CHOC

I

The first rays of the morning sun were stealing up the palm-bordered

roads towards Sidi-bel-Abbès, above whose ramparts the minaret of the

great mosque blazed white in the sky. Eighty miles from Oran on the

coast, and the headquarters of the Foreign Legion, Sidi-bel-Abbès is

surely one of the strangest cities on earth.

It was built by the Foreign Legion, it is swept and garnished by the

Foreign Legion, it is held against the Arabs by the Foreign Legion.

At night the electric lights round the bandstand of the Foreign

Legion on the Place Sadi Carnot blaze against the Algerian stars,

whilst the Muezzins on the balconies of the minarets keep watch over

Islam and their voices send north, south, east and west the cry that

was old in the time of Sindbad the Sailor!

_All' il Allah_--God is great.

But the marvel of Sidi-bel-Abbès is not the fact that here Edison and

Strauss face Mahommed in the form of his priests, nor the flower

gardens blooming on the face of the desert, nor the roads along which

the Arabs stalk and the automobiles dash. The marvel of

Sidi-bel-Abbès lies in the Legion.

When France found herself faced with the problem of Algeria, that is

to say, the problem of infinite wastes of rock and sand inhabited by

a foe mobile and ungraspable as the desert wind, she formed the

Legion.

She called to the wastrels, the criminals, the despairing and the

impoverished of every country and every city--and they came.

Men of genius, street sweepers, artists, doctors, engineers--it would

be difficult to touch a profession, a race or a grade of intellect

not to be found in the Legion.

General de Négrier said that the Legion could do anything--from the

building of a bridge, to the writing of an opera, to the painting of

a picture--all the genius that civilization has turned away from its

doors is here at command--for a halfpenny a day.

The sun had touched the upper border of the huge blank eastern wall

of the Legion's barracks and it was still a few minutes before

_réveillé_, when in room Number 6 of the tenth company the

_garde-chambre_ for the day slipped from his bed, stretched and

yawned noiselessly, and glanced round him.

The room was like the ward of a hospital, and the likeness was made

no less striking by the card above each of the twenty beds, a white

card setting out each man's name and number.

Jacques' number, as shown by the card on the bed he had just vacated,

was 7,083.

Jacques Radoub, known always and everywhere as Jacques, _tout court_,

was a small and wiry-looking individual with the face of a _gamin_,

that is to say, the face of a child who is a jester, who may be a

cut-throat, and who is certainly and above all things a Parisian.

Jacques had, in fact, been an Apache by profession, and Monsieur

Lepine had given him the choice between a penitentiary and the

Legion. He chose the Legion, because, as he said, he liked the name

better.

He was quite aware that life in the Legion was as hard as life in a

penitentiary, and he did not care a button about the social

difference; he liked the name better, that was all. He was an artist.

He stood now, for a second, glancing at the others, nineteen men

stretched in all the attitudes of slumber. Germans, French, an

Englishman, an American, a Greek and a Russian. Then, shuffling on

some clothes, he left the room silently as the shadow of a moving cat.

In a moment he was back with a huge jug of steaming coffee, and as he

entered shouting to the others to wake up, the _réveillé_ came from

the barrack yard. The _réveillé_ of the French Army that sounds

every morning across France to find its echo in Algeria.

"Rat tat tat ta, Rat tat tat ta,

Rat tat tat ta ta ta ta.

Rat tat tat ta, Rat tat tat ta,

Rat tat tat ta, tat ta."

In a moment the room was astir. Between the _réveillé_ and the

muster in the barrack yard there was only half an hour, yet in that

half hour the coffee was drunk, the men dressed, the beds made and

the floor swept, Jacques yelling to the others to hurry up, hurry up,

hurry up, as it was his duty to put the completing touch to the

dusting and cleaning and fetch the water.

Then he came tearing down the stairs after the rest, and out in the

barrack yard half cut in two by the blaze of the six o'clock sun, and

under a sky blue as a cornflower, the long, long lines of white-clad

men fell in whilst the echoes roused to the bugles.

Then, led by the bugles, the columns wheeled out of the barrack

gates, making for the great drill ground, where the arms were piled

and the men were exercised at the double.

It was terrific, with the sun-blaze now in their faces, with the sun

beating now on their backs, and, now, with their sides to a furnace

door round and round and round the great parade ground they went, the

dust rising and hanging about them in a haze.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and then the thunder and

movement ceased and the légionnaires, released for a moment after

their first exercise of the day, broke into groups, cigarettes were

lit, and the dust-hazed air filled with the fumes of caporal.

