the especial mercy and grace of God, I am an Englishman, Sergeant, thank you," he replied coolly in good, if slow and careful French.
The Sergeant smiled grimly behind his big moustache. Himself a cashiered Russian officer, and once a gentleman, he could appreciate a gentleman and approve him in the strict privacy of his soul.
"Slava Bogu!" he roared. "Vile bleu! And now by the especial mercy and grace of the Devil you are a Légionnaire--or will be, if you survive the making...." and added sotto voce, "Are you a degraded dog of a broken officer? If so, you can claim to be appointed to the élèves caporaux as a non-commissioned officer on probation, if you have a photo of yourself in officer's uniform. Thus you will escape all recruit-drill and live in hope to become, some day, Sergeant, even as I," and the (for a Sergeant of the Legion) decent-hearted fellow smote his vast chest.
"I thank you, Sergeant," was the drawled reply. "You really dazzle me--but I am not a degraded dog of a broken officer."
"Gospodi pomilui!" roared the incensed Sergeant. "Ne me donnez de la gabatine, pratique!" and, for a second, seemed likely to strike the cool and insolent recruit who dared to bandy words with a Sergeant of the Legion. His eyes bulged, his moustache bristled, and his scarlet face turned purple as he literally showed his teeth.
"Go easy, old chap," spoke a quiet voice, in English, close beside the Englishman. "That fellow can do you to death if you offend him," and the recruit, turning, beheld a grey-moustached, white-haired elderly man, bronzed, lined, and worn-looking--a typical French army vielle moustache--an "old sweat" from whose lips the accents of a refined English gentleman came with the utmost incongruity.
The youth's face brightened with interest. Obviously this old dear was a public-school, or 'Varsity man, or, very probably, an ex-British officer.
"Good egg," quoth he, extending a hand behind him for a surreptitious shake. "See you anon, what?"
"Yes, you'll all come to the Seventh Company. We are below strength," said Legionary John Bull, in whose weary eyes had shone a new light of interest since they fell upon this compatriot of his own caste and kidney.
A remarkably cool and nonchalant recruit--and surely unique in the history of the Legion's "blues" in showing absolutely no sign of privation, fear, stress, criminality, poverty, depression, anxiety, or bewilderment!
"Now, what'n hell is he doin' in thet bum outfit?" queried the Bucking Bronco of his friend John Bull, who kept as near as possible to the Englishman whom he had warned against ill-timed causticity of humour.
"He's some b'y, thet b'y, but he'd better quit kickin'. He's a way-up white man I opine. What's 'e a'doin' in this joint? He's a gay-cat and a looker. He's a fierce stiff sport. He has sand, some--sure. Yep," and Mr. Hiram Cyrus Milton checked himself only just in time from defiling the immaculate and sacred parade-ground, by "signifying in the usual manner" that he was mentally perturbed, and himself in these circumstances of expectoration-difficulty by observing that the boy was undoubtedly "some" boy, and worthy to have been an American citizen had he been born under a luckier star--or stripe.
"I can't place him, Buck," replied the puzzled John Bull, his quiet voice rendered almost inaudible by the shouts, howls, yells and cries of the seething mob of Legionaries who swarmed round the line of recruits, assailing their bewildered ears in all the tongues of Europe, and some of those of Asia and Africa.
"He doesn't look hungry, and he doesn't look hunted. I suppose he is one of the few who don't come here to escape either starvation, creditors, or the Law. And he doesn't look desperate like the average turned-down lover, ruined gambler, deserted husband, or busted bankrupt.... Wonder if he's come here in search of 'Romance'?"
"Wal, ef he's come hyar for his health an' amoosement he'd go to Hell to cool himself, or ter the den of a grizzly b'ar fer gentle stimoolation and recreation. Gee whiz! Didn't he fair git ole Bluebottle's goat? He sure did git nixt him."
"Bit of a contrast to the rest of the gang, what?" remarked John Bull, and indeed the truth of his remark was very obvious.
"Ain't they a outfit o' dodgasted hoboes an' bindlestiffs!" agreed his friend.
Straight as a lance, thin, very broad in the shoulders and narrow of waist and hip; apparently as clean and unruffled as when leaving his golf-club pavilion for a round on the links; cool, self-possessed, haughty, aristocratic and clean-cut of feature, this Englishman among the other recruits looked like a Derby winner among a string of equine ruins in a knacker's yard; like a panther among bears--a detached and separated creature, something of different flesh and blood. Breed is a very remarkable thing, even more distinctive than race, and in this little band of derelicts was another Englishman, a Cockney youth who had passed from street-arab and gutter-snipe, via Reformatory, to hooligan, coster and soldier. No man in that collection of wreckage from Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and the four corners of Europe looked less like the tall recruit than did this brother Englishman.
To Sir Montague Merline, fallen and shattered star of the high social firmament, the sight of him was as welcome as water in the desert, and he thanked Fate for having brought another Englishman to the Legion--and one so debonair, so fine, so handsome, cool and strong.
"There's Blood there," he murmured to himself.
"His shoulders hev bin drilled somewheres, although he's British," added the Bucking one. "Yep. He's one o' the flat-backed push."
"I wonder if he can be a cashiered officer. He's drilled as you say.... If he has been broke for something it hasn't marked him much. Nothing hang-dog there," mused Legionary John Bull.
"Nope. He's a blowed-in-the-glass British aristocrat," agreed the large-minded Hiram Cyrus, "and I opine an ex-member of the commishunned ranks o' the British Constitootional Army. He ain't niver bin batterin' the main-stem for light-pieces like them other hoodlums an' toughs an' smoudges. Nope. He ain't never throwed his feet fer a two-bit poke-out.... Look at that road-kid next 'im! Ain't he a peach? I should smile! Wonder the medicine-man didn't turn down some o' them chechaquos...."
And, truly, the draft contained some very queer odd lots. By the side of the English gentleman stood a big fat German boy in knicker-bockers and jersey, bare-legged and wearing a pair of button-boots that had belonged to a woman in the days when they still possessed toe-caps. Pale face, pale hair, and pale eyes, conspired to give him an air of terror--the first seeming to have the hue of fright, the second to stand en brosse with fear, and the last to bulge like those of a hunted animal.
Presumably M. le Médicin-Major must have been satisfied that the boy was eighteen years of age, but, though tall and robust, he looked nearer fifteen--an illusion strengthened, doubtless, by the knickerbockers, bare calves, and button-boots. If he had enlisted in the Foreign Legion to avoid service in the Fatherland, he had quitted the frying-pan for a furnace seven times heated. Possibly he hoped to emulate Messieurs Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. In point of fact, he was a deserter (driven to the desperate step of fleeing across the French frontier by a typical Prussian non-commissioned officer), and already wishing himself once more zwei jahriger in the happy Fatherland.
Already, to his German soul and stomach, the lager-bier of Munich, the sausage, zwieback, and kalte schnitzel of home, seemed things of the dim and distant past, and unattainable future.
Next to him stood a gnarled and knotted Spaniard, whose face appeared to be carven from his native mahogany, and whose ragged clothing--grimy, oily, blackened--proclaimed him wharfside coal-heaver, dock-rat, and longshoreman. What did he among the Legion's blues? Was it lack of work, was it slow starvation? Or excess of temper and a quick
