MANSOOR

They were coming back from the rifle butts in the blaze of the late

afternoon sun, Jacques walking beside Corporal Kandorff. The roofs

and minarets of Sidi-bel-Abbès showed beyond the barracks, swimming

in the heat-shaken air, whilst on the tepid wind blowing in their

faces came the scents of the desert and the smell of the town.

You can smell Sidi-bel-Abbès half a league off, the perfume of the

yellow city is as distinctive as the perfume of a marigold, and as

unforgettable. Camels, negroes, jasmine flowers, caporal tobacco and

the old, old yellow earth of the ramparts all lend a trace of

themselves to form a scent the very recollection of which brings up

the bugles of the Legion, the domes of the city, and the cry of the

muezzins from the minarets of the mosques.

Jacques was thirsty, and as he tramped along beside Kandorff he was

abusive towards the universe in general. When he was short of money

he was always like that, and lately he had been very short of money,

reduced to borrowing a few halfpence that morning from

Kandorff--fifteen centimes, and they were spent.

"Seven years in the regiment," he was saying, "and look at me. I who

know every hole and corner of Sidi-bel-Abbès. Things are going from

bad to worse; a year ago there was lots of pickings to be had what

between the new drafts from Oran and the town there; but of late

there's not a man joined the Legion with more than the rags he stands

up in, and as for the town it's gone rotten. Visitors don't seem to

come there now, there's no money and no tick and no trade to be done.

I was the sharpest man in the regiment once at carving a bit out of

the Arabs and the visitors and the traders, but where's the use in

being sharp when you have nothing to cut. Tell me that. I had money

once, enough to start in business when I got my discharge; much good

my discharge will do me when I get it. It will mean rejoining for

another five years, and that will be the end of me. I want the sight

of money and I want it bad; every time I pass the Crédit Lyonnais I

can scent the gold there just as you smell the cooking going on in a

café. I'll break in there some day, and if I can't do anything more

I'll just roll in the twenty-franc pieces, swallow them, choke myself

with them. That's how I feel--you'll see."

"Then they would shoot you," said Kandorff, "and I would never get my

fifteen centimes back."

Jacques laughed.

"Well, there would be some satisfaction in that," said he. "It's

better to die owing fifteen centimes than owing nothing--one has

someone to mourn one then. Ah, ha! here's the placard for Mansoor

stuck up."

They had reached the barrack gates and he pointed to a poster just

stuck upon the right gate-post. It was the offer of a reward of five

hundred francs for the capture of Mansoor, late superintendent of the

Arab police, and the delivery of his body alive or dead into the

hands of Colonel Tirard, chief of the regiment of légionnaires

stationed at Sidi-bel-Abbès. The poster was issued from the Bureau

Arabe, but the goods were to be delivered at the headquarters of the

Legion.

Mansoor, two days ago, had murdered a légionnaire; it was a sordid

and ferocious crime, committed on account of a woman. The criminal

had made his escape, Sidi-bel-Abbès had been searched, Oran sealed,

and the desert posts warned, but the murderer was still at large,

hence the reward. Jacques and Kandorff stood amongst the crowd that

had gathered to discuss the notice.

"They'll never get him," said Kandorff.

"And why not?" asked one of the crowd.

"Why not? Well, just for the very good reason that he is an Arab and

the Arab police will shelter him and wink at his escape."

"Winking at him won't help him much if he wants to cross the

frontier," replied the other, "to get into Tunisia."

"He won't bother about that," said Kandorff; "he'll stick on to some

wandering tribe and most likely the next time we meet him he'll be

fighting us down south somewhere. That is the sort of man worse to

let loose than a plague, and he will very likely raise a holy war of

his own if he is not caught."

Kandorff--whose name was not Kandorff and who had spent some years in

the Asiatic Department of the Russian Foreign Office--was a man who

knew what he was talking about. He turned and entered the barrack

yard with Jacques and the business passed from their minds. A

légionnaire has no time to bother about murders, even if the murdered

man is a légionnaire. Jacques and his companion had not even time to

think about resting. They had their washing to do.

Jacques had annexed a piece of soap that morning and hidden it under

his bed; he shared it now with Kandorff as they stood at the great

washing trough, and then, the uniforms washed, pressed and packed

safely away, they started off on their usual evening's walk to the

town.

