CHAPTER XVII.
UNDER THE HOUSES OF HAIR.
It was just sunset.
The far-off summits of the Djurjura were tinted with the intense glareof the distant pines and cypresses cut sharply against the rose-warmedradiance of the sky. On the slopes of the hills white cupolas andterraced gardens, where the Algerine haouach still showed the taste andluxury of Algerine corsairs, rose up among their wild olive shadowson the groves of the lentiscus. In the deep gorges that were channeledbetween the riven rocks the luxuriance of African vegetation ran riot;the feathery crests of tossing reeds, the long, floating leaves ofplants, filling the dry water-courses of vanished streams; the broadfoliage of the wild fig, and the glowing, dainty blossoms of theoleander, wherever a trace of brook, or pool, or rivulet let it putforth its beautiful coronal, growing one in another in the narrowvalleys, and the curving passes, wherever broken earth or rock gaveshelter from the blaze and heat of the North African day.
Farther inland the bare, sear stretches of brown plain were studdedwith dwarf palm, the vast shadowless plateaux were desolate as the greatdesert itself far beyond; and the sun, as it burned on them a momentin the glory of its last glow, found them naked and grand by the sheerforce of immensity and desolation, but dreary and endless, and brokeninto refts and chasms, as though to make fairer by their own barrensolitude the laughing luxuriance of the sea-face of the Sahel.
A moment, and the luster of the light flung its own magic brilliancyover the Algerine water-line, and then shone full on the heights of ElBiar and Bouzariah, and on the lofty, delicate form of the Italianpines that here and there, Sicilian-like, threw out their gracefulheads against the amber sun-glow and the deep azure of the heavens. Thenswiftly, suddenly, the sun sank; twilight passed like a gray, glidingshade, an instant, over earth and sea; and night--the balmy, sultry,star-studded night of Africa,--fell over the thirsty leafage longing forits dews, the closed flowers that slumbered at its touch, the searedand blackened plains to which its coolness could bring no herbage, themassive hills that seemed to lie so calmly in its rest.
Camped on one of the bare stretches above the Mustapha Road was a circleof Arab tents; the circle was irregularly kept, and the Krumas werescattered at will; here a low one of canvas, there one of goatskin; herea white towering canopy of teleze, there a low striped little nest ofshelter, and loftier than all, the stately beit el shar of the Sheik,with his standard stuck into the earth in front of it, with its heavyfolds hanging listlessly in the sultry, breathless air.
The encampment stretched far over the level, arid earth, and there wasmore than one tent where the shadowing folds of the banner marked theabode of some noble Djied. Disorder reigned supreme, in all the desertfreedom; horses and mules, goats and camels, tethered, strayed amongthe conical houses of hair, browsing off the littered straw or thetossed-down hay; and caldrons seethed and hissed over wood fires, whoselurid light was flung on the eagle features and the white haiks of thewanderers who watched the boiling of their mess, or fed the emberswith dry sticks. Round other fires, having finished the eating of theircouscousson, the Bedouins lay full-length; enjoying the solemn silencewhich they love so little to break, and smoking their long pipes;while through the shadows about them glided the lofty figures of theirbrethren, with the folds of their sweeping burnous floating in thegloom. It was a picture, Rembrandt in color, Oriental in composition;with the darkness surrounding it stretching out into endless distancethat led to the mystic silence of the great desert; and above theintense blue of the gorgeous night, with the stars burning throughwhite, transparent mists of slowly drifting clouds.
In the central tent, tall and crimson-striped, with its mighty standardreared in front, and its opening free to the night, sat the Khalifa, thehead of the tribe, with a circle of Arabs about him. He was thrown onhis cushions, rich enough for a seraglio, while the rest squatted on themorocco carpet that covered the bare ground, and that was strewn withround brass Moorish trays and little cups emptied of their coffee. Thesides of the tent were hung with guns and swords, lavishly adorned; andin the middle stood a tall Turkish candle-branch in fretted work, whoselight struggled with the white flood of the moon, and the ruddy, fitfulglare from a wood fire without.
Beneath its light, which fell full on him, flung down upon another pileof cushions facing the open front of the tent, was a guest whom theKhalifa delighted to honor. Only a Corporal of Chasseurs, and once afoe, yet one with whom the Arab found the brotherhood of brave men, andon whom he lavished, in all he could, the hospitalities and honors ofthe desert.
The story of their friendship ran thus:
The tribe was now allied with France, or, at least, had accepted Frenchsovereignty, and pledged itself to neutrality in the hostilities stillrife; but a few years before, far in the interior and leagued with theKabailes, it had been one of the fiercest and most dangerous among theenemies of France. At that time the Khalifa and the Chasseur met in manya skirmish; hot, desperate struggles, where men fought horse to horse,hand to hand; midnight frays, when, in the heart of lonely ravines, Arabambuscades fell on squadrons of French cavalry; terrible chases throughthe heat of torrid suns, when the glittering ranks of the chargingtroops swept down after the Bedouins' flight; fiery combats, whenthe desert sand and the smoke of musketry circled in clouds above theclose-locked struggle, and the Leopard of France and the Lion of Saharawrestled in a death-grip.
