Corporal Jacques of the Foreign Legion
The longest route march ends ere long,
The hottest sun to the west must go,
The Legion marches a thousand strong,
On the wind of the desert the bugles blow,
The wild notes die as the stars out-shiver,
But the wind of the desert it blows for ever.
Corporal Jacques of
the Foreign Legion
By H. de Vere Stacpoole,
Author of
"The Pearl Fishers," "The Reef of Stars," &c.
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
LETTER OF A LÉGIONNAIRE RECEIVED BY THE AUTHOR FROM THE EDITOR OF "THE POPULAR MAGAZINE," NEW YORK, U.S.A.
July 27, 1916.
SIR,
Reading an article in The Popular Magazine, I thought I would write to you. In number May 20, 1916, is an article, "Stories of the Legion" by H. de Vere Stacpoole. He states nobody escaped from the Legion. Well, I have done so, though it involved me becoming a Mohammedan and joining a wandering band of Touaregs and took two years to accomplish. I finally wandered across the Sahara, helped in the looting of caravans, and sailed from Cape Tuby with the assistance of Baba Hamid of the Wad Lagin Hameva Tribe, on the western Sahara seaboard below Morocco on a Spanish fishing boat to Teneriffe, Canary Islands. I am longing for the desert, the smell of the camel dung fire, and the freedom of the everlasting sand ever since. The hardship, adventures and escapes I went through are incredible. This took place ten years ago, since then I have been elephant hunter in Central Africa, in the army of Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia, pearl fishing off North Australia, diamond digging at the Cape, and in a revolution in Central American republic, not to mention fighting with Muley Mohamad El Hiba, the son of Sheik Ma-el-deinne of South Morocco when he tried for the throne of Morocco against Muley Hafid, the Ex-Sultan of Morocco. If Mr. Stacpoole would be interested in my story, a letter will find me care of General Delivery, New Orleans, in the period of the next thirty days, when I leave for Honduras.
Yours faithfully,
***** *****
CONTENTS
CORPORAL JACQUES
CHOC
I
The first rays of the morning sun were stealing up the palm-bordered roads towards Sidi-bel-Abbès, above whose ramparts the minaret of the great mosque blazed white in the sky. Eighty miles from Oran on the coast, and the headquarters of the Foreign Legion, Sidi-bel-Abbès is surely one of the strangest cities on earth.
It was built by the Foreign Legion, it is swept and garnished by the Foreign Legion, it is held against the Arabs by the Foreign Legion. At night the electric lights round the bandstand of the Foreign Legion on the Place Sadi Carnot blaze against the Algerian stars, whilst the Muezzins on the balconies of the minarets keep watch over Islam and their voices send north, south, east and west the cry that was old in the time of Sindbad the Sailor!
All' il Allah—God is great.
But the marvel of Sidi-bel-Abbès is not the fact that here Edison and Strauss face Mahommed in the form of his priests, nor the flower gardens blooming on the face of the desert, nor the roads along which the Arabs stalk and the automobiles dash. The marvel of Sidi-bel-Abbès lies in the Legion.
When France found herself faced with the problem of Algeria, that is to say, the problem of infinite wastes of rock and sand inhabited by a foe mobile and ungraspable as the desert wind, she formed the Legion.
She called to the wastrels, the criminals, the despairing and the impoverished of every country and every city—and they came.
Men of genius, street sweepers, artists, doctors, engineers—it would be difficult to touch a profession, a race or a grade of intellect not to be found in the Legion.
General de Négrier said that the Legion could do anything—from the building of a bridge, to the writing of an opera, to the painting of a picture—all the genius that civilization has turned away from its doors is here at command—for a halfpenny a day.
The sun had touched the upper border of the huge blank eastern wall of the Legion's barracks and it was still a few minutes before réveillé, when in room Number 6 of the tenth company the garde-chambre for the day slipped from his bed, stretched and yawned noiselessly, and glanced round him.
The room was like the ward of a hospital, and the likeness was made no less striking by the card above each of the twenty beds, a white card setting out each man's name and number.
Jacques' number, as shown by the card on the bed he had just vacated, was 7,083.
Jacques Radoub, known always and everywhere as Jacques, tout court, was a small and wiry-looking individual with the face of a gamin, that is to say, the face of a child who is a jester, who may be a cut-throat, and who is certainly and above all things a Parisian.
Jacques had, in fact, been an Apache by profession, and Monsieur Lepine had given him the choice between a penitentiary and the Legion. He chose the Legion, because, as he said, he liked the name better.
He was quite aware that life in the Legion was as hard as life in a penitentiary, and he did not care a button about the social difference; he liked the name better, that was all. He was an artist.
He stood now, for a second, glancing at the others, nineteen men stretched in all the attitudes of slumber. Germans, French, an Englishman, an American, a Greek and a Russian. Then, shuffling on some clothes, he left the room silently as the shadow of a moving cat.
In a moment he was back with a huge jug of steaming coffee, and as he entered shouting to the others to wake up, the réveillé came from the barrack yard. The réveillé of the French Army that sounds every morning across France to find its echo in Algeria.
"Rat tat tat ta, Rat tat tat ta,
Rat tat tat ta ta ta ta.
Rat tat tat ta, Rat tat tat ta,
Rat tat tat ta, tat ta."
In a moment the room was astir. Between the réveillé and the muster in the barrack yard there was only half an hour, yet in that half hour the coffee was drunk, the men dressed, the beds made and the floor swept, Jacques yelling to the others to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, as it was his duty to put the completing touch to the dusting and cleaning and fetch the water.
Then he came tearing down the stairs after the rest, and out in the barrack yard half cut in two by the blaze of the six o'clock sun, and under a sky blue as a cornflower, the long, long lines of white-clad men fell in whilst the echoes roused to the bugles.
Then, led by the bugles, the columns wheeled out of the barrack gates, making for the great drill ground, where the arms were piled and the men were exercised at the double.
It was terrific, with the sun-blaze now in their faces, with the sun beating now on their backs, and, now, with their sides to a furnace door round and round and round the great parade ground they went, the dust rising and hanging about them in a haze.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and then the thunder and movement ceased and the légionnaires, released for a moment after their first exercise of the day, broke into groups, cigarettes were lit, and the dust-hazed air filled with the fumes of caporal.
Jacques, though sweating, showed little signs of stress; he had lungs of leather. Not so Casmir, a man in his company to whom he was talking.
Casmir was a bitter-looking individual who had once been a Government clerk. His white uniform was clinging to him with perspiration, and he was just getting his wind back.