Arrived there they parted company, Kandorff going on some business of

his own, whilst Jacques, left to himself, strolled off down one of

the boulevards. The evening was delightful after the heat of the

day, and the wind from the desert, warm but stimulating, played with

the leaves of the trees bordering the street and blew in the face of

the légionnaire as he walked, glancing in at the shop windows and

pausing here and there to inspect their contents.

He reached the Crédit Lyonnais, which was closed, and stood for a

moment looking at the building as though measuring the strength of

it. This was the place where fellows shovelled twenty-franc pieces

across the counter with copper shovels and pulled out drawers stuffed

with pink and blue five-hundred-franc notes. Dreams rose before him

of what the Legion could do if it only had the courage of its desires

and opinions. The looting of Sidi-bel-Abbès rose up before him, a

gaudy picture with himself in the foreground armed with a copper

shovel and a sack. Then he resumed his way, striking from the

boulevard into the native quarter, or rather the Moslem quarter of

the town.

He was quite at home here and well known to many of the traders. He

had eaten kouss-kouss in the terrible little native cafés where the

front premises are only the stage curtains that conceal an opium

joint or worse; he was known to black-eyed Arab children and to the

quick-eyed Arab police, and to-night, being hard up for cigarettes,

he was on the look-out for someone amidst all this host of

acquaintances who could supply him.

In a narrow street and before an open booth he paused. Here on a

bench beneath a swinging lamp sat a yellow man, cross-legged and

wearing a red fez. He was rolling cigarettes.

He had rolled cigarettes since the time when he was a little boy, son

of a cigarette-maker in Blidah. He would continue rolling cigarettes

till they took him to the grave. He did not know how many he had

rolled since his fingers had first closed on the rice paper and the

yellow opium-tinctured tobacco. He might have rolled millions, tens

of millions, he did not know. He never smoked the things he rolled

and one might have taken him for an automaton, but for the song that

was always humming upon his lips, a song without words, monotonous,

dreary and fateful.

Jacques paused before this image and greeted it. It nodded in reply

to his greeting and went on with its work.

Jahāl, for that was the name of this man, did not work for his own

hand. He was only a servant in the employ of the Kassim company. It

supplied him with the tobacco and cigarette-papers and paid him for

the finished product. He sat now without replying to the remarks of

the légionnaire, for he guessed Jacques was hard up for a smoke and

had come to borrow.

Jacques noted the sullenness of the other and resented it. He was

just on the point of flinging an epigram at the head of the silent

one and turning on his heel, when the reed curtain at the back of the

shop parted, revealing the head of Mansoor the murderer.

There was no mistaking that dark haughty head with the hare lip that

exposed glistening teeth in an eternal sneer.

The pause in the talk between Jacques and Jahāl had evidently

inspired Mansoor with the belief that the visitor was gone, and, as

evidently, he had something urgent to say to Jahāl, else he would

not have put forth from his hiding hole. As it was he drew back

instantly, but not before Jacques had sprung into the shop, upsetting

Jahāl, sending the pile of made cigarettes flying every way and

striking with his head the swinging lamp so that it smashed against

the fretwork screen depending from the low ceiling and went out.

Next moment, Jacques was behind the screen, in darkness, struggling

with a cloth which someone--he knew it was a woman from the clash of

the bangles on the arms--had flung over him. Then he was free and

bursting out of a stifling atmosphere of camel-hair cloth, scent, and

native smell through a window and with his right hand on the shoulder

of Mansoor.

Mansoor had sprung into a lane through a window. The moon, filling

with light as the west sank to darkness, shone on the scene and

showed now the flying figure of Mansoor and the following figure of

Jacques, who had missed the shoulder hold, fallen face forward from

the low window on to the pavement, and, nothing daunted by his fall,

was in full pursuit.

Jacques had joined in many a game of life and death, but never one

quite like this. There was money in this business, a lot of money,

and fame. More fame than he could ever get were he to perform the

utmost prodigies of valour as a soldier fighting the enemy with his

regiment.

Then Mansoor was a devil incarnate and he was absolutely certain to

be armed. He had not fired yet, nor would he do so as long as there

was the faintest chance of escape without using the automatic pistol

in his belt.

He, Jacques, was unarmed.

