THE MISSION

It is the darkest hour that comes before the dawn. Next day Soldier St. George became Corporal St. George, and felt more pleasure in the bit of red wool on his sleeve than Lieutenant Max Doran would have thought possible.

It was Four Eyes who brought him the news, a week later, that his name was among those who would go on "the great march." Four Eyes was somehow invariably the first one to hear everything, good news or bad. Life was not so black after all. There need be no past for a Legionnaire, but there might be a future. None of the men knew for certain when the start was to be made, but it would be soon, and the barracks of the Legion seethed with excitement. Even those who were not going could talk of nothing else. They swore that there was no doubt of the business to be done. The newly risen leader of the Senussi had summoned large bands of the sect to the village, El Gadhari, of which he was sheikh, calling upon them ostensibly to celebrate a certain feast. Close to this village was one of the most important Senussi monasteries. Tribes were moving all through the south, apparently with no warlike intention; but the Deliverer was dangerous. Just such a leader as he—even to the gray eyes and the horseshoe on his forehead—had been prophesied for this time of the world. The Legion would march. And it would maneuver in the desert, in the neighbourhood of El Gadhari. If the warning were enough—there would be no fighting; but the Legion hoped it might not be enough. To be the regiment ordered to give this warning was in itself an honour, for wherever work is hardest there the Legion goes. The Legion must sustain its reputation, such as it is! Desperate men, bad men, let them be called by civilians in times of peace, but give them fighting and they are the glorious soldiers who never turn back, who, even when they fall in death, fall forward as they rush upon the enemy. All the world knew that of them, and they knew it of themselves. They knew, also, that when the moment of starting came men of Sidi-bel-AbbÉs who drew away from them in the streets and the Place Carnot would take off their hats as the Legion went by. It would be "Vive la Legion!" then.

With each day of burning heat the excitement grew more feverish. Surely this morning, or this night, the order would come! The soldiers whistled as they polished their accoutrements, whistled half beneath their breath the "March of the Legion" which the band is forbidden to play in garrison. Quarrels were forgotten. Men who had not spoken to each other for weeks grinned in each other's faces and offered one another their cheap but treasured cigarettes.

Almost every one seemed to be happy except Garcia. He was among those who would not be taken on the march—he, who craved and needed to go, as did no other man in the Legion! Max feared Garcia meant to kill himself the night when he lost hope, and would not let him go out alone to walk in the darkness. "I don't want to ask if you have any plans," he said. "But there's one thing I do ask: share with me the money I've got left. You may need it. I shan't. And if you'll take it, that'll be proof that you think as much of me as I do of you."

Garcia took it, from the wallet which a man now lying in the hospital had tried to empty the other night. Then Max knew for certain what the queer light in ManÖel's eyes meant. He could not help a rejoicing thrill in the other's desperate courage which no obstacle had crushed.

That same night, when the two had separated (St. George reassured, and believing that Garcia had use for his life after all), Max met Colonel DeLisle face to face, for the first time alone and unofficially since they had parted in the Salle d'Honneur. The colonel was walking unaccompanied, in the street not far from the little garden of the officers' club, where the band was to give a concert, and returning Max's quick salute he turned to call him back.

"Good evening, Corporal! I should like to speak with you a minute!" DeLisle cried out cheerfully in English. Max's heart gave a bound. Surely never could the word "Corporal" have sounded so like fine music in a poor, non-commissioned officer's ears!

He wheeled, pale with pleasure that his beau ideal should wish to speak with him, and in English, the language they had used when they were still social equals. "My Colonel!" he stammered.

"I want to congratulate you on your quick promotion," said DeLisle. "It has come to you in spite of your resolution to take no advantage in the beginning over your comrades. I congratulate you on that, too, and on keeping it, now it has turned out so well. I hoped and believed it would be so, though I advised you for your good."

"I know that, my Colonel," answered Max, determined not to presume in speech or act upon his superior officer's kindness. "I knew it then."

