Under Two Flags Part 60

"Give me no honor while they sleep yonder. With the dead lies the glory!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE.

"Hold!" cried Cigarette, interrupting herself in her chant in honor of the attributes of war, as the Tringlo's mules which she was driving, some three weeks after the fray of Zaraila, stopped, by sheer force of old habit, in the middle of a green plateau on the outskirts of a camp pitched in its center, and overlooked by brown, rugged scarps of rock, with stunted bushes on their summits, and here and there a maritime pine clinging to their naked slopes. At sight of the food-laden little beasts, and the well-known form behind them, the Tirailleurs, Indigenes, and the Zouaves, on whose side of the encampment she had approached, rushed toward her with frantic shouts, and wild delight, and vehement hurrahs in a tempest of vociferous welcome that might have stunned any ears less used, and startled any nerves less steeled, to military life than the Friend of the Flag. She signed back the shouting, disorderly crowd with her mule-whip, as superbly as though she were a Marshal of France signing back a whole army's mutiny.

"What children you are! You push, and scramble, and tear, like a set of monkeys over a nut. Get out of my way, or I swear you shall none of you have so much as a morsel of black bread--do you hear!"

It was amusing to see how they minded her contemptuous orders; how these black-bearded fire-eaters, the terror of the country, each one of whom could have crushed her in his grasp as a wolf crushes a lamb, slunk back, silenced and obedient, before the imperious bidding of the little vivandiere. They had heeded her and let her rule over them almost as much when she had been seven years old, and her curls, now so dark, had been yellow as corn in the sun.

"Ouf!" growled only one insubordinate, "if you had been a day and night eating nothing but a bit of moist clay, you might be hungry too."

The humiliated supplication of the reply appeased their autocratic sovereign. She nodded her head in a.s.sent.

"I know; I know. I have gone days on a handful of barley-ears. M. le Colonel has his marmitons, and his frica.s.sees, and his fine cuisine where he camps--ho!--but we soldiers have nothing but a hunch of baked chaff. Well, we win battles on it!"

Which was one of the impromptu proverbs that Cigarette was wont to manufacture and bring into her discourse with an air of authority as of one who quotes from profound scholastic lore. It was received with a howl of applause and of ratification. The entrails often gnaw with bitter pangs of famine in the Army of Algiers, and they knew well how sharp an edge hunger gives to the steel.

Nevertheless, the sullen, angry roar of famished men, that is so closely, so terribly like the roar of wild beasts, did not cease.

"Where is Biribi?" they growled. "Biribi never keeps us waiting. Those are Biribi's beasts."

"Right," said Cigarette laconically, with a crack of her mule-whip on to the arm of a Zouave who was attempting to make free with her convoy and purloin a loaf off the load.

"Where is Biribi, then?" they roared in concert, a crowd of eager, wolfish, ravenous, impatient men, hungry as camp fasting could make them, and half inclined even to tear their darling in pieces, since she kept them thus from the stores.

Cigarette uncovered her head with a certain serious grace very rare in her.

"Biribi had made a good end."

Her a.s.sailants grew very quiet.

"Shot?" they asked briefly. Biribi was a Tringlo well beloved in all the battalions.

Cigarette nodded, with a gesture outward to the solitary country. She was accustomed to these incidents of war; she thought of them no more than a girl of civilized life thinks of the grouse or the partridges that are killed by her lovers and brothers.

"I was out yonder, two leagues or more away. I was riding; I was on my own horse; Etoile-Filante. Well I heard shots; of course I made for the place by my ear. Before I got up I saw what was the mischief. There were the mules in a gorge, and Biribi in front of them, fighting, mon Dieu!--fighting like the devil--with three Arbis on him. They were trying to stop the convoys, and Biribi was beating them back with all his might. I was too far off to do much good; but I shouted and dashed down to them. The Arbis heard, Biribi heard; he flew on to them like a tiger, that little Tringlo. It was wonderful! Two fell dead under him; the third took fright and fled. When I got up, Biribi lay above the dead brutes with a dozen wounds in him, if there were one. He looked up, and knew me. 'Is it thee, Cigarette?' he asked; and he could hardly speak for the blood in his throat. 'Do not wait with me; I am dead already.

Drive the mules into camp as quick as thou canst; the men will be thinking me late.'"

"Biribi was always bon enfant," muttered the listening throng; they forgot their hunger as they heard.

"Ah! he thought more of you than you deserve, you jackals! I drew him aside into a hole in the rocks out of the heat. He was dead; he was right. No man could live, slashed about like that. The Arbicos had set on him as he went singing along; if he would have given up the brutes and the stores, they would not have harmed him; but that was not Biribi.