All these considerations, flashing and splashing like heliograph

signals across the brain of Jacques, tinged the business with the

charm of drunkenness. This was Life stirred up and sublimated, the

sort of life one holds for a moment by virtue of Absinthe.

With the rush of a rat, Mansoor broke from the lane into a passage

that was simply a crack between two houses that were built right

against the inner wall of the ramparts.

The house next the rampart had an iron stair leading to the upper

story and the roof. Mansoor, followed by Jacques, swarmed up these

stairs, reached the roof, reached the ramparts and dropped over into

the encircling ditch.

Mansoor made the drop fifteen seconds only before Jacques. It was

thirty feet and they ought both to have been killed, but we may fancy

that the gods like a bit of sport sometimes, for they weren't.

But the Arab recovered from the shake-up of the fall before his

pursuer had done likewise, and from the start at the ditch's edge for

the race for freedom Jacques was under a half-minute handicap.

Half a minute is a terribly long time when the energy of life is

blazing to a point as in battle, or a pursuit like this. It gave

Mansoor time to get well away.

Just here, around the walls of Sidi-bel-Abbès, you will find

vineyards stretching southward and breaking up at last into market

gardens. Mansoor was making his way between two vineyards down a

path that ended in a cul-de-sac.

A fence, in fact, ended the path and barred his way and checked it

for a moment. He left it broken behind him and struck across a

market garden where long lines of bell glasses glowed in the light of

the moon. In the grape season all this place would be watched by the

grape growers and by this a hue and cry might have been set up and

half a dozen unsolicited helpers spoiling Jacques' game, but at this

time of year the place was deserted and the pursued and the pursuer

had the ground to themselves.

The time taken by Mansoor in breaking through the fence gave Jacques

an advantage, for the break was so thorough that he was able to get

through without delay; when he was through, Mansoor, at the other end

of the garden, was negotiating the fence on that side.

Beyond lay broken ground, spotted here and there with stunted bushes

and cacti.

When Jacques reached this place, Mansoor was far ahead but distinctly

visible, and he had altered his pace. He was no longer running as if

for his life, he had settled down to a jog-trot, and Jacques, after a

spurt that lessened the distance between them by a quarter, held

himself in and settled down to the pace of Mansoor.

The man who holds the lead in an affair of this kind holds the

advantage, for the pursuer, if he overhauls the pursued, must

inevitably come up to the scratch winded.

Jacques had come to the conclusion that the murderer was unarmed,

else here, in this desolate place, he would undoubtedly have attacked

instead of running away. Believing this, he determined to hang on

the other's heels, wear him down, and then close with him.

He knew his own powers; a born long-distance runner and trained to

feats of almost fabulous endurance by his seven years' life in the

Legion, he felt that he held the trump card, and if, as he felt

certain now, Mansoor was unarmed, he had no fear of the issue.

Sidi-bel-Abbès is situated on the borders of the desert, but the

Algerian desert must not be confused with the Sahara, in those places

where it shows limitless wastes of sand.

The desert places of Algeria show little sand except in districts

away down south, as, for instance, by the Oasis of the Five Palms or

that great, sandy track where we saw the Legion fronting the Arabs

and defeating them.

The desert of Algeria consists of waste land, rock-strewn and

desolate, yellow earth, sun-baked and hardened, a few miserable scrub

bushes and cacti, an occasional oasis with palm trees blowing in the

desert wind.

There is no water, except that which flows underground and breaks to

the surface here and there to form the oasis pools.

Through this wilderness runs the great southern military road, built

by the soldiers of the Legion, and the line Mansoor was now taking

lay to the west of this road. It was his object to avoid the road;

in this Jacques was with him; the road meant military patrols and the

prize taken out of Jacques' hands.

Five hundred francs! Never for a moment had the idea left his mind;

it had driven him like a charging bull into the shop of the

cigarette-maker, it led him in pursuit down the lane, over the

rampart, into the ditch and through the market garden; it was leading

him now on the most desperate and dangerous chase that man ever

engaged in, and it would lead him to the end, whatever the end might

be.

The serious fact for Mansoor at that moment lay, not in the fact that

he was a murderer, but the fact that he was five hundred francs. He

was bundles of Algerian cigarettes, bottles of blue Algerian wine,

jolly evenings at the canteen, lots of soap to wash uniforms with,

kisses from black-eyed girls, glasses of coloured liqueurs at

Kito's--and he was being chased by Jacques!--heaven help him!

