The Collected Works of P. C. Wren: Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories. P. C. Wren
wave of death-like faintness had passed, into the very face of one who had sprung past him and was in the act of driving his big curved dagger into my breast. . . .
As I aimed my last shot--at the man whose sword was clashing on Dufour's sabre--the squadron came thundering back, headed by Lieutenant d'Auray de Redon, and never was I more glad to see the face of my beloved Raoul. . . .
He and several of the Spahis drew rein, scattered our assailants and pursued them, while Dufour caught a riderless troop-horse and--I am told--lifted me across the saddle, jumped on its back, behind the saddle, and galloped back to our position.
It seems that he had been behind me when my horse came down, had deliberately reined up, dismounted, and run to rescue me--when he was attacked. Nor had he striven to cut his way out from among the few who were surrounding him, but had stood his ground, defending me until he was the centre of the mob of wild fanatics from which Raoul's charge saved us in the nick of time. He was bleeding from half a dozen sword-cuts by the time he got me away, though not one of them was severe. . . .
Yes--this was the picture that burned before my eyes on the dreadful day of which I shall tell you.
Duty is a stern and jealous God. . . .
§ 3
I made a quick recovery, and thanked Heaven and our splendid surgeons when I found that I was not, as I had feared, to be lame for life.
I got back to work, and when my uncle, punctual to his life's programme, came out to Africa, I was able to join his Staff as an officer who knew more than a little about the country and its fascinating towns and people; an officer who could speak Arabic and its Moorish variant like a native; and who could wander through suq and street and bazaar as a beggar; a pedlar; a swaggering Riffian askri of the bled; a nervous, cringing Jew of the mellah; a fanatic of Mulai Idris; a camel-man, or donkey-driver--without the least fear of discovery.
And I believe I could tell him things that no other officer in all Morocco could tell him of subterranean tribal politics; gutter intrigues of the fanatical mobs of towns that mattered (such as Meknes, for example, where I relieved my friend Captain de Lannec and where I was soon playing the Jew pedlar, and sending out messengers up to the day of its rising and the great massacre); and the respective attitudes, at different times, of various parts of the country and various classes of the people towards the Sultan Abd-el-Aziz; the would-be Sultan, Mulai Hafid; the Pretender Mulai Zine, his brother; or the great powerful marabout Ibn Nualla.
My uncle was pleased with the tool of his fashioning--the tool that would never "turn in his hand," and my name was writ large in the books of the Bureau des Affaires Indigènes at Rabat. . . .
Nor do I think that there was any jealousy or grumbling when I became the youngest Major in the French Army, and disappeared from human ken to watch affairs in Zaguig and in the disguise of a native of that mean city. . . .
I entered it on foot, in the guise of a hill-man from the north, and as I passed through the tunnel of the great gate in the mighty ramparts, a camel-driver rose from where he squatted beside his beast and accosted me.
We gave what I think was an unexceptionable rendering of the meeting of two Arab friends who had not seen each other for a long time.
"Let me be the proud means of giving your honoured legs a rest, my brother," said the man loudly, as he again embraced me and patted my back with both hands. "Let my camel bear you to the lodging you honour with your shining presence. . . . God make you strong. . . . God give you many sons. . . . God send rain upon your barley crops. . . ." And he led me to where his kneeling camel snarled.
And may I be believed when I say that it was not until he had patted my back (three right hand, two left, one right, one left) that I knew that this dirty, bearded, shaggy camel-man was Raoul d'Auray de Redon, whom I was to relieve here! I was to do this that he might make a long, long journey with a caravan of a certain Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf, a Europeanized Arab merchant whom our Secret Service trusted--to a certain extent.
Raoul it was however, and, at Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf's house, he told me all he could of local politics, intrigues, under-currents and native affairs in general.
"It's high time we made a plain gesture and took a firm forward step," he concluded. "It is known, of course, that we are coming and that the Military Mission will be a strong one--and it is anticipated that it will be followed by a column that will eventually remark J'y suis--J'y reste. . . . Well, the brutes have asked for it, and they'll get it--but I think it is a case of the sooner the quicker. . . .
"I'll tell you a curious thing, my friend. I have been attending some very interesting gatherings, and at one or two of them was a heavily-bearded fanatic who harangued the audience volubly and eloquently--but methought his Arabic had an accent. . . . I got Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf to let me take his trusted old factotum, Ali Mansur, with me to a little fruit-party which the eloquent one was giving.
"When old Ali Mansur had gobbled all the fruit he could hold and we sat replete, listening to our host's harangue upon the greatness of Islam and the littleness (and nastiness) of Unbelievers--especially the Franzawi Unbelievers who have conquered Algeria and penetrated Tunisia and Morocco and intended to come to Zaguig--I asked old Ali if he thought the man spoke curious Arabic and was a foreigner himself.
"'He is an Egyptian or a Moor or a Turk or something else, doubtless,' granted Ali. 'But he is a true son of Islam and a father of the poor and the oppressed. Wallahi, but those melons and figs and dates were good--Allah reward him.'
"So I decided that I was right and that this fellow's Arabic was a little queer. . . . Well, I followed him about, and, one evening, saw him meet another man, evidently by appointment, in the Zaouia Gardens. . . . And the other man made a much quicker job of tucking his legs up under him on the stone seat, and squatting cross-legged like a true native, than my suspect did. He was a little slow and clumsy about it, and I fancied that he would have sat on the seat in European fashion, if he had been alone and unobserved. . . . Whereupon I became a wicked cut-purse robber of a mountaineer, crept up behind those two, in bare-footed silence, and suddenly fetched our eloquent friend a very sharp crack on the head with my heavy matrack stick. . . . He let out one word and sprang to his feet. The hood of my dirty burnous was well over my ingenuous countenance and the evening was growing dark, but I got a clear glimpse of his face, and then fled for my life. . . . I am a good runner, as you know, and I had learned what I wanted--or most of it."
I waited, deeply interested, while Raoul paused and smiled at me.
"When a man has an exclamation fairly knocked out of him, so to speak, that exclamation will be in his mother-tongue," continued Raoul. "And if a man has, at times, a very slight cast in his eye, that cast is much enhanced and emphasized in a moment of sudden shock, fright, anger or other violent emotion."
"True," I agreed.
"My friend," said Raoul, "that man's exclamation, when I hit him, was 'Himmel!' and, as he turned round, there was a most pronounced cast in his left eye. He almost squinted, in fact. . . ."
"The former point is highly interesting," I observed. "What of the other?"
"Henri," replied Raoul. "Do you remember a man who--let me see--had dirty finger-nails, ate garlic, jerked his horse's mouth, had a German mother, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, revealed a long dog-tooth when he grinned sideways, and had a cast in his eye? . . . A man in the Blue Hussars, a dozen years and more ago? . . . Eh, do you?"
"Becque!" I exclaimed.
"Becque, I verily believe," said Raoul.
"But wouldn't he exclaim in French, under such sudden and violent shock?" I demurred.
"Not if he had been bred and born speaking the German of his German mother in Alsace," replied my friend. "German would be literally his mother-tongue. He would learn from his French father to speak perfect French, and we know that his parents were of the two nationalities."
"It