In these, through four or five seasons of warfare, the Sheik and theChasseur had encountered each other, till each had grown to look forthe other's face as soon as the standards of the Bedouins flashed inthe sunshine opposite the guidons of the Imperial forces; till eachhad watched and noted the other's unmatched prowess, and borne awaythe wounds of the other's home-strokes, with the admiration of a boldsoldier for a bold rival's dauntlessness and skill; till each hadlearned to long for an hour, hitherto always prevented by waves ofbattle that had swept them too soon asunder, when they should meet in aduello once for all, and try their strength together till one bore offvictory and one succumbed to death.
At last it came to pass that, after a lengthened term of this chivalrousantagonism, the tribe were sorely pressed by the French troops, andcould no longer mass its fearless front to face them, but had to fleesouthward to the desert, and encumbered by its flocks and its women, washardly driven and greatly decimated. Now among those women was onewhom the Sheik held above all earthly things except his honor in war; abeautiful antelope-eyed creature, lithe and graceful as a palm, and thedaughter of a pure Arab race, on whom he could not endure for any othersight than his to look, and whom he guarded in his tent as the chiefpearl of all his treasures; herds, flocks, arms, even his horses, allsave the honor of his tribe, he would have surrendered rather thansurrender Djelma. It was a passion with him; a passion that not even theiron of his temper and the dignity of his austere calm could abate orconceal; and the rumor of it and of the beauty of its object reachedthe French camp, till an impatient curiosity was roused about her, and araid that should bear her off became the favorite speculation roundthe picket fires at night, and in the scorching noons, when the men laystripped to their waist--panting like tired dogs under the hot witheringbreath that stole to them, sweeping over the yellow seas of sands.
Their heated fancies had pictured this treasure of the great Djied assomething beyond all that her sex had ever given them, and to snare herin some unwary moment was the chief thought of Zephyr and Spahi whenthey went out on a scouting or foraging party. But it was easier saidthan done; the eyes of no Frank ever fell on her, and when he was mostclosely driven the Khalifa Ilderim abandoned his cattle and sheep, but,with the females of the tribe still safely guarded, fell more andmore backward and southward; drawing the French on and on, farther andfarther across the plains, in the sickliest times of hottest drought.
Re-enforcements could swell the Imperial ranks as swiftly as they werethinned, but with the Arabs a man once fallen was a man the less totheir numbers forever, and the lightning-like pursuit began to te
llterribly on them; their herds had fallen into their pursuers' hands, andfamine menaced them. Nevertheless, they were fierce in attack as tigers,rapid in swoop as vultures, and fought flying in such fashion that thecavalry lost more in this fruitless, worthless work than they would havedone in a second Hohenlinden or Austerlitz.
Moreover, the heat was intense, water was bad and very rare, dysenterycame with the scorch and the toil of this endless charge; the chief incommand, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, swore heavily as he saw many ofhis best men dropping off like sheep in a murrain, and he offered twohundred napoleons to whosoever should bring either the dead Sheik's heador the living beauty of Djelma.
One day the Chasseurs had pitched their camp where a few barren,withered trees gave a semblance of shelter, and a little thread ofbrackish water oozed through the yellow earth.
It was high noon; the African sun was at its fiercest; far as the eyecould reach there was only one boundless, burning, unendurable glitterof parching sand and cloudless sky--brazen beneath, brazen above--tillthe desert and the heavens touched, and blent in one tawny, fieryglow in the measureless distance. The men lay under canvas, dead-beat,half-naked, without the power to do anything except to fight likethirst-maddened dogs for a draught at the shallow stream that they andtheir breathless horses soon drained dry.
Even Raoul de Chateauroy, though his frame was like an Arab's, and knitinto Arab endurance, was stretched like a great bloodhound, chainedby the sultry oppression. He was ruthless, inflexible, a tyrant tothe core, and sharp and swift as steel in his rigor, but he was a finesoldier, and never spared himself any of the hardships that his regimenthad to endure under him.
Suddenly the noon lethargy of the camp was broken; a trumpet-call rangthrough the stillness; against the amber transparency of the horizonline the outlines of half a dozen horsemen were seen looming nearerand nearer with every moment; they were some Spahis who had been outsweeping the country for food. The mighty frame of Chateauroy, almostas unclothed as an athlete's, started from its slumberous, pantingrest; his eyes lightened hungrily; he muttered a fiery oath; "Mort deDieu!--they have the woman!"
They had the woman. She had been netted near a water-spring, to whichshe had wandered too loosely guarded, and too far from the Bedouinencampment. The delight of the haughty Sidi's eyes was borne off to thetents of his foe, and the Colonel's face flushed darkly with an eager,lustful warmth, as he looked upon his captive. Rumor had not outboastedthe Arab girl's beauty; it was lustrous as ever was that when, faryonder to the eastward, under the curled palms of Nile, the sorceress ofthe Caesars swept through her rose-strewn palace chambers. Only Djelmawas as innocent as the gazelle, whose grace she resembled, and loved herlord with a great love.