The two men were walking up and down rapidly, for it is impossible to stand still after half an hour of the double.
"Well," said Casmir, "this finishes me. This is the last time. I'm off."
He had been threatening for the last week or so to make a bolt.
Jacques, a fountain of wisdom in most things practical, had always dissuaded him from this fatal course. The man who tries to escape from the grip of the Legion is, in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, brought back, and when he is brought back, Heaven help him.
"Take my advice," said Jacques, "and leave that alone. No good. Stick it as I have done and make the best of it. I have been at it four years and ten months to-morrow, and in another two months I walk out like a gentleman."
"Well," said Casmir, "I have been in it only six months and in another twelve hours—well, you will see."
"Have your way," said Jacques, "you are a fool. Do you think a clever man like myself would not have cut and run years ago had there been a decent chance? I weighed it all ages ago. The chance is too small and the punishment too big. It's impossible to drill sense into a head like yours, else I'd say, 'Look at me. If running away is not good enough for me, it's not good enough for you.'"
"All the same, I'm going to do it," said Casmir.
"Then do it and be damned," said Jacques.
The bugle was sounding "Fall in," and the morning exercises went on. At eleven o'clock, sweating, dusty, fagged out but cheerful, the vast regiment of légionnaires, wheeling in column formation to the sound of drums as well as bugles, marched back to barracks.
As they passed through the gates, Jacques flung a word to a small and dusty figure that was hanging about by the gate. It was Choc.
He had picked up Choc one night, a year ago, in the town. A dog that seemed compounded of all the known breeds of dogs—with the exception of the noblest.
Choc was dust-coloured, his hair stood in permanent bristle upon his shoulders, and he was terrific in battle; he had fought everything in Sidi-bel-Abbès and in the negro village that lies by the parade ground of the Foreign Legion, and without any manner of doubt, his family tree, had it been worked back, would have disclosed an Irish terrier somewhere in the not remote distance. But the fighting qualities of Choc made less appeal to Jacques than the fact that he was an out and out blackguard, an expert thief, an Apache.
I have said that Choc was hanging about the gate. That was the impression he gave one. It was not the honest waiting of a dog for its master, it was the waiting of a confederate for his mate at a public-house door or the corner of a race-course. There was no tail-wagging. As the column passed in, the dust-coloured one, sniffing about, did not even cast an eye at Jacques. Then, when the last files had passed the gateway, he slunk in after them and hung about in the courtyard till Jacques, who was a friend of the cook, came out of the cook-house with a bone for him.
This happened every day. Choc, who slept in some hole or corner of the town best known to himself, paid two daily visits to the barracks, at eleven and six.
At eleven o'clock he got a bone or by chance a bit of meat, at six o'clock he appeared to accompany his master into the town.
At six o'clock every day the work of the Legion is over, and you may see the légionnaires, spick and span, streaming through the barrack gates to the town, there to amuse themselves as best they can. They have no money. Literally no money, save what is sent to them by friends or relatives. The halfpenny a day paid them by Government scarcely serves for tobacco; they have to buy their own soap, mostly, and washing is a big item in a regiment where white fatigue uniforms of washable material are worn, and must be worn speckless.
Jacques had taught Choc a lot of tricks. In the Place Sadi Carnot of an evening, with the band playing a march, you might have seen Choc on his hind legs marching up and down before his master. Visitors to Sidi-bel-Abbès, attracted by the animal's queer appearance and his tricks, would question Jacques about him, and the result was nearly always profitable to Jacques. It was said that Choc stole cigarettes for him in the native quarters of the town, sneaking packets from the Moslem traders' stalls whilst Jacques held the latter in light conversation, and not only cigarettes, but articles more bulky and more valuable.
To-day, Jacques, having given Choc his bone and dismissed him, was turning to enter the barracks when he ran into the arms of Corporal Klein.
"Ah, there's that dog of yours again," said Klein. "I was looking for you to tell you. The Colonel says he has had enough of him, and he's to be shot."
Jacques swore the great oath of the Legion—which is unprintable.
"Shot—and what for?"
"Biting the sentry. It was last night after you had come back from the town. Seguer was on duty and the beast stuck about the gate, and Seguer tried to make him go and got bitten in the foot, right through his boot."
"He must have kicked him," said Jacques.
"Who knows? Not only that, but the Colonel says he has been having reports about you and him and your doings in the town, says that the Legion has enough blackguards in it without enlisting four-footed ones, and there you are, the order is promulgated, the dog has to go."
"Catch him, then," said Jacques.
Klein, a big man, in spite of his name, came towards Choc, who was busy with his bone. Jacques whistled shrilly between his teeth, and the dog, picking up his treasure, started for the barrack gate. Flying pebbles and dust marked his path, and he was gone.
Klein laughed. He was a good-natured man, a friend of Jacques' and he had no grudge against the dog.
"All the same," said he, "the dog has to go, you know what it is. The order has been given and once the order has been given there is no staying it."
Jacques knew quite well what it was. He knew the Colonel and he knew the Legion.
Choc might evade capture, but caught he would be, sooner or later.
He said nothing, however. The bugle call for soup rang through the yard, and as he was orderly of his room he had to rush off to the kitchen, from where in a moment he returned, bearing a steaming can for his men; then he had to return for bread.
No one noticed the least change in him, and if there had been a change in him nobody would have bothered. The Legion never bothers about anything, and the most monstrous happenings pass with scarcely a comment from the hearers and beholders.
All that afternoon Jacques was engaged on scout-patrol manoeuvres, and at six o'clock, spick and span, he left the barrack yard for the town.
Choc was waiting for him at the gate, but not close to it. The sentry, having his orders, had tried to lure him in, but Choc, alarmed by this unaccustomed civility, had removed himself a full hundred yards away, where he was sitting with his stump of a tail sticking out straight behind him.
He followed Jacques.
But Jacques did not make direct for the town. He skirted the ramparts till he came to the western side, where the great rough yellow wall was blazing in the light of the sinking sun, then, getting into the ditch, he followed the wall a certain distance, stopped, glanced up and down the ditch to make sure that no one was observing him, and then drew a stone from the wall, disclosing a hole in which was seated, like a squat gnome, a little fat linen bag.
This was his cache. The money he had collected by one means or another during the last four years and ten months. It was a fair sum, partly in gold, partly in silver, and he had intended it for that day, now only two months distant, when, to use his own words, he would walk out of the Legion like a gentleman. He was going to use it for a different purpose now, and placing the bag in his pocket, without troubling to close the cache, he turned, and, followed by the dog, came back along the ditch.