"It may seem a pitifully small step up," DeLisle went on, "but it's the first reward the Legion can give a soldier. There will be others. I shall have to congratulate you again before long, I'm sure. Meanwhile, I have a message for you." He paused for an instant, slightly hesitating, perhaps. "It is from my daughter. She is in the south, visiting the daughter of an Agha who is very loyal to France as a servant, very loyal to me as a friend. Because of the march last spring, and again this one, now coming (which I expected for this time, and on which I must go myself), I could not have a young girl like Sanda living in Sidi-bel-AbbÉs. She is happy and interested where she is, and she has not forgotten you. In more than one letter she has wished to be remembered to you, if possible. To-night, Corporal, it is possible, and I'm glad to give the message."

"I thank you for it, my Colonel," Max said, half ashamed of the deep feeling which his voice betrayed. "I—wish I might be able to thank Miss DeLisle. It is a great deal to me that she should remember me—my——"

"Your chivalry? It would be impossible to forget," DeLisle took him up crisply. Then he dismissed the subject, as Max felt. "Tell me," he went on in the same cheerful tone in which he had called out "Corporal!" "Are you happy to escape the caserne, and get away to the desert?"

Suddenly a wild idea sprang into Max's head. Desperately, not daring to let himself stop and think, he spoke. "I should be happy, my Colonel, but for one thing. Have I your permission to tell you what it is?"

"Yes," said DeLisle. "If I can help you in the matter, I will."

"My Colonel, it's in your power to do me a favour I would repay you for with my life if necessary, though"—and Max began to stammer again—"that would be at your service in any case. The best friend I have made in the regiment would give his soul to go on this march. I know he hasn't always behaved as a soldier ought, but he's as brave as he is hot tempered and reckless. If it could be reconsidered——"

"You mean Garcia?" broke in Colonel DeLisle sharply.

Max was astonished. Instantly he saw that the colonel must have been watching his career. He might have guessed as much from the reward of merit just given him—friendly congratulations and Sanda's message, a thousand times more valued for the delay; and he had begun to realize that he had never been abandoned, never forgotten. But the colonel's knowledge of his friendship with Garcia brought the thrilling truth home, almost with a shock.

"Yes, my Colonel—Garcia," he replied.

"Well, I can make no promise," said DeLisle, speaking now more in the tone of an officer with a subordinate, yet showing that he was not vexed. "But—I should like you to go away happy, Corporal. I'll look into the affair of your friend, and after that—we shall see. Good-night."

Again the salute was exchanged, and the colonel was gone, turning in at the garden gate of the Cercle Militaire. The meeting, and all that had passed, seemed like a waking dream. Max could hardly believe it had happened, that Sanda had sent him a message, that her father had given it, and that he, scarcely more than a bleu, had dared to speak for ManÖel Valdez.

That day it proved not to be a dream, for Garcia learned officially that he was to go with his comrades. Max hardly knew whether or not it would be wise to explain how the miracle had come to pass, but there was a reason why he wished to tell. When the truth was out, and Valdez ready to worship his friend, Max said: "I did it before I stopped to think; if I had stopped, I don't know—for you see, in a way, this makes me a traitor to the colonel. I begged him for a favour and he granted it. Yet you and I understand what your going means. I've been asking him for your chance to—well, we won't put it in words! Only, for God's sake, try to think of some other way to do what you've got to do!"

"Even you admit that I have got to do it!" Valdez argued. "To save a woman—it's to save her life, you know."

"I know," said Max. "But there may be some other way than this one in your mind."

"If there is, I'll take it. And now I can give you back your money."

"No! You'll need every sou if——"

"You're the best friend a man ever had!" cried the Spaniard.

At midnight the alarm they were all waiting for sounded, and though it was expected at any hour, it came as a surprise.

"Aux armes!" rang out the call of the bugle from the barrack-yard and waked the stone soldiers to instant life. The flat, carved figures sat up on their narrow tombs in the moonlight, then sprang to their feet. There was no need or thought of discipline with that glorious alarm sounding in their ears! The men yelled with joy and roared from dormitory to dormitory in the wonderful Legion language made up of chosen bits from every other language of the world.

