THE AMBUSH OF THE BROOM
"The wells of El Djebir, Monsieur," explained Sergeant Perinaud. "It is
here we should find our men, if they are proceeding by the shortest
route to their hills. If not--" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.
The horses were roused from their gentle amble into a gallop. The dust
rose from fourscore hoofs as the Goumiers raced down in an enveloping
cloud upon the cluster of palms and thicket of broom scrub which
surrounded the watering-place. They pulled their horses upon their
haunches; they shouted in hoarse disappointment. The shadowed
resting-place beneath the palms was empty. Not a living soul was in
sight.
Perinaud shrugged his shoulders again.
"This is very conclusive, Monsieur. The party we seek has thought fit to
leave the open road and to bury themselves in the recesses of the jungle
and the northern gorges of the river. They did not do that without a
reason. It remains to follow, if we can."
The native officer shouted something and Perinaud turned swiftly in the
saddle to stare down the track which they had been following. A white
figure bestriding a brown horse was thundering towards them, the rider's
_haik_ fluttering out snowily against the dun background of the earth.
"So Monsieur thought fit to leave me--me!" expostulated Daoud, as he
drew rein at Aylmer's side. "I, I who address you, am told by the chance
gossip of the Sok that this expedition has set out without a word of
warning, to seek bandits--where?" He threw abroad his arms in derision.
"On the broad and open road, within sound, nay, almost within sight, of
the patrols of Casablanca. I ask, is it here that knaves are likely to
hide their knavery? Your venture and its object are already the pivot on
which the laughter of the market-place swings."
He turned and pointed vehemently towards the north.
"Has none of your trained spies had the wit or the courage to tell you
that a hundred of these Beni M'Geel Berbers have encamped in the
thickets of the Bou Gherba gorge this ten days back? And yet the
market-place knows it, as it knows a hundred things beneath your
concern."
Perinaud looked the Moor up and down. Then he turned leisurely towards
Aylmer.
"He is a safe man, this?" he asked. "You guarantee him?"
Aylmer smiled, and shrugged his shoulders towards the waiting Goumiers.
"They are all for their own hand, these, are they not, Sergeant? Yes, I
will guarantee that he seeks to serve me, for the moment, and in serving
me, himself. It is the way with these desert folk. They cannot manage
large issues, and they split into factions to follow small ones. Let us
hear him and, if you see no objection, take his advice. He has been in
Casablanca before."
Perinaud grunted and eyed the Moor grudgingly.
"Well, man of infinite knowledge," he said in Arabic. "You
propose--what?"
"Are there two courses before us?" asked Daoud, disdainfully. "Or are we
to await reinforcements? We have to surround this lair of desert cats."
"Where?" asked Perinaud, laconically.
The Moor wheeled his stallion with an elaborate caracole.
"If the Sidi had used my services from the first," he said, "he would
have been saved an hour's ride. Forward, Sidi!"
The sergeant lifted his eyebrows at Aylmer with an air of comical
resignation. To the native officer he gave a decisive little nod. With
Daoud leading, the brown stallion arching his neck in remonstrance to a
tightened rein and goading spur, the column broke formation and in
single file turned northwards into the broom scrub which fringes the
tilled lands of the Chawia.
The horsemen rode in silence. The mantle of Rattier's taciturnity, rent
to rags in D'Hubert's office, seemed to have been restored to its
pristine imperviousness, seemed, indeed, to hang heavy upon the spirits
of the whole company. Now and again the commandant's lips moved
uneasily, but the spoken word died still-born. A Goumier would address
fervent maledictions to the memory of the female ancestors of a
stumbling horse; curt conferences took place at long intervals between
Perinaud and the native officer. But apart from this, the thud of hoofs
meeting sand or earth and the dull rap of rein or stirrup leather were
all the sounds which broke the stillness. The heavy noontide heat seemed
to have swallowed into silence all sound. For sound denotes creative
energy, and energy, when the sun is at its zenith in South Morocco, is
sapped.
Their course, as Aylmer was quick to notice, led perpetually upward, but
in gradients which almost eluded notice. Gray blue in the haze of
distance, the rolling uplands culminated in a range of low hills, but
these were a full day's march beyond their powers. Their goal, if it
were to be reached within daylight, must be nearer than that. His
attention, as the hours went monotonously by, was at last drawn to a gap
in the far mapped expanse of vegetation.