The half-moon blazing in the sky lit the chase, and the cold of the

Algerian night checked the breath of Jacques.

It seemed also to affect Mansoor, for all of a sudden he slackened

his pace from a jog-trot to a quick walk.

His pursuer did the same, nothing loth.

At this pace, the marching pace of the Legion, he could keep on all

night and half the next day.

In the Legion on a route march he would be carrying rifle, three

hundred rounds of ammunition, knapsack and tent-pole, a weight of

fifty kilogrammes or so. To-night he was free of all this, his own

man.

As he kept up the pursuit the thought suddenly occurred to him that

the barracks would have long closed by this, and not answering to the

roll call his name would be posted as a deserter. This thought

amused him for a moment, then it troubled him. He had deserted from

the regiment before; that always leaves a stain on a man's name, no

matter how good his subsequent conduct may be. The punishment for a

second attempt is very heavy and the Legion is deaf to excuses and

very merciless. Stung by this, he determined to finish the business

at once, if possible, close with his prey and chance it. He broke

into a run, but, lo and behold, as though gifted with eyes in the

back of his head, or a supernatural sense of hearing, Mansoor did

likewise.

Five minutes later, both men, as if by tacit consent, had fallen back

into the old pace.

There are occasions when men hold quite long conversations with one

another without a word of speech, and whilst they are grasping for

one another's throats. Mansoor was saying to Jacques, "If you

increase your pace I will increase mine; there is nothing to be

gained by you in overhauling me like that; quite the reverse, for,

seeing that I have a long lead, you would be the most exhausted of

the two if you managed to outstrip me. Besides, in a racing test you

might not be able to do so."

Jacques was saying, "That is true--curse you!--well, then, let's heel

and toe it, I have the advantage of the practice marches of the

Legion on my side, and I can stick to you till we both drop. I know,

you have method in your game, for the further you lead me the more

chance you have of falling in with some tribe of wandering Arabs who

would back you against me. Well, I must take the chance."

These two men had once known each other; at a distance, it is true,

still they had known one another and exchanged greetings. Jacques

had a reputation of his own in Sidi-bel-Abbès, and so had Mansoor.

They knew one another's reputations. This knowledge helped in the

mute conversation between the pursued and the pursuer.

At dawn they had put some thirty kilometres between them and

Sidi-bel-Abbès; the outline of the Tessala Mountains hardened against

the fading darkness and then the sun rose, a ball of guinea-gold

coloured, eye-dazzling fire, in a blue, still, silent sky.

The solitude here was unbroken by any sign of life; grass patch,

scrub bush, ash-grey-green cactus, all seemed petrified in their

natural colours, unreal in the real and living sunlight. Forsaken,

and given over to eternal silence.

Jacques, used as he was to extreme and violent exercise, was

beginning to fail. On route marches, it is true, he had often done

forty kilometres heavily laden. They were not yet forty kilometres

from their starting-point, and he was carrying nothing, but it must

be remembered that the Legion on the march pauses often for a rest

and that five minutes' rest makes all the difference.

Jacques had not had a moment's rest. The same held true for Mansoor.

Both men were exhausted, but they were exhibiting the effects of

their exhaustion in different ways. Jacques, marching well and

firmly, had the appearance of a man still capable of covering many

miles. His legs were still all right, but his head was giving out.

The higher nervous centres could not hold to their work much longer,

and that is one of the most fatal forms of exhaustion. For half a

minute at a time he would forget Mansoor. At any moment he might

fall together like a house of cards and lie on the ground, not dead,

but sleeping peacefully, a prey to the man he was pursuing.

On the other hand, Mansoor was failing in the legs; occasionally he

swayed and stumbled, but his mind was clear and it dominated his

body, as a jockey dominates an exhausted horse.

They had entered a little gully where years ago quarrying work had

gone on, for stone to metal the great south road, and Jacques' mind

had just returned from one of its momentary lapses, when he saw the

man he was pursuing wheel round and advance towards him.

Mansoor was holding something in his right hand. It was an automatic

pistol.

