Percival Christopher Wren

“ Voyez donc! A French fort in the Sahara, besieged by Arabs. Every man killed at his post. The Arabs beaten off. The fort inviolate, untrodden by Arab foot. The gates closed. Within—the dead, and one of them slain by a French bayonet while he held a loaded revolver in his hand! ...
But was the fort inviolate and untrodden by Arab foot? If so, what had become of my trumpeter? Might not the Arabs be hiding below, waiting their opportunity to catch the relieving force unawares? Might not there be an Arab eye at every rifle-slit? Might not the caserne, rooms, offices, sheds, be packed with them? ”

“ And what do you think I found there, my friend?"
"Dunno," said George Lawrence.
"Nothing. No one and nothing. Not even the man who had fired the two shots of welcome! ... As I had felt sure, really, all along, no Arab had entered the fort. That leapt to the eye at once. The place was as tight shut as this fist of mine—and as empty of Arab traces. The caserne was as orderly and tidy as when the men left it and stood to arms—the paquetages on the shelves, the table-apparatus in the hanging cupboards, the gamelles and cleaning-bags at the heads of the beds, the bedding folded and straight. ”

“ These Watchers, I felt certain, had been compelled by this dead man, who lay before me, to continue as defenders of the fort after their deaths. ... He was evidently a man. A bold, resourceful, undaunted hero, sardonic, of a macabre humour, as the Legion always is.
As each man fell, throughout that long and awful day, he had propped him up, wounded or dead, set the rifle in its place, fired it, and bluffed the Arabs that every wall and every embrasure and loophole of every wall was fully manned. He must, at the last, have run from point to point, firing a rifle from behind its dead defender. ”

“ And then as I wearily light a wretched cigarette of our beastly caporal, there comes running my orderly, babbling I know not what of a dying Arab goum—they are always dying of fatigue these fellows, if they have hurried a few miles—on a dying camel, who cries at the gate that he is from Zinderneuf, and that there is siege and massacre, battle, murder, and sudden death. All slain and expecting to be killed. ”

“ I preferred the sunlight while I was alone. I freely admit it. I do not object to Arabs, but I dislike 'spirits, ghosts, and devils'—that commit murders and abductions. Perhaps I was not quite myself. But what would you? I had been enjoying fever; I had ridden all night; I was perilously near cafard myself; and the presence of those dead Watchers to whom I had spoken, the finding of that incredibly murdered man, the not finding of that more incredibly vanished trumpeter—had shaken me a little.
As I awaited the return of the Sergeant-Major I gazed at the corpse of the sous-officier. ”

“ The only flaw in the beautiful theory is that we should have heard the shot—just as we should have heard a rifle-shot had the trumpeter used his rifle for the murder. In that brooding heavy silence a revolver fired on that open roof would have sounded like a seventy-five.'
'True,' agreed St. André, a little crestfallen. 'The man was mad then. He did everything that was done, and then committed suicide or was burnt alive.'
'Ah, my friend,' said I, 'you have come to the madman theory, eh? So had I. It is the only one. But now I will tell you something. The trumpeter did not do all this. ”

“ There we should have cover and water, and if we could only hold the devils until they were nicely between us and St. André's Senegalese, we would avenge the garrison of that blazing fort.
They are grand soldiers, those Légionnaires, George. No better troops in our army. They are to other infantry what my Spahis are to other cavalry. It warmed one's heart to see them double, steady as on parade, back to the darkness of the oasis, every man select his cover and go to ground, his rifle loaded and levelled as he did so. ”

“ Instead of fleeing to certain death from thirst and starvation, or torture at the hands of the Arabs, why had not the murderer awaited, in comfort, the honours, réclame, reward, and promotion that would most assuredly have been his? Obviously, the man who—lusting for blood and vengeance on account of some real or fancied wrong—could murder his superior at such a moment, would be the very one to see the beauty of getting a rich and glorious reward as a sequel to his revenge. ”