Stars like the points of needles were piercing the pansy-coloured sky when Jacques and his companion reached the Place Sadi Carnot. The Place was crowded, légionnaires, visitors and townsfolk crowding around the bandstand, some seated, others standing about in groups. The warm air was filled with the scents of jessamine and garlic, the African earth, caporal and cigar smoke, all vague and blended to form the smell of Sidi-bel-Abbès en fête.
Then the electric lights blazed out and the band struck up. They were playing the Sambre et Meuse, that splendid march of the French Army, spirited enough almost to raise the slain, but Jacques did not beat time with his foot, nor, when Choc glanced up at him, did he give the dog the signal to start his tricks.
He walked about for a while, showing himself to his companions, then he disappeared from the Place and, followed by the dog, sought the native streets.
Sidi-bel-Abbès is slashed across by two great boulevards running north and south, and east and west. Here you find plate glass windows and Paris jewellery, motor-cars, cocottes, American women in blue veils. Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London and New York all represented by some fragment of their social life, just as in the Legion they are represented, each, by some form of the universal diseases that prey on society.
Behind these gay boulevards you find the real Sidi-bel-Abbès.
You walk into the country of Islam. Passing through the narrow bazaars, the moon above your head becomes the moon that lit the three Calenders, and the lamps that light the gloom of the booths are the lamps of Aladdin.
The légionnaires swarm here, yet their blue and red dress uniform does not detract from the Oriental charm; they have about them some subtle touch of Africa that blends with the surroundings.
Jacques, followed by his companion, passed through several of the narrow streets till he reached an alley where, at a door set in the wall, he knocked.
The door opened and he went in, leaving Choc to wait for him outside, seated on the ground. Arab dogs came down the alley, saw the stranger, advanced, burbling and bristling, recognized him, and passed on; the rising moon laid a pale finger on the wall-top and from far away across the faint noises of the city came the cry of the priest from the balcony of the minaret calling the faithful to prayer; and now a window opened somewhere and the laughter of a girl, the tinkle-tankle of a guitar, and a snatch of song blew away on the night wind and then snapped off to the closing of the casement.
This was the Spanish quarter of the Moslem town, and perhaps the wickedest; outside the jurisdiction of the Bureau Arabe, and visited only by the shadiest characters among the European population of the place.
Twenty minutes passed and then the door opened and a man came out. He was dressed in mufti, but the alteration in dress did not deceive Choc. He knew his master at once, and, rising, followed him down the alley into the street.
Jacques had made up his mind to escape from the Legion. It was the maddest act of his life.
First of all, he was not an ordinary légionnaire, but a criminal serving for rehabilitation. If he managed to escape he would have to begin life over again without papers. It would be impossible for him to find work in France; he must go to England or some other country where papers were not required. Then, again, he had only to wait two short months and he would secure his rehabilitation and be able to leave the Legion and obtain work.
Though he had started in life as an Apache, Commonsense had been talking to him for the last two years or so, pointing out that a franc made by robbery is not worth two sous made by work. The rate of exchange is always against the criminal; so appalling is it that one may wonder at any man with an ounce of brains doing business on such ruinous terms. Jacques had recognized this, and he had determined, on finding himself his own man again, to take to honest ways.
He was now ruining all the plans he had made for that future so nearly in his grasp. Throwing everything away—for a dog.
As a matter of fact, there was no struggle involved in the giving up of his plans. Cold plans for the future dictated by commonsense did not stand for a moment before the warm desire to keep the dog and flout Authority. Choc was his mate and he was not going to lose him.
Passing a shop where viands were sold, he bought two sausages and put them in his pocket, then he walked on, striking towards the European quarter.
The band was still playing in the Place Sadi Carnot and the faint sound of it came on the warm, perfumed wind.
To Jacques it seemed a month ago since he had left the Place, and it seemed extraordinary to hear the band at it still.
But he had little time to think of anything except his objective, and that was Oran, eighty miles away.
There is a railway between Sidi-bel-Abbès and Oran, that is to say, a trap for runaway légionnaires. Jacques was not such a fool as to use the railway, or even to walk along the embankments. Time was of no matter to him. The pursuit would be after him before he could reach Oran, even by rail; he had to trust entirely to his disguise and to luck. He recognized that Choc would be his main difficulty; he could not disguise Choc.
He had lit a cigarette and he passed along to the city gates without let or hindrance; a bourgeois taking an evening stroll with his dog excited no comment. At the gates it was the same, and, walking with a leisurely manner with his hands in his pockets, he found the road to Oran and struck along it. It lay before him white in the moonlight, and beyond the gardens of the town, on either side, stretched the sand wastes and rocks of a miserable plain that in daylight is yellow, parched, sun-bitten and murderous in its desolation. A few stunted palms broke the sky-line on the right, whilst on the left could be seen the lights of the railway and the furnace-lit smoke of a train just coming in from Oran. Jacques, noting these, looked up and down the road, to right, to left, not a soul was there to be seen. Then, calling to Choc, he struck into his stride.
Nearly five years of life in the Legion had rendered him almost impervious to weariness in marching. Five kilometres an hour is the regulation pace in full marching order and laden with rifle, ammunition, and equipment. Forty kilometres a day is the minimum on active service.
Five miles or so from Sidi-bel-Abbès a mounted police patrol passed Jacques without halting and with scarcely a glance at him, but they were going towards the town, and would know nothing of his escape.
Then, thinking things over in his mind, he reflected that the fact of his escape would be still unknown even at the barracks, where it was just turning-in time. Légionnaires sometimes outstepped their leave. The pursuit would not be on his heels till to-morrow morning, when, definitely declared absent, his description would be circulated, right to Oran.
But this did not incline him to slacken his pace. He kept on steadily, till he had reached a point some ten miles from the town, when he took his seat by the wayside, took the sausages, which were wrapped up in a sheet of the Journal d'Oran, from his pocket, and divided one with Choc. Then, noticing a prickly pear bush growing near by, he cut some of the fruit and carefully peeled it.
It was their first meal in the desert, and they had four, for it was not till the morning of the third day of his escape that Jacques entered Oran.
II
His adventures during that journey of eighty miles or less would fill a brilliant chapter of fiction. He was stopped and spoken to by a police patrol and escaped suspicion of being a deserter by assuming the role of a deaf mute. He joined a band of wandering Arabs and, suspecting their good intentions, escaped from them. This little escape within an escape caused him more trouble than any other incident of the journey. Lastly, by means of a bribe of two francs, he managed to enter Oran in a cart laden with esparto grass and drawn by two mules, thus avoiding the attentions of the gentlemen at the gate of the town.