I did all I could for him. Dame! It was no good. He lay very still for some minutes with his head on my lap; then he moved restlessly and tossed about. 'They will think me so late--so late,' he muttered; 'and they are famished by this. There is that letter, too, from his mother for Pet.i.t-Pot-de-Terre; there is all that news from France; I have so much for them, and I shall be so late--so late!' All he thought was that he should be so late into camp. Well, it was all over very soon. I do not think he suffered; but he was so afraid you should not have the food. I left him in the cave, and drove the mules on as he asked.

Etoile-Filante had galloped away; have you seen him home?"

There broke once more from the hearkening throng a roar that shook the echoes from the rocks; but it was not now the rage of famished longing, but the rage of the l.u.s.t for vengeance, and the grief of pa.s.sionate hearts blent together. Quick as the lightning flashes, their swords leaped from their scabbards and shook in the sun-lighted air.

"We will avenge him!" they shouted as with one throat, the hoa.r.s.e cry rolling down the valley like a swell of thunder. If the bonds of discipline had loosed them, they would have rushed forth on the search and to the slaughter, forgetful of hunger, of heat, of sun-stroke, of self-pity, of all things, save the dead Tringlo, whose only fear in death had been lest they should want and suffer through him.

Their adjutants, alarmed by the tumult, hurried to the spot, fearing a bread riot; for the camp was far from supplies, and had been ill victualed for several days. They asked rapidly what was the matter.

"Biribi had been killed," some soldier answered.

"Ah! and the bread not come."

"Yes, mon adjutant; the bread is there, and Cigarette too."

"There is no need for me, then," muttered the adjutant of Zouaves; "the Little One will keep order."

The Little One had before now quelled a mutiny with her pistol at the ringleader's forehead, and her brave, scornful words scourging the insubordinates for their dishonor to their arms, for their treason to the Tricolor; and she was equal to the occasion now. She lifted her right hand.

"We will avenge him. That is of course. The Flag of France never hangs idly when there is a brave life's loss to be reckoned for; I shall know again the cur that fled. Trust to me, and now be silent. You bawl out your oath of vengeance, oh, yes! But you bawled as loud a minute ago for bread. Biribi loved you better than you deserved. You deserve nothing; you are hounds, ready to tear for offal to eat as to rend the foe of your dead friend. Bah!"

The roar of the voices sank somewhat; Cigarette had sprung aloft on a gun-carriage, and as the sun shone on her face it was brilliant with the scorn that lashed them like whips.

"Sang de Dieu!" fiercely swore a Zouave. "Hounds, indeed! If it were anyone but you! When one has had nothing but a s.n.a.t.c.h of raw bullock's meat, and a taste of coffee black with mud, for a week through, is one a hound because one hungers?"

"No," said the orator from her elevation, and her eyes softened wonderfully. In her heart she loved them so well, these wild, barbaric warriors that she censured--"no, one is not a hound because one hungers; but one is not a soldier if one complains. Well! Biribi loved you; and I am here to do his will, to do his work. He came laden; his back was loaded heavier than the mules'. To the front, all of you, as I name you!

Pet.i.t-Pot-de-Terre, there is your old mother's letter. If she knew as much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive! f.a.gotin! Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new--only nine months old! Potele!

Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your pa.s.sions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife as a souvenir; sharpen it on the Arbicos. Poupard, Loup-terrible, Jean Pagnote, Pince-Maille, Louis Magot, Jules Goupil--here! There are your letters, your papers, your commissions.

Biribi forgot nothing. As if you deserved to be worked for, or thought of!"

With which reproach Cigarette relieved herself of the certain pain that was left on her by the death of Biribi; she always found that to work yourself into a pa.s.sion with somebody is the very best way in the world to banish an unwelcome emotion.

The men summoned by their camp-sobriquets, which were so familiar that they had, many of them, fairly forgotten their original names, rallied around her to receive the various packets with which a Tringlo is commonly charged by friends in the towns, or relatives away in France, for the soldiers of African brigades, and which, as well as his convoy of food and his budget of news, render him so precious and so welcome an arrival at an encampment. The dead Biribi had been one of the lightest, brightest, cheeriest, and sauciest of the gay, kindly, industrious wanderers of his branch of the service; always willing to lead; always ready to help; always smoking, singing, laughing, chattering; treating his three mules as an indulgent mother her children; calling them Plick, Plack, et Plock, and thinking of Plick, Plack, et Plock far beyond himself at all times; a merry, busy, smiling, tender-hearted soul, who was always happy, trudging along the sunburned road, and caroling in his joyous voice chansonnettes and gaudrioles to the African flocks and herds, amid the African solitudes. If there were a man they loved, it was Biribi; Biribi, whose advent in camp had always been the signal for such laughter, such abundance, such showers of newspapers, such quant.i.ties of intelligence from that France for tidings of which the hardest-featured veteran among them would ask with a pang at the heart, with a thrill in the words. And they had sworn, and would keep what they had sworn in bitter intensity, to avenge him to the uttermost point of vengeance. Yet five minutes afterward when the provisions Plick, Plack, et Plock had brought were divided and given out, they were shouting, eating, singing, devouring, with as eager a zest, and as hearty an enjoyment, as though Biribi were among them, and did not lie dead two leagues away, with a dozen wounds slashed on his stiffening frame.

