and suddenly Blondin's sharp, clear order:
"Halte! ... Formez le carré! ... Attention pour les feux de salve!" as, with incredible rapidity, an avalanche of horsemen appeared over a ridge and bore down upon them in a cloud of dust, with wild howls of "Allah Akbar" ... "Lah illah il Allah!" and a rising united chant "Ul-ul-ul-ul Ullah Akbar."
Swiftly the trained legionaries dismounted, knelt their camels in a ring, took cover behind them, and, with loaded rifles, awaited their leader's orders. Coolly Blondin estimated the number of this band of The-Forgotten-of-God, the blue-clad, Veiled Men of the desert.... Not more than twenty or thirty. They would never have attacked had not their scout taken the little caravan to be one of traders, some portion of a migrating tribe, or, perchance, a little gang of smugglers, traders of the Ouled-Ougouni or the Ouled-Sidi-Sheikhs, or possibly gun-running Chambaa taking German rifles from Tripoli to Morocco—a rich prey, indeed, if this were so. Each Chambi would fight like Iblis himself though, if Chambaa they were, for such are fiends and devils, betrayers of hospitality, slayers of guests, defilers of salt, spawn of Jehannum, who were the sons and fathers of murderers and liars. Moreover, they would be doubly watchful, suspicious, and resolute if they, French subjects, were smuggling German guns across French territory into Morocco under the very nose of the Bureau Arabe.... However, there were but nine of them, in any case, so Ul-ul-ul-ul-ul Ullah Akbar!
"Don't fire till I do—and then at the horses, and don't miss," shouted Blondin.
The avalanche swept down, and lances were lowered, two-handed swords raised, and guns and pistols presented—for the Touareg fires from the saddle at full gallop.
Blondin waited.
Blondin fired.... The leading horse and rider crashed to the ground and rolled like shot rabbits. Eight rifles spoke almost simultaneously, and seven more men and horses spun in the dust. At the second volley from the Nine, the Touaregs broke, bent their horses outward from the centre of the line, and fled. All save one, who either could not, or would not, check his maddened horse. Him Blondin shot as his great sword split the skull of Fritz Bauer, whose poor shooting, for which he was notorious, had cost him his life. "Cessez le feu," cried Blondin, as one or two shots were fired after the retreating Arabs. "They won't come back, so don't waste cartridges.... See what hero can catch me a horse."
As he coolly examined the ghastly wound of the dying Fritz Bauer, he observed to the faithful Jean Kebir "Habet!" and added—
"Nine little Légionnaires—
But one fired late
When a Touareg cut at him—
And so there were Eight."
"Eh bien, mon Capitaine?" inquired Kebir.
"N'importe, mon enfant!" smiled Monsieur Blondin, and turned his attention to the property and effects of the dying man....
"We shall hear more of these Forsaken-of-God before long," observed Jean Kebir when the eight were once more upon their way.
They did. Just before sunset, as they were silhouetted against the fiery sky in crossing a sandhill ridge, there was a single shot, and Georges Grondin, the cook, grunted, swayed, observed "Je suis bien touché"," and fell from his camel.
Gazing round, Blondin saw no signs of the enemy. The plain was empty of life—but there might be hundreds of foemen behind the occasional aloes, palmettos, and Barbary cacti; crouching in the driss, or the thickets of lentisks and arbutus and thuyas. Decidedly a place to get out of. If a party of Touaregs had ambushed them there, they might empty every saddle without showing a Targui nose....
A ragged volley was fired from the right flank.
"Ride for your lives," he shouted, and set an excellent example to the other seven.
"What of Grondin?" asked Kebir, bringing his mehari alongside that of Blondin.
"Let the dead bury their dead," was the reply. (Evidently the fool had not realized that the raison d'être of this expedition was to get one, Jean Blondin, safe to Maroc!)
An hour or so later, in a kind of little natural fortress of stones, boulders, and rocks, they encamped for the night, a sharp watch being kept. But while Monsieur Blondin slept, Jean Kebir, who was attached to Georges Grondin, partly on account of his music and partly on account of his cookery, crept out, an hour or so before dawn, and stole back along the track, in the direction from which they had come.
He found his friend at dawn, still alive; but as he had been neatly disembowelled and the abdominal cavity filled with salt and sand and certain other things, he did not attempt to move him. He embraced his cher Georges, bade him farewell, shot him, and returned to the little camp.
As the cavalcade proceeded on its way, Monsieur Blondin, stimulated by the brilliance and coolness of the glorious morning, and by high hopes of escape, burst into song.
"Eight little Légionnaires
Riding from 'ell to 'eaven,
A wicked Targui shot one—
And then there were Seven,"
improvised he.
Various reasons, shortness of food and water being the most urgent, made it desirable that they should reach and enter a small ksar that day.
Towards evening, the Seven beheld what was either an oasis or a mirage—a veritable eye-feast in any case, after hours of burning desolate desert, the home only of the horned viper, the lizard, and the scorpion.
It proved to be a small palm-forest, with wells, irrigating-ditches, cultivation, pigeons, and inhabitants. Cultivators were hoeing, blindfolded asses were wheeling round and round noria wells, veiled women with red babooshes on their feet bore brightly coloured water-vases on their heads. Whitewashed houses came into view, and the cupola of an adobe-walled kuba.
Jean Kebir was sent on to reconnoitre and prospect, and to use his judgment as to whether his six companions—good men and true, under a pious vow of silence—might safely enter the oasis, and encamp.
While they awaited his return, naked children came running towards them clamouring for gifts. They found the riders dumb, but eloquent of gesture—and the gestures discouraging.
Some women brought clothes and commenced to wash them in an irrigation stream, on some flat stones by a bridge of palm trunks. The six sat motionless on their camels.
A jet-black Haratin boy brought a huge basket of Barbary figs and offered it—as a gift that should bring a reward. At a sign from Blondin, Mohamed the Turk took it and threw the boy a mitkal.
"Salaam," said he.
"Ya, Sidi, Salaam aleikoum," answered the boy, with a flash of perfect teeth.
Blondin glared at Mohamed. Could not the son of a camel remember that the party was dumb—pious men under a vow of silence? It was their only chance of avoiding discovery and exposure as accursed Roumis5 when they were near the habitations of men.
A burst of music from tom-tom, derbukha, and raita broke the heavy silence, and then a solo on the raita, the "Muezzin of Satan," the instrument of the provocative
