IN THE CAFE OF THE CHASSEURS.
The red-hot light of the after-glow still burned on the waters of the
bay, and shed its Egyptian-like luster on the city that lies in the
circle of the Sahel, with the Mediterranean so softly lashing with its
violet waves the feet of the white, sloping town. The sun had sunk down
in fire--the sun that once looked over those waters on the legions of
Scipio and the iron brood of Hamilcar, and that now gave its luster on
the folds of the French flags as they floated above the shipping of the
harbor, and on the glitter of the French arms, as a squadron of the army
of Algeria swept back over the hills to their barracks. Pell-mell in its
fantastic confusion, its incongruous blending, its forced mixture of two
races--that will touch, but never mingle; that will be chained together,
but will never assimilate--the Gallic-Moorish life of the city poured
out; all the coloring of Haroun al Raschid scattered broadcast among
Parisian fashion and French routine. Away yonder, on the spurs and tops
of the hills, the green sea-pines seemed to pierce the transparent air;
in the Cabash old, dreamy Arabian legends, poetic as Hafiz, seem still
to linger here and there under the foliage of hanging gardens or the
picturesque curves of broken terraces; in the distance the brown, rugged
Kabyl mountains lay like a couched camel, and far off against the golden
haze a single palm rose, at a few rare intervals, with its drooped,
curled leaves, as though to recall, amid the shame of foreign
domination, that this was once the home of Hannibal; the Africa that had
made Rome tremble.
In the straight, white boulevards, as in the winding ancient streets;
under the huge barn-like walls of barracks, as beneath the marvelous
mosaics of mosques; the strange bizarre conflict of European and
Oriental life spread its panorama. Staff officers, all aglitter with
crosses, galloped past; mules, laden with green maize and driven by
lean, brown Bedouins, swept past the plate-glass windows of bonbon
shops; grave, white-bearded sheiks drank petits verres in the
guinguettes; sapeurs, Chasseurs, Zouaves, cantinieres--all the varieties
of French military life--mingled with jet-black Soudans, desert kings
wrathful and silent, Eastern women shrouded in haick and serroual,
eagle-eyed Arabs flinging back snow-white burnous, and handling
ominously the jeweled halts of their cangiars. Alcazar chansons rang out
from the cafes, while in their midst stood the mosque, that had used
to resound with the Muezzin. Bijou-blondine and Bebee La-la and all
the sister-heroines of demi-monde dragged their voluminous Paris-made
dresses side by side with Moorish beauties, who only dared show the
gleam of their bright black eyes through the yashmak; the reverberes
were lit in the Place du Gouvernement, and a group fit for the days
of Solyman the Magnificent sat under the white marble beauty of the
Mohammedan church. “Rein n'est sacre pour un sapeur!” was being sung
to a circle of sous-officiers, close in the ear of a patriarch serenely
majestic as Abraham; gaslights were flashing, cigar shops were
filling, newspapers were being read, the Rigolboche was being danced,
commis-voyageurs were chattering with grisettes, drums were beating,
trumpets were sounding, bands were playing, and, amid it all, grave
men were dropping on their square of carpet to pray, brass trays of
sweetmeats were passing, ostrich eggs were dangling, henna-tipped
fingers were drawing the envious veil close, and noble Oriental shadows
were gliding to and fro through the open doors of the mosques, like
a picture of the “Arabian Nights,” like a poem of dead Islamism--in a
word, it was Algiers at evening.
In one of the cafes there, a mingling of all the nations under the
sun was drinking demi-tasses, absinthe, vermouth, or old wines, in the
comparative silence that had succeeded to a song, sung by a certain
favorite of the Spahis, known as Loo-Loo-j'n-m'en soucie guere, from
Mlle. Loo-Loo's well-known habits of independence and bravado, which
last had gone once so far as shooting a man through the chest in the
Rue Bab-al-Oued, and setting all the gendarmes and sergents-de-ville at
defiance afterward. Half a dozen of that famous regiment the Chasseurs
d'Afrique were gathered together, some with their feet resting on the
little marble-topped tables, some reading the French papers, all
smoking their inseparable companions--the brules-gueles; fine, stalwart,
sun-burned fellows, with faces and figures that the glowing colors of
their uniform set off to the best advantage.
“Loo-Loo was in fine voice to-night,” said one.
“Yes; she took plenty of cognac before she sang; that always clears her
voice,” said a second.