It was the sight of the pistol that brought Jacques' mind vividly

awake. A pistol! And he had been absolutely certain that his enemy

was unarmed. The fact remained, and before the fact Jacques turned

tail. But he did not run.

On his left a cave-opening in the rock caught his eye, and urged by

the dread of a bullet in his back he dived into the cave.

Mansoor, pistol in hand, came along, swaying as he came, wild-eyed

and dreadful, with the grey pallor of exhaustion showing through his

dusky skin.

Right opposite the cave mouth, and thirty feet or so away, he flung

himself down on the ground, rested his left arm on a piece of rock

and the barrel of the pistol on the angle of his elbow, taking aim

straight into the cave.

Jacques, seeing this, flung himself flat on the cave floor and waited

for the first shot.

But Mansoor did not fire. He seemed content to lie recovering from

his exhaustion and holding his enemy at bay.

Jacques had retreated as far as possible into the darkness of the

cave, the opening was some nine feet or so from his face, and as he

lay on his stomach, his chin resting on his arm, the fact that he was

cornered and at the mercy of the other appeared before him in all its

bleak simplicity.

Mansoor, when he had rested sufficiently and gauged the possibilities

of the situation, would come straight to the cave mouth and then all

would be over with Jacques.

But the man with the pistol showed no signs of such an intention yet,

he seemed content to wait and watch, keeping a strict blockade till

his energy and resolution found themselves again.

Jacques wondered what it would be like when he was dead and lying

there always in the cave. Mansoor would not bother to bury him. He

thought of what his companions in the Legion would say and think.

They would fancy that he had deserted and had succeeded in making his

escape. Then appeared before him the blue sea at Oran and Oran

itself, with the barracks away up on the heights just as he had seen

it on the first day of his arrival in Algeria, more than seven years

ago. Then the sea, from a thought, became a vision and shimmered up

to him and over him. Mansoor vanished, the cave, the sunlight at its

door and the fact that he was held for Death.

Jacques had fallen asleep.

Had you fired a cannon in the ravine he would not have heard it. It

was the sleep that follows on high excitement or profound exhaustion.

He was awakened by the bugles of the Legion sounding the _réveillé_,

so it seemed to him for a moment, then the bugles of the Legion

became the crying of birds.

Birds were flocking about the ravine, great birds whose shadows swept

the ground in front of the cave. With the return of consciousness to

Jacques came the return of full mental energy. He remembered

everything, and recognized to his astonishment that it was evening,

towards sundown, and that Mansoor was still in exactly the same

position, his face half sheltered by his arm, taking aim.

Yet it was morning when Jacques had fallen asleep. All the burning

day the murderer must have lain like this, watching--or had sleep

taken him too?

Suddenly one of the great birds whose shadows had been flitting

across the ground swept down and lighted on the head of Mansoor. It

stood there for a second, fiery-eyed and swaying, like a funeral

plume, then, shooting its head forward and downward, it peeped up

into the face of the watching one and plucked out an eye.

The birds of the desert always attack the eyes of a man first. The

vultures will haul at a fallen man's head till they get the face

sideways. Jacques, who knew all about the birds of the desert and

their ways, gave a shout; next moment he was kneeling beside the dead

man.

Mansoor had been dead for hours, death had struck him most likely the

moment he had changed the upright for the recumbent position, giving

him only just time to lie down and take aim. His heart had given out

owing to his exertions and the excitement of the chase, or a blood

vessel had broken in his brain.

Jacques took the pistol from the dead hand, not without a struggle.

Then he saw why the pursued man had not fired on him. The magazine

was empty.

Mansoor must have been unable to obtain ammunition after the murder.

He had used bluff. It is almost as good sometimes.

The birds had now drawn off. They could be seen perched here and

there on the rocks and waddling on the ground. Jacques shook his

fist at them. Then, taking a clasp knife out of his pocket, a knife

as keen as a razor, he did that unto the body of Mansoor which would

ensure the reward of five hundred francs.

As he stood up the sun was setting, and the half-moon, like a ghost

in the east, was strengthening in outline. From that eastern sky,

warm blue and infinite in depth, a gentle wind was blowing, shaking

the leaves of the few stunted plants that grew in the ravine.

Jacques, having finished his business, came out of the ravine and

stood shading his eyes with his hands.

