The Wages of Virtue Part 21

"Stick to it, my son," said the latter from time to time, "we are sure to stop at the fifty-kilometre stone."

The Belgian seemed to be semiconscious, and did not reply. His feet began to drag, and occasionally his two comrades bore his full weight for a few paces. Every few yards Feodor looked anxiously round. These four, in their anxiety for their weaker brother, forgot their own raw thighs, labouring lungs, inflamed eyes, numbed arms and agonising feet.

Just as the Colonel rode by, the Gra.s.shopper's feet ceased to move, and dragged lifeless along the ground.

Rupert stumbled and the three fell in a heap, beneath the Colonel's eye.

"Sacre Bapteme!" he swore--the oath he only used when a Legionary fell out on the march--"March or die, accursed pigs."

Rupert and John Bull staggered to their feet, but the Gra.s.shopper lay apparently lifeless. The Colonel swore again, and shouted an order.

The Gra.s.shopper was dragged to the side of the road, and a baggage-cart drove up. A tent-pole was thrust through its sides and tied securely.

To this pole the Belgian was lashed, the pole pa.s.sing across the upper part of his back and under his arms, which were pulled over it and tied together. If he could keep his feet, well and good. If he could not, he would hang from the pole by his arms (as an athlete hangs from a parallel-bar in a gymnasium, before revolving round and round it).

On tramped the Legion.

Before long, the Gra.s.shopper's feet dragged in the dust as he drooped inanimate, and then hung in the rope which lashed him to the pole.

At the fifty-fifth kilometre, thirty-five miles from Sidi-bel-Abbes, the command to halt was followed by the thrice-blessed G.o.d-sent order:

"_Campez!_"

Almost before the words, "_Formez les faisceaux_" were out of the Company-Commanders' mouths, the men had piled arms. Nor was the order "_Sac a terre_" obeyed in any grudging spirit. In an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time the jointed tent-poles and canvas had been removed from the knapsacks. Corporals of sections had stepped forward, holding the tent-poles above their heads, marking each Company's tent-line, and a city of small white tents had come into being on the face of the desert.

A few minutes later, cooking-trenches had been dug, camp-fires lighted and water, containing meat and macaroni, put on to boil.

A busy and profitable hour followed for Madame la Cantiniere, who, even as her cart stopped, had set out her folding tables, benches and bar for the sale of her Algerian wine. Her first customer was the great Luigi, who, thanks to Carmelita's money, could sit and drink while his employees did his work. The fly in the worthy man's ointment was the fact that his Italian dinner and Italian wine were thirty-five miles behind him at Carmelita's cafe. Like ordinary men, he must, to-night and for many a night to come, content himself with the monotonous and meagre fare of common Legionaries. However--better half a sofa than no bed; and he was easily prime favourite with Madame.... This would be an excellent chance for consolidating his position with her, winning her for his bride, and apprising Carmelita, from afar, of the fact that he was now respectably settled in life. Thus would a disagreeable scene be avoided and, on the return of the Battalion to Sidi-bel-Abbes, he would give the Cafe de la Legion a wide berth.... Could he perhaps _sell_ his rights and goodwill in the _cafe_ and Carmelita to some Legionary of means? One or two of his own _chambree_ seemed to have money--the Englishman; the Russians.... Better still, sell out to Malvin, Tou-tou, Meyer, or some other penniless toady and _make him pay a weekly percentage_ of what he screwed out of Carmelita. Excellent! And if the scoundrel did not get him enough, he would supplant him with a more competent lessee.... Meanwhile, to storm Madame's experienced and undecided heart. Anyhow, if she wouldn't have Luigi she shouldn't have anyone else....

There was, that evening, exceeding little noise and movement, and "the stir and tread of armed camps." As soon as they had fed--and, in many cases, before they had fed--the soldiers lay on their blankets, their heads on their knapsacks and their overcoats over their bodies.

Scarcely, as it seemed to Rupert, had they closed their eyes, when it was time to rise and resume their weary march. At one o'clock in the morning, the Battalion fell in, and each man got his two litres of water and strict orders to keep one quarter of it for to-morrow's cooking purposes. If he contributed no water to the cooking-cauldron he got no cooked food.

On tramped the Legion.

Day after day, day after day, it marched, and, on the twelfth day from Sidi-bel-Abbes, had covered nearly three hundred and fifty miles. Well might the Legion be known in the Nineteenth Division as the _Cavalerie a pied_.

--2

Life for the Seventh Company of the First Battalion of the Legion in Anargoula was, as John Bull had promised Rupert, simply h.e.l.l. Not even the relief of desert warfare had broken the cruel monotony of desert marches and life in desert stations--stations consisting of red-hot barracks, and the inevitable filthy and sordid _Village Negre_. Men lived--and sometimes died--in a state of unbearable irritation and morose savageness. Fights were frequent, suicide not infrequent, and murders not unknown. _Cafard_ reigned supreme. The punishment-cells were overcrowded night and day, and abortive desertions occurred with extraordinary frequency.

