The Collected Works of P. C. Wren: Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories. P. C. Wren
paced round and round the roof like a tiger in a cage.
"Hi you, there!" he called up to Schwartz. "Can you see nothing?"
"Nothing moving, mon Adjudant," replied Schwartz.
A moment later he shouted something, and his voice was drowned in the rattle and crash of a sudden outbreak of rifle fire in a complete circle all round the fort. The Arabs had lined the nearest sand-hills on all sides of us, and lying flat below the crests, poured in a steady independent fire.
This was a very different thing from their first mad rush up to the very walls, when they hoped to surprise a sleeping fort and swarm up over the walls from each other's shoulders.
They were now difficult to see, and a man firing from his embrasure was as much exposed as an Arab lying flat behind a stone or in a trench scooped in the sand.
There was a man opposite to me, about a hundred yards distant, who merely appeared as a small black blob every few minutes. He must have been lying on a slope or in a shallow sand trench, and he only showed his head for a few seconds when he fired. I felt that either he or I would get hurt, sooner or later, for he, among others, was potting at my embrasure.
It was certainly "fancy shooting" as Michael had said, waiting for the small object, a man's head, to appear for five seconds at a hundred yards' range, and get a shot at it. It was certainly interesting too, and more difficult than rifle-range work, for one's nerves are not steadied nor one's aim improved by the knowledge that one is also being shot at oneself, and by several people.
With unpleasant frequency there was a sharp blow on the wall near my embrasure and sometimes the high wailing song of a ricochet, as the deflected and distorted bullet continued its flight at an angle to the line of its arrival.
The morning wore on and the sun gained rapidly in power.
Unreasonably and unreasoningly I did not expect to be hit, and I was not hit, but I was increasingly conscious of the terrific heat and of a severe headache. I wondered if high nervous tension made one more susceptible, or whether the day was really hotter than usual. . . .
Suddenly, the man on my right leapt back, shouted, spun round and fell to the ground, his rifle clattering at my feet.
I turned and stooped over him. It was the wretched Guantaio, shot through the middle of his face.
As I bent down, I was suddenly sent crashing against the wall, as Lejaune literally sprang at me.
"By God!" he roared. "You turn from your place again and I'll blow your head off! Duty, you dog! Get to your duty! What have you to do with this carrion, you cursed, slinking, cowering, hiding shirker . . ." and as I turned back into my embrasure, he picked up the choking, moaning Guantaio and flung him into the place from where he had fallen.
"Stay there, you rotten dog," he shouted, "and if you slide out of it, I'll pin you up with bayonets through you," and he forced the dying wretch into the embrasure so that he was wedged in position, with his head and shoulders showing through the aperture between the crenellations on either side of him.
"I'll have no skulking malingerers here," he roared. "You'll all stay in those embrasures alive or dead, while there's an Arab in sight. . . ."
Suddenly the Arab fire dwindled and slackened and then ceased. Either they had had enough of our heavy and accurate fire, or else some new tactics were going to be introduced. I imagined that a camel-man had ridden all round the sand-hills, out of sight, calling the leaders to colloquy with the Emir in command.
Our bugles sounded the "Cease fire."
"Stand easy! . . . Wounded lie down where they are," rang out Lejaune's voice, and some half-dozen men sank to the ground in their own blood. I was thankful to see that Michael was not among them.
Sergeant Dupré with Cordier, who had been a doctor, went to each in turn, with bandages and stimulants.
"Corporal Boldini," barked Lejaune, "take the men down in three batches. Ten minutes for soupe and a half-litre of wine each. Come back at the 'pas gymnastique' if you hear the 'Assembly' blown. . . . St. André, replenish ammunition. Each man to have a hundred. . . . Stop that bandaging, Cordier, and stir yourself. . . ."
When my turn came, later, to go below, I was more thankful for the comparative darkness and coolness of the caserne than for the soupe and wine even, for my head was splitting.
"'Moriturus te saluto,'" said Cordier, as he raised his mug of wine.
"Don't talk rot," said I. "You're no more moriturus than--Madame la République."
"I shall be dead before sunset," replied Cordier. "This place will be a silent grave shortly . . . 'Madame la République--morituri te salutant!' . . ." and he drank again.
"He's fey," said Michael. "Anyhow, better to die fighting than to be done in by Lejaune afterwards. . . . If I go, I'd like to take that gentle adjudant with me. . . ."
"He's a topping soldier," I said.
"Great," agreed Michael. "Let's forgive him."
"We will, if he dies," said I. "I am afraid that he'll see to it that he needs some forgiving, if he and we survive this show, and he gets control again. . . ."
"Yes," said Michael. "Do you know, I believe he's torn both ways when a man's hit. The brute in him says, 'That's one for you, you damned mutineer,' and the soldier in him says, 'One more of a tiny garrison gone.'"
"He's a foul brute," I agreed. "He absolutely flung two wounded, suffering men back into their embrasures--and enjoyed doing it."
"Partly enjoyment and partly tactics," said Michael wiping his lips, and lighting a cigarette. "He's going to give the Arabs the idea that not a man has been killed. Or else that he has so many men in the fort that another takes the place of each one that falls. . . . The Touaregs have no field-glasses, and to them a man in an embrasure is a man. . . ."
"What about when there are too few to keep up any volume of fire?" I asked.
"He may hope for relief before then," hazarded Michael.
"He does," put in St. André, who had just joined us and taken a seat at the table. "Dupré told me so. The wily beggar has kept the two goums outside every night lately--presumably ever since he knew of the conspiracy. They had orders to go, hell for leather, to Tokotu, and say the fort was attacked, the moment they heard a rifle fired, inside or out."
"By Jove!" I exclaimed. "Of course! He wouldn't send to Tokotu to ask for help in quelling a mutiny of his own men, before it happened--but he wouldn't mind a column arriving because a goum had erroneously reported an attack on the fort."
"Cunning lad!" agreed Michael. "And he knew that when the conspiracy was about to bloom and he nipped it in the bud, he'd be pretty shorthanded after it, if he should be attacked--even by a small raiding party out for a lark!"
"Yes," said Cordier. "He saved his face and he saved the fort too. If a shot had been fired at the mutineers, the goums would have scuttled off as ordered, and the relief-column from Tokotu would have found an heroic Lejaune cowing and guarding a gang of mutineers. . . . As it is, they'll know to-morrow morning, at Tokotu, that the place is invested, and they'll be here the next day."
"Question is--where shall we be by then?" I observed.
"In Hell, dear friends," smiled Cordier.
"Suppose the goums were chopped in the oasis?" said Michael. "Taken by surprise, as we were."
"What I said to Dupré!" replied Cordier. "But Lejaune was too old a bird. They camped in the oasis by day, but were ordered to be out at night, and patrol separately, one north to south on the east and the other on the west, a half-circle each, from sunset to sunrise, Dupré says . . . Likely they'd have been chopped in the oasis in the daytime all right, sound asleep--but they wouldn't be caught at dawn. They were well outside the enveloping movement from the oasis when