"Faites les sacs. En tenue de campagne d'Afrique!" bawled excited corporals. Everything had to be done in about ten minutes; and though all soldiers knew the programme thoroughly, and young soldiers had gone through it in drill a hundred times, the real thing was somehow different. Men stumbled over each other and forgot what to do first. Corporals swore and threatened; but to an onlooker the work of packing would have seemed to go by magic. At the end of the ten minutes the barrack-yard was full of men lined up, ready for marching, and soldiers of all nations thanked their gods for finding that the cartridges served out to them from the magazine were not blank ones. They had all protested their certainty that this march was for business; and when they had heard that their colonel was going with them they had been doubly sure; yet in their hearts they had anxiously admitted that it was guesswork. Now these blessed cartridges packed full of the right stuff put an end to furtive doubts.

As the companies formed up, the "Legion's March" was played, and the young soldiers who had never heard it, unless whistled sotto voce by old Legionnaires, felt the thrill of its tempestuous strains in the marrow of their bones.

Nowadays the great marches of the Foreign Legion are not what they once were, unless for government maneuvers. When there is need of haste the Legion goes by the railway the Legion has helped to lay; and only at the end of the line begins the real business for which the Legion lives. For the Legion is meant for the hardest marching (with the heaviest kits in the world) as well as the fiercest fighting; and when the Legion marches through the desert, it is "marcher ou mourir."

The cry of the bugles reached the ears of the heaviest sleepers in town; for those who knew the Legion and the Legion's music knew that the soldiers were off for a great march, or that wild air would not be played. Windows flew up and heads looked down as the soldiers tramping the bright moonlit street went to the railway station. So the "lucky ones" of the Legion passed out of Sidi-bel-AbbÉs, some of them never to return. And perhaps that was lucky, too, for it's as well for a Legionnaire to rest in the desert as under one of the little black crosses behind the wall of cypresses in the Legion's burial ground.

They had to go by the new railway line to Touggourt, as Sanda DeLisle had gone, but instead of travelling by passenger train, the soldiers went as Max had seen the batch of recruits from Oran arrive at Bel-AbbÉs: in wagons which could be used for freight or France's human merchandise: "32 hommes, 6 cheveaux." After Touggourt their way would diverge from Sanda's. There was no chance for Colonel DeLisle to go and see his daughter, but in a letter he had told her the date of his arrival in the oasis town and the hope he had—a hope almost a certainty—of hearing from his girl there, or having a message of love to take with him on the long march, warmed his heart. It was very strange, almost horrible, to remember how he had felt toward his daughter until the day she came to him, in the image of his dead love, at Sidi-bel-AbbÉs. He had not wanted to see her. He had even felt that he could not bear to see her. Unjust and brutal as it was, he had never been able to banish the thought that, if it had not been for her, his wife might have been with him through the years. Sanda had cost him the happiness of his life.

He had easily persuaded himself that in any case, even if he had wanted her with him, for her sake it was far better not. Such an existence as his was not for a young woman to share, even after she had passed the schoolgirl age. It had seemed to DeLisle that the only place for Sanda was with her aunts, and passing half her time in France, half in Ireland, gave the girl a chance to see something of the world. She was not poor, for she had her mother's money; and because he wished to contribute something toward his daughter's keep, rather than because she needed it, he always paid for her education and her board. What she had of her own, from her mother, must be saved for her dot when she married; and half unconsciously he had hoped that she would marry early.

After he saw her—the lovely young thing who had run away to him, as her mother had—all that had been changed in an instant. His heart was at her little feet, as it had been at the feet of the first Sanda, whose copy she was.

