Amer-Picon bottle did a waltz. Thus reminded of the bottle, he promptly refreshed his memory with a lusty swig through his fearful brush before going on:
"Never, I say, have I seen another to equal that dancer or that dance! I was with le deuxieme regiment etranger at the time, and we were fighting on the lip of the Sahara where the Atlas mountains climbed down to have a look over the edge of the universe. Not too far from here, that place was, but about thirteen million miles from anywhere.
"There was a countryman of yours in the story, so it may be of interest to you. And the dancer of whom I tell -- Name of a pink pig! What a dancer! That dancer could have turned the head of the sternest Puritan in the world; could have turned the marble head of our marble saint out there. You shall hear about this amazing dancer, and the heads that were turned. What a story! But listen -- "
THE fight had started down at Ahmed ben Addadud's gin dive in Bab Hadoum. A nice little weasel-coop was Ahmed ben Addadud's, full of dancing girls and games to play and things to drink and smoke. You walked through a little blue door into a room crowded with half-caste Arabs and Tirailleurs and riffraff, and Legionnaires from the barracks at the other end of the town. A scrabbling, sweating, babbling crowd was always jamming the place. And that night, Yankee Bill the Elephant, Christianity Jensen the Dane, and I went through the little blue door; the place had the aspect of a station crowded with passengers who waited the first train for hell.
"Don't let this nest of rats bother you," Yankee Bill the Elephant advised me." There's a couple of Kabyle dancers in here worth seeing. Real artistic stuff, I mean. One of the girls is pretty decent. No rough stuff. Gotta nice face, an' she really hadn't ought to be in here."
So that was why my partner, my giant American copain had been vanishing every evening, and this was where he had been coming. I gave the big ox a smile. Yankee Bill the Elephant was nothing but a great big boy dressed in a Legion uniform, after all. A big grinning child with overdeveloped muscles, and a friendly pair of brilliant blue eyes under a shock of black hair.
Genial and kindly as a summer day with his friends---and every man was his friend until proved otherwise. Then he was a one-man tempest, and not so childish, either.
"These dancers always did fascinate you, Yankee Bill, ain't it so?" the Dane chided. "You were always watching them in Sidi. One would never think, to look at your so tough face, that you were a patron of the arts. I guess not. However, let us see your Kabyle lady," Christianity chuckled.
The little Dane possessed the biggest set of ears in the Foreign Legion, and he was pointing them at the dancing platform where three Arab musicians were seating themselves with ostentation and making preparatory discord on their instruments. A girl in poppy-colored bloomers and scarlet shawl stepped to the platform. I will say in the Yankee's defense that she was extraordiarily good-looking for a Kabyle. "Is that the lady?" asked the Dane.
Yankee Bill's mahogany face had split with a grin from ear to ear. Shoving back his kepi on his head, he elbowed a way to a table near the platform; and we three sat down before he answered. "That's her. That's little Zobeid. How about her, Christianity? Ain't she an ace? Listen, you two jealous Legion hounds. Most of these Arab dames expect a man to give them presents, don't they? Well, last night she come to my table an' said because she liked me an' I'd never tried to bother her, she was going to give me a present."
"You oughta seen what she gave me. To carry for luck. I got her present in my knapsack to always carry on the march and an' remember her by. Some present, too!"
Sapristi! I explained. "But you are always picking up the queerest of souvenirs, my Yankee. What did your friend give you?"
"I'll tell you now, if you'll promise," he began, "not to---" And then he was on his feet with a roar, knocking over a bottle of wine into my lap, and bringing the whole room to its feet at the same time. I caught the merest glimpse of what it as all about. The dancing girl had moved to the edge of the platform, and some ruffian standing near had grabbed her by the ankle. Now he had a clutch on her wrist, and she was slapping at his face. I heard him laugh as he swung her to the floor, and when he turned around I got a shock. Somewhere I had seen him before.
The man was a lousy-looking scoundrel, that is so. His skin looked like greasy brass against his whitedrill suiting. He was thick and medium height with a face like a decaying melon. I caught sight of a thin-lipped mouth drawn tight in a grin made cruel by a beautiful set of pearly white teeth. A wig of curly, black hair. A handsome cleft chin. Eyes like evil little raisins set in cups of blood.
The glittery eyes and the white-toothed grin I recognized as the eyes and grin of a man who would enjoy whipping a rabbit. But I got no chance to study that face right then. The ponderous shoulders of Yankee Bill the Elephant blotted out that face; and the next minute my American copain had leaped the table and charged.
Ahmed ben Addadud's gin dive screeched and floundered. Tables went over. Bottles smashed. I heard the Kabyle dancing girl give a soprano scream. At my elbow, Christianity Jensen was cursing the masterful oaths of the Legion. Vaguely I saw the giant fists of the giant Yankee Bill whip out through the smoke; and for the frst time in my knowledge of it I saw it miss. The white-tooth, evil-eyed melon ducked aside. A black hand sprang up curled about a wicked trench knife. The blade flashed. The kepi sailed from the head of Yankee Bill as one of his legs collapsed under him. But he was up in a second and, there was a thin river of red enamel leaking down from his left temple to his chin.
"Pull a knife on me, will you?" he was storming. "Try to knife a Legionnaire, eh? You dog, I'll break your face in two.
"Salopard!" screamed the white-toothed one. "I should cut out your heart---"
"Wham!" It was Chrisitanity Jensen's service revolver. "Wham! Wham!" The gun in his fist jerked as it spat flame. My numbed mind cleared and caught the little Dane's idea. I grabbed out my weapon and fired too.
"Bam! Wham! Bam!" The thundering echoes almost brought down Ahmed ben Addadud's lousy ceiling.
We did some splendid shooting, the two of us. Oil lamps toppled from the walls as if thrown down by the hand of le bon Dieu, and in thirteen seconds we had shot the place into an inky, squalling midnight.
Then we were battling to escape a whirlpool of clawing bodies. Heaven only knows how the Dane and I managed to reach the little blue door on either elbow of that infuriated American, and yank him into a night-hung street. Ahmed ben Adddad's was boiling like a red-hot caldron with shots and whistly shrieks, and it would all have been funny as the devil if the Yankee had not won that gash down his face, and if I had not ripped the sleeve of my capote, which would gain me a future visit to the Legion's salle de Police.
Nor was Yankee Bill filled with gratitude. Sweat and blood poured from under his kepi visor as he raged: "If I hadn't seen Zobeid duck safely out of a back door, I'd dive back in there and find that skunk who tried to annoy her. I'd smash his ugly head. Why'd you stop me? Who told you two devils to shoot out those lights? I'd have broken his face---"
Name of St. Adrien!" squealed the Dane, clapping a hand over the American's mouth. "Not so loud. Quick! We must get back to the barracks. Do you know who that man was? Bones of Stavengeren! That man is the greatest roue in Africa. Captain Giacomo Roque of the Legion. Of the Foreign Legion, I tell you. And I saw it posted in the barracks this morning that he has come back from furlough. He is to command our company, and to-morrow he leads a detachment out of Bab Hadoun into the Sahara. We can only pray God we are not in that detachment."
No wonder the ears of the little Dane were sticking out like white butterflies poised for flight. Then what do you suppose our Yankee Bill the Elephant had to say?
"I knew him all along," he growled. "A polecat. Boasts the reputation of a heart-smasher all over Algeria. Brags about his conquests and how he wins them with those beautiful teeth of his. " The American brought up a fist that looked bigger than a smoked ham in the dusk, and chuckled. Yankee Bill had a way of chuckling that could have brought a grin to the face of the Sphinx at Ghizeh---unless he chuckled the way he did just then. That chuckle would have made the Sphinx sweat.
"It was like him to sneak a knife at me. He won't dare come out in the open with this knifeplay affair of his , but he may try to make my life unhappy. Because we are in the detachment going into the desert to-morrow, you know. I'm glad. Maybe I'll get a chance to whack those teeth out of his head."
Now, Sacre Nom de Dieu!
JUST that---Sacre Nom de Dieu! Because I suddenly remembered this Giacomo Roque, and I also knew where he was going to lead our detachment. Captain Giacomo Roque! The Hand of the Devil they had called him over in Morocco. Only it had always been my contention he was the devil's younger brother and satan had kicked him out of hell for being such a powerful candidate to the throne. In Morocco the Legionnaires told a Legion legend of how Captain Roque had been bitten by three scorpions which had promptly turned up their tails and died. I believed that story.
He was the man who was leading us to the Eblis River. Just the man for the business. You know that Eblis River region just southwest of Bab Hadoun? No? You are lucky. Eblis is the Moslem name for the infernal regions, and that country southwest of Bab Hadoun was aptly christened. It was the country of the Beni-M'zab.
Mother France was having the devil of a game in those days trying to tie strings on the region; and those Beni-M'zab tribesmen had made fierce resistance. There were not many of the Mozabites, but they were like an itch, irritating as sin and hard to locate. The Legion had been chasing around after them at the double-quick; and at last had come the order to wipe them out. To this end, the detachment left Bab Hadoun, bound to lance needle bayonets through the first of the Beni-M'zab carbuncles on the hand of france reaching along the Eblis.