There was a rat in the cart as well, and the maddening fumes of it surged through Choc's brain, but he did not lose his reason or his self-command and held his place, crouching beside his master, though shivering in every muscle and thrilling in every nerve.
The driver managed to unload his passengers in a back yard unobserved, and Jacques, with Choc at his heels, found himself in the streets of Oran with nothing but the sea between himself and freedom.
He had little fear of detection in these bustling streets where every imaginable sort of business seemed going forward to the clatter of every European tongue.
Tall, white-clad Arabs stalked along and bare-legged Arab women with faces veiled; negro porters with glistening skins and red fez caps, Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, Italians, Spahis back from Senegal, sailors up from the warships in the harbour and English travellers just arrived, formed the crowd through which Jacques made his way with Choc at his heels and not the faintest notion in his head as to what course he was going to pursue.
The obvious course was the mail boat that runs between Oran and Marseilles, but there were difficulties in the way. The boats were sure to be watched for deserters. Mail boats and railway trains were simply roads to arrest. He had known and heard of numerous cases of escaped men caught either at the Oran railway station or on board the General Chanzy, or one of the other boats of the Algerian line.
He had an idea in his head of boarding some small trading vessel and either stowing himself away or making friends with the captain, and he was taking his way towards the harbour with a view to this when at a street corner he ran into the arms of Casmir. It was Casmir who recognized him and not he Casmir. For Casmir had dyed his face with walnut juice, and the suit of grey jean that he wore being too large for him, he had stuffed himself out at the waist with old newspapers, giving himself a corporation that was the very best disguise in the world. He looked like a disreputable old Spaniard.
"Mon Dieu!" said Jacques. "Casmir!"
Then he burst into a laugh. Only such a short time ago he had been warning Casmir on the parade ground of the Legion against running away!
They walked along the street together and Casmir explained matters.
He had run away, it seemed, on the same night that Jacques had made his evasion, had boldly taken the train for Oran, and with the good luck that comes with daring had found the matter perfectly easy.
"I was never stopped or questioned once," said he. "But here it is different. I cannot get across. It seems that they are watching the boats. I went down to the steamboat quay yesterday and there was an official at the gangway of the boat for Marseilles. He was demanding the papers of all the passengers—the men. To leave this place one must be either a fish or a sea bird, it seems, and I am neither."
"Come into this café and let us talk," said Jacques.
They entered a shabby café that was close by and Jacques called for coffee and food for them both.
"How much money have you?" said he.
"A hundred francs," replied Casmir. "I had a hundred and twenty to start with. I had received a money order from a relation for two hundred francs the morning I was talking to you. It cost me eighty francs to get this rig-out. It was that money order that fixed me in my idea of bolting, and I am beginning to wish now that I had never received it."
"Courage," said Jacques.
He said nothing for a few minutes and then he began to disclose his plan. There were ships always leaving Oran for the French and Spanish ports. Ship captains of the lesser mercantile marine were venal folk, for eighty francs, say, the pair of them might be able to get a passage on some barque, a place in the hold on top of the cargo would do.
"Ah," said Casmir, brightening up. "Now you are talking. If any man can do the trick you can, you have the gift of the gab and a way with you that I have not."
"Well, then," said Jacques, "let's go down to the wharves now, straight away, and try and fix up the business."
But Casmir demurred.
"There is no use in our going about the streets together," said he, "for if one is caught the other will be nabbed too. I'll meet you here in an hour if you will go and try and do the business. The café won't run away and you may be very sure that I won't either."
Jacques saw at once the reason of this and off he started, leaving Choc with Casmir.
Choc was fond of Casmir, who had often fed him with scraps; all the same, Jacques borrowed a piece of string from the dingy waiter and tied the end of it round the dog's neck.
"That will give you something to hold him by," said he, "in case he's up to any of his tricks."
Then he paid the bill and started off, leaving Casmir seated and holding the dog by the string.
There are two harbours at Oran. An outer anchorage not very good in rough weather, unless the wind is off the land, and a small inner harbour, a little hole of a place, always full because of its small size.
Jacques came along the quay-side, walking in a leisurely manner and smoking a cigarette. Beside the warships in the harbour there were two small barque-rigged vessels, one discharging grain, the other with closed hatches and evidently a full cargo.
Jacques was walking towards the gangplank of the latter when a hand fell on his arm and, turning, he found himself face to face with Sergeant Pelletier of the military police of Sidi-bel-Abbès.
"That's all right," said the sergeant, releasing Jacques' arm, and placing his hand on his shoulder in a fatherly way. "And you may be thankful your uniform was returned. Whoever sold you that rig-out sent it back, left it at the barrack gates done up in a parcel. Mon Dieu! Jacques, but I would never have thought it of you, to play a fool's game like this! A smart légionnaire like you, time nearly expired and all. What made you?"
Jacques laughed.
The game had gone against him and there was no use in grumbling.
His mind was engaged less on the business of arrest than on the problem of what he should do about Casmir and Choc.
To regain possession of Choc he would have to give Casmir away, and Choc was condemned to death, so there was no use in regaining possession of him. So he did nothing.
He lit another cigarette and, walking side by side with Pelletier, he went to the station, and twenty minutes later he was in the train returning to Sidi-bel-Abbès.
At the barracks he was placed promptly under arrest, and he marched off to his cell with that terrible lightheartedness which is a legacy of the Legion inherited from Crime.
As no single item of his uniform was lost he only received a month's imprisonment, and at the end of the month the Legion was marched off south where the Arabs were kicking up a dust, and hard fighting helped him to work off the stiffness caused by imprisonment.
He seemed to have forgotten Casmir, who had not been recaptured, and the dog, which was never heard of again, yet in the great battle that was fought that month near the Oasis of the Five Palms, an old légionnaire—the same who told me this story—fighting beside Jacques, was amazed, even in the heat of battle, at the fury of the latter.
"He was working off the dog," said the old fellow. "It is always so with the Legion, and that is what makes the Legion so terrible in battle—They are not so much fighting with the enemy, monsieur, they are bayoneting the Past, and what the Past has done to them."
QUITS
I
In Mustapha Street, which lies in the Moslem quarter of Sidi-bel-Abbès, there was some years ago a little hole of a restaurant run by a French girl. It is now a curio shop kept by Abdesslem, a gentleman with a beard of burnt-up black, long finger-nails, and a profound knowledge of the psychology of tourists, but the original use of the place still remains in evidence in the half scratched-out drawings and songs scribbled by légionnaires on the walls. There is also a vague scent of caporal tobacco which persists like a memory.