“ Does a man drive a bayonet through his heart, and then take a revolver in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other? I think not.
Have you ever seen a man drive a bayonet through his heart, my friend? Believe me, he does not fumble for letters, nor draw a revolver and fire it, after he has done that. No. He gasps, stares, staggers. He grips the handle and the forte of the blade with both hands, totters, stretches convulsively, and collapses, crashing to the ground. ... In any case, does a man commit suicide with a bayonet when he has a loaded revolver? ... Suicide? ”

“ No wonder the Arabs never charged that fort, from each of whose walls a rifle cracked continuously, and from whose every embrasure watched a fearless man whom they could not kill—or whose place seemed to be taken, at once, by another, if they did kill him. ”

“ George Lawrence pursued his vision and the two fell silent for a space.
"Supposing that stone had actually been in the pocket of a man on that roof, when it collapsed into the furnace below," said de Beaujolais as he sat up and felt for his cigarette case, "would the jewel be destroyed when the body of the man was cremated? Does fire affect precious stones?"
"Don't know," replied Lawrence. "We could find that out from any jeweller, I suppose. I rather think not. Aren't they, in fact, formed in the earth by a heat greater than any furnace can produce?" ”

“ If the escouade would not enter the fort they must expiate their military crime. If the company would not carry out my orders and fire on the mutineers, they must expiate their crime.
If I were to be shot, I should at least be saved the unpleasantness of reporting that my men had mutinied, and I should die in the knowledge that I had done my duty.
Yes—I would make it clear that disobedience to my orders would be death. Swift and sudden for some, lingering and horrible for many, sure and certain for all. ”

“ As we rode out of the gate of my fort, I gathered from the still-dying goum, on the still-dying camel, that a couple of days before, a large force of Touaregs had been sighted from the look-out platform of Zinderneuf fort. Promptly the wise sous-officier, in charge and command since the lamented death of Captain Renouf, had turned the goum loose on his fast mehari camel, with strict orders not to be caught by the Touaregs if they invested the fort, but to clear out and trek with all speed for help—as it appeared to be a case of too heavy odds. ”

“ But it was with an anxious heart that I mounted the mule again and cantered over to the fort.
I had thought of going on a camel, for, it is a strange psychological fact, that if your hearers have to look up to you physically, they also have to look up to you metaphysically as it were. If a leader speaks with more authority from a mule than from the ground, and with more weight and power from a horse than from a mule, would he not speak with still more from a camel? ”

“ The one, a tall, bronzed, lean Englishman, taciturn, forbidding, and grim, who never used two words where one would suffice; his cold grey eye looking through, or over, those who surrounded him; his iron-grey hair and moustache, his iron-firm chin and mouth, suggesting the iron that had entered into his soul and made him the hard, cold, bitter person that he was, lonely, aloof, and self-sufficing. (Perhaps Lady Brandon of Brandon Abbas, alone of women, knew the real man and what he might have been; and perhaps half a dozen men liked him as greatly as all men respected him.) ”

“ When, as in a dream, I rode right round the place, and beheld more and more of those motionless silent forms, with their fixed, unwinking eyes, I clearly saw that one of them, whose képi had fallen from his head, had a hole in the centre of his forehead and was dead—although at his post, with chest and elbows leaning on the parapet, and looking as though about to fire his rifle! ”

“ But, in due course, George Lawrence reached Kano and the Nassarawa Gate in the East Wall, which leads to the European segregation, there to wait for a couple of days for the bi-weekly train to Lagos. These days he whiled away in strolling about the wonderful Haussa city, visiting the market-place, exploring its seven square miles of streets of mud houses, with their ant-proof dôm-palm beams; watching the ebb and flow of varied black and brown humanity at the thirteen great gates in its mighty earthen ramparts ”

“ Anyhow it could not be Rastignac's work, for he would not have entered the place, even had he been left at liberty and had an opportunity to do so.
'Send and see if he is still there—and make sure that everyone else is accounted for,' I ordered.
It was useless to detail a pompier squad to put the fire out. We don't have hose and hydrants in the desert, as you know. When a place burns, it burns. And, mon Dieu, how it burns in the dry heat of that rainless desert! The place would be gone, even if the men would enter it, by the time we had got our teaspoonfuls of water from the oasis. ”