Jacques, though sweating, showed little signs of stress; he had lungs

of leather. Not so Casmir, a man in his company to whom he was

talking.

Casmir was a bitter-looking individual who had once been a Government

clerk. His white uniform was clinging to him with perspiration, and

he was just getting his wind back.

The two men were walking up and down rapidly, for it is impossible to

stand still after half an hour of the double.

"Well," said Casmir, "this finishes me. This is the last time. I'm

off."

He had been threatening for the last week or so to make a bolt.

Jacques, a fountain of wisdom in most things practical, had always

dissuaded him from this fatal course. The man who tries to escape

from the grip of the Legion is, in ninety-nine out of a hundred

cases, brought back, and when he is brought back, Heaven help him.

"Take my advice," said Jacques, "and leave that alone. No good.

Stick it as I have done and make the best of it. I have been at it

four years and ten months to-morrow, and in another two months I walk

out like a gentleman."

"Well," said Casmir, "I have been in it only six months and in

another twelve hours--well, you will see."

"Have your way," said Jacques, "you are a fool. Do you think a

clever man like myself would not have cut and run years ago had there

been a decent chance? I weighed it all ages ago. The chance is too

small and the punishment too big. It's impossible to drill sense

into a head like yours, else I'd say, 'Look at me. If running away

is not good enough for me, it's not good enough for you.'"

"All the same, I'm going to do it," said Casmir.

"Then do it and be damned," said Jacques.

The bugle was sounding "Fall in," and the morning exercises went on.

At eleven o'clock, sweating, dusty, fagged out but cheerful, the vast

regiment of légionnaires, wheeling in column formation to the sound

of drums as well as bugles, marched back to barracks.

As they passed through the gates, Jacques flung a word to a small and

dusty figure that was hanging about by the gate. It was Choc.

He had picked up Choc one night, a year ago, in the town. A dog that

seemed compounded of all the known breeds of dogs--with the exception

of the noblest.

Choc was dust-coloured, his hair stood in permanent bristle upon his

shoulders, and he was terrific in battle; he had fought everything in

Sidi-bel-Abbès and in the negro village that lies by the parade

ground of the Foreign Legion, and without any manner of doubt, his

family tree, had it been worked back, would have disclosed an Irish

terrier somewhere in the not remote distance. But the fighting

qualities of Choc made less appeal to Jacques than the fact that he

was an out and out blackguard, an expert thief, an Apache.

I have said that Choc was hanging about the gate. That was the

impression he gave one. It was not the honest waiting of a dog for

its master, it was the waiting of a confederate for his mate at a

public-house door or the corner of a race-course. There was no

tail-wagging. As the column passed in, the dust-coloured one,

sniffing about, did not even cast an eye at Jacques. Then, when the

last files had passed the gateway, he slunk in after them and hung

about in the courtyard till Jacques, who was a friend of the cook,

came out of the cook-house with a bone for him.

This happened every day. Choc, who slept in some hole or corner of

the town best known to himself, paid two daily visits to the

barracks, at eleven and six.

At eleven o'clock he got a bone or by chance a bit of meat, at six

o'clock he appeared to accompany his master into the town.

At six o'clock every day the work of the Legion is over, and you may

see the légionnaires, spick and span, streaming through the barrack

gates to the town, there to amuse themselves as best they can. They

have no money. Literally no money, save what is sent to them by

friends or relatives. The halfpenny a day paid them by Government

scarcely serves for tobacco; they have to buy their own soap, mostly,

and washing is a big item in a regiment where white fatigue uniforms

of washable material are worn, and must be worn speckless.

Jacques had taught Choc a lot of tricks. In the Place Sadi Carnot of

an evening, with the band playing a march, you might have seen Choc

on his hind legs marching up and down before his master. Visitors to

Sidi-bel-Abbès, attracted by the animal's queer appearance and his

tricks, would question Jacques about him, and the result was nearly

always profitable to Jacques. It was said that Choc stole cigarettes

for him in the native quarters of the town, sneaking packets from the

Moslem traders' stalls whilst Jacques held the latter in light

conversation, and not only cigarettes, but articles more bulky and

more valuable.

To-day, Jacques, having given Choc his bone and dismissed him, was

turning to enter the barracks when he ran into the arms of Corporal

Klein.

"Ah, there's that dog of yours again," said Klein. "I was looking

for you to tell you. The Colonel says he has had enough of him, and

he's to be shot."

Jacques swore the great oath of the Legion--which is unprintable.

"Shot--and what for?"