Of her suffering her captor took no more heed than if she were a youngbird dying of shot-wounds; but, with one triumphant, admiring glance ather, he wrote a message in Arabic, to send to the Khalifa, ere her losswas discovered--a message more cruel than iron. He hesitated a second,where he lay at the opening of his tent, whom he should send with it.His men were almost all half-dead with the sun-blaze. His glancechanced to light in the distance on a soldier to whom he bore nolove--causelessly, but bitterly all the same. He had him summoned, andeyed him with a curious amusement--Chateauroy treated his squadronswith much the same sans-facon familiarity and brutality that a chief offilibusters uses in his.
"So! you heed the heat so little, you give up your turn of water to adrummer, they say?"
The Chasseur gave the salute with a calm deference. A faint flush passedover the sun-bronze of his forehead. He had thought the Sidney-likesacrifice had been unobserved.
"The drummer was but a child, mon Commandant."
"Be so good as to give us no more of those melodramatic acts!" said M.le Marquis contemptuously. "You are too fond of trafficking in thoseshowy fooleries. You bribe your comrades for their favoritism tooopenly. Ventre bleu! I forbid it--do you hear?"
"I hear, mon Colonel."
The assent was perfectly tranquil and respectful. He was too good asoldier not to render perfect obedience, and keep perfect silence, underany goad of provocation to break both.
"Obey then!" said Chateauroy savagely. "Well, since you love heat sowell, you shall take a flag of truce and my scroll to the Sidi Ilderim.But tell me, first, what do you think of this capture?"
"It is not my place to give opinions, M. le Colonel."
"Pardieu! It is your place when I bid you. Speak, or I will have thestick cut the words out of you!"
"I may speak frankly?"
"Ten thousand curses--yes!"
"Then, I think that those who make war on women are no longer fit tofight with men."
For a moment the long, sinewy, massive form of Chateauroy started fromthe skins on which he lay at full length, like a lion started from itslair. His veins swelled like black cords; under the mighty muscle of hisbare chest his heart beat visibly in the fury of his wrath.
"By God! I have a mind to have you shot like a dog!"
The Chasseur looked at him carelessly, composedly, but with a serenedeference still, as due from a soldier to his chief.
"You have threatened it before, M. le Colonel. It may be as well to doit, or the army may think you capricious."
Raoul de Chateauroy crushed a blasphemous oath through his clinchedteeth, and laughed a certain short, stern, sardonic laugh, which his mendreaded more than his wrath.
"No; I will send you instead to the Khalifa. He often saves me thetrouble of killing my own curs. Take a flag of truce and this paper, andnever draw rein till you reach him, if your beast drop dead at the end."
The Chasseur saluted, took the paper, bowed with a certain languid, easygrace that camp life never cured him of, and went. He knew that theman who should take the news of his treasure's loss to the Emir Ilderimwould, a thousand to one, perish by every torture desert cruelty couldframe, despite the cover of the white banner.
Chateauroy looked after him, as he and his horse passed from the Frenchcamp in the full burning tide of noon.
"If the Arabs kill him," he thought, "I will forgive Ilderim fiveseasons of rebellion."
The Chasseur, as he had been bidden, never drew rein across thescorching plateau. He rode to what he knew was like enough to be death,and death by many a torment, as though he rode to a midnight love-tryst.His horse was of Arab breed--young, fleet, and able to endureextraordinary pressure, both of spur and of heat. He swept on, far andfast, through the sickly, lurid glitter of the day, over the loose sand,that flew in puffs around him as the hoofs struck it flying right andleft. At last, ere he reached the Bedouin tents, that were still butslender black points against the horizon, he saw the Sheik and a partyof horsemen returning from a foraging quest, and in ignorance as yet ofthe abduction of Djelma. He galloped straight to them, and halted acrosstheir line of march, with the folds of the little white flag flutteringin the sun. The Bedouins drew bridle, and Ilderim advanced alone. Hewas a magnificent man, of middle age, with the noblest type of theeagle-eyed, aquiline desert beauty. He was a superb specimen of hisrace, without the lean, withered, rapacious, vulture look which oftenmars it. His white haik floated round limbs fit for a Colossus: andunder the snowy folds of his turban the olive-bronze of his boldforehead, the sweep of his jet-black beard, and the piercing luminanceof his eyes had a grand and kingly majesty.
A glance of recognition from him on the lascar, who had so often crossedswords with him; and he waved back the scroll with dignified courtesy.
"Read it me."
It was read. Bitterly, blackly shameful, the few brutal words were. Theynetted him as an eagle is netted in a shepherd's trap.
The moment that he gave a sign of advancing against his ravishers, thecaptive's life would pay the penalty; if he merely remained in arms,without direct attack, she would be made the Marquis' mistress, andabandoned later to the army. The only terms on which he could have herrestored were instant submission to the Imperial rule, andpersonal homage of himself and all his Djouad to the
Marquis asthe representatives of France--homage in which they should confessthemselves dogs and the sons of dogs.
So ran the message of peace.
The Chasseur read on to the end calmly. Then he lifted his gaze, andlooked at the Emir--he expected fifty swords to be buried in his heart.