Now a devout Senussi holy man in El Guerrah once told me that Allah was letting the Eblis River country run to hell as express punishment for the Beni-M'zab. Orthodox Islam despised the Beni-M'zab as heretic because they were not of the four great branches Islamic. Those Mozabites were fanatic to insanity. Puritans of the Moslem world; but they were unorthodox on some point of faith, and so, according to my devout Senussi, Allah was punishing them by letting their country go to hell. But that humpback holy man was wrong. Their country had gone to hell for certain, but it seemed not to punish the Beni-M'zab. They loved it. And the Foreign Legion of France won the punishment, as you shall see.
Particularly did Yankee Bill the Elephant, Chritianity Jensen the Dane, and I win punishment. We marched in the detachment out of Bab Hadoun westward toward Brezina. And the thought of this march makes my feet burn to this day. Pardieu! what a march it was. There never was and never will be a road through that region. Allah would not like it, and le bon Dieu would never bother to argue with him about it. Aunt of the devil! What a country. Struggling, coughing, panting, our company tramped a landscape of jagged, sullen hills that at night were as cold as the kiss of a courtesan and hotter than a furnace at the first hue of day. Every red cliff and scarlet crag radiated heat like a stove. Hills that were ugly, grim, petrified by the blasts blowing up from the south. Hills that roasted under a blazing daylight that boiled the eyes in their sockets and made smoke of the breath in the lungs. A terrible land.
By noon of our firstday's march, every man was blistered, footsore, covered with white duat from kepi-crown to brodequin-toe. Our water was sour in our canteens; our capotes steamed on our backs. Our rations would not have matched the breakfast of a Gascony pig. Our nerves were shattered by the snipers who did such splendid sharpsuiting at every unexpected turn.
Bam! would go a Beni-M'zab sniper gun; and the first Legionnaire is our column would be apt to drop with a pretty crimson fountain showering out of his forehead. They left nothing for us to shoot at save a bouquet of blue smoke drifting up from behind a red bowlder. These Beni-M'zab snipers, you comprehend, were ghosts who vanished on the echo of their gunshiots.
But yes, it was hard on the nerves. Mostly on the nerves of Yankee Bill the Elephant, Christianity Jensen the Dane, and I. For we were marching in the lead of that column, you realize, by order of Captain Giacomo Roque and none other. The fight that had started in Ben Addadud's gin was continuous on our march to the pictureque River Eblis. And it was Captain Giacomo Roque who pushed the battle now.
The Corsican officer was a crafty fighter, that is so. Yankee Bill had guessed sagely. Captain Roque did not dare come into the open because of his inexcusable knife-play of the previous evening. However, his---shall I call it infighting?---was unexcelled. A vicious martinet astride a dripping pony, he pranced along from one end of the column to the other, lashing the men with his sneery white-toothed smile; spouting verbal abuse. Truly, his tongue had been salvaged from an Algiers sewer.
"Hola! you lousy lizards, lift your mulish feet," he would ball at the staggering Legionnaires. "Sons of camels, do you think you stroll the Rue de Rivoli? March, you devils! And no faces at me or you will see how an officer of the Legion deals with defaulters. I am a better man than any of you with the ladies and with the men. Just lift a finger against me and see what happens. I would blow off your pig heads. March, dogs!"
His finest imprecations he saved for Yankee Bill. Spurring his pony until it bled, he would gallop to the big American's side and sneer and curse him and jibe and cast aspersions and dares. The other Legionnaires hated him for a leper, and would have stabbed him in the back quickly enough had we not been on campaign Squirming inwardly and cursing in their throats, they tramped along with faces black from anger. But the sagacious American knew this is what the Corsican enjoyed. Yankee Bill knew men like Captain Roque loved to corner a victim, torture and watch him twitch. Accordingly, Yankee Bill refused to twitch.
"Now here is a pig for certain," the princely captain would growl through his beautiful dental equipment at the Yankee. "A prize dog. A man who needs training and would do well in the Penal Battalion quarries at Oujda. What have you to say to that you American son of a camel? Nothing? I thought not, you salopard. You do not dare talk back. You know how quickly I would hurl you into some lovely prison, eh? Ho, ho! A fine gentleman with the ladies, I suppose? Let us say, with Kabyle dancing girls. But a cowardly salopard at heart, oui? A dog. A pig. A coward!"
And Yankee Bill? All smiles. Grinning cheerfully from ear to ear he would look up into captain Roque's face with the calm and happy expression of a man just listed for citations. Maybe you think the good captain liked that? No! he wanted the Yankee to make an overt move, make some insubordinate gesture that would rate a prison sentence.
I thought the Yankee would explode at mention of the Kabyle dancer, but he managed a broader smile than ever. Which made the Corsican's forehead darken and inspired him to larger infamies such as washing his foul mouth with fresh wine, the while we groaned of thirst as we watched. (But, yes, those scorpions must have died on the spot.)
HE wants killing, that one, Christianity Jensen hinted to me one time when our captain had fallen back to outrage a straggler. "How does our big Yankee keep his peace? Saint Boniface! but that officer has been at him every step of the way."
Yankee Bill ovrerheard but he said nothing until that night. We had dropped our pack and stood at ease in the dim dark, waiting for the sudden cold to freeze the marrow of our bones. All day we had led the line of march, expecting a sniper bullet to buzz along and burn one of us through the bowels. But Captain Roque had been doomed to acute disappointment, as our only casualty was holes through our kepis. I stood fingering the four holes in mine and wondering why God was just, when the Yankee dug an elbow into my ribs and held up that smoked-ham fist of his. Captain Roque was at the tail of the column; and we could hear his snarly, bullying voice sawing like a file on iron through the cold gloom. My American copain shook his fist at the tantalizing, dour sound.
"There's always ways to hurt blowhards like Captain Roque," he said mildly. Too mildly, I thought. "He thinks he's so clever with the women an' that toothy grin of his. Killin' is too good for a salopard like that. They fail to rate the honor of bullets or steel. They're the kind who die of blood poison from stepping on a tack. And this good Roque needs to have his bombast removed. One of Yankee Bill's fingers touched the scratch on his forehead, then went tapping over his pack; and he chuckled. "Don't worry. I'm carryin' Zobeid's little lucky gift in my pack. Maybe it'll bring me real luck. Maybe I'll get a chance to knock those pearly teeth out of Captain Roque's skull."
The voice of Yankee Bill the Elephant was much too mild. I heard the Dane beside him exhale a contented sigh. I smiled. Things might happen to this varlet Corsican captain of ours. It was not well to tease an elephant. Elephants remember.
WE reached the Eblis River and attacked the Beni-M'zab at daybreak. I shall not soon forget my first sight of that place, or the way of our attack. We had marched all night through a land as dead, cold and awful as a man thirteen years in the coffin. No snipers to here. Nothing save black hills and a cold silence.
Even Captain Roque was stifled quiet in that Valley of the Shadow. Ma foi! but the Legionnaires would have welcomed a gunshot to break that oppressive quietude; and we were almost glad to see the ghost moon retire to permit a sun like a flaming chariot wheel to roll out of the east. Just as the sun wheeled clear we came to that place where the mountains climbed down to have a look at the edge of the world. Our trail twisted out of a ravine; suddenly we stood on a ledge of rock that overlooked eternity.
Without an order, every man of us dropped his pack; our Lebel butts thumped ground in unison, and we stared. And glared. It is not often a man gets a chance to look over the edge of the world.
Here the mountains stopped up short as if they had been hacked off by a giant knife; made a fence to a sweep of flat sand that raced away and away to meet scarlet skies east, south, west. The vast sweeping plane never stopped when it met the sky, you understand. It kept right on going to the end of the universe. We stood atop those scarlet palisades, and stared up a worldwide sandy boulevard reaching a million years over the rim of things.
The Walrus and the Carpenter who wept to see such quantities of sand in Lewis Carroll's famous "Through the Looking Glass" would have dropped dead at this sight. I wanted to weep, I tell you. Because there was a tiny thread of mercury leaking out of the canyon below us to die on the rim of that awful desert. The Eblis River. It made a little mirror-like pool before it expired; a little pool surrounded by three date palms and overhanging cliffs which cast real shadows. A half league from this pool, where a peninsular of rock struck timidly into the desert, stood an infinitismal mud fortress no bigger than an atom.
The green flag of the Prophet waved that impossible blob of brown mud; and I knew what it was. A Moslem monastery. A stronghold of those puritanical Beni-M'zab---the only men in the world who could have locked themselves up in such a fearful place of fearful desolation. What religious exaltation!
It made me sweat to think of the handful of fanatical hermits down there. Wild, forgotten men who ventured from this tiny strong hold only to pillage some unwary traveler of caravan, then buried themselves in solitary confinement to spend their days groing whiskers and the nnety-nine beautiful namres of the Apostle of Islam. Mon Dieu!
Staring, Yankee Bill the Elephant got a whisper out of his white mouth.
"Look at that place, Corday. That's what we gotta wipe out. An' listen to the stillness. Wow! Sort of gets me by the throat."
But, yes, the silence wound ghost fingers around one's throat and choked. That silence, that sound, that awful solitude made immense by the puny blob of mud under a green pennant. I swear the echo of man's voice could not get twenty feet away without dying of loneliness. It sent prickles down my spine for it was a place where no man should tread. Only a pig like Captain Roque would have dared interrupt.