"What heartless brutes! Are they always like that?" muttered a gentleman painter who, traveling through the interior to get military sketches, had obtained permission to take up quarters in the camp.

"If they were not like that they could not live a day," a voice answered curtly, behind him. "Do you know what this service is, that you venture to judge them? Men who meet death in the face every five minutes they breathe cannot afford the s.p.a.ce for sentimentalism which those who saunter at ease and in safety can do. They laugh when we are dead, perhaps, but they are true as steel to us while we live--it is the reverse of the practice of the world!"

The tourist started, turned, and looked aghast at the man who had reproved him; it was a Cha.s.seur d'Afrique, who, having spoken, was already some way onward, moving through the press and tumult of the camp to his own regiment's portion of it.

Cigarette, standing by to see that Plick, Plack, and Plock were property baited on the greenest forage to be found, heard, and her eyes flashed with a deep delight.

"Dame!" she thought, "I could not have answered better myself! He is a true soldier, that." And she forgave Cecil all his sins to her with the quick, impetuous, generous pardon of her warm little Gallic heart.

Cigarette believed that she could hate very bitterly; indeed, her power of resentment she rated high among her grandest qualities. Had the little leopard been told that she could not resent to the death what offended her, she would have held herself most infamously insulted.

Yet hate was, in truth, foreign to her frank, vivacious nature; its deadliness never belonged to her, if its pa.s.sion might; and at a trait akin to her, at a flash of sympathetic spirit in the object of her displeasure, Cigarette changed from wrath to friendship with the true instinct of her little heart of gold. A heart which, though it had been tossed about on a sea of blood, and had never been graven with so much as one tender word or one moral principle from the teachings of any creature, was still gold, despite all; no matter the bruises and the stains and the furnace-heats that had done their best to harden it into bronze, to debase it into bra.s.s.

The camp was large, and a splendid picture of color, movement, picturesque combination, and wonderful light and shadow, as the sun-glow died out and the fires were lighted; for the nights were now intensely cold--cold with the cutting, icy, withering bise, and clear above as an Antarctic night, though the days were still hot and dry as flame.

On the left were the Tirailleurs, the Zouaves, the Zephyrs; on the right were the Cavalry and the Artillery; in the center of all was the tent of the chief. Everywhere, as evening fell, the red warmth of fires rose; the caldron of soup or of coffee simmered, gypsy-like, above; the men lounged around, talking, laughing, cooking, story-telling at their pleasure; after the semi-starvation of the last week, the abundance of stores that had come in with other Tringlos besides poor Biribi caused a universal hilarity. The glitter of accouterments, the contents of open knapsacks, the skins of animals just killed for the marmite, the boughs of pines broken for firewood, strewed the ground. Tethered horses, stands of arms, great drums and eagle-guidons, the looming darkness of huge cannon, the blackness, like dromedaries couched, of caissons and ambulance-wagons, the whiteness of the canvas tents, the incessant movement as the crowds of soldiery stirred, and chattered, and worked, and sang--all these, on the green level of the plain, framed in by the towering ma.s.ses of the rugged rocks, made a picture of marvelous effect and beauty.

Cecil, looking at it, thought so; though the harsh and bitter misery which he knew that glittering scene enfolded, and which he had suffered so many years himself--misery of hunger, of cold, of shot-wounds, of racking bodily pains--stole from it, in his eyes, that poetry and that picturesque brilliancy which it bore to the sight of the artist and the amateur. He knew the naked terrors of war, the agony, the travail, the icy chills, the sirocco heats, the grinding routine, the pitiless chastis.e.m.e.nts of its reality; to those who do, it can no longer be a spectacle dressed in the splendid array of romance. It is a fearful tragedy and farce woven close one in another; and its sole joy is in that blood-thirst which men so l.u.s.tfully share with the tiger, and yet shudder from when they have sated it.

It was this knowledge of war, in its bitter and deadly truth, which had made him give the answer that had charmed Cigarette, to the casual visitor of the encampment.