“And I think that did her spirits good, shooting that Kabyl,” said a
third. “By the way, did he die?”
“N'sais pas, Loo-Loo's a good aim.”
“Sac a papier, yes! Rire-pour-tout taught her.”
“Ah! There never was a shot like Rire-pour-tout. When he went out, he
always asked his adversary, 'Where will you like it? your lungs, your
heart, your brain? It is quite a matter of choice;'--and whichever
they chose, he shot there. Le pauvre Rire-pour-tout! He was always
good-natured.”
“And did he never meet his match?” asked a sous-officier of the line.
The speaker looked down on the piou-piou with superb contempt, and
twisted his mustaches. “Monsieur! how could he? He was a Chasseur.”
“But if he never met his match, how did he die?” pursued the irreverent
piou-piou--a little wiry man, black as a berry, agile as a monkey, tough
and short as a pipe-stopper.
The magnificent Chasseur laughed in his splendid disdain. “A piou-piou
never killed him, that I promise you. He spitted half a dozen of you
before breakfast, to give him a relish. How did Rire-pour-tout die? I
will tell you.”
He dipped his long mustaches into a beaker of still champagne. Claude,
Viscomte de Chanrellon, though in the ranks, could afford those
luxuries.
“He died this way, did Rire-pour-tout! Dieu de Dieu! a very good way
too. Send us all the like when our time comes! We were out yonder” (and
he nodded his handsome head outward to where the brown, seared
plateaux and the Kabyl mountains lay). “We were hunting Arabs, of
course--pot-shooting, rather, as we never got nigh enough to their main
body to have a clear charge at them. Rire-pour-tout grew sick of it.
'This won't do,' he said; 'here's two weeks gone by, and I haven't
shot anything but kites and jackals. I shall get my hand out.' For
Rire-pour-tout, as the army knows, somehow or other, generally potted
his man every day, and he missed it terribly. Well, what did he do? He
rode off one morning and found out the Arab camp, and he waved a white
flag for a parley. He didn't dismount, but he just faced the Arabs and
spoke to their Sheik. 'Things are slow,' he said to them. 'I have come
for a little amusement. Set aside six of your best warriors, and I'll
fight them one after another for the honor of France and a drink of
brandy to the conqueror.' They demurred; they thought it unfair to him
to have six to one. 'Ah!' he laughs, 'you have heard of Rire-pour-tout,
and you are afraid!' That put their blood up: they said they would fight
him before all his Chasseurs. 'Come, and welcome,' said Rire-pour-tout;
'and not a hair of your beards shall be touched except by me.' So the
bargain was made for an hour before sunset that night. Mort de Dieu!
that was a grand duel!”
He dipped his long mustaches again into another beaker of still. Talking
was thirsty work; the story was well known in all the African army, but
the piou-piou, having served in China, was new to the soil.
“The General was ill-pleased when he heard it, and half for arresting
Rire-pour-tout; but--sacre!--the thing was done; our honor was involved;
he had engaged to fight these men, and engaged for us to let them go in
peace afterward; there was no more to be said, unless we had looked like
cowards, or traitors, or both. There was a wide, level plateau in front
of our camp, and the hills were at our backs--a fine field for the
duello; and, true to time, the Arabs filed on to the plain, and fronted
us in a long line, with their standards, and their crescents, and their
cymbals and reed-pipes, and kettle-drums, all glittering and sounding.
Sac a papier! There was a show, and we could not fight one of them! We
were drawn up in line--Horse, Foot, and Artillery--Rire-pour-tout all
alone, some way in advance; mounted, of course. The General and the
Sheik had a conference; then the play began. There were six Arabs
picked out--the flower of the army--all white and scarlet, and in
their handsomest bravery, as if they came to an aouda. They were fine
men--diable!--they were fine men. Now the duel was to be with
swords; these had been selected; and each Arab was to come against
Rire-pour-tout singly, in succession. Our drums rolled the pas de
charge, and their cymbals clashed; they shouted 'Fantasia!' and the
first Arab rode at him. Rire-pour-tout sat like a rock, and lunge went
his steel through the Bedouin's lung, before you could cry hola!--a
death-stroke, of course; Rire-pour-tout always killed: that was his
perfect science. Another and another and another came, just as fast as
the blood flowed. You know what the Arabs are--vous autres? How they
wheel and swerve and fight flying, and pick up their saber from the
ground, while their horse is galloping ventre a terre, and pierce you
here and pierce you there, and circle round you like so many hawks? You
know how they fought Rire-pour-tout then, one after another, more like
devils than men. Mort de Dieu! it was a magnificent sight! He was gashed
here and gashed there; but they could never unseat him, try how they
would; and one after another he caught them sooner or later, and sent
them reeling out of their saddles, till there was a great red lake of
blood all round him, and five of them lay dead or dying down in
the sand. He had mounted afresh twice, three horses had been killed
underneath him, and his jacket all hung in strips where the steel had
slashed it. It was grand to see, and did one's heart good; but--ventre
bleu!--how one longed to go in too.