The discontent and sense of wasted time, which had begun to oppress Rupert at Sidi-bel-Abbes, increased tenfold. To him and to the Bucking Bronco (who daily swore that he would desert that night, and tramp to Sidi-bel-Abbes to see Carmelita) John Bull proved a friend in need.

Each afternoon, during that terrible time between eleven and three, when the incredible heat of the barrack-room made it impossible for any work to be done, and the men, by strict rule, were compelled to lie about on their cots, it was John Bull who found his friends something else to think about than their own sufferings and miseries.

A faithful coadjutor was 'Erb, who, with his mouth-organ and Jew's-harp, probably saved the reason, or the life, of more than one man. 'Erb seemed to feel the heat less than bigger men, and he would sit cross-legged upon his mattress, evoking tuneful strains from his beloved instruments when far stronger men could only lie panting like distressed dogs. Undoubtedly the three Englishmen and the American exercised a restraining and beneficial influence, inasmuch as they interfered as one man (following the lead of John Bull, the oldest soldier in the room) whenever a quarrel reached the point of blows, in their presence....

Under those conditions of life and temper a blow is commonly but the prelude to swift homicide.

One terrible afternoon, as the Legionaries lay on their beds, almost naked, in that stinking oven, the suddenness of these tragedies was manifested. It was too hot to play _bloquette_ or _foutrou_, too hot to sing, too hot to smoke, too hot to do anything, and the hot bed positively burnt one's bare back. The Bucking Bronco lay gasping, his huge chest rising and falling with painful rapidity. John Bull was showing Rupert a wonderfully and beautifully j.a.panese-tattooed serpent which wound twice round his wrist and ran up the inner side of his white forearm, its head and expanded hood filling the hollow of his elbow.

Rupert, who would have liked to copy it, was wondering how its brilliant colours had been achieved and had remained undimmed for over thirty-five years, as John Bull said was the case, it having been done at Nagasaki when he was a mids.h.i.+pman on the _Narcissus_. It was too hot even for 'Erb to make music and he lay fanning himself with an ancient copy of the _Echo d'Oran_. It was too hot to sleep, save in one or two cases, and these men groaned, moaned and rolled their heads as they snored. It was too hot to quarrel--almost. But not quite. Suddenly the swift _zweeep_ of a bayonet being s.n.a.t.c.hed from its steel scabbard hissed through the room, and all eyes turned to where Legionary Franz Josef Meyer flashed his bayonet from his sheath and, almost in the same movement, drove it up through the throat of the Greek, Dimitropoulos, and into his brain.

"Take that, you sc.u.m of the Levant," he said, and then stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at his handiwork. There had been bad blood between the men for some time, and for days the Austrian had accused the Greek of stealing a piece of his wax. Some taunt of the dead man had completed the work of _le cafard_....

That night Meyer escaped from the cells--and his body, three days later, was delivered up in return for the twenty-five francs paid for a live or dead deserter. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that parts of his body were brought in--sufficient, at any rate, for identification.

He had fallen into the hands of the Arabs.

To give the Arabs their due, however, they saved the situation. Just when Legionary John Bull had begun to give up hope, and nightly to dread what the morrow might bring forth for his friends and himself, the Arabs attacked the post. The strain on the over-stretched cord was released and men who, in another day, would have been temporarily or permanently raving madmen, were saved.

The attack was easily beaten off and without loss to the Legionaries, firing from loopholes and behind stone walls.

On the morrow, a reconnaissance toward the nearest oasis discovered their camp and, on the next day, a tiny punitive column set forth from Anargoula--the Legionaries as happy, to use Rupert's too appropriate simile, as sand-boys. Like everybody else, he was in the highest spirits. Gone was the dark shadow of _le cafard_ and the feeling that, unless something happened, he would become a homicidal maniac and run amuck.

Here was the "real thing." Here was that for which he had been so long and so drastically trained--desert warfare. He thrilled from head to foot with excitement, and wondered whether the day would bring forth one of the famous and terrible Arab cavalry charges, and whether he would have his first experience of taking part in the mad and fearful joy of a bayonet charge. Anyhow, there was a chance of either or both.

The Company marched on at its quickest, alternating five minutes of swift marching with five minutes of the _pas gymnastique_, the long, loping stride which is the "double" of the Legion.

Far ahead marched a small advance-guard; behind followed a rear-guard, and, well out on either side, marched the flankers. Where a sandy ridge ran parallel with the course of the Company, the flankers advanced along the crest of it, that they might watch the country which lay beyond.