A line of green, deeper and of more luxuriant growth than the thickets
around them, divided the jungle from east to west. Daoud, turning in his
saddle, waved his hand in an important gesture.
"The Gorge of the Bou Djerba, Sidi," he said. "It is my advice that I go
forward to reconnoitre--alone."
Aylmer looked at Perinaud. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders.
"Monsieur guarantees this fellow, I understand? Well, let him justify
himself. I have no objections."
Rattier interrupted.
"It is well understood that I deal with this M. de Landon if he is
there, I alone? Your man, now, if he suddenly confronts him--" He broke
off with a meaning gesture. "I do not wish my interview with him
anticipated."
In spite of himself, a smile broke the imperturbability of the
sergeant's face. With a suggestive jerk of the hand he dismissed Daoud,
who cantered on into and was lost in the jungle of mallow. Perinaud
turned sympathetic and now perfectly grave features towards the
commandant.
"Monsieur may be easy in his mind," he said quietly. "The man we seek,
if I have understood his talents rightly, is hardly likely to be subdued
without the display of some force and intelligence."
He turned to give the order to dismount. Rattier watched him with an air
of baffled exasperation. There had been a gentle emphasis on the last
two words which could scarcely be misunderstood, and as the sailor
ruminated over them, his taciturnity showed renewed signs of failing
before the rising tide of his wrath. A sudden diversion averted an
outbreak.
For a gunshot rang out among the woodland silences into which Daoud had
disappeared. It was instantly replied to by the shriller snap of a
revolver. And this was followed by a fusillade of five more reports as
the weapon was emptied. The Moor's voice was suddenly uplifted.
"To me, Sidi!" he was shouting vehemently. "To me!"
The native officer thundered an order. In a twinkling the men were back
in their saddles and, in irregular formation, threading the aisles of
thicket at a canter. Aylmer and Rattier followed the sergeant, riding
abreast.
There came another report. A bullet whistled between the pair, and from
Rattier came a little growl of satisfaction. If there was to be a fight,
he seemed to imply, his promised interview with Landon would assume
proportions which were entirely pleasing to him. Perinaud increased his
horse's pace, flinging alert glances each side of him rather than in
front.
A couple of hundred yards at speed and the forest maze opened into a
wide clearing, deeply overgrown with mallow and broom. Through the
middle of this, his horse laboring against the growth which was full
five feet high, rode Daoud, revolver in hand. A short distance ahead of
him the green thicket was grooved in half a dozen places, as unseen
bodies crashed through. Daoud's aim was poised and then withdrawn a
score of times in as many seconds. The flicker of a white _haik_ would
show for a brief instant here and there, and then be swallowed by the
jungle.
Daoud would answer these appearances with a bullet, one which apparently
invariably missed its mark, for the echo of a mocking triumph greeted
them. He turned irritably in the direction of his companions.
He waved his hand significantly, motioning them to deploy right and
left, to surround the thicket. Perinaud answered with a comprehending
nod.
But Rattier had neither the time nor the inclination for a display of
tactics. As Daoud turned his horse to emerge from the mallow, the
commandant spurred his charger into the thick of it. And he shouted, he
whirled up his right hand, grasping his revolver, with fierce
gesticulations of encouragement.
The Goumiers saw, heard, and found little room for hesitation in their
mood. Like a torrent released at the breaking of a dam, they followed.
Perinaud thundered an ineffectual protest.
It fell on deaf ears. The green brake was furrowed by a dozen lanes
before their impact and then, relentlessly, as it seemed, closed behind
them. The horses bucked, plunged, but made little headway. From one of
them came a sudden whinnying shriek of pain.
Then it sank under its rider as the knife which had severed its tendons
slipped back into the cover from which it had been so swiftly and so
silently thrust.
The fallen Goumier cleared himself and scrambled to his feet. His face
alone was clear in the sea of vegetation, and it was a mask of anger and
bewilderment. And then it, too, was gone with a sudden panting cry.
Aylmer gave a little gasp. The head was there and then it was not. It
sank into the green as the swimmer sinks into the blue in a
shark-infested sea. But this shark was a human one, and its teeth a long
Berber knife. The fugitives of the Beni M'Geel had chosen their
battle-ground well.
Horse or man, lance or carbine--what were they against the daggers which
the tussocks veiled? Mocking cries echoed in the thicket. Another horse
shrieked and fell; another face showed white above the green and then
was gone. The Goumiers snarled with rage as they spurred furiously
forward, but the clinging mallow held them, shackled them, suffocated
them with its density. There was a note of panic in their shouts; they
battled no longer for victory but for escape.