As he gazed, he thought no more of his own doom; he thought only of therevelation before him, of what passion and what agony could be--thingsunknown in the world where the chief portion of his life had passed. Hewas a war-hardened campaigner, trained in the ruthless school of Africanhostilities; who had seen every shape of mental and physical suffering,when men were left to perish of gun-wounds, as the rush of the chargeswept on; when writhing horses died by the score of famine and ofthirst; when the firebrand was hurled among sleeping encampments, anddefenseless women were torn from their rest by the unsparing handsof pitiless soldiers. But the torture which shook for a second thesteel-knit frame of this Arab passed all that he had dreamed aspossible; it was mute, and held in bonds of iron, for the sake of thedesert pride of a great ruler's majesty; but it spoke more than anyeloquence ever spoke yet on earth.
With a wild, shrill yell, the Bedouins whirled their naked sabers abovetheir heads, and rushed down on the bearer of this shame to their chiefand their tribe. The Chasseur did not seek to defend himself. He satmotionless. He thought the vengeance just.
The Sheik raised his sword, and signed them back, as he pointed to thewhite folds of the flag. Then his voice rolled out like thunder over thestillness of the plains:
"But that you trust yourself to my honor I would rend you limb fromlimb. Go back to the tiger who rules you, and tell him that--as Allahliveth--I will fall on him, and smite him as he hath never been smitten.Dead or living, I will have back my own. If he take her life, I willhave ten thousand lives to answer it; if he deal her dishonor, I willlight such a holy war through the length and breadth of the land thathis nation shall be driven backward like choked dogs into the sea, andperish from the face of the earth for evermore. And this I swear by theLaw and the Prophet!"
The menace rolled out, imperious as a monarch's, thrilling through thedesert hush. The Chasseur bent his head, as the words closed. His ownteeth were tightly clinched, and his face was dark.
"Emir, listen to one word," he said briefly. "Shame has been done tome as to you. Had I been told what words I bore, they had never beenbrought by my hand. You know me. You have had the marks of my steel, asI have had the marks of yours. Trust me in this, Sidi. I pledge youmy honor that, before the sun sets, she shall be given back to youunharmed, or I will return here myself, and your tribe shall slay mein what fashion they will. So alone can she be saved uninjured. Answer,will you have faith in me?"
The desert chief looked at him long; sitting motionless as a statue onhis stallion, with the fierce gleam of his eyes fixed on the eyes ofthe man who so long had been his foe in contests whose chivalry equaledtheir daring. The Chasseur never wavered once under the set, piercing,ruthless gaze.
Then the Emir pointed to the sun, that was not at its zenith:
"You are a great warrior: such men do not lie. Go, and if she be borneto me before the sun is half-way sunk toward the west, all the branchesof the tribes of Ilderim shall be as your brethren, and bend as steelto your bidding. If not--as God is mighty--not one man in all your hostshall live to tell the tale!"
The Chasseur bowed his head to his horse's mane; then, without a word,wheeled round, and sped back across the plain.
When he reached his own cavalry camp, he went straightway to his chief.What passed between them none ever knew. The interview was brief; itwas possibly as stormy. Pregnant and decisive it assuredly was; andthe squadrons of Africa marveled that the man who dared beard Raoul deChateauroy in his lair came forth with his life. Whatever the spell heused, the result was a marvel.
At the very moment that the sun touched the lower half of the westernheavens, the Sheik Ilderim, where he sat in his saddle, with all histribe stretching behind him, full-armed, to sweep down like falcons onthe spoilers, if the hour passed with the pledge unredeemed, saw theform of the Chasseur reappear between his sight and the glare of theskies; nor did he ride alone. That night the Pearl of the Desert layonce more in the mighty, sinuous arms of the great Emir.
But, with the dawn, his vengeance fell in terrible fashion, on thesleeping camp of the Franks; and from that hour dated the passionate,savage, unconcealed hate of Raoul de Chateauroy for the mostdaring soldier of all his fiery Horse, known in his troop as"Bel-a-faire-peur."
It was in the tent of Ilderim now that he reclined, looking outward atthe night where flames were leaping ruddily under a large caldron, andfar beyond was the dark immensity of the star-studded sky; the light ofthe moon strayed in and fell on the chestnut waves of his beard, out ofwhich the long amber stem of an Arab pipe glittered like a golden line,and on the skin--fair, despite a warm hue of bronze--and the long,slumberous softness of the hazel eyes, were in so marked a contrast ofrace with the eagle outlines of the Bedouins around.
From the hour of the restoration of his treasure the Sheik had been trueto his oath; his tribe in all its branches had held the French lascar inclosest brotherhood; wherever they were he was honored and welcomed; washe in war, their swords were drawn for him; was he in need, their housesof hair were spread for him; had he want of flight, the swiftest andmost precious of their horses was at his service; had he thirst,they would have died themselves, wringing out the last drop from thewater-skin for him. Through him their alliance, or more justly to speak,their neutrality, was secured to France, and the Bedouin Chief loved himwith a great, silent, noble love that was fast rooted in the graniteof his nature. Between them there was a brotherhood that beat down theantagonism of race, and was stronger than the instinctive hate of theoppressed for all who came under the abhorred standard of the usurpers.He liked the Arabs, and they liked him; a grave courtesy, a preferencefor the fewest words and least demonstration possible, a marked opinionthat silence was golden, and that speech was at best only silver-washedmetal, an instinctive dread of all discovery of emotion, and a limitlesspower of resisting and suppressing suffering, were qualities the nomadsof the desert and the lion of the Chasseurs d'Afrique had in common; asthey had in unison a wild passion for war, a dauntless zest in danger,and a love for the hottest heat of fiercest battle.