The land far and wide lay glowing in the sunset light, all hardness

had vanished from it, and the desolation was almost masked by the

colours that spread the distance.

The légionnaire was looking now to the east. He had determined to

make for the great south road and strike along it back to

Sidi-bel-Abbès. He was stiff and so exhausted from want of food that

he could take little pleasure in his triumph and the prospect of the

reward.

His one idea was rest and food and drink. As he tramped along,

making due east, he found by good chance one of those tiny oases

which occur here and there in this part of the Algerian desert.

Here, by a well scarcely bigger than a slop basin, grew a prickly

pear bush with ripe fruit on it. He drank from the well and cut some

of the pears, taking care to avoid the prickles, then, having smoked

a pipe, he started again by the light of the moon, which was now

burning white and clear.

By the well he had heard the far-off crying and quarrelling of the

birds from the ravine; he could hear it still as he walked, the sound

growing ever fainter, till it ceased altogether before he struck the

road just at the milestone that marked the forty-first kilometre from

Sidi-bel-Abbès.

Here he was lucky enough to fall in with a cart going in the

direction of the town, and obtained a lift to the rest-house, which

lay five miles ahead and where for a couple of francs, which he had

taken from the pocket of Mansoor, he obtained a bed for the night and

some food.

At four o'clock the next afternoon, Jacques, in the highest of

spirits, dusty and tired, yet stepping out vigorously, saw the roofs

and mosque minarets of Sidi-bel-Abbès breaking up before him against

the sky.

He was going to enter that town as a conqueror. He gloated over the

idea. What a good joke! His name by this had without doubt been

posted as the name of a deserter, the Legion would be speculating on

his escape, they would see him returning, jeer over the fact--and

then!

Besides, what a smack it would be at the Arab police. The police and

the légionnaires are not friends. The police have the power to

arrest an escaped légionnaire, and more than that, they receive a

reward for his capture. You can fancy, then, how sharp they were on

the look-out for prey of this sort, and the ill-feeling that results.

Jacques, trudging along, had quite forgotten the police, also the

fact that he had no doubt been posted as a deserter by this. All of

a sudden the sound of horse-hoofs on the road behind him made him

turn his head. Two horsemen were approaching at full speed. They

had been scouting amongst the broken ground on the eastern side of

the road, and the dusty figure of the légionnaire tramping along had

attracted their attention.

They overhauled him, recognized him at once as the man for whom a

reward was out, and whilst one of them held him under the muzzle of a

pistol, the other clapped a handcuff on his right wrist. The

handcuff was attached to a couple of fathoms of thin steel chain, and

next moment they were mounted and trotting for Sidi-bel-Abbès,

Jacques running behind them in the dust of the road.

A nice triumphal entry for a corporal of the Legion.

They passed the gates, and then down the main boulevard they came,

the infernal police, like boys returning from fishing, only too proud

to exhibit their catch.

They were bringing him through the town on purpose. He knew it, but

he did not care. He was promising himself a fine revenge, and the

onlookers in the street were treated to a new sight, an escaped

légionnaire being brought in bursting with laughter and shouting

ribald remarks to his captors.

At the barracks the police dismounted, and leaving their horses in

charge of one of the légionnaires on duty, they marched their still

laughing prisoner off to the guard-room, Five minutes later they were

standing before Colonel Tirard, waiting for their reward, Jacques

between them.

The Colonel was in a temper. Jacques was one of the best men in the

regiment, and one of the best marchers. He had been well treated.

Desertion on the part of a man like that was a big crime in his eyes.

"So, you scamp," said he, "they've brought you back. A nice thing

truly, for you, a man in authority over others. Well, I will teach

you--what's in that bundle tied to your belt?"

"A present for you, _mon Colonel_," replied Jacques.

He took the bundle, which consisted of something wrapped up in the

dead man's shirt, placed it on the table, opened it, and exposed the

grinning head of Mansoor.

"There are things that explain themselves," said Jacques that night,

as he told the story of his interview with Colonel Tirard to his

companions.

He spent the money in diverse ways, but he bought no cigarettes.

Jahāl supplied him with cigarettes gratis during the next three

months. He had said nothing about Jahāl's part in the business of

hiding Mansoor, and he managed to impress Jahāl with the

importance of his silence and its commercial value. That was Jacques

all over.