II

As he took up his position again, a horseman spurring at full speed

came across the plain from the direction of the barracks. As he

passed the drill ground where a couple of thousand légionnaires were

at exercise, a hurricane of cheering followed him and the message

which he had evidently shouted to them.

Then he came at full speed towards the men at the butts. They knew

at once. The order for active service had come.

They were marched back to barracks, yelling, shouting, whistling and

singing. One might have fancied that every man of them had just

received news of a fortune having fallen to him. The barracks were

humming like a vast beehive, and the word was going round that it was

down south the trouble was. Down south, away in the depths of the

desert where the whole Arab country was up in revolt, attacking the

outpost stations and surging north.

The Legion does not take long to mobilize. An hour is sufficient.

It was now eight in the morning; by nine, headed by the band and

followed by the ammunition carts, the légionnaires in four-deep

formation, wheeled out of the barrack yard and marched through

Sidi-bel-Abbès, striking the great south road that cuts Algeria like

a meridian of longitude.

Ten miles south of the town and precisely at eleven o'clock a halt

was called, tents were put up, and soup was served.

It was the hot season, and unless driven by the direst necessity the

Legion does not march under the three hours of terrific sun that

withers everything from noon till three o'clock. Night is the time

for marching, and the tents are generally struck shortly after

midnight. There were also a hundred details to be attended to in the

first hours of this big shake-out after six months' rest in barracks.

Some of the tents proved to want repairing, and numerous little

weaknesses had to be remedied before the great test came.

Half an hour after midnight the tents were struck and the long, long

column, broken only by the rattling ammunition and baggage carts, got

into its stride. Five kilometres an hour is the pace of the Legion,

with a five minutes' rest at every tenth kilometre.

At dawn the column was marching still, and in the full blaze of day

it was still marching, voiceless, tottering, almost broken with

weariness.

Then it halted at the milestone that marked a distance of fifty

kilometres from Sidi-bel-Abbès, the tents were put up by the wayside

and coffee was served.

The men lay about exhausted in the tents. Under the sun across a

great stretch of sand and rubbly ground on the right of the road, lay

the city of little tents that had suddenly broken into existence like

fungi, and around the city, showing sometimes the flash of a bayonet

in the sunlight, could be seen the dark forms of the patrols.

Grumbling, smoking, swearing, the population of the tent city filled

the air with a murmur, dying at last to silence as sleep took the

légionnaires. They had marched forty kilometres. Forty kilometres

laden with rifle, ammunition, knapsack, tent and collapsible tent

poles. Forty kilometres at the rate of five kilometres an hour, with

only four breaks of five minutes each. Forty kilometres with only

twenty minutes' rest.

But this was nothing to the fantastic labours before them. Next day,

and the day after, and the day after, the march went on, ever south,

and ever through more desolate country. They reached the region of

the small outpost stations, where men of the penal battalion were at

work road-making and fort-building. Here wind came to them that the

trouble had shifted more to the east, where a great army of Arabs was

at work breaking, pillaging and murdering. Three outpost stations

had been sacked and the soldiers put to death, and with this news the

Legion, setting its teeth, struck on to the south-south-east.

They were entering now the real desert. The great yellow desert that

lies burning in the sun for ever. Now voiceless, now sighing and

shifting its sand to the wind that blows from nowhere. Here there

are no roads, only caravan tracks marked by the skeletons of men and

animals, an horizon hard like burnished brass, a thirst that drains

even the water in the oasis wells.

Jacques, old campaigner that he was, had never grown used to the

desert, no white man ever does. There is a spirit here that daunts

the soul and haunts the heart for ever.

As they marched, sometimes, came marching abreast of them, miles

away, vast sand devils, recalling the D'jin released from the bottle

in the Arabian tale. Sometimes the devils would move as though

waltzing with viewless partners, but the Legion scarcely cast an eye

upon them. The Trumpet of Doom alone could have arrested the

attention of that vast centipede, sun-dazzled, or moon-lit,

exhausted, dead to everything but the necessity of movement. The

water ran short, but still they marched; men fell out only to be tied

to the tails of the ammunition carts, where they had either to be

dragged along the sands or march; feet bled, eyes were blinded,

brains reeled, but the purpose of the mechanism never failed, nor did

the movement falter.

Five kilometres an hour was the inexorable pace to which the machine

was set.

A longer halt than usual whilst waiting for despatch bearers had

shifted the starting hour of each march to one o'clock in the morning.

Then, under the stars and in the perishing cold of the desert night,

the bugles would ring out, the city of little white tents shrivel up

and vanish, and the great centipede reform itself out of all its

incongruous elements.

Criminals, soldiers of fortune, clerks, once men of learning, men

from all the quarters of the world and all the walks of civilization,

woke from profound sleep or troubled dreams and became, once again,

the Legion.

As they marched under the stars, not a voice broke the silence of the

ranks, half-awake; still under the opiate weariness of the last

march, the night seemed to them like a blue veil tangling their feet.

The sound of the vast moving column filled the night, not with the

tramp of men, but with a noise like the shuffling of a great

snake--the shuddering, shuffling sound of sand trodden upon and

tossed aside by the feet of the Legion.

Men marched as they pleased, there was no keeping in step. It did

not matter how rifles were carried--so that they were carried; how

men marched--so that they marched.

One thing alone mattered--the pace. Five kilometres an hour.

Then a pale light would appear in the east and flicker out, and then,

vague blue and luminous, dawn would show and tinted fingers along the

sand rim begin to lift the veil.

It was day far up in the sky before the first sun-flash struck the

sands.

Then came the blaze, and like Memnon the Legion would find its voice.

Mixed with the creak and rattle of the baggage and ammunition carts,

above the dull pounding and scuffling of feet, you would hear the

growl of voices breaking out all down the line. A grumble half a

mile long; the voice of the bruised, battered, and bedevilled soul of

the Legion. This centipede with a brain for every pair of legs

possessed a single soul. Artist, Author, Bank Clerk, ex-soldier or

Apache, Optimist, Pessimist, Grumbler or Man of Fortitude, all were

subdued to the same medium. Like the oars of the Trireme or the

bricks for the Pyramids, the rifles of the Legion linked the minds of

their holders in a common bondage of thought--or want of thought,

gave them a common tongue to express the suffering common to all.

The cutting of the gun-straps, the weight of the knapsacks, the

weariness of the march, all were voiced in that awful grumble, more

akin to the grumble and groan of the baggage and ammunition carts

than the voices of human beings.

Then the sound would die out, and the moving column resume its

garment of silence, and so it went on till on the morning of the

twelfth day, just after sunrise, the sands right in the sun-blaze

suddenly became alive and moving; the people of the desert,

mysterious as the desert itself, had declared themselves.

It was like the springing to life of D'jins. The Legion had come to

attack, and lo! it was attacked, its movements had been watched by

scouts, keen-eyed as vultures. All to eastward and southward the

swarming sands showed like sea foam beneath the fluttering green

flags and the blaze of spears; drums beat, and on the wind came the

crying of that vast, sun-born host like the crying of far-off

sea-birds on a quarrelling beach.

The voice of the Legion made answer like the roar of the tiger that

is sure of its prey.

Then silence for a heart-beat, followed by a few sharp orders, and

the column, no longer moving, undulated, broadened, became formless,

and then, click! became a geometrical figure.

A hollow square, with the baggage and ammunition carts in the centre,

the girding straps of the ammunition boxes flying loose.

Far above, a dot in the blue, hovered a vulture. From that height,

the dark, rigid square would have the appearance of a pattern traced

on the sands.