Silence reigned in the tent, beyond whose first division, screened by aheavy curtain of goat's hair, the beautiful young Djelma played withher only son, a child of three or four summers; the Sheik lay mute, theDjouad and Marabouts around never spoke in his presence unless theirlord bade them, and the Chasseur was stretched motionless, his elbowresting on a cushion of Morocco fabric, and his eyes looking outward atthe restless, changing movement of the firelit, starlit camp.
After the noise, the mirth, the riotous songs, and the gay, elastic goodhumor of his French comrades, the silence and the calm of the Emir's"house of hair" were welcome to him. He never spoke much himself; ofa truth, his gentle, immutable laconism was the only charge that hiscomrades ever brought against him. That a man could be so brief inwords, while yet so soft in manner, seemed a thing out of all nature tothe vivacious Frenchmen; that unchanging stillness and serenity in onewho was such a reckless, resistless croc-mitaine, swift as fire in thefield, was an enigma that the Cavalry and the Demi-cavalry of Algerianever solved. His corps would have gone after him to the devil, asClaude de Chanrellon had averred; but they would sometimes wax a littleimpatient that he would never grow communicative or thread many phrasestogether, even over the best wine which ever warmed the hearts of itsdrinkers or loosened all rein from their lips.
"I wish I had come straight to you, Sidi, when I first set foot inAfrica," he said at last, while the fragrant smoke uncurled from underthe droop of his long, pendent mustaches.
"Truly it had been well," answered the Khalifa, who would have given thebest stallions in his stud to have had this Frank with him in warfare,and in peace. "There is no life like our life."
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"Faith! I think not!" murmured the Chasseur, rather to himself than theBedouin. "The desert keeps you and your horse, and you can let all therest of the world 'slide.'"
"But we are murderers and pillagers, say your nations," resumed theEmir, with the shadow of a sardonic smile flickering an instant over thesternness and composure of his features. "To rifle a caravan is a crime,though to steal a continent is glory."
Bel-a-faire-peur laughed slightly.
"Do not tempt me to rebel against my adopted flag."
The Sheik looked at him in silence; the French soldiers had spenttwelve years in the ceaseless exertions of an amused inquisitivenessto discover the antecedents of their volunteer; the Arabs, with theirloftier instincts of courtesy, had never hinted to him a question ofwhence or why he had come upon African soil.
"I never thought at all in those days; else, had I thought twice, Ishould not have gone to your enemies," he answered, as he lazily watchedthe Bedouins without squat on their heels round the huge brass bowlsof couscoussou, which they kneaded into round lumps and pitched betweentheir open, bearded lips in their customary form of supper. "Not butwhat our Roumis are brave fellows enough; better comrades no man couldwant."
The Khalifa took the long pipe from his mouth and spoke; his slow,sonorous accents falling melodiously on the silence in the lingua sapirof the Franco-Arab tongue.
"Your comrades are gallant men; they are great warriors, and fearlessfoes; against such my voice is never lifted, however my sword maycross with them. But the locust-swarms that devour the land are themoney-eaters, the petty despots, the bribe-takers, the men who wringgold out of infamy, who traffic in tyrannies, who plunder under officialseals, who curse Algiers with avarice, with fraud, with routine, withthe hell-spawn of civilization. It is the 'Bureaucracy,' as your tonguephrases it, that is the spoiler and the oppressor of the soil. But--weendure only for a while. A little, and the shame of the invader's treadwill be washed out in blood. Allah is great; we can wait."
And with Moslem patience that the fiery gloom of his burning eyesbelied, the Djied stretched himself once more into immovable and silentrest.
The Chasseur answered nothing; his sympathies were heartfelt with theArabs, his allegiance and his esprit de corps were with the servicein which he was enrolled. He could not defend French usurpation; butneither could he condemn the Flag that had now become his Flag, andin which he had grown to feel much of national honor, to take much ofnational pride.
"They will never really win again, I am afraid," he thought, as his eyesfollowed the wraith-like flash of the white burnous, as the Bedouinsglided to and fro in the chiar-oscuro of the encampment; now in theflicker of the flames, now in the silvered luster of the moon. "It isthe conflict of the races, as the cant runs, and their day is done.It is a bolder, freer, simpler type than anything we get in the worldyonder. Shall we ever drift back to it in the future, I wonder?"
The speculation did not stay with him long; Semitic, Latin, or Teutonrace was very much the same to him, and intellectual subtleties had notmuch attraction at any time for the most brilliant soldier in the Frenchcavalry; he preferred the ring of the trumpets, the glitter of the sun'splay along the line of steel as his regiment formed in line on the eveof a life-and-death struggle, the wild, breathless sweep of a midnightgallop over the brown, swelling plateau under the light of the stars,or,--in some brief interval of indolence and razzia-won wealth,--thegleam of fair eyes and the flush of sparkling sherbet when somepassionate, darkling glance beamed on him from some Arab mistress whosescarlet lips murmured to him through the drowsy hush of an Algerinenight the sense, if not the song of Pelagia,
"Life is so short at best! Take while thou canst thy rest, Sleeping by me!"