Galloping up from the tail of the column, he drew rein in front of Yankee Bill, the Dane and me, and voiced a loud squall. "Dogs! Who gave the order to halt? Up arms, you salopards. We charge that rat nest below and smash it to bits before noon. Forward you yellow dogs."
THE Corsican had no imagination, no subtlety for fine points. At double-quick, the two squads of Legionnaires pounded down the trail, galloped along the twisty bank of the river, cantered past the pool among the quiet rocks, and debouched with fixed bayonets out on the desert. It was silly.
The Corsican spread us in a serried rank, and we thumped along, pointing our needle bayonets at the blob of mud under the green banner. The blob paid us no attention, either. It grew in size as we neared it and turned into a squat, round tower. But it was adamant. We might as well have been charging an empty tomb.
"Saint Sulpice!" panted the little Dane at my side. (He and the Yankee and I ran elbow to elbow.) "The place is deserted. I knew no one could live in this corner of forgotten hell!"
But we were one hundred years away when eight jets of flame burst from the turret under the flag. Smoke toiled up toward the metal sky. Bullets skipped under our astonished feet. Tac-tac-tac-tac! You have heard that deadly, nerve-shaking drone of a machine-gun? You should have heard eight of them flinging hot steel across that impossible desert, to break our rank and rip the silence into ribbons!
Can you see this strange picture, then? Can you see that tremendous stretch of Sahara, hedged on the north by red cliffs and escaping in three other directions farther than the eye could see? Can you see our little column of Legionnaires legging it out of the canyon where the river wiggled; dashing over the hot open sand with bayonets pointe at that tiny Moslem tower? Then---tac-tac-tac-tac-tac! go eight antiquated machine-guns under the rippling pennant of Mohammed. Fire spis out of a tower turret as a scorcing rain of bullets pour through the blatant sunlight, dig founts of sand and sends the soldiers of the Legion scampering back to the canyon. It was absurd, impossible, fantastic. In the first place the country was unreal, void of life, and no human beings should have been found there. In the second place the Beni-M'zab tower was smaller than nonsense; and that eight ancient Maxim rapid-firers should defend its walls was past belief
Le bon Dieu alone knows where those Beni-M'zab hermits obtained those eight Maxim guns. But they certainly knew their usage. "Yah! Yah! Yah Allah!" the monks would scream as we attacked, and their guns would rattle like thirteen thousand drums. We charged and those Beni-M'zab monks sat safe in their tower, laughed like the devil and drove us back.
Again and again, and from every angle, we assaulted the tower. Time after time the hurricane of bullets, drawing a circle about the tower, fended us off. There could not have been more than a dozen of those Beni-M'zab defender in that tiny blob of mud; but we might as well have attacked twenty armies.
Captain Giacomo Roque went purple-faced from rage. Every device of tactics he knew he tried. We surrounded the tower and closed in, We feinted attack, drawing up fifteen men under shadow of the rocky promontory east of the tower and charging from there, hoping to draw the Beni-M'ab all on one side while our remaining force assaulted the other. Useless. Those monks were not fools. Not so! They stuck to their posts behind their eight machine guns; watched every angle of possible attack. All morning, all afternoon, all evening, the Legion charged and fled. Up to the line of the machinegun fire, then back to safety. Like a game.
When the moon was up we lay like twenty-one exhausted scarecrows, around the pool among the rocks, panting, tired Legionnaires.
We had not lost a man; we Legionnaires had been mighty quick to escape the rage of those old Maxims. But there were bullet holes in our capotes, and more than one wound among us. We were certain as sin that the Beni-M'zab tower could be captured by nothing lress than the entire Foreign Legion with the French navy thrown in.
And what of the personal quarrel between our gentle Corsican captain and my big American copain, Yankee Bill the Elephant? There had been little space for hostilty between a Legionnaire and his officer, that day; but Captain Roque had managed a few sneers and hate-hot glances at the Yankee, and every time the men had fallen back Yankee Bill had smiled a knowing smile at the captain. As if our failure to capture the tower was the Captain's fault, and the Yankee knew a better way.
Of a certainty it made that Captain Roque furious. Now as we lay gasping in our retreat, the Corsican brought up the issue. He had been marching up and down in front of the men, waving his fist, cursing, stopping only to swig drinks or liquor from his canteen.
"DOGS! Cowards! If there was a man among you, we could have taken that tower long ago." That sort of thing. Now he planted himself in front of the recumbent Yankee Bill. The Dane and I lay on either side of the Yankee, and we wondered what was going to happen. Flat on his back, hands under his dusty head, Yankee Bill smiled up at the raging officer. Moonlight flickered in Captain Roqu's eyes, made his teeth shine, outlined the veins standing out on his blue forehead. He glared down at Yankee Bill and leered and snarled:
"Bien, here is a dog who smiles wisely. Perhaps my bold fool, you can suggest how that tower can be captured."
It was decidedly irregular for an officer to talk thus. But the Corsican had been swigging at his canteen with automatic regularity and must have been pretty drunk. The Legionnaires within earshot got up on their elbows to listen; and Yankee Bill stood up to salute.
"Oui, my captain," he said in his mildest voice. We all were treated to a real surprise. A jolly smile was on the big Yankees face as he declared:
"But. Yes, peraps I could help win the tower. Liste: suppose you take the men back to that promontory of rock east of the tower. I wait here. " He drew a rusty watch from his capote pocket. "Look, then. At the tick of midnight you attack the tower. While you battle on the east, I will creep alone across the sand, climb the wall and grab a machine gun. I would only need one. Perhaps I could do it alone. May I try the plan?"
I guess that speech took the breath out of those listening Legionnaires and Captain Roque. I felt as if I had been kicked in the lungs. You can wager the captain gave a delighted smile and replied: "Excellent. We will try the plan. You are a brave man after all."
"But, name of Heaven!" panted Christianity Jensen to Yankee Bill when Captain Roque had marched off chuckling. "It is suicide, Yankee Bill. The Corsican knows you will be killed and loves the idea. This is madness. You can never get into that tower.
"Don't lose no sleep while you wait for midnight," the big Yankee had advised. Once again he touched that scratch on his cheek, and once again tapped fingers over his pack. The Legion will win the tower. See if we don't. The moonlight has give me a plan. Nobody will get killed. I'm carryin' Zobeid's little present to bring us luck.
Chuckling merrily, he left the Dane and me, and sauntered down to th pool to get a drink. The moon in the black sky was big and yellow and bright.
"BONES of Stavrengeren," groaned Christianity Jensen for the thirteenth time in as many minutes. "But why did Yankee Bill suggest this foolish plan? For him to rush that tower alone is suicidal. Surely those monks will keep a guard on that side of the tower. He will be riddled. Those Beni-M'zab will not be fooled by this ruse. We tried it twice before today. Captain Roque is delighted at the Yankee's foolhardy plan. He hauls out his watch and grins like the devil. Midnight cannot be an hour away."
The Dane pointed a finger at the cleft in the hills where the pool lay concealed from view. The distant canyon mouth where Yankee Bill was hidden, awaiting his one-man assault. From where we lay, the canyon mouth, west of the tower, could hardly be seen. We were lying atop a rock-shelf on the promontory east of the tower. The tower was not six hundred yards away; quiet as a tomb in the moonlight, but I knew those Beni-M'zab hermits were vigilant as tigers. That handful of Moslem puritans had not seen the twenty of us sneak out on the promontory, but they must have sighted the gleam of our bayonets as we lay in line up there. Our fire might draw their attention all right but the Yankee could never cover the distance from the canyon across the open sand in the bright moonlight. Foolishness. I glanced at Captain Roque, sprawled flat nearby. The Corsican was grinning evilly. Midnight was scarce sixty minutes away; perhaps it would never come.
A restless tremor passed along the recumbent line of Legionnaires. Every eye was on the tower, every mind counting the minutes. Every tongue whispered of the Yankee's madness. My companions were uneasy, too. If that neck of desert had looked like the end of the world in daylight, you should have seen it under a round, yellow moon. The quiet was incredible. It yanked our nerves and wet our cheeks with sweat. It was not of this world. So we waited and the Moslem monks in the tower below waited behind heir machine guns. Once, I glimpsed a white turban moving. The green flag whispered.
"Listen," muttered the Dane at my side. "Do you think Yankee Bill is playing a game?Perhaps he does not wait beside the pool behind the rocks? Perhaps this is a trick to give him a chance to get away? Desertion."
"Pardieu! I had not thought of that. I glared at the hidden and distant canyon; opened my mouth to reply. And then my mouth clicked shut. A curious sigh ran along the line of Legionnaires. A gasp escaped the Dane. A sibilant curse popped from the teeth of Captain Giacomo Roque. We of the Legion line stared to make the eyes hangout of our buzzing skulls. Were we mad?
Was the moonlight, the atmosphere of that evil spot tricking our minds? Or did we really see a live ghost flit from that canyon? A live ghost shrouded in white veils came skipping from the spot where the pool lay hidden, and flickered across the sand toward the Beni-M'zab tower. Aunt of the devil, but it robbed one's heart of blood!