The leader of the reckless charge was in slightly better case than the
majority. Rattier and one or two others, by chance of circumstances,
stood in wider spaces, where the dagger men could not reach them unseen.
They sat in their saddles, alert for opportunity, quivering with rage,
but useless. Their glances flashed from side to side, their eyes
gleamed, but opportunity evaded them. And the cries of the unseen enemy
still mocked them from the ambush.
Carried away by impulse, Aylmer would have joined the charge. Perinaud's
hand fell upon his reins with a grip of iron. Aylmer made as if he would
release them by force.
The sergeant made a gesture of appeal.
"No, my Captain! This is serious. A little coolness, a little restraint,
and we pull them out of this! But to follow! That spells death for us
all!"
He leaped from the saddle, drew his carbine from the bucket, and flung
to Aylmer the reins of both horses.
"If Monsieur will be so obliging?" he said quickly, and turned towards
the nearest tree, a cedar which towered twenty feet above the dwarfed
bolls of cork. He climbed lithely, rapidly, resting, at last, within a
few feet of the top. He leaned his carbine upon a bough, took a steady
aim, and fired.
A shriek answered the report--a shriek muffled in the blanket of the
broom.
"_Courage, mes enfants!_" said Perinaud, placidly. "That accounted for
one, and from here I see all. There are but six. Give me time and the
affair completes itself effectually."
Again he dwelled upon his aim, hesitated, fired, shook his head in
self-reproach and fired again. This time he gave a little nod of
satisfaction.
"Two!" he cried complacently. "Two, my children!" and the report of his
rifle punctuated the announcement. "So!" went on the sergeant, as if he
commented on the score at a rifle range. "So! We write full stop to
_Monsieur le troisieme_. Aha! _Messieurs quatrieme_, _cinquieme_ and
_sixieme_--it is poor stuff to push through, the broom. No, I do not see
you, Messieurs, but I see where you run like rabbits, and perhaps we may
chance a bullet--there!"
The report of the last cartridge in the magazine was answered by another
yell. A brown-clad body shot into the air out of the undergrowth and
subsided limply. Perinaud nodded again.
"Through the brain, my friend, through the brain. Yes, I still see you,
my two little doves. We have to reload. Four for one magazine of five
cartridges is not bad, you will allow. You are trapped, are you not? In
the broom you cannot escape me; in the open you will be ridden down.
Well, it is to be in the broom, is it? So! _Voila, Monsieur le
cinquieme!_ That closes your account. As for you, my sixth friend, you
have chosen the thicket, have you? You are very still; we must
speculate, we must invite the co-operation of chance, who is a good
friend to Sergeant Perinaud as a rule. There! No, is that not in the
middle of the target? We must try again. Umph! I wonder if you are,
after all, dead, my pigeon. Hola, there! Monsieur le Commandant. If you
will be good enough to step fifteen long paces to the right, following
the motion of my hand, you will be able to inform me if my last shot was
a bull's-eye, an outer, or even--shame to me if it is so--a miss. Yes,
Monsieur, that is the spot. Where the patch of broom outcrops between
those two stumps of cork."
Rattier beat a road laboriously through the clinging stems as the
sergeant's finger motioned. A sudden muffled exclamation burst from him;
he lurched sideways, stumbled, and fell prone. The green stalks rustled
and shook as something brown and indistinguishable shot through them in
the direction in which the waiting Goumiers were thickest.
Perinaud gave a warning cry.
"Look to yourselves! I cannot shoot; he is in line between us!"
One of the horsemen shouted and spurred his stallion towards the fringe
of the undergrowth furthest from the point at which the charge had
entered it. His impulsive action countered Perinaud's manifest purpose
of firing, for he, too, had seen the agitation of the mallow in that
direction. The horseman bounded forward, the horse clearing the
obstructions in a series of jerky little leaps. Beside the edge of the
clearing they halted, the man searching the cover in front of him and on
each side keenly.
A brown something snaked out of the thicket at his back. Steel flashed
in the sun. The Goumier toppled from the saddle, and a brown figure,
bowing flat across the horse's withers, seemed to have replaced him
almost in the moment of his fall. Spurred desperately by his new rider,
the stallion burst away down the cork tree alleys.