Mademoiselle Tricot was the name of the girl, she had come from who knows where, planted herself in the little shop and bloomed. She had wonderful hair, coils and coils of hair black as night and bright as polished ebony, eyes black as sloes and a face too practical to be pretty—hard, in fact, with that business hardness one finds so often amongst the women of the small shop-keeping class in France.
But she fascinated the légionnaires, sold them coffee and hideous non-alcoholic drinks made up with syrup of gum, and gave them credit occasionally for cigarettes.
Corporal Jacques of the 10th Company of the second regiment of the Foreign Legion was one of her warmest admirers. Jacques, towards the end of his fifth year's service, had fallen foul of the authorities over the matter of Choc, attempted escape, failed, and lost his discharge. He was now in his seventh year of service and had been promoted to the rank of corporal owing to his bravery and splendid fighting qualities. He had started in life as an Apache and he was still an Apache though of an improved order. A good-humoured scoundrel, brown now as a Brazil-nut and always in his spare time on the look out for profitable plunder. It was said that he had trained his famous dog to thieve for him. He did not want any assistant in that matter, however, if one were to believe the stories about him. But whether he got it by theft or whether he got it by honest means, one thing was certain: he generally had money to spend—and spent it. Spent it in the canteen of the Legion and at Mimi Tricot's "Restaurant"—but more especially of late at the latter place.
He was in love with the lady, yet he kept his passion so well concealed that no one guessed it, except Corporal Zeiss. Zeiss was a German from somewhere near Munich, a good-looking man and Jacques' best friend.
Jacques it was who introduced Zeiss to Mimi Tricot's, and a couple of months later, in the expansion of mind produced by a bottle of heavy Algerian wine, he told Zeiss of the terrible condition his heart was in, and Zeiss being a temperamental German, understood and sympathized and quoted Schiller. Zeiss was a scamp who had left his country to escape the law, but he had rich relations who sent him a good deal of money—as money is reckoned in the Legion. He put most of it by, hid it in some hole or corner, and sponged on Jacques and anyone else who would stand him drinks.
This fact did not alter Jacques' friendliness towards Zeiss. He knew him to be mean and looked on his meanness more in the light of a humorous sort of infirmity than anything else. Zeiss was his friend—and that was enough. Zeiss wore gold earrings. Things quite inconspicuous yet all the same objects of jest among his friends. The only other man in the regiment so adorned was an Italian named Bretano who had once been a Neapolitan fisherman. No one noticed them in the case of Bretano, but Zeiss was a German and that made all the difference.
One day Jacques received a call to the hospital, where a man of his company, Pelletan by name, lay dying.
Pelletan had developed rapid consumption as a result of his life in the Legion acting on an hereditary tendency to the disease. Jacques had been kind to him. This scoundrel of a Jacques had one great quality: he was a man. A bad man, but still a man. Cruel as death to a slacker, his instinct told him that when Pelletan fell out on a march, or when his accoutrements were not absolutely spick and span, the fault was not in the soul of Pelletan but in his body. It was he who had marched Pelletan off to the doctor and he stood before him now, looking down on him and asking what he wanted.
"You see, it's this way, corporal," said the dying man. "By yesterday morning's post I received a money order for six hundred francs. It seems that my father died last month. He had a little vineyard down there by Tarascon, and when everything was sold up and settled six hundred francs was all that was left of his property. I have no mother, brother, sister, or aunt—so you see——"
His breath failed him for a moment. Then he went on: "You see, I have no one to leave the money to. I had the order changed last night and they got me gold at the Crédit Lyonnais for the notes. I'm near done out—and the money is yours."
He put a thin and claw-like hand under his pillow and produced one of the little paper bags of the Crédit Lyonnais. It chinked as he handled it. Then he turned the money out on the quilt.
There was a screen round the bed so that no one saw what was going forward, and a beam of sunlight through the high window lit the thirty gold coins as Pelletan played with them lovingly, whilst Jacques stood fascinated by the sight.
"You will take them?"
"Oh, ay," said Jacques. "I'll take them right enough if you have no one better to give them to. Money is money, and there's no use throwing it away."
Pelletan called out for the hospital orderly, and the man came.
"I've got some money here," said he, holding up the bag in which he had replaced the coins. "It's the money you got me yesterday for that order. I'm just off the hooks as you very well know and I have no one to give the stuff to except my friend here. He has used me well and I give it to him. You are witness."
"Yes," replied the man.
Pelletan handed the bag to Jacques. It was his last act. As though the gold coins had been his last drops of blood he fell back on the pillows and in five minutes he was no longer a soldier of the Legion.
Jacques gave the orderly a louis and marched off with the little bag in his pocket.
He was rich enough now to attempt his escape again from Algeria and to have a fair sum left over with which to begin life in some foreign country, but he was not thinking of escape. He was thinking of Mimi Tricot.
Mimi was always bewailing the fact that she had not enough money to start in a bigger business.
"Even a few hundred francs," she had said, "would help to get credit with and with credit one can get anything—but what can one do with customers like you légionnaires?"
This speech was in his memory as he went back to barracks, and all through the afternoon drill he was thinking of Mimi.
He was greatly torn in his mind, the gold pulling one way and Mimi the other.
The gold meant a lot to him. Twenty-nine pieces of gold, an unthinkable treasure, hauled upon the rope at the other end of which pulled Mimi.
He made two mistakes at drill that day and got reprimanded for the first time since wearing the insignia of corporal. The gold was already beginning to bring him into trouble, but he did not think of this, or take warning.
At six o'clock, when the work of the day was over and the Légionnaires starting off to the town, Jacques left the barracks.
He took his way with the others till he reached the Place Sadi Carnot, where the band of the Legion was already occupying the bandstand, around which the townsfolk and visitors were collecting.
It was a superb evening, the warm wind blowing from the Thessala Mountains and a great moon rising in the east against the setting sun.
Jacques, his pocket bulging with gold, turned from the Place into a narrow lane. It was the Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès.
Sidi-bel-Abbès has its Spanish quarter, its negro quarter—outside the gates—its Arab quarter and its Jewish quarter. It was through the latter that Jacques took his way till he reached Mustapha Street and the café of the charmer.
A half tipsy Spahi was talking to her across the little counter and Jacques took a seat and called for a cup of coffee. He noted with approval how well she kept the Spahi at a distance and at the same time as a customer. Then, the Spahi having taken his departure, he rose, came to the counter and plunged into the business on hand. There was no time to waste as more customers might arrive at any moment.