"Look at that!" panted the Dane, clutching my arm. I was looking all right. So was every man of us lying on that edge. Looking, yes! Mon Dieu how we looked! We did not believe our eyes.
When the ghost whirled nearer, veils blowing in the moonlight, and we saw it was not a wraith but a dancer, we did not believe or eyes a whit more. No! We stared and gasped oaths, and hugged the rock on which we lay, and knew we were insane. That moonlit corner of hell was lucky to be inhabited by Moslem hermits and Legionnaires; never the place to see a dancer shrouded in misty white veils.
WE forgot we were Legionnaires waiting a midnight assault. We forgot the Beni-M'zab tower below us. We forgot everything. Eyes pasted on that whirling figure we remembered only to breathe; and I, for one, forgot that and almost suffocated. The dancer's weaving arms were white as milk save where brass bracelets flashed. Face shrouded by a fluttering veil. Lithe body, sinuous and white, wrapped in the delicate misty raiment that clung and shimmered and fluttered in the moonbeams. Tiny as a nymph against that vast background of Saharan sand and hedging cliffs, that incredible dancer twirled over the flat sand, nearer and nearer to the tower.
Can you picture it? The line of Legionnaires panting and pop-eyed atop that ledge. The desolate Sahara running to the ends of the world. The chill moonlight laying long, blue shadows. And that utterly improbable veiled dancer flitting over the sand. I am a Dutchman if I did not think I was stark, raving mad.
What a dancer, I say! I had seen the Ouled Nail, the mystic dancers of Cambodia, the Seven Snake Sisters of Rabat, the queer dancers of Dahomey, and some pretty good ladies in Cadiz, Marseille, Singapore, Mombassa, Bangkok and New Orleans. But never had I seen a dancer like this one who had popped out of the night-hung cliffs fencing the Sahara to chram the moonbeams.
I will wager I was gasping like a steam valve. That dancer and that dance! Uncle of Satan! The danse du venire, the can-can, Russian ballet, snake-arm, what you Americans call "shimmie"---that dancer did them all and some new ones in the bargain. We watched from a distance, but we were plenty near enough, that is so.
Once I forced a look at Captain Giacomo Roque. His face was scarlet. His teeth were grinning steam. His eyes were the heads of steel nails drven into a rotting log. "Dieu!" the Corsican was panting. "Sacre nom de Dieu!" I should say so.
What of the little blob of mud under the green pennant below our promontory? Perhaps you think something was going on down there? But yes. Something was. Now I could not understand that impossible dancing figure, but I could comprehend what was happening in that Beni-M'zab monastery. I could almost see those Moslem monks, crowded together, staring with eyes like coals over the edge of their crenellated turret; staring like the very devil at the dancer on the sand below.
Imagine that handful of Moslem hermits, shut away in that spot of bitter desolation for Heaven knows how many years, suddenly treated to the sight of a dancer wrapped in veils, a dancer with arms white as milk in that moonlight, and graceful feet and a veil-misted torso, doing the can-can better than could the very mother of the Ouled Nail Mountains.
I could fancy how these desert-bitten, forgotten hermits were staring when the dance went on under the very shadow of their prison. These Beni-M'zab monks were puritans chiselled out of granite; devout steel-souled men. That dance looked like the vision of Bacchus to us of the Foreign Legion, but comprehend how it must have looked to men who had not seen a pair of lithe white arms for years and years! And it was going on, so to speak, right under their window. For the dancer was pirouetting on the sand where the shadow of the tower lay.
SUDDENLY the veiled figure stopped, and a white arm beckoned. Beckoned yes, to those eyes that must've been glaring from the tower turret. It was unfair, I tell you. Like dangling a juicy steak at the mouth of a starved lion. These Beni-M'zab hermits were the starved lion. It is no wonder they believed this vision in veils, a houri sent by Allah from paradise to console their sterile souls. No wonder they forgot their machine guns.
Perhaps they believed the Legion had gone away and this houri stepped from the sky was an omen of victory and an award from Allah the Merciful.
At any rate---what do you believe? Every man of us hidden on that very ledge, east of the tower saw it all. We saw these Beni-M'zab monks swarm over the low tower wall like little white-turbaned ants. Yes! They clambered out of their impregnable little tower and started for the beckoning dancer. The veiled finger waved a hand, and those monks ---there were twelve of them---legged it over the sand. The veiled dancer turned to run and those dried-up desert monks gave mad chase. Right then it came over me like a flood of light! Le bon Dieu lone knew where Yankee Bill had found her among those desolate cliffs. But somewhere, somehow, the big American had found this dancing genius, and worked out the scheme. Now you could have cut my head off with a paper sword!
The other Legionnaires and Captain Giacomo Roque caught the idea, too. As one man we bounced our heels, jerked up our Lebels and charged down from the rocks. Those poor, duped monks of the Beni-M'zab never saw us until we had covered the distance to the tower. Even then, they wavered between following the houri and trying to get back to their guns. Too late. They turned about, squalling like trapped cats, and with one volley we sent them to meet a real bevy of houris in the excellent paradise those good fighters deserved.
And the dancer? Aunt of the devil! That veiled figure stood like a statue on the sand some five hundred feet away from us, and we heard a shrill laugh. Somehow that laugh halted the feet of the Legionnaires. We stood with our Lebels smking in our fists; glaring from the extinguished Mozabitesto the dancer who had betrayed them.
We Legionnaires dared not move, but Captain Giacomo Roque did. Uttering a lusty bawl, the Corsican kept right on running. He pounded across the sand like a satyr with evil in its eye. He had lost his kepi and his greasy curls were flying. The moonlight was not nice on his avid face; no wonder the dancer turned to run.
Straight for the canyon mouth fled the shrouded figure, with the Corsican ruffian making after. Running like antelopes, they covered a quarter mile in record time, but the Corsican gained. The distance between them closed in---then abruptly the veiled figure turned. We saw our noble captain dart on with grabbing hands outstretched. Then, Sacre Dieu! A white arm whipped out from the blowing veils. Whack! We could almost hear the blow. Down went Captain Roque in the manner of a man hit by a lightning bolt. The astounding dancer spun about , and fled like a white streak to vanish among the cliffs where the Eblis River made a final pool among the hidden rocks.
IT was too muh for dog-tired Legionnaire brains to handle. We stood like fools for five minutes that were five centuries, then jumped over the bodies of those poor Beni-M'zab holy men and cantered up to the unconscious form of our captain. I reached him first, and I want to tell you, I received a jolt. He lay like one dead face up on the sand where the dancer's mighty blow had dropped him. Hi face was chalk and he had a scarlet streak for a mouth, and I dropped my rifle when I saw. They lay scattered on the sand like so many dice. You comprehend? His front teeth had been knocked out of that bulldog's head!
He could not speak when we roused him to his feet, and no wonder. He could only lisp oaths and spit blood for his mouth swelled like a sponge welled in red ink. He was one dismal sight, that Corsican captain of ours, but we Legionaires did not expire of sorrow. We did not.
We helped him stagger over the sand toward the mouth of the canyon in the cliffs; and I would have given thirteen million francs to read his thoughts.
My thoughts were not worth a franc and they fell in value to a sou when we rounded the bowlders sheltering the pool under the palm trees---It was where the mountains climbed to look over the edge of the world, you remember---and gained the spot where the dancer disappeared. There was no dancer there. But no! Only a certain giant Legionnaire called Yankee Bill the Elephant.
His capote and shoes were off; he was naked to the waist and looked as if he had been diving. In one hand he held four brass bracelets. He was the dancer of the Seven Veils who had fooled the Beni-M'zab monks and outwitted Catain Giacomo Roque!
SHADOWS were gathering on Boulevard Sadi Carnot. Out beyond the harbor ramps, the Bay of Algiers was a lake of rose and blue, painted by the brushes of sundown. Somewhere in the Kasbah scrambling behind the town an Arab fife started to tootle; and a streak of sunset light slanted suddenly through a rent in our cafe awning and found a drop of crimson lurking in the bottom of the old veteran's, Thibaut's wine glass.
Old Thibaut Corday cocked his head to catch the tenuous refrain; pushed aside his Amer-Picon (bitter-sweet French aperitif); and turned to me with a chuckle. His beard had retained its rusty cinnamon for all his fourscore years.
"Those dancers down on Rue Sainte are getting to work. Always they start with the music. Always they start with the moonrise and they are on time to-night." Staring out across the triangle, he chuckled in his beard again. "Look, then."
He pointed a finger that years of trigger-pulling had bent into a hook. For the venerable veteran had a trigger-pulling record. He had pulled triggers with Confederates out of New Orleans in the eighteen sixties, with the British in the Boer War, with the legions of Spain, Holland, to say nothing of his own beloved Legion Etrangere. Not age, but medals had stooped his shoulders; nothing had dimmed the wink of his twinkly blue eyes; and only triggers had crooked his finger.
Now he pointed the hook at the statue of the cardinal. "Look, then," he repeated. "The Arabs move off in a body and leave the good Lavigerie standing alone. Those Arabs hear the music of the dance and immediately turn for Rue Sainte.
