The Truants Part 27

"Come, my children," said Tavernay, "fight well; the Touaregs give no quarter."

Followed by Stretton, he led the charge. The Touaregs gave way before their furious onslaught. The soldiers reached the gun, faced about, and firing steadily kept off the enemy while the gun was run back. As soon as that was saved the battle was over. All over the hollow, wherever the Touaregs were ma.s.sed, the two guns rattled out their canister. No Arab could approach them. The sun rose over the earth, and while it was rising the Touaregs broke and fled. When it shone out in its full round, there was no one left of them in that hollow except the wounded and the dead. But the victory had been dearly bought. All about the well, lying pell-mell among the Arabs and the dead camels, were the French Legionaries, some quite still, and others writhing in pain and crying for water. Stretton drew his hand across his forehead.

He was stunned and dazed. It seemed to him that years had pa.s.sed, that he had grown very old. Yet there was the sun new-risen. There was a dull pain in his head. He raised his hand and drew it away wet with blood. How or when he had received the blow he was quite unaware. He stood staring stupidly about him. So very little while ago men were lying here sleeping in their cloaks, quite strong, living people; now they were lying dead or in pain; it was all incomprehensible.

"Why?" he asked aloud of no one. "Now, why?"

Gradually, however, custom resumed its power. There was a man hanging limp over the parapet of the well. He looked as though he had knelt down and stooped over to drink, and in that att.i.tude had fallen asleep. But he might so easily be pushed into the well, and custom had made the preservation of wells from impurity an instinct. He removed the body and went in search of Tavernay. Tavernay was sitting propped up against a camel's saddle; the doctor was by his side, a blood-stained bandage was about his thigh. He spoke in a weak voice.

"Lieutenant Laurent?"

Stretton went in search. He came across an old grey-headed soldier rolling methodically a cigarette.

"He is dead--over there," said the soldier. "Have you a light?"

Laurent had died game. He was lying clasped in the arms of a gigantic Touareg, and while thus held he had been stabbed by another through the back. To that end the contemptuous smile of a lady far away in Paris had brought him. He lay with his face to the sky, his wounded vanity now quite healed. He had earned Tavernay's praise, at all events, that day. For he had fought well. Of the _sous-lieutenants_ one was killed, the other dangerously wounded. A sergeant-major lay with a broken shoulder beside one of the guns. Stretton went back to Tavernay.

"You must take command, then," said Tavernay. "I think you have learnt something about it on your fishing-boats." And in spite of his pain he smiled.

Stretton mustered the men and called over the names. Almost the first name which he called was the name of "Barbier," and Barbier, with a blood-stained rag about his head, answered. Of the two hundred and thirty men who had made up the two companies of the Legion, only forty-seven could stand in the ranks and answer to their names. For those forty-seven there was herculean work to do. Officers were appointed, the dead bodies were roughly buried, the camels collected, litters improvised for the wounded, the goat-skins filled with water.

Late in the afternoon Stretton came again to Tavernay.

"We are ready, sir." Tavernay nodded and asked for a sheet of paper, an envelope, and ink. They were fetched from his portfolio and very slowly and laboriously he wrote a letter and handed it to Stretton.

"Seal it," he said, "now, in front of me."

Stretton obeyed.

"Keep that letter. If you get back to Ouargla without me, give it to the Commandant there."

Tavernay was lifted in a litter on to the back of a camel, and the remnant of the geographical expedition began its terrible homeward march. Eight hundred miles lay between Bir-el-Ghiramo and the safety of Ouargla. The Touaregs hung upon the rear of the force, but they did not attack again. They preferred another way. One evening a solitary Arab drove a laden camel into the bivouac. He was conducted to Stretton, and said, "The Touaregs ask pardon and pray for peace. They will molest you no more. Indeed, they will help you, and as an earnest of their true desire for your welfare they send you a camel-load of dates."

Stretton accepted the present, and carried the message to Tavernay, who cried at once, "Let no one eat those dates." But two soldiers had already eaten of them, and died of poison before the morning. Short of food, short of sentinels, the broken force crept back across the stretches of soft sand, the greyish-green plains of halfa-gra.s.s, the ridges of red hill. One by one the injured succ.u.mbed; their wounds gangrened, they were tortured by the burning sun and the motion of the camels. A halt would be made, a camel made to kneel, and a rough grave dug.

"Pelissier," cried Stretton, and a soldier stepped out from the ranks who had once conducted ma.s.s in the church of the Madeleine in Paris.

Pelissier would recite such prayers as he remembered, and the force would move on again, leaving one more soldier's grave behind it in the desert to protest unnoticed against the economy of governments. Then came a morning when Stretton was summoned to Captain Tavernay's side.

For two days Tavernay had tossed in a delirium. He now lay beneath a rough shelter of cloaks, in his right senses, but so weak that he could not lift a hand, and with a face so pinched and drawn that his years seemed to have been doubled. His eyes shone out from big black circles. Stretton knelt down beside him.