His thoughts drifted back over many varied scenes and changing memoriesof his service in Algiers, as he lay there at the entrance of theSheik's tent, with the night of looming shadow and reddened firelightand picturesque movement before him. Hours of reckless, headlongdelight, when men grew drunk with bloodshed as with wine; hours ofhorrible, unsuccored suffering, when the desert thirst had burned in histhroat and the jagged lances been broken off at the hilt in his flesh,while above-head the carrion birds wheeled, waiting their meal; hoursof unceasing, unsparing slaughter, when the word was given to slay andyield no mercy, where in the great, vaulted, cavernous gloom of rentrocks, the doomed were hemmed as close as sheep in shambles. Hours, inthe warm flush of an African dawn, when the arbiter of the duel was thesole judge allowed or comprehended by the tigers of the tricolor, and toaim a dead shot or to receive one was the only alternative left, as thechallenging eyes of "Zephir" or "Chasse-Marais" flashed death across thebarriere, in a combat where only one might live, though the root of thequarrel had been nothing more than a toss too much of brandy, a puff oftobacco smoke construed into insult, or a fille de joie's maliciouslycast fire-brand of taunt or laugh. Hours of severe discipline, ofrelentless routine, of bitter deprivation, of campaigns hard as steelin the endurance they needed, in the miseries they entailed; of militarysubjection, stern and unbending, a yoke of iron that a personal andpitiless tyranny weighted with persecution that was scarce else thanhatred; of an implicit obedience that required every instinct ofliberty, every habit of early life, every impulse of pride and manhoodand freedom to be choked down like crimes, and buried as though they hadnever been. Hours again that repaid these in full, when the long lineof Horse swept out to the attack, with the sun on the points of theirweapons; when the wheeling clouds of Arab riders poured like the cloudsof the simoon on a thinned, devoted troop that rallied and fought ashawks fight herons, and saved the day as the sky was flushed with thatday's decline; when some soft-eyed captive, with limbs of free mountaingrace, and the warm veins flushing under the clear olive of her cheeks,was first wild as a young fettered falcon, and then, like the falcon,quickly learned to tremble at a touch, and grow tame under a caress, andlove nothing so well as the hand that had captured her. Hours of all thechanceful fortunes of a soldier's life, in hill-wars and desert raids,passed in memory through his thoughts now where he was stretched;looking dreamily through the film of his smoke at the city of tents, andthe reclining forms of camels, and the tall, white slowly moving shapesof the lawless marauders of the sand plains.
"Is my life worth much more under the French Flag than it was under theEnglish?" thought the Chasseur, with a certain, careless, indifferentirony on himself, natural to him. "There I killed time--here I kill men.Which is the better pursuit, I wonder. The world would rather economizethe first commodity than the last, I believe. Perhaps it don't make anovergood use of either."
The night was someway spent when the talk of wild-pigeon-blue mares andsorrel stallions closed between the Djied and his guest; and the Frenchsoldier, who had been sent hither from the Bureau with another of hiscomrades, took his way through the now still camp where the cattle weresleeping, and the fires were burning out, and the banner-folds hungmotionless in the luster of the stars, to the black-and-white tentprepared for him. A spacious one, close to the chief's, and given suchluxury in the shape of ornamented weapons, thick carpets, and softcushions, as the tribe's resources could bring together.
As he opened the folds and entered, his fellow-soldier, who was lying onhis back, with his heels much higher than his head, and a short pipe inhis teeth, tumbled himself up; with a rapid somersault, and stood boltupright, giving the salute; a short, sturdy little man, with a skinburnt like a coffee-berry, that was in odd contrast with his light,dancing blue eyes, and his close, matted curls of yellow hair.
"Beg pardon, sir! I was half asleep!"
The Chasseur laughed a little.
"Don't talk English; somebody will hear you one day."
"What's the odds if they do, sir?" responded the other. "It relievesone's feelings a little. All of 'em know I'm English, but never a oneof 'em know what you are. The name you was enrolled by won't really tell'em nothing. They guess it ain't yours. That cute little chap, Tata, hesays to me yesterday,
'you're always a-treating of your galonne likeas if he was a prince.' 'Damme!' says I, 'I'd like to see the prince aswould hold a candle to him.' 'You're right there,' says the little'un. 'There ain't his equal for taking off a beggar's head with a backsweep.'"
The Corporal laughed a little again, as he tossed himself down on thecarpet.
"Well, it's something to have one virtue! But have a care what thosechatter-boxes get out of you."