But once: the cardinal is not lured by those dancers. A good man, the cardinal. He ignores the music. He does not even turn his head. Nothing is making him deviate from his straight and narrow path. He ignores, and keeps on his straight and narrow path to cure the heathen in the Congo."
Thibaut Corday paused, fixed me with an eye like a little blue stone. Another series of chuckles exploded from his cinnamon whiskers and he plugged them back by ramming a stubby pipe between his teeth. Cramming the pipe with what appeared to be monkey fur, he touched a match and exhaled a gaseous whorl of smoke. I anticipated a story behind this purling fog, and I was not to be disappointed. Eyes reminiscent, the old veteran settled back in his chair and flung a smoke bomb and a hand at the statue deserted in the triangle.
"Cardinal Lavigerie was a noble and splendid saint," he said slowly. "For the glory of Africa and France he held bravely to his hard way, even as now he refuses to turn his head for those dancers down on Rue Sainte. But let me tell you something. I once saw a dancer who could have turned the head of the strongest character in the world. Ma foi! I have seen my share of dancers, that is so. But never a dancer to equal the one of whom I tell. Never! Never such a dancer, or such a dance!"
He slammed a fist against the table and the Amer-Picon bottle did a waltz. Thus reminded of the bottle, he promptly refreshed his memory with a lusty swig through his fearful brush before going on:
"Never, I say, have I seen another to equal that dancer or that dance! I was with le deuxieme regiment etranger at the time, and we were fighting on the lip of the Sahara where the Atlas mountains climbed down to have a look over the edge of the universe. Not too far from here, that place was, but about thirteen million miles from anywhere.
"There was a countryman of yours in the story, so it may be of interest to you. And the dancer of whom I tell -- Name of a pink pig! What a dancer! That dancer could have turned the head of the sternest Puritan in the world; could have turned the marble head of our marble saint out there. You shall hear about this amazing dancer, and the heads that were turned. What a story! But listen -- "
THE fight had started down at Ahmed ben Addadud's gin dive in Bab Hadoum. A nice little weasel-coop was Ahmed ben Addadud's, full of dancing girls and games to play and things to drink and smoke. You walked through a little blue door into a room crowded with half-caste Arabs and Tirailleurs and riffraff, and Legionnaires from the barracks at the other end of the town. A scrabbling, sweating, babbling crowd was always jamming the place. And that night, Yankee Bill the Elephant, Christianity Jensen the Dane, and I went through the little blue door; the place had the aspect of a station crowded with passengers who waited the first train for hell.
"Don't let this nest of rats bother you," Yankee Bill the Elephant advised me." There's a couple of Kabyle dancers in here worth seeing. Real artistic stuff, I mean. One of the girls is pretty decent. No rough stuff. Gotta nice face, an' she really hadn't ought to be in here."
So that was why my partner, my giant American copain had been vanishing every evening, and this was where he had been coming. I gave the big ox a smile. Yankee Bill the Elephant was nothing but a great big boy dressed in a Legion uniform, after all. A big grinning child with overdeveloped muscles, and a friendly pair of brilliant blue eyes under a shock of black hair.
Genial and kindly as a summer day with his friends---and every man was his friend until proved otherwise. Then he was a one-man tempest, and not so childish, either.
"These dancers always did fascinate you, Yankee Bill, ain't it so?" the Dane chided. "You were always watching them in Sidi. One would never think, to look at your so tough face, that you were a patron of the arts. I guess not. However, let us see your Kabyle lady," Christianity chuckled.
The little Dane possessed the biggest set of ears in the Foreign Legion, and he was pointing them at the dancing platform where three Arab musicians were seating themselves with ostentation and making preparatory discord on their instruments. A girl in poppy-colored bloomers and scarlet shawl stepped to the platform. I will say in the Yankee's defense that she was extraordiarily good-looking for a Kabyle. "Is that the lady?" asked the Dane.
Yankee Bill's mahogany face had split with a grin from ear to ear. Shoving back his kepi on his head, he elbowed a way to a table near the platform; and we three sat down before he answered. "That's her. That's little Zobeid. How about her, Christianity? Ain't she an ace? Listen, you two jealous Legion hounds. Most of these Arab dames expect a man to give them presents, don't they? Well, last night she come to my table an' said because she liked me an' I'd never tried to bother her, she was going to give me a present."
"You oughta seen what she gave me. To carry for luck. I got her present in my knapsack to always carry on the march and an' remember her by. Some present, too!"
Sapristi! I explained. "But you are always picking up the queerest of souvenirs, my Yankee. What did your friend give you?"
"I'll tell you now, if you'll promise," he began, "not to---" And then he was on his feet with a roar, knocking over a bottle of wine into my lap, and bringing the whole room to its feet at the same time. I caught the merest glimpse of what it as all about. The dancing girl had moved to the edge of the platform, and some ruffian standing near had grabbed her by the ankle. Now he had a clutch on her wrist, and she was slapping at his face. I heard him laugh as he swung her to the floor, and when he turned around I got a shock. Somewhere I had seen him before.
The man was a lousy-looking scoundrel, that is so. His skin looked like greasy brass against his whitedrill suiting. He was thick and medium height with a face like a decaying melon. I caught sight of a thin-lipped mouth drawn tight in a grin made cruel by a beautiful set of pearly white teeth. A wig of curly, black hair. A handsome cleft chin. Eyes like evil little raisins set in cups of blood.
The glittery eyes and the white-toothed grin I recognized as the eyes and grin of a man who would enjoy whipping a rabbit. But I got no chance to study that face right then. The ponderous shoulders of Yankee Bill the Elephant blotted out that face; and the next minute my American copain had leaped the table and charged.
Ahmed ben Addadud's gin dive screeched and floundered. Tables went over. Bottles smashed. I heard the Kabyle dancing girl give a soprano scream. At my elbow, Christianity Jensen was cursing the masterful oaths of the Legion. Vaguely I saw the giant fists of the giant Yankee Bill whip out through the smoke; and for the frst time in my knowledge of it I saw it miss. The white-tooth, evil-eyed melon ducked aside. A black hand sprang up curled about a wicked trench knife. The blade flashed. The kepi sailed from the head of Yankee Bill as one of his legs collapsed under him. But he was up in a second and, there was a thin river of red enamel leaking down from his left temple to his chin.
"Pull a knife on me, will you?" he was storming. "Try to knife a Legionnaire, eh? You dog, I'll break your face in two.
"Salopard!" screamed the white-toothed one. "I should cut out your heart---"
"Wham!" It was Chrisitanity Jensen's service revolver. "Wham! Wham!" The gun in his fist jerked as it spat flame. My numbed mind cleared and caught the little Dane's idea. I grabbed out my weapon and fired too.
"Bam! Wham! Bam!" The thundering echoes almost brought down Ahmed ben Addadud's lousy ceiling.
We did some splendid shooting, the two of us. Oil lamps toppled from the walls as if thrown down by the hand of le bon Dieu, and in thirteen seconds we had shot the place into an inky, squalling midnight.
Then we were battling to escape a whirlpool of clawing bodies. Heaven only knows how the Dane and I managed to reach the little blue door on either elbow of that infuriated American, and yank him into a night-hung street. Ahmed ben Adddad's was boiling like a red-hot caldron with shots and whistly shrieks, and it would all have been funny as the devil if the Yankee had not won that gash down his face, and if I had not ripped the sleeve of my capote, which would gain me a future visit to the Legion's salle de Police.
Nor was Yankee Bill filled with gratitude. Sweat and blood poured from under his kepi visor as he raged: "If I hadn't seen Zobeid duck safely out of a back door, I'd dive back in there and find that skunk who tried to annoy her. I'd smash his ugly head. Why'd you stop me? Who told you two devils to shoot out those lights? I'd have broken his face---"
Name of St. Adrien!" squealed the Dane, clapping a hand over the American's mouth. "Not so loud. Quick! We must get back to the barracks. Do you know who that man was? Bones of Stavengeren! That man is the greatest roue in Africa. Captain Giacomo Roque of the Legion. Of the Foreign Legion, I tell you. And I saw it posted in the barracks this morning that he has come back from furlough. He is to command our company, and to-morrow he leads a detachment out of Bab Hadoun into the Sahara. We can only pray God we are not in that detachment."
No wonder the ears of the little Dane were sticking out like white butterflies poised for flight. Then what do you suppose our Yankee Bill the Elephant had to say?
"I knew him all along," he growled. "A polecat. Boasts the reputation of a heart-smasher all over Algeria. Brags about his conquests and how he wins them with those beautiful teeth of his. " The American brought up a fist that looked bigger than a smoked ham in the dusk, and chuckled. Yankee Bill had a way of chuckling that could have brought a grin to the face of the Sphinx at Ghizeh---unless he chuckled the way he did just then. That chuckle would have made the Sphinx sweat.
"It was like him to sneak a knife at me. He won't dare come out in the open with this knifeplay affair of his , but he may try to make my life unhappy. Because we are in the detachment going into the desert to-morrow, you know. I'm glad. Maybe I'll get a chance to whack those teeth out of his head."
Now, Sacre Nom de Dieu!