"Mimi," said Jacques, "you've always been saying how well you could get on but for the want of a few francs. Well, here's something. Open it and see."
He placed the little bag on the counter. Mimi opened it and shook out the coins.
There were twenty-five louis in the bag. He had kept back four for himself, which, with the one he had given to the hospital orderly, made up the six hundred francs of Pelletan's gift.
"Mon Dieu!" cried Mimi. "What bank have you been robbing?"
Jacques laughed, then he explained, and as he explained Mimi counted the money, dropping it back into the little paper bag coin by coin.
"So you see," finished Jacques, "it's yours; and since you are mine, ma mie—it's mine. Take it and use it. In three years I will be a free man, and if you care for me as you say you do, and if you have any luck with the business you start in, we may do well together, you and I. There's not a man knows more of the ins and outs of Sidi-bel-Abbès than myself."
Mimi leaning her arms comfortably on the counter, they began to talk. It was more like the conversation of two business people than two lovers, but it ended in a kiss given across the counter as a seal of the compact.
Jacques had confessed that he had kept four louis back for his own private use. Three of these he handed to Mimi, at her request, to keep for him.
"I will be your banker," said she.
Jacques returned to barracks that night in high good spirits. Strangely enough, the money had weighed on him, making him irritable; he had been afraid of losing it, afraid of being robbed, a hundred plans for spending it had fought with another only to be conquered by the plan he had just carried through. His mind was easy now, and he had the satisfaction not only of knowing that Mimi was now his for certain, but also of the surety that he had made a very good deal in a business way.
With Mimi waiting for him till he came out of the Legion he would have something to live for, and all the time he was serving the completion of his term she would be building up their business. No man knew better than Jacques what possibilities for making money lay in Sidi-bel-Abbès. As cunning as a monkey and as sharp as a weasel, Jacques had plumbed all the depths of the town.
Though the pay of the Legion is only a half-penny a day there is money in the Legion. Nearly every légionnaire who has a friend or a relative in any part of the world becomes a beggar-man, money orders are constantly arriving and the money when it arrives is spent at once. He reckoned on the Legion as a good customer for the new business. Then there was the possibility of money-lending in the town, beginning very small, of course, and increasing by degrees; and there were things to be bought and sold in illicit ways, visitors to be fleeced and natives to be plundered.
Before he went asleep that night he was driving in his automobile through Sidi-bel-Abbès with Mimi at his side.
For a fortnight after that he lived on his twenty francs and in a state of complete happiness, presenting the picture, unnatural and against all reason, of a contented légionnaire; every evening he would call in on Mimi, drink her vile coffee, smoke cigarettes, dream of fortune, and make love to her as well as he could in the presence of the other customers. She would give him no appointment outside for a walk on the ramparts or through the great boulevards and he did not grumble; her strictness and propriety pleased him almost as much as her black coiled hair; this was a proper woman, a woman a man could trust, if not, nom de Dieu! whom could one trust?
One evening at the end of the fortnight, having spent his last copper, he called on this trustworthy woman to draw five francs of his money.
Jacques felt rather shamefaced over the business, but, putting a bold face on the matter, he entered the little café, only to find the bar deserted. It was early in the evening, a bit before the hour when légionnaires might be expected, and the space before the counter, with its rickety chairs and stained marble-topped tables, was also empty.
From the little room at the back of the bar came voices in amicable conversation, Mimi's voice and another—the voice of Corporal Zeiss!
Jacques stood for a moment like a man petrified, then he knocked on the counter with one of the glass cigarette-ash trays and the lady appeared.
Seeing Jacques, she closed the door of the little room and came forward smiling and quite unruffled, and he, white under his sunburning, but showing nothing of his feelings, made his request for the five francs.
She gave it to him without a murmur and he took it, paid for a drink, chatted for a few minutes, and then, saying that he had some business on hand in the town, took his departure.
Outside he hid in the shadow of a doorway. He had not long to wait. Some customers went into the café and almost as soon as they entered out came Zeiss, walking with a light step and with the jaunty air of a man very well satisfied with himself.
He passed so close to Jacques that the latter could see his earrings, or at least the right earring.
Then Zeiss vanished round a corner and Jacques returned to the barracks.
He wanted to be alone, a most dangerous sign in a man of Jacques' mentality and character. He knew that at this hour the barracks would be empty of all but the sentries and the men under sentence of confinement to barracks, and he found no one in the big bedroom where he slept and where now he lay down on his bed to think.
He was thinking of how he should kill Zeiss.
All sorts of tempting ways occurred to him and were played with by his mind, but they had all one fault—they would also inevitably kill Jacques.
He was a very brave man, but he had no fancy at all for facing the firing-squad.
His love for Mimi was not of the nature that makes a man regardless of all things should he be betrayed, but it was strong enough to raise the Apache in him.
His dreams of wealth and motor-cars had been smashed by this scoundrel Zeiss; that fact was almost more powerful with him than the fact that Zeiss had stolen Mimi from him, and more potent than either of these was the fact that Zeiss, his friend, had betrayed him.
Twenty minutes passed and then Jacques, rising from his bed, went off downstairs to the canteen. He had discovered a way to revenge himself, clean and without danger.
Firing practice on the range took place once every three weeks or so, and Jacques had to wait a week till one fine morning when, led by the buglers, his company started out for the butts.
During the whole of that week he had not seen Mimi nor heard from her, nor thought of her, so deeply was his mind engaged with Zeiss. But out here on the firing-ground this blazing morning, just as he had taken a loaded rifle from one of the new recruits to explain its mechanism, the thought of Mimi shot up in his mind like an imp as if to give energy to his purpose.
He was bringing the muzzle of the rifle round in the direction of Zeiss' broad back, whilst Zeiss, all unconscious of the fact, was receiving orders from the captain of the company, when Sergeant Terrail, with a glance at the German, said:
"Have you heard how Zeiss has been let down by that woman at the coffee-shop—Black Mimi—she's bolted with all his savings, nom d'un pétard, what a fool. Savigny met him last night crying for his money. He blurted the whole thing out. She has cleared off. He had close on a thousand francs saved up. He lent it to her to improve her business. Well, he was always a mean pig, close-fisted, but she managed to open his fist. Trust a woman for that."
Jacques said nothing. He handed the rifle back to the recruit and Zeiss' life was saved. Then, getting away by himself, on the pretence that the sun had given him vertigo, he lay down on the sand under the shelter of a tree and laughed. Laughed with a laughter that shook his whole body down to his toes. It was the sudden uplift of the tragic from his mind as well as the facts of the case that caused this extraordinary convulsion of merriment.
