Under Two Flags Part 65

Venetia Corona a.s.sociated with an Algerian trooper! If Cigarette had been of his own s.e.x he could have dashed the white teeth down her throat for having spoken of the two in one breath.

And as, later on, he stretched his gallant limbs out on his narrow camp pallet, tired with a long day in saddle under the hot African sun, the Seraph fell asleep with his right arm under his handsome golden head, and thought no more of this unknown French trooper.

But Cigarette remained wakeful.

She lay curled up in the straw against her pet horse, Etoile Filante, with her head on the beast's glossy flank and her hand among his mane.

She often slept thus in camp, and the horse would lie still and cramped for hours rather than awaken her, or, if he rose, would take the most watchful heed to leave unharmed the slender limbs, the flushed cheeks, the frank, fair brow of the sleeper beneath him, that one stroke of his hoof could have stamped out into a bruised and shapeless ma.s.s.

To-night Etoile Filante slept, and his mistress was awake--wide-awake, with her eyes looking out into the darkness beyond, with a pa.s.sionate mist of unshed tears in them, and her mouth quivering with pain and with wrath. The vehement excitation had not died away in her, but there had come with it a dull, spiritless, aching depression. It had roused her to fury to hear the reference to her rival spoken--of that aristocrat whose name had been on Cecil's lips when he had been delirious. She had kept his secret loyally, she had defended him vehemently; there was something that touched her to the core in the thought of the love with which he had recognized this friend who, in ignorance, spoke of him as of some unknown French soldier. She could not tell what the history was, but she could divine nearly enough to feel its pathos and its pain. She had known, in her short life, more of men and of their pa.s.sions and of their fortunes than many lives of half a century in length can ever do; she could guess, nearly enough to be wounded with its sorrow, the past which had exiled the man who had kept by him his lost mother's ring as the sole relic of years to which he was dead so utterly as though he were lying in his coffin. No matter what the precise reason was--women, or debt, or accident, or ruin--these two, who had been familiar comrades, were now as strangers to each other; the one slumbered in ignorance near her, the other had gone out to the close peril of death, lest the eyes of his friend recognize his face and read his secret. It troubled her, it weighed on her, it smote her with a pang. It might be that now, even now--this very moment, while her gaze watched the dusky shadows of the night chase one another along the dreary plains--a shot might have struck down this life that had been stripped of name and fame and country; even now all might be over!

And Cigarette felt a cold, sickly shudder seize her that never before, at death or danger, had chilled the warm, swift current of her bright French blood. In bitter scorn at herself, she muttered hot oaths between her pretty teeth.

Mere de Dieu! he had touched her lips as carelessly as her own kiss would have touched the rose-bud, waxen petals of a cl.u.s.ter of oleander-blossoms; and she cared for him still!

While the Seraph slept dreamlessly, with the tents of the French camp around him, and the sleepless eyes of Cigarette watched afar off the dim, distant forms of the vedettes as they circled slowly round at their outpost duty--eight leagues off, through a vast desert of shadow and silence, the two hors.e.m.e.n swept swiftly on. Not a word had pa.s.sed between them; they rode close together in unbroken stillness; they were scarcely visible to each other for there was no moon, and storm-clouds obscured the skies. Now and then their horses' hoofs struck fire from a flint-stone, and the flash sparkled through the darkness; often not even the sound of their gallop was audible on the gray, dry, loose soil.

Every rood of the road was sown thick with peril. No frowning ledge of rock, with pine-roots in its clefts, but might serve as the barricade behind which some foe lurked; no knot of cypress-shrubs, black even on that black sheet of shadow, but might be pierced with the steel tubes of leveled, waiting muskets.

Pillaging, burning, devastating wherever they could, in what was to them a holy war of resistance to the infidel and the invader, the predatory tribes had broken out into a revolt which the rout of Zaraila, heavy blow though it had been to them, had by no means ended. They were still in arms, infesting the country everywhere southward; defying regular pursuit, impervious to regular attacks; carrying on the hara.s.sing guerilla warfare at which they were such adepts. And causing thus to their Frankish foe more irritation and more loss than decisive engagements would have produced. They feared nothing, had nothing to lose, and could subsist almost upon nothing. They might be driven into the desert, they might even be exterminated after long pursuit; but they would never be vanquished. And they were scattered now far and wide over the country; every cave might shelter, every ravine might inclose them; they appeared here, they appeared there; they swooped down on a convoy, they carried sword and flame into a settlement, they darted like a flight of hawks upon a foraging party, they picked off any vedette, as he wheeled his horse round in the moonlight; and every yard of the sixty miles which the two gray chargers of the Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique must cover ere their service was done was as rife with death as though its course lay over the volcanic line of an earthquake or a hollow, mined and sprung.