JUST that---Sacre Nom de Dieu! Because I suddenly remembered this Giacomo Roque, and I also knew where he was going to lead our detachment. Captain Giacomo Roque! The Hand of the Devil they had called him over in Morocco. Only it had always been my contention he was the devil's younger brother and satan had kicked him out of hell for being such a powerful candidate to the throne. In Morocco the Legionnaires told a Legion legend of how Captain Roque had been bitten by three scorpions which had promptly turned up their tails and died. I believed that story.
He was the man who was leading us to the Eblis River. Just the man for the business. You know that Eblis River region just southwest of Bab Hadoun? No? You are lucky. Eblis is the Moslem name for the infernal regions, and that country southwest of Bab Hadoun was aptly christened. It was the country of the Beni-M'zab.
Mother France was having the devil of a game in those days trying to tie strings on the region; and those Beni-M'zab tribesmen had made fierce resistance. There were not many of the Mozabites, but they were like an itch, irritating as sin and hard to locate. The Legion had been chasing around after them at the double-quick; and at last had come the order to wipe them out. To this end, the detachment left Bab Hadoun, bound to lance needle bayonets through the first of the Beni-M'zab carbuncles on the hand of france reaching along the Eblis.
Now a devout Senussi holy man in El Guerrah once told me that Allah was letting the Eblis River country run to hell as express punishment for the Beni-M'zab. Orthodox Islam despised the Beni-M'zab as heretic because they were not of the four great branches Islamic. Those Mozabites were fanatic to insanity. Puritans of the Moslem world; but they were unorthodox on some point of faith, and so, according to my devout Senussi, Allah was punishing them by letting their country go to hell. But that humpback holy man was wrong. Their country had gone to hell for certain, but it seemed not to punish the Beni-M'zab. They loved it. And the Foreign Legion of France won the punishment, as you shall see.
Particularly did Yankee Bill the Elephant, Chritianity Jensen the Dane, and I win punishment. We marched in the detachment out of Bab Hadoun westward toward Brezina. And the thought of this march makes my feet burn to this day. Pardieu! what a march it was. There never was and never will be a road through that region. Allah would not like it, and le bon Dieu would never bother to argue with him about it. Aunt of the devil! What a country. Struggling, coughing, panting, our company tramped a landscape of jagged, sullen hills that at night were as cold as the kiss of a courtesan and hotter than a furnace at the first hue of day. Every red cliff and scarlet crag radiated heat like a stove. Hills that were ugly, grim, petrified by the blasts blowing up from the south. Hills that roasted under a blazing daylight that boiled the eyes in their sockets and made smoke of the breath in the lungs. A terrible land.
By noon of our firstday's march, every man was blistered, footsore, covered with white duat from kepi-crown to brodequin-toe. Our water was sour in our canteens; our capotes steamed on our backs. Our rations would not have matched the breakfast of a Gascony pig. Our nerves were shattered by the snipers who did such splendid sharpsuiting at every unexpected turn.
Bam! would go a Beni-M'zab sniper gun; and the first Legionnaire is our column would be apt to drop with a pretty crimson fountain showering out of his forehead. They left nothing for us to shoot at save a bouquet of blue smoke drifting up from behind a red bowlder. These Beni-M'zab snipers, you comprehend, were ghosts who vanished on the echo of their gunshiots.
But yes, it was hard on the nerves. Mostly on the nerves of Yankee Bill the Elephant, Christianity Jensen the Dane, and I. For we were marching in the lead of that column, you realize, by order of Captain Giacomo Roque and none other. The fight that had started in Ben Addadud's gin was continuous on our march to the pictureque River Eblis. And it was Captain Giacomo Roque who pushed the battle now.
The Corsican officer was a crafty fighter, that is so. Yankee Bill had guessed sagely. Captain Roque did not dare come into the open because of his inexcusable knife-play of the previous evening. However, his---shall I call it infighting?---was unexcelled. A vicious martinet astride a dripping pony, he pranced along from one end of the column to the other, lashing the men with his sneery white-toothed smile; spouting verbal abuse. Truly, his tongue had been salvaged from an Algiers sewer.
"Hola! you lousy lizards, lift your mulish feet," he would ball at the staggering Legionnaires. "Sons of camels, do you think you stroll the Rue de Rivoli? March, you devils! And no faces at me or you will see how an officer of the Legion deals with defaulters. I am a better man than any of you with the ladies and with the men. Just lift a finger against me and see what happens. I would blow off your pig heads. March, dogs!"
His finest imprecations he saved for Yankee Bill. Spurring his pony until it bled, he would gallop to the big American's side and sneer and curse him and jibe and cast aspersions and dares. The other Legionnaires hated him for a leper, and would have stabbed him in the back quickly enough had we not been on campaign Squirming inwardly and cursing in their throats, they tramped along with faces black from anger. But the sagacious American knew this is what the Corsican enjoyed. Yankee Bill knew men like Captain Roque loved to corner a victim, torture and watch him twitch. Accordingly, Yankee Bill refused to twitch.
"Now here is a pig for certain," the princely captain would growl through his beautiful dental equipment at the Yankee. "A prize dog. A man who needs training and would do well in the Penal Battalion quarries at Oujda. What have you to say to that you American son of a camel? Nothing? I thought not, you salopard. You do not dare talk back. You know how quickly I would hurl you into some lovely prison, eh? Ho, ho! A fine gentleman with the ladies, I suppose? Let us say, with Kabyle dancing girls. But a cowardly salopard at heart, oui? A dog. A pig. A coward!"
And Yankee Bill? All smiles. Grinning cheerfully from ear to ear he would look up into captain Roque's face with the calm and happy expression of a man just listed for citations. Maybe you think the good captain liked that? No! he wanted the Yankee to make an overt move, make some insubordinate gesture that would rate a prison sentence.
I thought the Yankee would explode at mention of the Kabyle dancer, but he managed a broader smile than ever. Which made the Corsican's forehead darken and inspired him to larger infamies such as washing his foul mouth with fresh wine, the while we groaned of thirst as we watched. (But, yes, those scorpions must have died on the spot.)
HE wants killing, that one, Christianity Jensen hinted to me one time when our captain had fallen back to outrage a straggler. "How does our big Yankee keep his peace? Saint Boniface! but that officer has been at him every step of the way."
Yankee Bill ovrerheard but he said nothing until that night. We had dropped our pack and stood at ease in the dim dark, waiting for the sudden cold to freeze the marrow of our bones. All day we had led the line of march, expecting a sniper bullet to buzz along and burn one of us through the bowels. But Captain Roque had been doomed to acute disappointment, as our only casualty was holes through our kepis. I stood fingering the four holes in mine and wondering why God was just, when the Yankee dug an elbow into my ribs and held up that smoked-ham fist of his. Captain Roque was at the tail of the column; and we could hear his snarly, bullying voice sawing like a file on iron through the cold gloom. My American copain shook his fist at the tantalizing, dour sound.
"There's always ways to hurt blowhards like Captain Roque," he said mildly. Too mildly, I thought. "He thinks he's so clever with the women an' that toothy grin of his. Killin' is too good for a salopard like that. They fail to rate the honor of bullets or steel. They're the kind who die of blood poison from stepping on a tack. And this good Roque needs to have his bombast removed. One of Yankee Bill's fingers touched the scratch on his forehead, then went tapping over his pack; and he chuckled. "Don't worry. I'm carryin' Zobeid's little lucky gift in my pack. Maybe it'll bring me real luck. Maybe I'll get a chance to knock those pearly teeth out of Captain Roque's skull."
The voice of Yankee Bill the Elephant was much too mild. I heard the Dane beside him exhale a contented sigh. I smiled. Things might happen to this varlet Corsican captain of ours. It was not well to tease an elephant. Elephants remember.
WE reached the Eblis River and attacked the Beni-M'zab at daybreak. I shall not soon forget my first sight of that place, or the way of our attack. We had marched all night through a land as dead, cold and awful as a man thirteen years in the coffin. No snipers to here. Nothing save black hills and a cold silence.
Even Captain Roque was stifled quiet in that Valley of the Shadow. Ma foi! but the Legionnaires would have welcomed a gunshot to break that oppressive quietude; and we were almost glad to see the ghost moon retire to permit a sun like a flaming chariot wheel to roll out of the east. Just as the sun wheeled clear we came to that place where the mountains climbed down to have a look at the edge of the world. Our trail twisted out of a ravine; suddenly we stood on a ledge of rock that overlooked eternity.
Without an order, every man of us dropped his pack; our Lebel butts thumped ground in unison, and we stared. And glared. It is not often a man gets a chance to look over the edge of the world.
Here the mountains stopped up short as if they had been hacked off by a giant knife; made a fence to a sweep of flat sand that raced away and away to meet scarlet skies east, south, west. The vast sweeping plane never stopped when it met the sky, you understand. It kept right on going to the end of the universe. We stood atop those scarlet palisades, and stared up a worldwide sandy boulevard reaching a million years over the rim of things.
The Walrus and the Carpenter who wept to see such quantities of sand in Lewis Carroll's famous "Through the Looking Glass" would have dropped dead at this sight. I wanted to weep, I tell you. Because there was a tiny thread of mercury leaking out of the canyon below us to die on the rim of that awful desert. The Eblis River. It made a little mirror-like pool before it expired; a little pool surrounded by three date palms and overhanging cliffs which cast real shadows. A half league from this pool, where a peninsular of rock struck timidly into the desert, stood an infinitismal mud fortress no bigger than an atom.
