Our bugler blew the "Cease fire," and on the order, "Unload! Stand easy," I looked round as I straightened myself up, unloaded my rifle, and stood at ease.
It was a strange sight.
At every embrasure there was a caricature of a soldier--in some cases almost naked--at his feet a litter of spent cartridges, and, in one or two instances, a pool of blood. As I looked, one of these wild figures, wearing nothing but a shirt and trousers, slowly sank to the ground, sat a moment and then collapsed, his head striking with a heavy thud. It was Blanc, the sailor.
Lejaune strode over from his place in the middle of the roof.
"Here," he shouted. "No room nor time, yet, for shirkers," and putting his arms round the man, dragged him from the ground and jerked him heavily into the embrasure.
There he posed the body, for Blanc appeared to be dead. Into the embrasure it leaned, chest on the upward sloping parapet, and elbows wedged against the outer edges of the massive uprights of the crenellation.
Lejaune placed the rifle on the flat top of the embrasure, a dead hand under it, a dead hand clasped round the small of the butt, the heel-plate against the dead shoulder, a dead cheek leaning against the butt.
"Continue to look useful, my friend, if you can't be useful," he jeered; and as he turned away, he added:
"Perhaps you'll see that route to Morocco if you stare hard enough."
"Now then, Corporal Boldini," he called, "take every third man below, get them fed and properly dressed, and double back here if you hear a shot, or the 'Assembly' blown. If there's no attack, take below one-half of the rest. . . . Then the remainder. . . . Have all klim-bim and standing-to again in thirty minutes. . . . You, St. André, and Maris, more ammunition. A hundred rounds per man. . . . Cordier, pails of water. Fill all water-flasks and then put filled pails there above the gate. . . . They may try another bonfire against it. . . . Sergeant Dupré, no wounded whatsoever will go below. Bring up the medical panniers. . . . Are all prisoners out of the cells?" . . .
He glared around, a competent, energetic, courageous soldier. "And where's the excellent Schwartz?" he went on. "Here, you dog, up on to that look-out platform and watch those palm trees--till the Arabs get you. . . . Watch that oasis, I say. . . . You'll have a little while up there for the thinking out of some more plots. . . ." And he laid his hand on the butt of his revolver, as he scowled menacingly at the big German.
Schwartz sprang up the ladder leading to the high look-out platform that towered far above the roof of the fort. It was the post of danger.
"Now use your eyes, all of you," bawled Lejaune, "and shoot as soon as you see anything to shoot at."
Ten minutes or so later, Boldini returned with the men whom he had taken below, now all dressed as for morning parade. They took their places and the Corporal hurried round the roof, touching each alternate man on the shoulder.
"Fall out, and go below," he ordered.
Ten minutes or so later they were back, fed, clothed, and in their right minds. Gone like magic were all signs of cafard, mutiny, and madness. These were eager, happy soldiers, revelling in a fight.
With the third batch I went, hoping to be back before anything happened. Not a rifle-shot broke the stillness, as we hastily swallowed soupe and coffee, and tore at our bread.
"Talk about 'They came to curse and remained to pray,'" murmured Michael, with bulging cheeks. "These jolly old Arabs removed our curse and remained for us to slay. There'll be no more talk of mutiny for a while."
"Nor of anything else, old bean," I replied, "if they remain to prey."
"Never get in here," said Michael. "They couldn't take this place without guns."
"Wonder what they're doing?" I mused.
"Diggin' themselves in on the crests of the sand-hills," said Michael. "They can't rush us, so they're going to do some fancy shooting."
"Yes. What about a regular siege?" I asked. "And killing only one of us to a score of them that we kill? We should be too few to man the four walls eventually."
"What about relief from Tokotu?" suggested Michael.
"Over a hundred miles away!" I replied, "and no wires. Nor any chance to heliograph across a level desert, even if they could see so far."
"Chance for the médaille militaire," grinned Michael. "Go to Lejaune and say, 'Fear not! Alone I will walk through the encircling foe and bring you relief.' Then you walk straight through them, what?"
"Might be done at night," I mused.
"I don't think," said Michael. "These merry men will sit round the place in a circle like a spiritualists' séance, holding hands, rather than let anyone slip through them."
"Full moon too," I observed. "Anyhow, I'm very grateful to the lads for rolling up. . . ."
"Shame to shoot 'em," agreed Michael, and then Boldini hounded us all back to the roof, and we resumed our stations.
All was ready, and the Arabs could come again as soon as they liked.
Lejaune paced round and round the roof like a tiger in a cage.
"Hi you, there!" he called up to Schwartz. "Can you see nothing?"
"Nothing moving, mon Adjudant," replied Schwartz.
A moment later he shouted something, and his voice was drowned in the rattle and crash of a sudden outbreak of rifle fire in a complete circle all round the fort. The Arabs had lined the nearest sand-hills on all sides of us, and lying flat below the crests, poured in a steady independent fire.
This was a very different thing from their first mad rush up to the very walls, when they hoped to surprise a sleeping fort and swarm up over the walls from each other's shoulders.
They were now difficult to see, and a man firing from his embrasure was as much exposed as an Arab lying flat behind a stone or in a trench scooped in the sand.
There was a man opposite to me, about a hundred yards distant, who merely appeared as a small black blob every few minutes. He must have been lying on a slope or in a shallow sand trench, and he only showed his head for a few seconds when he fired. I felt that either he or I would get hurt, sooner or later, for he, among others, was potting at my embrasure.
It was certainly "fancy shooting" as Michael had said, waiting for the small object, a man's head, to appear for five seconds at a hundred yards' range, and get a shot at it. It was certainly interesting too, and more difficult than rifle-range work, for one's nerves are not steadied nor one's aim improved by the knowledge that one is also being shot at oneself, and by several people.
With unpleasant frequency there was a sharp blow on the wall near my embrasure and sometimes the high wailing song of a ricochet, as the deflected and distorted bullet continued its flight at an angle to the line of its arrival.
The morning wore on and the sun gained rapidly in power.
Unreasonably and unreasoningly I did not expect to be hit, and I was not hit, but I was increasingly conscious of the terrific heat and of a
