I wondered if high nervous tension made one more susceptible, or whether the day was really hotter than usual. . . .
Suddenly, the man on my right leapt back, shouted, spun round and fell to the ground, his rifle clattering at my feet.
I turned and stooped over him. It was the wretched Guantaio, shot through the middle of his face.
As I bent down, I was suddenly sent crashing against the wall, as Lejaune literally sprang at me.
"By God!" he roared. "You turn from your place again and I'll blow your head off! Duty, you dog! Get to your duty! What have you to do with this carrion, you cursed, slinking, cowering, hiding shirker . . ." and as I turned back into my embrasure, he picked up the choking, moaning Guantaio and flung him into the place from where he had fallen.
"Stay there, you rotten dog," he shouted, "and if you slide out of it, I'll pin you up with bayonets through you," and he forced the dying wretch into the embrasure so that he was wedged in position, with his head and shoulders showing through the aperture between the crenellations on either side of him.
"I'll have no skulking malingerers here," he roared. "You'll all stay in those embrasures alive or dead, while there's an Arab in sight. . . ."
Suddenly the Arab fire dwindled and slackened and then ceased. Either they had had enough of our heavy and accurate fire, or else some new tactics were going to be introduced. I imagined that a camel-man had ridden all round the sand-hills, out of sight, calling the leaders to colloquy with the Emir in command.
Our bugles sounded the "Cease fire."
"Stand easy! . . . Wounded lie down where they are," rang out Lejaune's voice, and some half-dozen men sank to the ground in their own blood. I was thankful to see that Michael was not among them.
Sergeant Dupré with Cordier, who had been a doctor, went to each in turn, with bandages and stimulants.
"Corporal Boldini," barked Lejaune, "take the men down in three batches. Ten minutes for soupe and a half-litre of wine each. Come back at the 'pas gymnastique' if you hear the 'Assembly' blown. . . . St. André, replenish ammunition. Each man to have a hundred. . . . Stop that bandaging, Cordier, and stir yourself. . . ."
When my turn came, later, to go below, I was more thankful for the comparative darkness and coolness of the caserne than for the soupe and wine even, for my head was splitting.
"'Moriturus te saluto,'" said Cordier, as he raised his mug of wine.
"Don't talk rot," said I. "You're no more moriturus than--Madame la République."
"I shall be dead before sunset," replied Cordier. "This place will be a silent grave shortly . . . 'Madame la République--morituri te salutant!' . . ." and he drank again.
"He's fey," said Michael. "Anyhow, better to die fighting than to be done in by Lejaune afterwards. . . . If I go, I'd like to take that gentle adjudant with me. . . ."
"He's a topping soldier," I said.
"Great," agreed Michael. "Let's forgive him."
"We will, if he dies," said I. "I am afraid that he'll see to it that he needs some forgiving, if he and we survive this show, and he gets control again. . . ."
"Yes," said Michael. "Do you know, I believe he's torn both ways when a man's hit. The brute in him says, 'That's one for you, you damned mutineer,' and the soldier in him says, 'One more of a tiny garrison gone.'"
"He's a foul brute," I agreed. "He absolutely flung two wounded, suffering men back into their embrasures--and enjoyed doing it."
"Partly enjoyment and partly tactics," said Michael wiping his lips, and lighting a cigarette. "He's going to give the Arabs the idea that not a man has been killed. Or else that he has so many men in the fort that another takes the place of each one that falls. . . . The Touaregs have no field-glasses, and to them a man in an embrasure is a man. . . ."
"What about when there are too few to keep up any volume of fire?" I asked.
"He may hope for relief before then," hazarded Michael.
"He does," put in St. André, who had just joined us and taken a seat at the table. "Dupré told me so. The wily beggar has kept the two goums outside every night lately--presumably ever since he knew of the conspiracy. They had orders to go, hell for leather, to Tokotu, and say the fort was attacked, the moment they heard a rifle fired, inside or out."
"By Jove!" I exclaimed. "Of course! He wouldn't send to Tokotu to ask for help in quelling a mutiny of his own men, before it happened--but he wouldn't mind a column arriving because a goum had erroneously reported an attack on the fort."
"Cunning lad!" agreed Michael. "And he knew that when the conspiracy was about to bloom and he nipped it in the bud, he'd be pretty shorthanded after it, if he should be attacked--even by a small raiding party out for a lark!"
"Yes," said Cordier. "He saved his face and he saved the fort too. If a shot had been fired at the mutineers, the goums would have scuttled off as ordered, and the relief-column from Tokotu would have found an heroic Lejaune cowing and guarding a gang of mutineers. . . . As it is, they'll know to-morrow morning, at Tokotu, that the place is invested, and they'll be here the next day."
"Question is--where shall we be by then?" I observed.
"In Hell, dear friends," smiled Cordier.
"Suppose the goums were chopped in the oasis?" said Michael. "Taken by surprise, as we were."
"What I said to Dupré!" replied Cordier. "But Lejaune was too old a bird. They camped in the oasis by day, but were ordered to be out at night, and patrol separately, one north to south on the east and the other on the west, a half-circle each, from sunset to sunrise, Dupré says . . . Likely they'd have been chopped in the oasis in the daytime all right, sound asleep--but they wouldn't be caught at dawn. They were well outside the enveloping movement from the oasis when the Arabs surrounded the place, and the goums would be off to Tokotu at the first shot or sooner. . . . By the time . . ."
"Up with you," shouted Boldini, and we hurried back to the roof and resumed our stations. The wounded were again in their places, one or two lying very still in them, others able to stand.
On either side of me, a dead man stood wedged into his embrasure, his rifle projecting before him, his elbows and the slope of the parapet keeping him in position.
I could see no sign of life from my side of the fort. Nothing but sand and stones over which danced the blinding aching heat-haze.
Suddenly there was a cry from Schwartz on the look-out platform.
"The palms," he shouted and pointed. "They're climbing them." He raised his rifle and fired.
Those were his last words. A volley rang out a minute later, and he fell.
Bullets were striking the wall against which I stood, upon its inner face. Arab marksmen had climbed to the tops of the palms of the oasis, and were firing down upon the roof. From all the sand-hills round, the circle of fire broke out again.
"Rapid fire at the palms," shouted Lejaune. "Sergeant Dupré,