A ragged volley rattled out. Splinters flew wide from a dozen trees, but
horse and rider fled on. The Goumiers called fiercely on the name of a
dozen saints of Islam to qualify their rage as they thrust their
chargers out of the tangle in pursuit. Perinaud and their officer yelled
strenuous commands.
Crestfallen and sullen, the troopers reined in, listening in silence to
the commination addressed to them from the pulpit of the cedar.
"Is one lesson insufficient?" thundered Perinaud. "Do we practise the
arts of war or are we conducting a _ralli-papier_? Like hares you were
decoyed into this ambush, and, flinging your red-hot experience to the
winds, you are prepared to be drawn, as likely as not, into another.
Collect yourselves, morally as well as physically, if you please."
They reined in among the cork trees, and half a dozen, flinging their
reins to comrades, pushed back on foot into the cover. A string of
oaths and maledictions, twice repeated, told of what they found. They
came back with the sullen tread of those bearing the heavy burdens of
defeat and death. They laid the bodies of their two comrades at the foot
of the cedar.
Rattier, leaning upon Aylmer's arm, swore vehemently. The blood dripped
from a gash across his wrist, but he raised it to shake a fist in the
direction taken by the fugitive.
"Another item in M. de Landon's ledger, name of all names!" he cried.
"But we shall see, my friends, we shall see. The hand is not played out
yet, believe me!"
"Perhaps not," agreed Aylmer, "but you, at any rate, have cut out of the
deal, or have been cut out," he added significantly, pointing to the
wounded arm.
The commandant drew himself away with a fierce jerk.
"I!" he cried. "Is a cut finger--a graze--to send me weeping to the
ambulance? The scoundrel who deceived me I pursue to the world's end! He
has scored once more. It is the last time--this!"
He raised himself to his full height in a grandiloquent gesture
and--fell fainting into Perinaud's arms. The sergeant grunted morosely
and pointed to a crimson stain which had welled through the blue tunic
and was rapidly spreading.
"If it is not serious, I thank Our Lady and all the listening Saints for
this!" he said devoutly. "He is impossible as a colleague on
reconnaissance, this energetic commandant. It was his recklessness which
led these men into a trap which at any other moment they would have
avoided. We have lost two men and five horses by the result of this
escapade. What are your suggestions now, Monsieur?"
Aylmer hesitated.
"For the moment have you not done enough?" he asked. "After all, your
service is to France, not to intruders like myself. My Moorish servant
and I might continue to reconnoitre alone. Your hands are full enough,
are they not?"
The other looked at him queerly.
"Perhaps Monsieur thinks that so far we have been a hindrance rather
than a help to his purposes. Monsieur has reason. At the same time we
might justly, in my opinion, be permitted another chance to repair our
prestige."
Aylmer smiled. Perinaud's voice was chilly. The glance he directed at
the crestfallen Goumiers let it be inferred that his words were also
designed to reach their address. They shuffled and kicked at the ground
restlessly as they listened.
"It is for you, of course, to direct matters, Sergeant!" he said
quickly. "But the commandant, without a doubt, must be removed at once
to hospital."
"Without a doubt, Monsieur," agreed Perinaud, with sudden cheerfulness.
"We will escort him and the dismounted men out of the forest into the
open farm lands, where patrols are not infrequent and nothing is to be
feared. They will then be about twenty kilometres from the town. The
best mounted will proceed as quickly as possible to fetch the ambulance.
Of the others, twenty will escort the commandant's stretcher--it is
perfectly feasible to make a good one of poles which we will cut and
over which we will button two greatcoats--the five new-made _fantassins_
will walk. The remaining dozen and you and I, Monsieur, will
proceed--with energy, if you please, but certainly with prudence."
Perinaud closed his little homily with the satisfied air of an orator
who has arrived at and correctly delivered an anticipated peroration.
And chance, who may have been listening, offered yet another of her
favors to her protege. As the little column debouched from the trees
into the open expanse of alluvial country, a cloud of brown dust was
rising on the far side of the fringing barley fields. Perinaud gave an
exclamation of content.
"It is the Tirailleurs with their major," he explained. "They have
patrolled the Ber Rechid road and made a reconnaissance to get cattle.
They will have an ambulance, or at least a mule litter."
He put his horse to the gallop. The others, following more sedately, saw
him reach and disappear among the ranks of white-uniformed men, whose
cummerbunds and tarbooshes winked a cheerful scarlet against the dun
fallow or green cropping of the fields. And there was an air of
animation about the column accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that
innumerable kids frisked about their mothers as the captured goats were
herded along the track, while droves of small, wiry cattle bellowed and
butted at each other, their captors, and every moving object within
reach of their serviceable little horns.