They had reached the center of the plain when the sound they had long looked for rang on their ears, piercing the heavy, breathless stillness of the night. It was the Allah-il-Allah of their foes, the war-cry of the Moslem. Out of the gloom--whether from long pursuit or some near hiding-place they could not tell--there broke suddenly upon them the fury of an Arab onslaught. In the darkness all they could see were the flash of steel, the flame of fierce eyes against their own, the white steam of smoking horses, the spray of froth flung off the snorting nostrils, the rapid glitter of the curved flissas--whether two, or twenty, or twice a hundred were upon them they could not know--they never did know. All of which they were conscious was that in an instant, from the tranquil melancholy around them of the great, dim, naked s.p.a.ce, they were plunged into the din, the fury, the heat, the close, crushing, horrible entanglement of conflict, without the power to perceive or to number their foes, and only able to follow the sheer, simple instincts of attack and of defense. All they were sensible of was one of those confused moments, deafening, blinding, filled with violence and rage and din--an eternity in semblance, a second in duration--that can never be traced, never be recalled; yet in whose feverish excitement men do that which, in their calmer hours, would look to them a fable of some Amadis of Gaul.

How they were attacked, how they resisted, how they struck, how they were encompa.s.sed, how they thrust back those who were hurled on them in the black night, with the north sea-wind like ice upon their faces, and the loose African soil drifting up in clouds of sand around them, they could never have told. Nor how they strained free from the armed ring that circled them, and beat aside the shafts of lances and the blades of swords, and forced their chargers breast to breast against the fence of steel and through the tempest of rage, and blows, and shouts, and wind, and driven sand, cut their way through the foe whose very face they scarce could see, and plunged away into the shadows across the desolation of the plain, pursued, whether by one or by the thousand they could not guess; for the gallop was noiseless on the powdered soil, and the Arab yell of baffled pa.s.sion and slaughterous l.u.s.t was half drowned in the rising of the wind-storm. Had it been day, they would have seen their pa.s.sage across the level table-land traced by a crimson stream upon the sand, in which the blood of Frank and Arab blended equally.

As it was, they dashed headlong down through the darkness that grew yet denser and blacker as the storm rose. For miles the ground was level before them, and they had only to let the half-maddened horses, that had as by a miracle escaped all injury, rush on at their own will through the whirl of the wind that drove the dust upward in spiral columns and brought icy breaths of the north over the sear, sunburned, southern wastes.

For a long s.p.a.ce they had no sense but that of rapid, ceaseless motion through the thick gloom and against the pressure of the violent blasts.

The speed of their gallop and the strength of the currents of air were like some narcotic that drowned and that dizzied perception. In the intense darkness neither could see, neither hear, the other; the instinct of the beasts kept them together, but no word could be heard above the roar of the storm, and no light broke the somber veil of shadow through which they pa.s.sed as fast as leopards course through the night. The first faint streak of dawn grew gray in the east when Cecil felt his charger stagger and sway beneath him, and halt, worn out and quivering in every sinew with fatigue. He threw himself off the animal in time to save himself from falling with it as it reeled and sank to the ground.

"Ma.s.sena cannot stir another yard," he said. "Do you think they follow us still?"

There was no reply.

He strained his sight to pierce the darkness, but he could distinguish nothing; the gloom was still too deep. He spoke more loudly; still there was no reply. Then he raised his voice in a shout; it rang through the silence, and, when it ceased, the silence reigned again.

A deadly chill came on him. How had he missed his comrade? They must be far apart, he knew, since no response was given to his summons; or--the alternative rose before him with a terrible foreboding.

That intense quiet had a repose as of death in it, a ghastly loneliness that seemed filled with desolation. His horse was stretched before him on the sand, powerless to rise and drag itself a rood onward, and fast expiring. From the plains around him not a sound came, either of friend or foe. The consciousness that he was alone, that he had lost forever the only friend left to him, struck on him with that conviction which so often foreruns the a.s.surance of calamity. Without a moment's pause he plunged back in the direction he had come, leaving the charger on the ground to pant its life out as it must, and sought to feel his way along, so as to seek as best he could the companion he had deserted. He still could not see a rood before him, but he went on slowly, with some vague hope that he should ere long reach the man whom he knew death or the fatality of accident alone would keep from his side. He could not feel or hear anything that gave him the slightest sign or clew to aid his search; he only wandered farther from his horse, and risked falling afresh into the hands of his pursuers; he shouted again with all his strength, but his own voice alone echoed over the plains, while his heart stood still with the same frozen dread that a man feels when, wrecked on some barren sh.o.r.e, his cry for rescue rings back on his own ear over the waste of waters.

The flicker of the dawn was growing lighter in the sky, and he could see dimly now, as in some winter day's dark twilight, though all around him hung the leaden mist, with the wild winds driving furiously. It was with difficulty also that he kept his feet against their force; but he was blown onward by their current, though beaten from side to side, and he still made his way forward. He had repa.s.sed the ground already traversed by some hundred yards or more, which seemed the length of many miles in the hurricane that was driving over the earth and sky, when some outline still duskier than the dusky shadow caught his sight; it was the body of a horse, standing on guard over the fallen body of a man.

Another moment and he was beside them.

"My G.o.d! Are you hurt?"

He could see nothing but an indistinct and shapeless ma.s.s, without form or color to mark it out from the brooding gloom and from the leaden earth. But the voice he knew so well answered him with the old love and fealty in it; eager with fear for him.