"Lord, sir! Ain't I been a-taking care these ten years? It comes quitenatural now. I couldn't keep my tongue still; that wouldn't be inanyways possible. So I've let it run on oiled wheels on a thousand rumtracks and doublings. I've told 'em such a lot of amazing stories aboutwhere we come from, that they've got half a million different styles tochoose out of. Some thinks as how you're a Polish nob, what got into hotwater with the Russians; some as how you're a Italian prince, whatwas cleaned out like Parma and them was; some as how you're a AustrianArchduke that have cut your country because you was in love with theEmpress, and had a duel about her that scandalized the whole empire;some as how you're a exiled Spanish grandee a-come to learn tactics andthat like, that you may go back, and pitch O'Donnell into the middle ofnext week, whenever you see a chance to cut in and try conclusions withhim. Bless you, sir! you may let me alone for bamboozling of anybody."
The Corporal laughed again, as he began to unharness himself. There wasin him a certain mingling of insouciance and melancholy, each of whichalternately predominated; the former his by nature, the latter born ofcircumstances.
"If you can outwit our friends the Zephyrs you have reached a height ofdiplomacy indeed! I would not engage to do it myself. Take my word forit, ingenuity is always dangerous--silence is always safe."
"That may be, sir," responded the Chasseur, in the sturdy English withwhich his bright blue eyes danced a fitting nationality. "No doubt it'suncommon good for them as can bring their minds to it--just like waterinstead o' wine--but it's very trying, like the teetotalism. You mightas well tell a Newfoundland not to love a splash as me not to love achatter. I'd cut my tongue out sooner than say never a word that youdon't wish--but say something I must, or die for it."
With which the speaker, known to Algerian fame by the sobriquet of"Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort," from the hair-breadth escapes and recklessrazzias from which he had come out without a scratch, dropped on hisknees and began to take off the trappings of his fellow-soldier, with asreverential a service as though he were a lord of the bedchamber servinga Louis Quatorze. The other motioned him gently away.
"No, no! I have told you a thousand times we are comrades and equalsnow."
"And I've told you a thousand times, sir, that we aren't, and never willbe, and don't oughtn't to be," replied the soldier doggedly, drawingoff the spurred and dust-covered boots. "A gentleman's a gentleman, letalone what straits he fall into."
"But ceases to be one as soon as he takes a service he cannotrequite, or claims a superiority he does not possess. We have beenfellow-soldiers for twelve years--"
"So we have, sir; but we are what we always was, and always will be--onea gentleman, the other a scamp. If you think so be as I've done a goodthing, side by side with you, now and then in the fighting, give me myown way and let me wait on you when I can. I can't do much on it whenthose other fellow's eyes is on us; but here I can and I will--beggingyour pardon--so there's an end of it. One may speak plain in this placewith nothing but them Arabs about; and all the army know well enough,sir, that if it weren't for that black devil, Chateauroy, you'd have hadyour officer's commission, and your troop too, long before now--"
"Oh, no! There are scores of men in the ranks merit promotion betterfar than I do. And--leave the Colonel's name alone. He is our chief,whatever else he be."
The words were calm and careless, but they carried a weight with themthat was not to be disputed. "Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort" hung his heada little and went on unharnessing his Corporal in silence, contentinghimself with muttering in his throat that it was true for all that, andthe whole regiment knew it.
"You are happy enough in Algeria?" asked the one he served, as hestretched himself on the skins and carpets, and drank down a sherbetthat his self-attached attendant had made with a skill learned from apretty cantiniere, who had given him the lesson in return for a slashingblow with which he had struck down two "Riz-pain-sels," who, as the bestpaid men in the army, had tried to cheat her in the price of her Cognac.
"I, sir? Never was so happy in my life, sir. I'd be discontented indeedif I wasn't. Always some spicy bit of fighting. If there aren't afantasia, as they call it, in the field, there's always somebody to potin a small way; and, if you're lying by in barracks, there's always ascrimmage hot as pepper to be got up with fellows that love the row justas well as you do. It's life, that's where it is; it ain't rusting."
"Then you prefer the French service?"
"Right and away, sir. You see this is how it is," and the redoubtable,yellow-haired "Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort" paused in the vigorous cleansingand brushing he was bestowing on his Corporal's uniform and stood atease in his shirt and trousers; with his eloquence no way impeded by thebrule-gueule that was always between his teeth. "Over there in England,you know, sir, pipe-clay is the deuce-and-all; you're always got to havethe stock on, and look as stiff as a stake, or it's all up with you;you're that tormented about little things that you get riled and kickthe traces before the great 'uns come to try you. There's a lot of ladswould be game as game could be in battle--aye, and good lads to boot,doing their duty right as a trivet when it came to anything likewar--that are clean drove out of the service in time o' peace,along with all them petty persecutions that worry a man's skin likemosquito-bites. Now here they know that, and Lord! what soldiers theydo make through knowing of it! It's tight enough and stern enough inbig things; martial law sharp enough, and obedience to the letter allthrough the campaigning; but that don't grate on a fellow; if he's worthhis salt he's sure to understand that he must move like clockwork in afight, and that he's to go to hell at double-quick-march, and mute as amouse, if his officers see fit to send him. There ain't better stuff tomake soldiers out of nowhere than Englishmen, God bless 'em! But they'rebadgered, they're horribly badgered; and that's why the service don'ttake over there, let alone the way the country grudge 'em every bit ofpay. In England you go in the ranks--well, they all just tell you you'rea blackguard, and there's the lash, and you'd better behave yourself oryou'll get it hot and hot; they take for granted you're a bad lot oryou wouldn't be there, and in course you're riled and go to the badaccording, seeing that it's what's expected of you. Here, contrariwise,you come in the ranks and get a welcome, and feel that it just restswith yourself whether you won't be a fine fellow or not; and just alongof feeling that you're pricked to show the best metal you're made on,and not to let nobody else beat you out of the race, like. Ah! it makesa wonderful difference to a fellow--a wonderful difference--whether theservice he's come into look at him as a scamp that never will be nothingbut a scamp, or as a rascal that's maybe got in him, all rascal thoughhe is, the pluck to turn into a hero. And that's just the difference,sir, that France has found out, and England hasn't--God bless her, allthe same!"