“There was only one left now--a young Arab, the Sheik's son, and down he
came like the wind. He thought with the shock to unhorse Rire-pour-tout,
and finish him then at his leisure. You could hear the crash as they
met, like two huge cymbals smashing together. Their chargers hit and
tore at each other's manes; they were twined in together there as if
they were but one man and one beast; they shook and they swayed and they
rocked; the sabers played about their heads so quick that it was like
lightning, as they flashed and twirled in the sun; the hoofs trampled up
the sand till a yellow cloud hid their struggle, and out of it all you
could see was the head of a horse tossing up and spouting with foam,
or a sword-blade lifted to strike. Then the tawny cloud settled down
a little, the sand mist cleared away, the Arab's saddle was empty--but
Rire-pour-tout sat like a rock. The old Chief bowed his head. 'It is
over! Allah is great!' And he knew his son lay there dead. Then we broke
from the ranks, and we rushed to the place where the chargers and men
were piled like so many slaughtered sheep. Rire-pour-tout laughed such
a gay, ringing laugh as the desert never had heard. 'Vive la France!' he
cried. 'And now bring me my toss of brandy.' Then down headlong out of
his stirrups he reeled and fell under his horse; and when we lifted him
up there were two broken sword-blades buried in him, and the blood
was pouring fast as water out of thirty wounds and more. That was how
Rire-pour-tout died, piou-piou; laughing to the last. Sacre bleu! It was
a splendid end; I wish I were sure of the like.”
And Claude de Chanrellon drank down his third beaker, for overmuch
speech made him thirsty.
The men around him emptied their glasses in honor of the dead hero.
“Rire-pour-tout was a croc-mitaine,” they said solemnly, with almost a
sigh; so tendering by their words the highest funeral oration.
“You have much of such sharp service here, I suppose?” asked a voice in
very pure French. The speaker was leaning against the open door of the
cafe; a tall, lightly built man, dressed in a velvet shooting tunic,
much the worse for wind and weather, a loose shirt, and jack-boots
splashed and worn out.
“When we are at it, monsieur,” returned the Chasseur. “I only wish we
had more.”
“Of course. Are you in need of recruits?”
“They all want to come to us and to the Zouaves,” smiled Chanrellon,
surveying the figure of the one who addressed him, with a keen sense of
its symmetry and its sinew. “Still, a good sword brings its welcome. Do
you ask seriously, monsieur?”
The bearded Arabs smoking their long pipes, the little piou-piou
drowning his mortification in some curacoa, the idlers reading the
“Akbah” or the “Presse,” the Chasseurs lounging over their drink, the
ecarte players lost in their game, all looked up at the newcomer. They
thought he looked a likely wearer of the dead honors of Rire-pour-tout.
He did not answer the question literally, but came over from the doorway
and seated himself at the little marble table opposite Claude, leaning
his elbows on it.
“I have a doubt,” he said. “I am more inclined to your foes.”
“Dieu de Dieu!” exclaimed Chanrellon, pulling at his tawny mustaches. “A
bold thing to say before five Chasseurs.”
He smiled, a little contemptuously, a little amusedly.
“I am not a croc-mitaine, perhaps; but I say what I think, with little
heed of my auditors, usually.”
Chanrellon bent his bright brown eyes curiously on him. “He is a
croc-mitaine,” he thought. “He is not to be lost.”
“I prefer your foes,” went on the other, quite quietly, quite
listlessly, as though the glittering, gas-lit cafe were not full of
French soldiers. “In the first place, they are on the losing side; in
the second, they are the lords of the soil; in the third, they live as
free as air; and in the fourth, they have undoubtedly the right of the
quarrel!”
“Monsieur!” cried the Chasseurs, laying their hands on their swords,
fiery as lions. He looked indolently and wearily up from under the long
lashes of his lids, and went on, as though they had not spoken.