The green flag of the Prophet waved that impossible blob of brown mud; and I knew what it was. A Moslem monastery. A stronghold of those puritanical Beni-M'zab---the only men in the world who could have locked themselves up in such a fearful place of fearful desolation. What religious exaltation!
It made me sweat to think of the handful of fanatical hermits down there. Wild, forgotten men who ventured from this tiny strong hold only to pillage some unwary traveler of caravan, then buried themselves in solitary confinement to spend their days groing whiskers and the nnety-nine beautiful namres of the Apostle of Islam. Mon Dieu!
Staring, Yankee Bill the Elephant got a whisper out of his white mouth.
"Look at that place, Corday. That's what we gotta wipe out. An' listen to the stillness. Wow! Sort of gets me by the throat."
But, yes, the silence wound ghost fingers around one's throat and choked. That silence, that sound, that awful solitude made immense by the puny blob of mud under a green pennant. I swear the echo of man's voice could not get twenty feet away without dying of loneliness. It sent prickles down my spine for it was a place where no man should tread. Only a pig like Captain Roque would have dared interrupt.
Galloping up from the tail of the column, he drew rein in front of Yankee Bill, the Dane and me, and voiced a loud squall. "Dogs! Who gave the order to halt? Up arms, you salopards. We charge that rat nest below and smash it to bits before noon. Forward you yellow dogs."
THE Corsican had no imagination, no subtlety for fine points. At double-quick, the two squads of Legionnaires pounded down the trail, galloped along the twisty bank of the river, cantered past the pool among the quiet rocks, and debouched with fixed bayonets out on the desert. It was silly.
The Corsican spread us in a serried rank, and we thumped along, pointing our needle bayonets at the blob of mud under the green banner. The blob paid us no attention, either. It grew in size as we neared it and turned into a squat, round tower. But it was adamant. We might as well have been charging an empty tomb.
"Saint Sulpice!" panted the little Dane at my side. (He and the Yankee and I ran elbow to elbow.) "The place is deserted. I knew no one could live in this corner of forgotten hell!"
But we were one hundred years away when eight jets of flame burst from the turret under the flag. Smoke toiled up toward the metal sky. Bullets skipped under our astonished feet. Tac-tac-tac-tac! You have heard that deadly, nerve-shaking drone of a machine-gun? You should have heard eight of them flinging hot steel across that impossible desert, to break our rank and rip the silence into ribbons!
Can you see this strange picture, then? Can you see that tremendous stretch of Sahara, hedged on the north by red cliffs and escaping in three other directions farther than the eye could see? Can you see our little column of Legionnaires legging it out of the canyon where the river wiggled; dashing over the hot open sand with bayonets pointe at that tiny Moslem tower? Then---tac-tac-tac-tac-tac! go eight antiquated machine-guns under the rippling pennant of Mohammed. Fire spis out of a tower turret as a scorcing rain of bullets pour through the blatant sunlight, dig founts of sand and sends the soldiers of the Legion scampering back to the canyon. It was absurd, impossible, fantastic. In the first place the country was unreal, void of life, and no human beings should have been found there. In the second place the Beni-M'zab tower was smaller than nonsense; and that eight ancient Maxim rapid-firers should defend its walls was past belief
Le bon Dieu alone knows where those Beni-M'zab hermits obtained those eight Maxim guns. But they certainly knew their usage. "Yah! Yah! Yah Allah!" the monks would scream as we attacked, and their guns would rattle like thirteen thousand drums. We charged and those Beni-M'zab monks sat safe in their tower, laughed like the devil and drove us back.
Again and again, and from every angle, we assaulted the tower. Time after time the hurricane of bullets, drawing a circle about the tower, fended us off. There could not have been more than a dozen of those Beni-M'zab defender in that tiny blob of mud; but we might as well have attacked twenty armies.
Captain Giacomo Roque went purple-faced from rage. Every device of tactics he knew he tried. We surrounded the tower and closed in, We feinted attack, drawing up fifteen men under shadow of the rocky promontory east of the tower and charging from there, hoping to draw the Beni-M'ab all on one side while our remaining force assaulted the other. Useless. Those monks were not fools. Not so! They stuck to their posts behind their eight machine guns; watched every angle of possible attack. All morning, all afternoon, all evening, the Legion charged and fled. Up to the line of the machinegun fire, then back to safety. Like a game.
When the moon was up we lay like twenty-one exhausted scarecrows, around the pool among the rocks, panting, tired Legionnaires.
We had not lost a man; we Legionnaires had been mighty quick to escape the rage of those old Maxims. But there were bullet holes in our capotes, and more than one wound among us. We were certain as sin that the Beni-M'zab tower could be captured by nothing lress than the entire Foreign Legion with the French navy thrown in.
And what of the personal quarrel between our gentle Corsican captain and my big American copain, Yankee Bill the Elephant? There had been little space for hostilty between a Legionnaire and his officer, that day; but Captain Roque had managed a few sneers and hate-hot glances at the Yankee, and every time the men had fallen back Yankee Bill had smiled a knowing smile at the captain. As if our failure to capture the tower was the Captain's fault, and the Yankee knew a better way.
Of a certainty it made that Captain Roque furious. Now as we lay gasping in our retreat, the Corsican brought up the issue. He had been marching up and down in front of the men, waving his fist, cursing, stopping only to swig drinks or liquor from his canteen.
"DOGS! Cowards! If there was a man among you, we could have taken that tower long ago." That sort of thing. Now he planted himself in front of the recumbent Yankee Bill. The Dane and I lay on either side of the Yankee, and we wondered what was going to happen. Flat on his back, hands under his dusty head, Yankee Bill smiled up at the raging officer. Moonlight flickered in Captain Roqu's eyes, made his teeth shine, outlined the veins standing out on his blue forehead. He glared down at Yankee Bill and leered and snarled:
"Bien, here is a dog who smiles wisely. Perhaps my bold fool, you can suggest how that tower can be captured."
It was decidedly irregular for an officer to talk thus. But the Corsican had been swigging at his canteen with automatic regularity and must have been pretty drunk. The Legionnaires within earshot got up on their elbows to listen; and Yankee Bill stood up to salute.
"Oui, my captain," he said in his mildest voice. We all were treated to a real surprise. A jolly smile was on the big Yankees face as he declared:
"But. Yes, peraps I could help win the tower. Liste: suppose you take the men back to that promontory of rock east of the tower. I wait here. " He drew a rusty watch from his capote pocket. "Look, then. At the tick of midnight you attack the tower. While you battle on the east, I will creep alone across the sand, climb the wall and grab a machine gun. I would only need one. Perhaps I could do it alone. May I try the plan?"
I guess that speech took the breath out of those listening Legionnaires and Captain Roque. I felt as if I had been kicked in the lungs. You can wager the captain gave a delighted smile and replied: "Excellent. We will try the plan. You are a brave man after all."
"But, name of Heaven!" panted Christianity Jensen to Yankee Bill when Captain Roque had marched off chuckling. "It is suicide, Yankee Bill. The Corsican knows you will be killed and loves the idea. This is madness. You can never get into that tower.
"Don't lose no sleep while you wait for midnight," the big Yankee had advised. Once again he touched that scratch on his cheek, and once again tapped fingers over his pack. The Legion will win the tower. See if we don't. The moonlight has give me a plan. Nobody will get killed. I'm carryin' Zobeid's little present to bring us luck.
Chuckling merrily, he left the Dane and me, and sauntered down to th pool to get a drink. The moon in the black sky was big and yellow and bright.
"BONES of Stavrengeren," groaned Christianity Jensen for the thirteenth time in as many minutes. "But why did Yankee Bill suggest this foolish plan? For him to rush that tower alone is suicidal. Surely those monks will keep a guard on that side of the tower. He will be riddled. Those Beni-M'zab will not be fooled by this ruse. We tried it twice before today. Captain Roque is delighted at the Yankee's foolhardy plan. He hauls out his watch and grins like the devil. Midnight cannot be an hour away."
The Dane pointed a finger at the cleft in the hills where the pool lay concealed from view. The distant canyon mouth where Yankee Bill was hidden, awaiting his one-man assault. From where we lay, the canyon mouth, west of the tower, could hardly be seen. We were lying atop a rock-shelf on the promontory east of the tower. The tower was not six hundred yards away; quiet as a tomb in the moonlight, but I knew those Beni-M'zab hermits were vigilant as tigers. That handful of Moslem puritans had not seen the twenty of us sneak out on the promontory, but they must have sighted the gleam of our bayonets as we lay in line up there. Our fire might draw their attention all right but the Yankee could never cover the distance from the canyon across the open sand in the bright moonlight. Foolishness. I glanced at Captain Roque, sprawled flat nearby. The Corsican was grinning evilly. Midnight was scarce sixty minutes away; perhaps it would never come.
A restless tremor passed along the recumbent line of Legionnaires. Every eye was on the tower, every mind counting the minutes. Every tongue whispered of the Yankee's madness. My companions were uneasy, too. If that neck of desert had looked like the end of the world in daylight, you should have seen it under a round, yellow moon. The quiet was incredible. It yanked our nerves and wet our cheeks with sweat. It was not of this world. So we waited and the Moslem monks in the tower below waited behind heir machine guns. Once, I glimpsed a white turban moving. The green flag whispered.