"You have the letter?"

"Yes."

"Do not forget."

He lay for a while in a sort of contentment, then he said--"Do not think this expedition has been waste. A small force first and disaster ... the big force afterwards to retrieve the disaster, and with it victory, and government and peace, and a new country won for France.

That is the law of the Legion.... _My_ Legion." He smiled, and Stretton muttered a few insincere words.

"You will recover, my captain. You will lead your companies again."

"No," said Tavernay, in a whisper. "I do not want to. I am very happy.

Yes, I say that, who joined the Legion twenty years ago. And the Legion, my friend, is the nation of the unhappy. For twenty years I have been a citizen of that nation.... I pity women who have no such nation to welcome them and find them work.... For us there is no need of pity."

And in a few moments he fell asleep, and, two hours later, sleeping, died. A pile of stones was built above his grave, and the force marched on. Gaunt, starved, and ragged, the men marched northwards, leaving the Touat country upon their left hand. It struck the caravan route from Tidikelt to Ouargla; it stumbled at last through the gates of the town. Silently it marched through the streets to the French fortress. On no survivor's face was there any sign of joy that at last their hardships were over, their safety a.s.sured. All were too tired, too dispirited. The very people who crowded to see them pa.s.s seemed part of an uninteresting show. Stretton went at once to the Commandant and told the story of their disaster. Then he handed him the letter of Captain Tavernay. The Commandant broke the seal and read it through.

He looked up at Stretton, a thin spent figure of a man overwrought with sleeplessness and anxiety.

"Tell me how and when this was written," said the Commandant.

Stretton obeyed, and after he had heard, the Commandant sat with his hand shading his eyes. When he spoke, his voice showed that he was deeply moved.

"You know what the letter contains, Sergeant Ohlsen?"

"No, my Commandant."

"Read, then, for yourself;" and he pa.s.sed the letter across his office table. Stretton took it and read. There were a few lines written--only a few; but those few lines recommended Sergeant Ohlsen for promotion to the rank of officer. The Commandant held out his hand.

"That is like our Tavernay," he said. "He thought always of his soldiers. He wrote it at once, you see, after the battle was over, lest he should die and justice not be done. Have no fear, my friend.

It is you who have brought back to Ouargla the survivors of the Legion. But you must give your real name. There is a scrutiny before a soldier is promoted to the rank of office. Sergeant Ohlsen. That is all very well. But Lieutenant----. Come, Lieutenant who?"

He took up his pen.

"Lieutenant Sir Anthony Stretton," replied Tony; and the Commandant wrote down the name.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TURNPIKE GATE

It was not, however, only Millie Stretton whose fortunes were touched by Tony's absence. Warrisden, whom Stretton had met but the once on board the _City of Bristol_, was no less affected. On a day of that summer, during which Tony camped far away on the edge of the Sahara, Warrisden rode down the steep hill from the village of the three poplars on his way to Whitewebs. Once Pamela had ridden along this road between the white wood rails and the black bare stems of trees on a winter's evening of mist. That was more than fifteen months ago. The brown furrows in the fields were now acres of waving yellow; each black clump was now an ambuscade of green, noisy with birds. The branches creaked in a light wind and rippled and shook the sunlight from their leaves, the road glistened like chalk. It was ten o'clock on an August morning, very clear and light. Voices from far away amongst the corn sounded tiny and distinct, like voices heard through a telephone. Round this bend at the thicket corner Pamela had disappeared on that dim, grey evening. How far had she since travelled on the new road, Warrisden wondered. She was at Whitewebs now. He was riding thither to find out.

When he inquired for her at the door, he was at once led through the house into the big garden at the back. Pamela was sitting in a chair at the edge of the lawn under the shade of the great avenue of elms which ran straight from the back of the house to the shallow stream at the garden's boundary. She saw him at once as he came out from the gla.s.s-door on to the gravel, and she rose from her chair. She did not advance to him, but just stood where she was, watching him approach; and in her eyes there was a great perplexity. Warrisden came straight to her over the lawn. There was no hesitation in his manner, at all events. On the other hand, there was no air of a.s.surance. He came with a definite object; so much was evident, but no more. He stopped in front of her and raised his hat. Pamela looked at him and said nothing. She did not even give him her hand. She stood and waited almost submissively, with her troubled eyes resting quietly on his.

"You expected me?" he said.

"Yes. I received your letter this morning."

"You have guessed why I have come?"

"Yes."

"And you are troubled," said Warrisden.

They turned and walked under the branches into the avenue. Overhead there was a bustle of blackbirds and thrushes; a gardener sharpening his scythe in the rose garden made a little rasping sound. Over all the lawn the August sunlight lay warm and golden like a benediction.

"I have come to ask you the old question," said Warrisden. "Will you marry me?"

Pamela gazed steadily ahead as she walked, and she walked very slowly.