With which the soldier whom England had turned adrift, and France hadwon in her stead, concluded his long oration by dropping on his knees torefill his Corporal's pipe.
"An army's just a machine, sir, in course," he concluded, as he rammedin the Turkish tobacco. "But then it's a live machine, for all that;and each little bit of it feels for itself, like the joints in an eel'sbody. Now, if only one of them little bits smarts, the whole creaturegoes wrong--there's the mischief."
Bel-a-faire-peur listened thoughtfully to his comrade where he lay flungfull-length on the skins.
"I dare say you are right enough. I knew nothing of my men when--when Iwas in England; we none of us did; but I can very well believe whatyou say. Yet--fine fellows though they are here, they are terribleblackguards!"
"In course they are, sir; they would
n't be such larky company unlessthey was. But what I say is that they're scamps who're told they may begreat men, if they like; not scamps who're told that, because they'veonce gone to the devil, they must always keep there. It makes all thedifference in life."
"Yes--it makes all the difference in life, whether hope is left,or--left out!"
The words were murmured with a half smile that had a dash of infinitesadness in it; the other looked at him quickly with a shadow of keenpain passing over the bright, frank, laughing features of his sunburnedface; he knew that the brief words held the whole history of a life.
"Won't there never be no hope, sir?" he whispered, while his voicetrembled a little under the long, fierce sweep of his yellow mustaches.
The Chasseur rallied himself with a slight, careless laugh; the laughwith which he had met before now the onslaught of charges ferocious asthose of the magnificent day of Mazagran.
"Whom for? Both of us? Oh, yes; very likely we shall achieve fame anddie! A splendid destiny."
"No, sir," said the other, with the hesitation still in the quiver ofhis voice. "You know I meant, no hope of your ever being again----"
He stopped, he scarcely knew how to phrase the thoughts he was thinking.
The other moved with a certain impatience.
"How often must I tell you to forget that I was ever anything except asoldier of France?--forget as I have forgotten it!"
The audacious, irrepressible "Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort," whom nothingcould daunt and nothing could awe, looked penitent and ashamed as achidden spaniel.
"I know, sir. I have tried, many a year; but I thought, perhaps, as howhis lordship's death--"
"No life and no death can make any difference to me, except the deaththat some day an Arbico's lunge will give me; and that is a long timecoming."
"Ah, for God's sake, Mr. Cecil, don't talk like this!"
The Chasseur gave a short, sharp shiver, and started at this name, as ifa bullet had struck him.
"Never say that again!"
Rake, Algerian-christened "Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort," stammered acontrite apology.
"I never have done, sir--not for never a year; but it wrung it out of melike--you talking of wanting death in that way----"
"Oh, I don't want death!" laughed the other, with a low, indifferentlaughter, that had in it a singular tone of sadness all the while. "Iam of our friends the Spahis' opinion--that life is very pleasant with ahandsome, well-chosen harem, and a good horse to one's saddle. Unhappilyharems are too expensive for Roumis! Yet I am not sure that I am notbetter amused in the Chasseurs than I was in the Household--speciallywhen we are at war. I suppose we must be wild animals at the core, orwe should never find such an infinite zest in the death grapple.Good-night!"
He stretched his long, slender, symmetrical limbs out on the skins thatmade his bed, and closed his eyes, with the pipe still in his mouth, andits amber bowl resting on the carpet which the friendship and honor ofSidi-Ilderim had strewn over the bare turf on which the house of hairwas raised. He was accustomed to sleep as soldiers sleep, in all thedin of a camp, or with the roar of savage brutes echoing from the hillsaround, with his saddle beneath his head, under a slab of rock, or withthe knowledge that at every instant the alarm might be given, the drumsroll out over the night, and the enemy be down like lightning on thebivouac. But now a name--long unspoken to him--had recalled years hehad buried far and forever from the first day that he had worn the kepid'ordonnance of the Army of Algeria, and been enrolled among its wildand brilliant soldiers.
Now, long after his comrade had slept soundly, and the light in thesingle bronze Turkish candle-branch had flickered and died away, theChasseur d'Afrique lay wakeful; looking outward through the folds of thetent at the dark and silent camp of the Arabs, and letting his memorydrift backward to a time that had grown to be to him as a dream--a timewhen another world than the world of Africa had known him as BertieCecil.