“ I have strained my military conscience already to satisfy my private conscience. If, after four hours' rest and reflection, they still decide to mutiny—on their heads be it! No responsibility rests on me. If they mutiny, they do it in cold blood. If they obey orders before the Senegalese arrive, no great harm has been done, and discipline has been maintained. That is the very utmost length to which I can go in my desire to save them.'
'To save them, mon Commandant! ”

“ At every embrasure of the breast-high parapet round the flat roof stood a soldier, staring out across the desert, and most of them staring along their levelled rifles too; some of them straight at me. ”

“ For a moment George Lawrence had visions of devoting his leave to jewel-hunting, and returning to Brandon Abbas with three-quarters of a million francs' worth of crystallised alumina in his pocket.
"That will require prompt and careful consideration, directly we learn that the stone has gone, George," said de Beaujolais, and added: "This grows more and more interesting. ... A treasure hunt at Zinderneuf! Fancy the Arabs if the information got about! Fancy the builders of the new fort, and the garrison! ”

“ And had he got near enough to the fort to throw it? And had it by chance, or skill of the thrower, penetrated the heart of the Commandant of the garrison?"
"Possibly," said Lawrence.
"So I thought for a moment," replied de Beaujolais, "though why a man armed with a breech-loading rifle, should leave the cover of his sand-hill, trench, or palm tree, and go about throwing bayonets, I don't know. And then I remembered that the bayonet went through the breast of the sous-officier in a slightly upward direction from front to back. Could a bayonet be thrown thus into the middle of a wide roof?" ”

“ I don't mind joining corpses as a corpse. You can shoot me.'
'That can I, of a surety,' I agreed, and drew my revolver. 'Ride your camel under that projecting water-spout,' said I. 'Stand on its back, and spring to the spout. Climb into the embrasure, and then go down and open the gates.'
'Not I, mon Officier,’ said Rastignac again. I raised my revolver, and the Sergeant-Major snatched the man's rifle. ”

“ I would point out to them the inevitable and awful results to the men themselves, of disobedience and mutiny. I would speak of the heroism, discipline, and dutifulness of the dead. I would point out to them that in the event of mutiny, they themselves would either be loyal and die at the hands of the mutineers, or become deserters and die at the hands of the Arabs. ”

“ Not a sound nor a movement!
'Perhaps the last one or two are badly wounded,' thought I. 'There may not be a man able to crawl from his bed. The fellow who propped those corpses up may have been shot in the act, and be lying up there, or on his cot,' and I bade the trumpeter cease. Sending for the Chef, as we call the Sergeant-Major, I ordered him to knot camel-cords, sashes, girths, reins, anything, make a rope, and set an active fellow to climb from the back of a camel, into an embrasure, and give me a hoist up. ”

“ And across all the Harmattan was blowing hard, that terrible wind that carries the Saharan dust a hundred miles to sea, not so much as a sand-storm, but as a mist or fog of dust as fine as flour, filling the eyes, the lungs, the pores of the skin, the nose and throat; getting into the locks of rifles, the works of watches and cameras, defiling water, food and everything else; rendering life a burden and a curse. ”

“ He had done well, and my one regret was that the Arabs who had caused the destruction of Zinderneuf were not between me and him as he closed upon the oasis.
While the weary troops rested, I told St. André all that had happened, and asked for a theory—reserving mine about the madman. He is a man with a brain, this St. André, ambitious and a real soldier. Although he has private means, he serves France where duty is hardest, and life least attractive. A little dark pocket-Hercules of energy and force. ”

“ Suppose you ...'
'Silence, Chef,' I replied, 'I am going,' and I rode back to the fort. Was I right, George?"
"Dunno," replied George Lawrence.
"I remember thinking, as I rode back, what a pernicious fool I should look if, under the eyes of all—the living and the dead—I failed to accomplish that, by no means easy, scramble, and had ignominiously to admit my inability to climb up where the trumpeter had gone. It is sad when one's vile body falls below the standard set by the aspiring soul, when the strength of the muscles is inadequate to the courage of the heart. ... ”