"Biting the sentry. It was last night after you had come back from

the town. Seguer was on duty and the beast stuck about the gate, and

Seguer tried to make him go and got bitten in the foot, right through

his boot."

"He must have kicked him," said Jacques.

"Who knows? Not only that, but the Colonel says he has been having

reports about you and him and your doings in the town, says that the

Legion has enough blackguards in it without enlisting four-footed

ones, and there you are, the order is promulgated, the dog has to go."

"Catch him, then," said Jacques.

Klein, a big man, in spite of his name, came towards Choc, who was

busy with his bone. Jacques whistled shrilly between his teeth, and

the dog, picking up his treasure, started for the barrack gate.

Flying pebbles and dust marked his path, and he was gone.

Klein laughed. He was a good-natured man, a friend of Jacques' and

he had no grudge against the dog.

"All the same," said he, "the dog has to go, you know what it is.

The order has been given and once the order has been given there is

no staying it."

Jacques knew quite well what it was. He knew the Colonel and he knew

the Legion.

Choc might evade capture, but caught he would be, sooner or later.

He said nothing, however. The bugle call for soup rang through the

yard, and as he was orderly of his room he had to rush off to the

kitchen, from where in a moment he returned, bearing a steaming can

for his men; then he had to return for bread.

No one noticed the least change in him, and if there had been a

change in him nobody would have bothered. The Legion never bothers

about anything, and the most monstrous happenings pass with scarcely

a comment from the hearers and beholders.

All that afternoon Jacques was engaged on scout-patrol manoeuvres,

and at six o'clock, spick and span, he left the barrack yard for the

town.

Choc was waiting for him at the gate, but not close to it. The

sentry, having his orders, had tried to lure him in, but Choc,

alarmed by this unaccustomed civility, had removed himself a full

hundred yards away, where he was sitting with his stump of a tail

sticking out straight behind him.

He followed Jacques.

But Jacques did not make direct for the town. He skirted the

ramparts till he came to the western side, where the great rough

yellow wall was blazing in the light of the sinking sun, then,

getting into the ditch, he followed the wall a certain distance,

stopped, glanced up and down the ditch to make sure that no one was

observing him, and then drew a stone from the wall, disclosing a hole

in which was seated, like a squat gnome, a little fat linen bag.

This was his _cache_. The money he had collected by one means or

another during the last four years and ten months. It was a fair

sum, partly in gold, partly in silver, and he had intended it for

that day, now only two months distant, when, to use his own words, he

would walk out of the Legion like a gentleman. He was going to use

it for a different purpose now, and placing the bag in his pocket,

without troubling to close the _cache_, he turned, and, followed by

the dog, came back along the ditch.

Stars like the points of needles were piercing the pansy-coloured sky

when Jacques and his companion reached the Place Sadi Carnot. The

Place was crowded, légionnaires, visitors and townsfolk crowding

around the bandstand, some seated, others standing about in groups.

The warm air was filled with the scents of jessamine and garlic, the

African earth, caporal and cigar smoke, all vague and blended to form

the smell of Sidi-bel-Abbès _en fête_.

Then the electric lights blazed out and the band struck up. They

were playing the _Sambre et Meuse_, that splendid march of the French

Army, spirited enough almost to raise the slain, but Jacques did not

beat time with his foot, nor, when Choc glanced up at him, did he

give the dog the signal to start his tricks.

He walked about for a while, showing himself to his companions, then

he disappeared from the Place and, followed by the dog, sought the

native streets.

Sidi-bel-Abbès is slashed across by two great boulevards running

north and south, and east and west. Here you find plate glass

windows and Paris jewellery, motor-cars, _cocottes_, American women

in blue veils. Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London and New York all

represented by some fragment of their social life, just as in the

Legion they are represented, each, by some form of the universal

diseases that prey on society.

Behind these gay boulevards you find the real Sidi-bel-Abbès.

You walk into the country of Islam. Passing through the narrow

bazaars, the moon above your head becomes the moon that lit the three

Calenders, and the lamps that light the gloom of the booths are the

lamps of Aladdin.

The légionnaires swarm here, yet their blue and red dress uniform

does not detract from the Oriental charm; they have about them some

subtle touch of Africa that blends with the surroundings.

Jacques, followed by his companion, passed through several of the

narrow streets till he reached an alley where, at a door set in the

wall, he knocked.