Perinaud, who had dismounted, was standing and speaking with an air of
respect and precision to a mounted officer. The latter turned as Aylmer
and his companions approached, and the former could barely restrain a
start of consternation and surprise. For a deep, flaming groove dinted
the man's forehead from temple to temple, while the hand which he raised
in salute was one huge scar from knuckles to wrist. His brown eyes
inspected Aylmer with friendly attention.
"At your service, _mon Capitaine_," he said. "Sergeant Perinaud has
explained your needs."
Aylmer began to express his thanks. The other nodded pleasantly and gave
an order. From the rear an ambulance was trotted forward: a
gray-moustached doctor in uniform swung himself from his saddle and bent
over Rattier, who was still unconscious.
A moment later he looked up.
"Loss of blood," he said laconically. "He has a gash two fingers deep
behind the shoulder. Severe, but not serious--with care. We will see to
him."
The officer nodded again. He looked at Aylmer.
"And yourself, Monsieur?" he asked.
Aylmer made a gesture towards the forest and the distant uplands.
"With your leave, we will continue our--investigations, Major," he said.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
"The forest, _mon ami_? We, do you see, have confined our operations so
far to the plough lands, the open. I have no store of experience to draw
upon for your advice. You will be pioneers. I shall hope to have the
benefit of your experience on your return. Maillot is my name, Monsieur,
and I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at the headquarters of my
regiment outside the Fedallah Gate. For the moment, then, _au revoir_!"
He smiled cheerfully, saluted, and gave an order. The tramp and jingle
of the march were renewed. The dust cloud began to form again where it
had settled, and the Tirailleurs swung off seawards with the elastic
step which those who wear the _godillot_ acquire, and which makes them
the envy of their colleagues in the regulars who are doomed to the
precise lacing of the _soulier_. Perinaud made a gesture of admiration,
as with Aylmer and his half score of Goumiers he watched them go.
"Monsieur has seen the bravest man and the finest leader of all the
troops of France," he remarked.
"Major Maillot?"
"But certainly the major, Monsieur. He needs no medals to prove what he
is and where he has been. His deeds are witnessed on his brow and
hands."
He hesitated and then spoke quickly.
"I have no wish to vaunt the deeds of Frenchmen to you, a foreigner,
Monsieur, but that is a man in whom we may take an honest pride. The
scar you saw came to him by Settat. He and a picket were cut off from
the main body by a hidden reserve of the enemy. They retreated fighting
and were within measurable distance of safety. And then one of our
fallen, whom they had left for dead, cried aloud out of the hands of the
enemy. How these savages were dealing with him I shall not disgust
Monsieur by telling. Suffice it to say that they were working the will
of devils upon him and, in spite of his manhood, he shrieked. The major
heard, and like a thunderbolt turned and charged straight for the enemy,
and his men, without a thought of the peril, turned with him, a dozen
perhaps, against five score. But those hundred Moors were in full
retreat before the main body of the regiment raced up to the rescue, and
they picked their major up wounded as you have seen, lying across the
body of the man he had fought to save, with seven dead foes ringed round
him.... They have a confident air, these Tirailleurs of ours. Some say
an insolent one. Well, Monsieur, they have their pride, it must be
allowed, but God knows when they are led as that man leads they have a
right to it."
Aylmer nodded. Slowly they turned their horses' heads forestwards again.
Perinaud looked at the line of trees abstractedly and then back again at
the receding column.
"France does not desert her children if she remembers," he remarked
quietly. "It is well that we met these men and their major. He is a man
who will see to it that we are not forgotten, if chance wills that we do
not soon return. The task of seeking us would be one after his own
heart, and his Tirailleurs would think with him." He smiled confidently.
"So we may go forward with an easy mind, _mon Capitaine_. We are
pioneers, as the major said. To pioneers should come adventures, if they
are worthy of their name."
He touched his stallion's flank with the spur. The little band of
horsemen cantered up and into the shadow of the cork trees. And there
was an air of arrogance and recklessness about the riders. All trace of
discomfiture of an hour back was gone. It was as if the Tirailleurs had
breathed an infection of valor around them--a bacillus of intrepidity
which their major had cultivated with the point of his untiring sword.