Then he rose up, dusted the sand from his tunic, and returned to the firing-ground.
But the laughter had not cleared his mind of anger. He had spared Zeiss' life, but his enmity towards Zeiss remained, though Mimi now shared it. Those two. That is how he thought of them.
II
As he took up his position again, a horseman spurring at full speed came across the plain from the direction of the barracks. As he passed the drill ground where a couple of thousand légionnaires were at exercise, a hurricane of cheering followed him and the message which he had evidently shouted to them.
Then he came at full speed towards the men at the butts. They knew at once. The order for active service had come.
They were marched back to barracks, yelling, shouting, whistling and singing. One might have fancied that every man of them had just received news of a fortune having fallen to him. The barracks were humming like a vast beehive, and the word was going round that it was down south the trouble was. Down south, away in the depths of the desert where the whole Arab country was up in revolt, attacking the outpost stations and surging north.
The Legion does not take long to mobilize. An hour is sufficient. It was now eight in the morning; by nine, headed by the band and followed by the ammunition carts, the légionnaires in four-deep formation, wheeled out of the barrack yard and marched through Sidi-bel-Abbès, striking the great south road that cuts Algeria like a meridian of longitude.
Ten miles south of the town and precisely at eleven o'clock a halt was called, tents were put up, and soup was served.
It was the hot season, and unless driven by the direst necessity the Legion does not march under the three hours of terrific sun that withers everything from noon till three o'clock. Night is the time for marching, and the tents are generally struck shortly after midnight. There were also a hundred details to be attended to in the first hours of this big shake-out after six months' rest in barracks. Some of the tents proved to want repairing, and numerous little weaknesses had to be remedied before the great test came.
Half an hour after midnight the tents were struck and the long, long column, broken only by the rattling ammunition and baggage carts, got into its stride. Five kilometres an hour is the pace of the Legion, with a five minutes' rest at every tenth kilometre.
At dawn the column was marching still, and in the full blaze of day it was still marching, voiceless, tottering, almost broken with weariness.
Then it halted at the milestone that marked a distance of fifty kilometres from Sidi-bel-Abbès, the tents were put up by the wayside and coffee was served.
The men lay about exhausted in the tents. Under the sun across a great stretch of sand and rubbly ground on the right of the road, lay the city of little tents that had suddenly broken into existence like fungi, and around the city, showing sometimes the flash of a bayonet in the sunlight, could be seen the dark forms of the patrols. Grumbling, smoking, swearing, the population of the tent city filled the air with a murmur, dying at last to silence as sleep took the légionnaires. They had marched forty kilometres. Forty kilometres laden with rifle, ammunition, knapsack, tent and collapsible tent poles. Forty kilometres at the rate of five kilometres an hour, with only four breaks of five minutes each. Forty kilometres with only twenty minutes' rest.
But this was nothing to the fantastic labours before them. Next day, and the day after, and the day after, the march went on, ever south, and ever through more desolate country. They reached the region of the small outpost stations, where men of the penal battalion were at work road-making and fort-building. Here wind came to them that the trouble had shifted more to the east, where a great army of Arabs was at work breaking, pillaging and murdering. Three outpost stations had been sacked and the soldiers put to death, and with this news the Legion, setting its teeth, struck on to the south-south-east.
They were entering now the real desert. The great yellow desert that lies burning in the sun for ever. Now voiceless, now sighing and shifting its sand to the wind that blows from nowhere. Here there are no roads, only caravan tracks marked by the skeletons of men and animals, an horizon hard like burnished brass, a thirst that drains even the water in the oasis wells.
Jacques, old campaigner that he was, had never grown used to the desert, no white man ever does. There is a spirit here that daunts the soul and haunts the heart for ever.
As they marched, sometimes, came marching abreast of them, miles away, vast sand devils, recalling the D'jin released from the bottle in the Arabian tale. Sometimes the devils would move as though waltzing with viewless partners, but the Legion scarcely cast an eye upon them. The Trumpet of Doom alone could have arrested the attention of that vast centipede, sun-dazzled, or moon-lit, exhausted, dead to everything but the necessity of movement. The water ran short, but still they marched; men fell out only to be tied to the tails of the ammunition carts, where they had either to be dragged along the sands or march; feet bled, eyes were blinded, brains reeled, but the purpose of the mechanism never failed, nor did the movement falter.
Five kilometres an hour was the inexorable pace to which the machine was set.
A longer halt than usual whilst waiting for despatch bearers had shifted the starting hour of each march to one o'clock in the morning.
Then, under the stars and in the perishing cold of the desert night, the bugles would ring out, the city of little white tents shrivel up and vanish, and the great centipede reform itself out of all its incongruous elements.
Criminals, soldiers of fortune, clerks, once men of learning, men from all the quarters of the world and all the walks of civilization, woke from profound sleep or troubled dreams and became, once again, the Legion.
As they marched under the stars, not a voice broke the silence of the ranks, half-awake; still under the opiate weariness of the last march, the night seemed to them like a blue veil tangling their feet. The sound of the vast moving column filled the night, not with the tramp of men, but with a noise like the shuffling of a great snake—the shuddering, shuffling sound of sand trodden upon and tossed aside by the feet of the Legion.
Men marched as they pleased, there was no keeping in step. It did not matter how rifles were carried—so that they were carried; how men marched—so that they marched.
One thing alone mattered—the pace. Five kilometres an hour.
Then a pale light would appear in the east and flicker out, and then, vague blue and luminous, dawn would show and tinted fingers along the sand rim begin to lift the veil.
It was day far up in the sky before the first sun-flash struck the sands.
Then came the blaze, and like Memnon the Legion would find its voice.
Mixed with the creak and rattle of the baggage and ammunition carts, above the dull pounding and scuffling of feet, you would hear the growl of voices breaking out all down the line. A grumble half a mile long; the voice of the bruised, battered, and bedevilled soul of the Legion. This centipede with a brain for every pair of legs possessed a single soul. Artist, Author, Bank Clerk, ex-soldier or Apache, Optimist, Pessimist, Grumbler or Man of Fortitude, all were subdued to the same medium. Like the oars of the Trireme or the bricks for the Pyramids, the rifles of the Legion linked the minds of their holders in a common bondage of thought—or want of thought, gave them a common tongue to express the suffering common to all.
The cutting of the gun-straps, the weight of the knapsacks, the weariness of the march, all were voiced in that awful grumble, more akin to the grumble and groan of the baggage and ammunition carts than the voices of human beings.