This did not avail them much, for, invariably, such a ridge was paralleled by a similar one at no great distance. To have rendered the little Company absolutely secure against sudden surprise-attack on either flank, would have necessitated sending out the majority of the force for miles on either side. Rupert, ever keen and deeply interested in military matters, talked of this with John Bull, who agreed with him that, considerable as the danger of such an attack was, it could not be eliminated.

"Anyhow," concluded he, "we generally get something like at least five hundred yards' margin and if the Arabs can cut us up while we have that--they deserve to. Still, it's tricky country I admit, with all these _wadis_ and folds in the ground, as well as rocks and ridges."

On marched the Company, and reached an area of rolling sand-hills, and loose heavy sand under foot.

The day grew terribly hot and the going terribly heavy. As usual, all pretence and semblance of smart marching had been abandoned, and the men marched in whatever posture, att.i.tude or style seemed to them best....

... It came with the suddenness of a thunderclap on a fine day, at a moment when practically everything but the miseries of marching through loose sand in the hottest part of one of the hottest days of the year had faded from the minds of the straining, labouring men.

A sudden shout, followed by the firing of half a dozen shots, brought the column automatically to a halt and drew all eyes to the right.

From a wide shallow _wadi_, or a fold in the ground, among the sand-hills a few hundred yards away, an avalanche of _haik_ and _djellab_-clad men on swift horses suddenly materialised and swept down like a whirlwind on the little force. Behind them, followed a far bigger ma.s.s of camel-riders howling "_Ul-Ul-Ullah-Akbar!_" as they came.

Almost before the column had halted, a couple of barks from Lieutenant Roberte turned the Company to the right in two ranks, the front rank kneeling, the rear rank standing close up behind it, with bayonets fixed and magazines charged... Having fired their warning shots, the flankers were running for their lives to join the main body. The Company watched and waited in grave silence. It was Lieutenant Roberte's intention that, when the Arabs broke and fled before the Company's withering blast of lead, they should leave the maximum number of "souvenirs" behind them. His was the courage and nerve that is tempered and enhanced by imperturbable coolness. He would let the charging foe gallop to the very margin of safety for his Legionaries. To turn them back at fifty yards would be much more profitable than to do it at five hundred.

Trembling with excitement and the thrilling desire for violent action, Rupert knelt between John Bull and the Bucking Bronco, scarcely able to await the orders to fire and charge. Before any order came he saw a sight that for a moment sickened and shook him, a sight which remained before his eyes for many days. Corporal Auguste Gilles, who was commanding the flankers, either too weary or too ill to continue his sprint for comparative safety, turned and faced the thundering rush of the oncoming Arab _harka_, close behind him. Kneeling by a p.r.i.c.kly pear or cactus bush he threw up his rifle and emptied his magazine into the swiftly rus.h.i.+ng ranks that were almost upon him. As he fired his last shot, an Arab, riding ahead of the rest, lowered his lance and, with a cry of "_Kelb ibn kelb_,"[#] bent over towards him. Springing to his feet the Corporal gamely charged with his bayonet. There can be only one end to such a combat when the horseman knows his weapon. The Corporal was sent flying into the cactus, impaled upon the Arab's lance, and, as it was withdrawn as the horseman swept by, the horrified Rupert saw his comrade stagger to his feet and totter forward--tethered to the cactus by his own entrails. Happily, a second later, the sweep of an Arab _flissa_ almost severed his head from his shoulders....

[#] Dog--and son of a dog.

The Company stood firm and silent as a rock, the s.h.i.+ning bayonets still and level. Just as it seemed to Rupert that it must be swept away and every man share the fate of that mangled lump of clay in front (for there is no more nerve-shaking spectacle than cavalry charging down upon you like a living avalanche or flood) one word rang out from Lieutenant Roberte.

When the cras.h.i.+ng rattle (like mingled, tearing thunder and the wild hammer of hail upon a corrugated iron roof), ceased as magazines were emptied almost simultaneously, the Arabs were in flight at top speed, leaving two-thirds of their number on the plain; and upon the fleeing _harka_ the Company made very pretty shooting--for the Legion shoots as well as it marches.

When the "Cease Fire" whistle had blown, Rupert remarked to John Bull--

"No chance for a bayonet charge, then?" to which the old soldier replied--

"No, my son, that is a pleasure to which the Arab does not treat us, unless we surprise his sleeping _douar_ at dawn...."

The Arabs having disappeared beyond the horizon, the Company camped and bivouacked on the battlefield, resuming its march at midnight. As Lieutenant Roberte feared and expected, the oasis which was surrounded and attacked at dawn, was found to be empty.

The Company marched back to Anargoula and, a few days later, returned to Sidi-bel-Abbes.