"I have travelled for three days due north," I said, apparently
reflecting. "If you send your men due south three days' journey, they
will come upon a small oasis. This must be passed, and still south
again, a three hours' ride, there is a larger oasis on the further side
of a high ridge. It is there that Hadj Absalam is taking his ease."
"Good!" exclaimed the officer, calling over a Chasseur who was
sauntering past with his hands in his pockets and ordering him to send
immediately a _sous-officier_, whom he named.
"It's a fine night," he said. "We will start when the moon rises, and,
_mon Dieu_! it will not be our fault if we do not exterminate the band,
and bring the black-faced old scoundrel back with us. The caravans will
never be safe until his head is in the _lunette_."
"But he may have moved by this time," I suggested.
"Then we will follow and overtake him," he replied, brushing some dust
from his braided sleeve. "He shall not escape us this time. When I was
quartered in Biskra, I knew old Hafiz well. Though prejudiced against
France, he was always good to our men, poor old fellow."
"Yes," I said. "Though a strict Moslem, he was most amiable and
generous."
At that moment a lieutenant of Chasseurs strode up and saluted.
"Victor," the commandant exclaimed, addressing him, "we leave at once,
with the whole of your _enfants d'enfer_, in search of Absalam, who is
three days' journey south. This time we will pursue him till we run him
to earth. The Spahis will remain;" and, turning to me, he added:
"M'sieur Holcombe, you are welcome to stay here also, if it pleases
you."
Thanking him, I assured him how deeply I appreciated his hospitality,
and then, having been handed over to the care of a _sous-officier_, I
was shown to the tent which the commandant ordered should be placed at
my disposal, while the Spahis--or _homards_, as they are termed in the
argot of the 19th Army Corps, because of their red burnouses--were busy
assisting their comrades to prepare for departure.
Our evening meal of thin onion soup, black bread, and rough, bitter
coffee having been disposed of, the Chasseurs, numbering about two
hundred, paraded with their horses, and were briefly but keenly
inspected by the officer in command, whose name I learned was Captain
Paul Deschanel. The inspection over, the commandant addressed his men,
and the order was given to mount. Then, amid the shouts of "_Vive les
Chasseurs! A bas les Ennitra! Vive la France_!" from the assembled
Spahis, the smart troop of cavalry, with the captain at their head,
galloped away into the moonlit desert, and were soon lost in the gloom.
As I sat watching the receding horsemen, and inwardly chuckling that by
sending them three days' journey into the country of the
Inemba-kel-Emoghri, Absalam and his people would be six days' journey
distant in an opposite direction, I was startled by a hand being laid
upon my shoulder. Turning quickly, I found it was a Spahi.
"M'sieur is English, if I mistake not?" he inquired, with a pleasant
smile upon his swarthy but refined face.
"True," I replied. "And, judging from your accent, you are not an Arab,
but a Parisian."
"Yes," he said, speaking in fairly good English. "I have been in
England once. If you care to spend an hour in my tent, I can offer you
absinthe and a cigarette. That is about the extent of the hospitalities
of the oasis."
Thanking him for his invitation, I accompanied him, and a few moments
later we were sitting in the bright moonlight on a mat spread outside
his small tent.
"So you have been in England?" I said presently, when he had told me
his name was Octave Uzanne.
"Yes," he replied, with a slight sigh, allowing the water to trickle
slowly into his absinthe, and drawing his scarlet burnouse closer about
him. It was strange to hear English in this region of silence and
desolation.
"Is not the recollection of your visit pleasant?" I asked.
"Ah! forgive me, m'sieur," he exclaimed quickly; "I can never hear your
tongue, or think of London, without becoming _triste_. I associate with
your great gloomy city the saddest days of my life. Had I not gone to
London, I should never have been here, leading the wild semi-barbarous
life in an Arab regiment of the Army of Africa. We of the Spahis have a
saying, `_N'eveillez pas le chat qui dort_'--but sometimes--"
"It is a good adage, but we cannot always let our sorrows lie," I
interrupted sympathetically. He had spoken with the accent of a
gentleman, and with the white light of the moon streaming upon his face,
I saw that he was about thirty years of age, with a countenance
clean-cut and noble, refined and somewhat effeminate. His dark eyes
were deep-set and serious, yet in his face there was an expression of
genuine _bonhomie_. The average Spahi is feared by Moor and Jew, by
Biskri and Koulougli, as the fiercest and most daring of soldiers. In
drink he is a brute, in love he is passionate, in the saddle he is one
of the finest riders in the world; in the town he is docile and
obedient, fond of lounging in the cafes, idling over his eternal
cigarette; yet away in the desert, all his old instincts return; he is
an Arab again, and knows no measure either in attachment or in hatred.
A blow from his scabbard is the only payment when scouring the country
for food, a thrust of his sabre the only apology to those he insults,
while in the field, seated on his fleet horse, he rides like the wind,
and has the strength and courage of a lion.
This quiet, intellectual, bearded young Frenchman sitting cross-legged
on the mat beside me, was, I felt sure, a man with a past. One of his
comrades came up and asked him a question in Arabic, to which he
replied, speaking the language of his regiment like a true-born Bedouin.
As we sipped our absinthe in silence for some minutes, watching the
camp settling down for the night, it struck me as curious that, instead
of being in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, he should be masquerading in
burnouse in an exclusively native regiment.
We began talking of England, but he was not communicative regarding
himself, and in reply to my question said--
"I desire to live here in the desert and to forget. Each time we return
to Algiers, the glare and glitter of the European quarter unlocks the
closed page of my history. It was because this wild roving beyond the
pale of civilisation was suited to my mood that I became a _homard_."
"Has your experience of life been so very bitter, then?" I asked,
looking into the handsome face, upon which there was a shadow of pain,
and which was set off by the spotless white haick surrounding it.
"Bitter?--Ah!" he exclaimed, with a deep sigh. "You see me now,
dragging out a wretched existence in this wilderness, exiled from my
home, with name, creed, nationality--everything changed."
"In order to conceal your identity?" I hazarded.
"Yes, my past is erased. Dead to those who knew me, I am now merely
known as Octave Uzanne. I have tasted of life's pleasures, but just as
I was about to drink of the cup of happiness, it was dashed from me. It
is ended. All I have now to look for is--is a narrow bed in yonder
sand."
"My dear fellow," I exclaimed, "don't speak so despondently! We all
have our little debauches of melancholy. Cannot you confide in me?
Perhaps I might presume to give advice."
Silently and thoughtfully he rolled a cigarette between the fingers of
his bronzed hand, completing its manufacture carefully.
"_My_ story?" he said dreamily. "Bah! Why should I trouble you--a
stranger--with the wretched tragedy of my life?"
"Because I also have a skeleton in my cupboard, and I can sincerely
sympathise with you," I answered, tossing away my cigarette end and
lighting a fresh one.
Murmuring some words that I did not catch, he sipped his absinthe
slowly, and, passing his sinewy, sun-tanned hand wearily across his
forehead, sat immovable and silent, with his eyes fixed upon the dense
growth of myrtle bushes and prickly aloes before him.
Lighted candles stuck upon piles of rifles flickered here and there
among the tents, the feathery leaves of the palms above waved in the
night breeze like funeral plumes, the dry hulfa grass rustled and surged
like a summer sea; while ever and anon there came bursts of hearty
laughter from the Arab soldiers, or snatches of a _chanson eccentrique_
with rollicking chorus that had been picked up a thousand miles away in
the French cafes of Algiers.