The door opened and he went in, leaving Choc to wait for him outside,

seated on the ground. Arab dogs came down the alley, saw the

stranger, advanced, burbling and bristling, recognized him, and

passed on; the rising moon laid a pale finger on the wall-top and

from far away across the faint noises of the city came the cry of the

priest from the balcony of the minaret calling the faithful to

prayer; and now a window opened somewhere and the laughter of a girl,

the tinkle-tankle of a guitar, and a snatch of song blew away on the

night wind and then snapped off to the closing of the casement.

This was the Spanish quarter of the Moslem town, and perhaps the

wickedest; outside the jurisdiction of the Bureau Arabe, and visited

only by the shadiest characters among the European population of the

place.

Twenty minutes passed and then the door opened and a man came out.

He was dressed in mufti, but the alteration in dress did not deceive

Choc. He knew his master at once, and, rising, followed him down the

alley into the street.

Jacques had made up his mind to escape from the Legion. It was the

maddest act of his life.

First of all, he was not an ordinary légionnaire, but a criminal

serving for rehabilitation. If he managed to escape he would have to

begin life over again without papers. It would be impossible for him

to find work in France; he must go to England or some other country

where papers were not required. Then, again, he had only to wait two

short months and he would secure his rehabilitation and be able to

leave the Legion and obtain work.

Though he had started in life as an Apache, Commonsense had been

talking to him for the last two years or so, pointing out that a

franc made by robbery is not worth two sous made by work. The rate

of exchange is always against the criminal; so appalling is it that

one may wonder at any man with an ounce of brains doing business on

such ruinous terms. Jacques had recognized this, and he had

determined, on finding himself his own man again, to take to honest

ways.

He was now ruining all the plans he had made for that future so

nearly in his grasp. Throwing everything away--for a dog.

As a matter of fact, there was no struggle involved in the giving up

of his plans. Cold plans for the future dictated by commonsense did

not stand for a moment before the warm desire to keep the dog and

flout Authority. Choc was his mate and he was not going to lose him.

Passing a shop where viands were sold, he bought two sausages and put

them in his pocket, then he walked on, striking towards the European

quarter.

The band was still playing in the Place Sadi Carnot and the faint

sound of it came on the warm, perfumed wind.

To Jacques it seemed a month ago since he had left the Place, and it

seemed extraordinary to hear the band at it still.

But he had little time to think of anything except his objective, and

that was Oran, eighty miles away.

There is a railway between Sidi-bel-Abbès and Oran, that is to say, a

trap for runaway légionnaires. Jacques was not such a fool as to use

the railway, or even to walk along the embankments. Time was of no

matter to him. The pursuit would be after him before he could reach

Oran, even by rail; he had to trust entirely to his disguise and to

luck. He recognized that Choc would be his main difficulty; he could

not disguise Choc.

He had lit a cigarette and he passed along to the city gates without

let or hindrance; a bourgeois taking an evening stroll with his dog

excited no comment. At the gates it was the same, and, walking with

a leisurely manner with his hands in his pockets, he found the road

to Oran and struck along it. It lay before him white in the

moonlight, and beyond the gardens of the town, on either side,

stretched the sand wastes and rocks of a miserable plain that in

daylight is yellow, parched, sun-bitten and murderous in its

desolation. A few stunted palms broke the sky-line on the right,

whilst on the left could be seen the lights of the railway and the

furnace-lit smoke of a train just coming in from Oran. Jacques,

noting these, looked up and down the road, to right, to left, not a

soul was there to be seen. Then, calling to Choc, he struck into his

stride.

Nearly five years of life in the Legion had rendered him almost

impervious to weariness in marching. Five kilometres an hour is the

regulation pace in full marching order and laden with rifle,

ammunition, and equipment. Forty kilometres a day is the minimum on

active service.

Five miles or so from Sidi-bel-Abbès a mounted police patrol passed

Jacques without halting and with scarcely a glance at him, but they

were going towards the town, and would know nothing of his escape.

Then, thinking things over in his mind, he reflected that the fact of

his escape would be still unknown even at the barracks, where it was

just turning-in time. Légionnaires sometimes outstepped their leave.

The pursuit would not be on his heels till to-morrow morning, when,

definitely declared absent, his description would be circulated,

right to Oran.

But this did not incline him to slacken his pace. He kept on

steadily, till he had reached a point some ten miles from the town,

when he took his seat by the wayside, took the sausages, which were

wrapped up in a sheet of the _Journal d'Oran_, from his pocket, and

divided one with Choc. Then, noticing a prickly pear bush growing

near by, he cut some of the fruit and carefully peeled it.

It was their first meal in the desert, and they had four, for it was

not till the morning of the third day of his escape that Jacques

entered Oran.