Then the sound would die out, and the moving column resume its garment of silence, and so it went on till on the morning of the twelfth day, just after sunrise, the sands right in the sun-blaze suddenly became alive and moving; the people of the desert, mysterious as the desert itself, had declared themselves.
It was like the springing to life of D'jins. The Legion had come to attack, and lo! it was attacked, its movements had been watched by scouts, keen-eyed as vultures. All to eastward and southward the swarming sands showed like sea foam beneath the fluttering green flags and the blaze of spears; drums beat, and on the wind came the crying of that vast, sun-born host like the crying of far-off sea-birds on a quarrelling beach.
The voice of the Legion made answer like the roar of the tiger that is sure of its prey.
Then silence for a heart-beat, followed by a few sharp orders, and the column, no longer moving, undulated, broadened, became formless, and then, click! became a geometrical figure.
A hollow square, with the baggage and ammunition carts in the centre, the girding straps of the ammunition boxes flying loose.
Far above, a dot in the blue, hovered a vulture. From that height, the dark, rigid square would have the appearance of a pattern traced on the sands.
III
The Legion waited as the storm surged towards it, crescentic, a host of the Past armed with the weapons of Saladin; then the great square broke into flame and smoke on three of its sides and the crash of rifles shook the silence of the desert far away beyond the reach of the voices of the attackers.
The vulture, larger now, saw the dead piling before the guns, and the waves of the living lapping over the ridges of the slain—then, in a flash, came the great break-up.
Allez, schieb Los! The Legion, no longer in square formation, was pursuing, attacking, bayoneting. That solid, silent fort of men behind the speaking rifles had burst its bonds of formation and silence. The cries of the fallen, the falling and the dying were drowned out by the piercing yell of the légionnaires, mad with the cafard of Blood.
At last the Legion had found its voice.
The voice of its rage against the world, of its hatred of itself, of its lust for blood and its desire to hack, and hack, and slay.
Stayed up for a moment and held by the very imminence of destruction, the enemy turned upon its pursuers and fought hand to hand.
This lasted but a very little time, and then came the second débâcle, worse than the first, and not to be recovered from.
The pursuit conducted by detached companies spread fan-wise to the south, the south-east and the south-west.
The Legion always drives its bayonet home, keeps on striking when once it has struck, and makes an end where it has made a good beginning.
IV
An hour after noon, Jacques, wounded in the arm and knocked out by a blow on the head, lay on the sands recovering his scattered wits. A hundred paces or so away lay Corporal Zeiss, whilst advancing towards the two men came the form of a woman.
An Arab woman.
Her tribe was half destroyed.
She had followed close on the heels of the attacking hosts with others of her kind, sure of victory and the delightful prospect of mutilating the wounded in unnameable ways.
Caught in the débâcle and, by a miracle, unscathed, she was now pursuing her true vocation in life, just as, close to battlefields, one may see the peasant ploughman at work or the gleaner gleaning. She was in search of plunder without the least idea as to how the plunder would profit her or how she was ever to regain her tribe. She knelt down beside Zeiss.
Jacques, now fully recovered, watched.
He knew Zeiss at once by his flax-coloured hair.
The woman's back was towards Jacques, and turning on his left side he seized his rifle, found that it was loaded, and then, with an Apache grin on his face, turned on his stomach and lay with the rifle to his shoulder, ready to fire, just as he had often lain on the practice ground.
The woman stood up, the shot rang out and she fell.
Then Jacques, rifle in hand, rose up, and still rather shaky from the result of his injuries, approached the two figures lying on the sand. Zeiss was dead and the woman was dead, and her plunder lay on the sand in the form of Zeiss' ears, Zeiss' earrings, and other things belonging to Zeiss.
She was comely. It only wanted that fact to complete the satisfaction of Corporal Jacques. For the first time since his betrayal he felt at ease. Zeiss was no longer a thorn in his flesh, and he had revenged himself on Mimi.
"On Mimi?" you will say.
Well, on her sex.
It is the same thing—or at least it was the same thing to Jacques.
He stood shading his eyes against the sun whilst the wind of the desert blowing in his face brought the far-off bugle calls of the Legion.
The hounds were being collected.
The battue was over.
SCHNEIDER
I
Stories about the Foreign Legion have, nearly all, the same centre idea and motive—escape or attempted escape.
It is the one thing the légionnaires think of. They grumble about their food; they grumble about their chief officers and their subordinate officers; they grumble about the hot days and cold nights of Algeria; they grumble about the scarcity of cigarettes, the price of wine, the scarcity of soap, the hardness of their work, the smallness of their pay, but they never grumble about their loss of liberty.
They dream about it.
It is the one idea around which all other ideas revolve, and it is kept alive and active less perhaps by the general hardness of life in the Legion than by the fact that escape is, though seemingly feasible, next to impossible.
No man can buy his discharge from the Legion. No man, once he has signed the fatal paper, can escape from the consequences of his act by influence. You may be the son of a prince—it does not matter, or of a Rockefeller—it does not matter, you have to dree your weird for five years and carry your rifle and knapsack under the blazing sun to the last day of your term of enlistment.
After all, you have signed a contract, and signed it with your eyes open, and should you fight against fate and try to break your contract, you find that the system you are struggling with has provided against that.
Twenty thousand men or so, distributed in Algeria, Indo-China and Morocco, and most of them willing to escape on the slightest chance, require a pretty definite and complete system of restraint.
Corporal Jacques had very clear views on this matter. Bitter personal experience had convinced him of the futility of all attempts at evasion. Where he had failed he could not see the chance of anyone else succeeding. Nor did he wish anyone else to succeed. Such a success would have cast extra discredit on his own attempt, an attempt that was fast fading from the memory of the regiment, but not from the memory of Corporal Jacques.
One bright morning, Jacques, who had returned to the barrack yard with his squad after three hours' practice on the ranges, turned from lighting a cigarette to watch the arrival of a column of recruits just arrived from France by way of Oran.
There were forty men in the column, men of all heights and ages, all nationalities, a sinister-looking crowd, dusty, tattered, limping, many of them most evidently underfed and nearly all of them wearing that look of dejection common to lost dogs and lost men.
Most of these new recruits had joined the Legion to escape starvation; a few were of the active criminal type and had evidently been given the choice of the Legion or the Penitentiary. Jacques' keen eyes sorted them out and classified them at once, but there was one man he could not classify, a man of middle height, dark, clean-shaven, youthful and of military bearing.