"When did you miss me, sir? I didn't mean you to know; I held on as long as I could; and when I couldn't no longer, I thought you was safe not to see I'd knocked over, so dark as it was."

"Great Heavens! You are hurt, then?"

"Just finished, sir. Lord! It don't matter. Only you ride on, Mr. Cecil; ride on, I say. Don't mind me."

"What is it? When were you struck? O Heaven! I never dreamt----"

Cecil hung over him, striving in vain through the shadows to read the truth from the face on which he felt by instinct the seal of death was set.

"I never meant you should know, sir. I meant just to drop behind and die on the quiet. You see, sir, it was just this way; they hit me as we forced through them. There's the lance-head in my loins now. I pressed it in hard, and kept the blood from flowing, and thought I should hold out so till the sun rose. But I couldn't do it so long; I got sick and faint after a while, and I knew well enough it was death. So I dropped down while I'd sense left to check the horse and get out of saddle in silence. I hoped you wouldn't miss me, in the darkness and the noise the wind was making; and you didn't hear me then, sir. I was glad."

His voice was checked in a quick, gasping breath; his only thought had been to lie down and die in the solitude so that his master might be saved.

A great sob shook Cecil as he heard; no false hope came to him; he felt that this man was lost to him forever, that this was the sole recompense which the cruelty of Africa would give to a fidelity pa.s.sing the fidelity of woman; these throes of dissolution the only payment with which fate would ever requite a loyalty that had held no travail weary, no exile pain, and no danger worthy counting, so long as they were encountered and endured in his own service.

"Don't take on about it, sir," whispered Rake, striving to raise his head that he might strain his eyes better through the gloom to see his master's face. "It was sure to come some time; and I ain't in no pain--to speak of. Do leave me, Mr. Cecil--leave me, for G.o.d's sake, and save yourself!"

"Did you leave me?"

The answer was very low, and his voice shook as he uttered it; but through the roar of the hurricane Rake heard it.

"That was different, sir," he said simply. "Let me lie here, and go you on. It'll soon be over, and there's naught to be done."

"O G.o.d! is no help possible?"

"Don't take on, sir; it's no odds. I always was a scamp, and scamps die game, you know. My life's been a rare spree, count it all and all; and it's a great, good thing, you see, sir, to go off quick like this. I might have been laid in hospital. If you'd only take the beast and ride on, sir--"

"Hush! hush! Would you make me coward, or brute, or both?"

The words broke in an agony from him. The time had been when he had been himself stretched in what he had thought was death, in just such silence, in just such solitude, upon the bare, baked earth, far from men's aid, and near only to the hungry eyes of watching beasts of prey.

Then he had been very calm, and waited with indifference for the end; now his eyes swept over the remorseless wastes, that were growing faintly visible under the coming dawn, with all the impatience, the terror, of despair. Death had smitten down many beside him; buoyant youth and dauntless manhood he had seen a thousand times swept under the great waves of war and lost forever, but it had an anguish for him here that he would never have known had he felt his own life-blood well out over the sand. The whole existence of this man had been sacrificed for him, and its only reward was a thrust of a lance in a midnight fray--a grave in an alien soil.

His grief fell dully on ears half deafened already to the sounds of the living world. The exhaustion that follows on great loss of blood was upon the soldier who for the last half hour had lain there in the darkness and the stillness, quietly waiting death, and not once seeking even to raise his voice for succor lest the cry should reach and should imperil his master.

The morning had broken now, but the storm had not lulled. The northern winds were sweeping over the plains in tenfold violence, and the rains burst and poured, with the fury of water-spouts on the crust of the parched, cracked earth. Around them there was nothing heard or seen except the leaden, angry mists, tossed to and fro under the hurricane, and the white light of the coming day breaking lividly through the clouds. The world held no place of more utter desolation, more unspeakable loneliness; and in its misery Cecil, flung down upon the sands beside him, could do nothing except--helpless to aid, and powerless to save--watch the last breath grow feebler and feebler, until it faded out from the only life that had been faithful to him.

By the fitful gleams of day he could see the blood slowly ebbing out from the great gap where the lance-head was still bedded with its wooden shaft snapped in two; he could see the drooped head that he had raised upon his knee, with the yellow, northern curls that no desert suns had darkened; and Rake's eyes, smiling so brightly and so bravely still, looked up from under their weary lids to his.

"I'd never let you take my hand before, sir; just take it once now--will you?--while I can see you still."

Their hands met as he asked it, and held each other close and long; all the loyal service of the one life, and all the speechless grat.i.tude of the other, told better than by all words in that one farewell.

A light that was not from the stormy dusky morning shone over the soldier's face.

"Time was, sir," he said, with a smile, "when I need to think as how, some day or another, when I should have done something great and grand, and you was back among your own again, and they here had given me the Cross, I'd have asked you to have done that before all the Army, and just to have said to 'em, if so you liked, 'He was a scamp, and he wasn't thought good for naught; but he kept true to me, and you see it made him go straight, and I aren't ashamed to call him my friend.' I used to think that, sir, though 'twas silly, perhaps. But it's best as it is--a deal best, no doubt. If you was only back safe in camp---"

"O G.o.d! cease! I am not worthy one thought of love like yours."