"Listen," muttered the Dane at my side. "Do you think Yankee Bill is playing a game?Perhaps he does not wait beside the pool behind the rocks? Perhaps this is a trick to give him a chance to get away? Desertion."
"Pardieu! I had not thought of that. I glared at the hidden and distant canyon; opened my mouth to reply. And then my mouth clicked shut. A curious sigh ran along the line of Legionnaires. A gasp escaped the Dane. A sibilant curse popped from the teeth of Captain Giacomo Roque. We of the Legion line stared to make the eyes hangout of our buzzing skulls. Were we mad?
Was the moonlight, the atmosphere of that evil spot tricking our minds? Or did we really see a live ghost flit from that canyon? A live ghost shrouded in white veils came skipping from the spot where the pool lay hidden, and flickered across the sand toward the Beni-M'zab tower. Aunt of the devil, but it robbed one's heart of blood!
"Look at that!" panted the Dane, clutching my arm. I was looking all right. So was every man of us lying on that edge. Looking, yes! Mon Dieu how we looked! We did not believe our eyes.
When the ghost whirled nearer, veils blowing in the moonlight, and we saw it was not a wraith but a dancer, we did not believe or eyes a whit more. No! We stared and gasped oaths, and hugged the rock on which we lay, and knew we were insane. That moonlit corner of hell was lucky to be inhabited by Moslem hermits and Legionnaires; never the place to see a dancer shrouded in misty white veils.
WE forgot we were Legionnaires waiting a midnight assault. We forgot the Beni-M'zab tower below us. We forgot everything. Eyes pasted on that whirling figure we remembered only to breathe; and I, for one, forgot that and almost suffocated. The dancer's weaving arms were white as milk save where brass bracelets flashed. Face shrouded by a fluttering veil. Lithe body, sinuous and white, wrapped in the delicate misty raiment that clung and shimmered and fluttered in the moonbeams. Tiny as a nymph against that vast background of Saharan sand and hedging cliffs, that incredible dancer twirled over the flat sand, nearer and nearer to the tower.
Can you picture it? The line of Legionnaires panting and pop-eyed atop that ledge. The desolate Sahara running to the ends of the world. The chill moonlight laying long, blue shadows. And that utterly improbable veiled dancer flitting over the sand. I am a Dutchman if I did not think I was stark, raving mad.
What a dancer, I say! I had seen the Ouled Nail, the mystic dancers of Cambodia, the Seven Snake Sisters of Rabat, the queer dancers of Dahomey, and some pretty good ladies in Cadiz, Marseille, Singapore, Mombassa, Bangkok and New Orleans. But never had I seen a dancer like this one who had popped out of the night-hung cliffs fencing the Sahara to chram the moonbeams.
I will wager I was gasping like a steam valve. That dancer and that dance! Uncle of Satan! The danse du venire, the can-can, Russian ballet, snake-arm, what you Americans call "shimmie"---that dancer did them all and some new ones in the bargain. We watched from a distance, but we were plenty near enough, that is so.
Once I forced a look at Captain Giacomo Roque. His face was scarlet. His teeth were grinning steam. His eyes were the heads of steel nails drven into a rotting log. "Dieu!" the Corsican was panting. "Sacre nom de Dieu!" I should say so.
What of the little blob of mud under the green pennant below our promontory? Perhaps you think something was going on down there? But yes. Something was. Now I could not understand that impossible dancing figure, but I could comprehend what was happening in that Beni-M'zab monastery. I could almost see those Moslem monks, crowded together, staring with eyes like coals over the edge of their crenellated turret; staring like the very devil at the dancer on the sand below.
Imagine that handful of Moslem hermits, shut away in that spot of bitter desolation for Heaven knows how many years, suddenly treated to the sight of a dancer wrapped in veils, a dancer with arms white as milk in that moonlight, and graceful feet and a veil-misted torso, doing the can-can better than could the very mother of the Ouled Nail Mountains.
I could fancy how these desert-bitten, forgotten hermits were staring when the dance went on under the very shadow of their prison. These Beni-M'zab monks were puritans chiselled out of granite; devout steel-souled men. That dance looked like the vision of Bacchus to us of the Foreign Legion, but comprehend how it must have looked to men who had not seen a pair of lithe white arms for years and years! And it was going on, so to speak, right under their window. For the dancer was pirouetting on the sand where the shadow of the tower lay.
SUDDENLY the veiled figure stopped, and a white arm beckoned. Beckoned yes, to those eyes that must've been glaring from the tower turret. It was unfair, I tell you. Like dangling a juicy steak at the mouth of a starved lion. These Beni-M'zab hermits were the starved lion. It is no wonder they believed this vision in veils, a houri sent by Allah from paradise to console their sterile souls. No wonder they forgot their machine guns.
Perhaps they believed the Legion had gone away and this houri stepped from the sky was an omen of victory and an award from Allah the Merciful.
At any rate---what do you believe? Every man of us hidden on that very ledge, east of the tower saw it all. We saw these Beni-M'zab monks swarm over the low tower wall like little white-turbaned ants. Yes! They clambered out of their impregnable little tower and started for the beckoning dancer. The veiled finger waved a hand, and those monks ---there were twelve of them---legged it over the sand. The veiled dancer turned to run and those dried-up desert monks gave mad chase. Right then it came over me like a flood of light! Le bon Dieu lone knew where Yankee Bill had found her among those desolate cliffs. But somewhere, somehow, the big American had found this dancing genius, and worked out the scheme. Now you could have cut my head off with a paper sword!
The other Legionnaires and Captain Giacomo Roque caught the idea, too. As one man we bounced our heels, jerked up our Lebels and charged down from the rocks. Those poor, duped monks of the Beni-M'zab never saw us until we had covered the distance to the tower. Even then, they wavered between following the houri and trying to get back to their guns. Too late. They turned about, squalling like trapped cats, and with one volley we sent them to meet a real bevy of houris in the excellent paradise those good fighters deserved.
And the dancer? Aunt of the devil! That veiled figure stood like a statue on the sand some five hundred feet away from us, and we heard a shrill laugh. Somehow that laugh halted the feet of the Legionnaires. We stood with our Lebels smking in our fists; glaring from the extinguished Mozabitesto the dancer who had betrayed them.
We Legionnaires dared not move, but Captain Giacomo Roque did. Uttering a lusty bawl, the Corsican kept right on running. He pounded across the sand like a satyr with evil in its eye. He had lost his kepi and his greasy curls were flying. The moonlight was not nice on his avid face; no wonder the dancer turned to run.
Straight for the canyon mouth fled the shrouded figure, with the Corsican ruffian making after. Running like antelopes, they covered a quarter mile in record time, but the Corsican gained. The distance between them closed in---then abruptly the veiled figure turned. We saw our noble captain dart on with grabbing hands outstretched. Then, Sacre Dieu! A white arm whipped out from the blowing veils. Whack! We could almost hear the blow. Down went Captain Roque in the manner of a man hit by a lightning bolt. The astounding dancer spun about , and fled like a white streak to vanish among the cliffs where the Eblis River made a final pool among the hidden rocks.
IT was too muh for dog-tired Legionnaire brains to handle. We stood like fools for five minutes that were five centuries, then jumped over the bodies of those poor Beni-M'zab holy men and cantered up to the unconscious form of our captain. I reached him first, and I want to tell you, I received a jolt. He lay like one dead face up on the sand where the dancer's mighty blow had dropped him. Hi face was chalk and he had a scarlet streak for a mouth, and I dropped my rifle when I saw. They lay scattered on the sand like so many dice. You comprehend? His front teeth had been knocked out of that bulldog's head!
He could not speak when we roused him to his feet, and no wonder. He could only lisp oaths and spit blood for his mouth swelled like a sponge welled in red ink. He was one dismal sight, that Corsican captain of ours, but we Legionaires did not expire of sorrow. We did not.
We helped him stagger over the sand toward the mouth of the canyon in the cliffs; and I would have given thirteen million francs to read his thoughts.
My thoughts were not worth a franc and they fell in value to a sou when we rounded the bowlders sheltering the pool under the palm trees---It was where the mountains climbed to look over the edge of the world, you remember---and gained the spot where the dancer disappeared. There was no dancer there. But no! Only a certain giant Legionnaire called Yankee Bill the Elephant.
His capote and shoes were off; he was naked to the waist and looked as if he had been diving. In one hand he held four brass bracelets. He was the dancer of the Seven Veils who had fooled the Beni-M'zab monks and outwitted Catain Giacomo Roque!
EPILOGUE
SHADOWS were gathering on Boulevard Sadi Carnot. Out beyond the harbor ramps, the Bay of Algiers was a lake of rose and blue, painted by the brushes of sundown. Somewhere in the Kasbah scrambling behind the town an Arab fife started to tootle; and a streak of sunset light slanted suddenly through a rent in our cafe awning and found a drop of crimson lurking in the bottom of the old veteran's, Thibaut's wine glass.
For next short-story gem: Not Only Perry Mason
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