“I will fight you all, if you like, as that worthy of yours,
Rire-pour-tout, did, but I don't think it's worth while,” he said
carelessly, where he leaned over the marble table. “Brawling's bad
style; we don't do it. I was saying, I like your foes best; mere matter
of taste; no need to quarrel over it--that I see. I shall go into
their service or into yours, monsieur--will you play a game of dice to
decide?”
“Decide?--but how?”
“Why--this way,” said the other, with the weary listlessness of one who
cares not two straws how things turn. “If I win, I go to the Arabs; if
you win, I come to your ranks.”
“Mort de Dieu! it is a droll gambling,” murmured Chanrellon. “But--if
you win, do you think we shall let you go off to our enemies? Pas si
bete, monsieur!”
“Yes, you will,” said the other quietly. “Men who knew what honor meant
enough to redeem Rire-pour-tout's pledge of safety to the Bedouins, will
not take advantage of an openly confessed and unarmed adversary.”
A murmur of ratification ran through his listeners.
Chanrellon swore a mighty oath.
“Pardieu, no. You are right. If you want to go, you shall go. Hola
there! bring the dice. Champagne, monsieur? Vermouth? Cognac?”
“Nothing, I thank you.”
He leaned back with an apathetic indolence and indifference oddly at
contrast with the injudicious daring of his war-provoking words and
the rough campaigning that he sought. The assembled Chasseurs eyed him
curiously; they liked his manner and they resented his first speeches;
they noted every particular about him--his delicate white hands, his
weather-worn and travel-stained dress, his fair, aristocratic features,
his sweeping, abundant beard, his careless, cool, tired, reckless way;
and they were uncertain what to make of him.
The dice were brought.
“What stakes, monsieur?” asked Chanrellon.
“Ten napoleons a side--and--the Arabs.”
He set ten napoleons down on the table; they were the only coins he had
in the world; it was very characteristic that he risked them.
They threw the main--two sixes.
“You see,” he murmured, with a half smile, “the dice know it is a drawn
duel between you and the Arabs.”
“C'est un drole, c'est un brave!” muttered Chanrellon; and they threw
again.
The Chasseur cast a five; his was a five again.
“The dice cannot make up their minds,” said the other listlessly, “they
know you are Might and the Arabs are Right.”
The Frenchmen laughed; they could take a jest good-humoredly, and alone
amid so many of them, he was made sacred at once by the very length of
odds against him.
They rattled the boxes and threw again--Chanrellon's was three; his two.
“Ah!” he murmured. “Right kicks the beam and loses; it always does, poor
devil!”
The Chasseur leaned across the table, with his brown, fearless sunny
eyes full of pleasure.
“Monsieur! never lament such good fortune for France. You belong to us
now; let me claim you!”
He bowed more gravely than he had borne himself hitherto.
“You do me much honor; fortune has willed it so. One word only in
stipulation.”
“Chanrellon assented courteously.
“As many as you choose.”
“I have a companion who must be brigaded with me, and I must go on
active service at once.”
“With infinite pleasure. That doubtless can be arranged. You shall
present yourself to-morrow morning; and for to-night, this is not the
season here yet; and we are triste a faire fremir; still I can show you
a little fun, though it is not Paris!”
But he rose and bowed again.
“I thank you, not to-night. You shall see me at your barracks with the
morning.”
“Ah, ah! monsieur!” cried the Chasseur eagerly, and a little annoyed.
“What warrant have we that you will not dispute the decree of the dice,
and go off to your favorites, the Arabs?”
He turned back and looked full in Chanrellon's face his own eyes a
little surprised, and infinitely weary.
“What warrant? My promise.”
Then, without another syllable, he lounged slowly out through the
soldiers and the idlers, and disappeared in the confused din and
chiar-oscuro of the gas-lit street without, through the press
of troopers, grisettes, merchants, beggars, sweetmeat-sellers,
lemonade-sellers, curacoa sellers, gaunt Bedouins, negro boys, shrieking
muleteers, laughing lorettes, and glittering staff officers.
“That is done!” he murmured to his own thoughts. “Now for life under
another flag!”
Claude de Chanrellon sat mute and amazed a while, gazing at the open
door; then he drank a fourth beaker of champagne and flung the emptied
glass down with a mighty crash.
“Ventre bleu! Whoever he is, that man will eat fire, bons garcons!”