His time for the next few months was so mapped out that he could not have the girl with him for more than the first few days of joy, for she could not be left in Sidi-bel-AbbÉs while he was away on duty. He had done the best he could for his daughter by giving her a romantic taste of desert life in the house of a tried friend whom he believed he might trust; but he thought tenderly and constantly of la petite, and of future days when they might be together—if he came back alive from those "maneuvers" near El Gadhari. Approaching Touggourt, the first scene of his life's great love tragedy, he could hardly wait for the letter he hoped for from Sanda. He expected another event, also the pleasure of meeting Richard Stanton, whom he had not seen for years, and who would be, he knew, at Touggourt, getting together a caravan for that "mad expedition" (as every one called it) in search of the Lost Oasis. But if Stanton had cared as much for his old friend as in past days, he had protested, he would have given a day or two to go out of his way and visit the Colonel of the Foreign Legion at its headquarters. He had not done that, and though DeLisle told himself that he was not hurt, his enthusiasm at the thought of the meeting was slightly dampened. He looked forward more keenly to Sanda's letter than to an encounter with his erratic friend. It was good to have something heart-warming to hope for in a place so poignantly associated with the past.

There was plenty for the Legionnaires to do in Touggourt. Having come by rail, their first camp was made in the flat space of desert between the big oasis town and the dunes. They were to stay only a few hours, for the first stage of their march would begin long before sun-up, and most of their leisure was to be spent in sleep. Yet somehow there was time for a look at the sights of the place. One of these was a large Arab cafÉ on the outskirts of the town where the trampled sand of the streets became a vast, flowing wave of gold. Four Eyes had been in Touggourt more than once, having marched all the way from Bel-AbbÉs, long before the railway was begun or thought of. He urged Max to come into the low white building where at dusk the rÄita and the tomtom had begun to scream and throb.

"Prettiest dancing girls of the Sahara," he said, "and a fellow there I used to know in Bel-AbbÉs—in the Chasseurs—has just told me there's a great show for to-night."

There were several cafÉs in Sidi-bel-AbbÉs, where the proprietors engaged Arab girls to dance, but Max, who had paid one visit, in curiosity, thought the women disgusting and the dancing dull. He said that he had no faith in the Touggourt attractions, and would rather take a stroll.

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Four Eyes scouted his objections. "Haven't you heard the scandal about this Stanton, the exploring man, who's here—our colonel's old pal?"

"No, I've heard that Stanton's at Touggourt. But I've heard no scandal," answered Max. "What has he got to do with the dancing girls?"

As he spoke, it was as if he saw Stanton sitting with Sanda DeLisle at one of the little tea-tables on the terrace of the Hotel St. George at Algiers; the square, resolute, red-tanned face, and the big, square blue eyes, burning with aggressive vitality.

"Everything to do with one of them," said Four Eyes. "That's the scandal. Seems Stanton's been playing the fool. They say he's half mad, anyhow, about a lot of things—always was, but it is a bit worse since a touch o' the sun he had a year or two ago. He's off his head about an Ouled Nail—don't know whether she came here because of him, or whether he picked her up at Touggourt, but the story is, he could o' got away before now, with his bloomin' caravan, on that d——d fool expedition of his you read of in the papers, only he couldn't bring himself to leave this Ahmara, or whatever her crack-jaw name is. The chap that was talkin' to me says she's the handsomest creature you'd see in a lifetime, an' she's going to dance to-night to spite Stanton."

"To spite him?" Max repeated, not understanding.

"Yes, you d——d young greenhorn! Anybody'd know you was new to Africa! These girls, when they get to be celebrated for their looks or any other reason, won't dance in public as a general thing. They leave that to the common ones, who need to do something to attract. Anyhow, Stanton wouldn't have let this Ahmara dance in a cafÉ before a crowd of nomads from the desert. She lives with the dancing lot, because there's some law or other about that for these girls, but that's all, till to-night. There's been a row, my old pal told me, because Stanton gives my lady the tip not to come near or pretend to know him while his friend the colonel is here. She's in such a beast of a rage she's announced to the owner of the cafÉ that she'll dance to-night; and I bet every man in Touggourt except Stanton and DeLisle'll be there. You'll come, won't you?"

"Yes, I'll come," said Max. He was ashamed of himself for so readily believing the scandal about Stanton, yet he did believe it. Stanton had struck him as the type of man who would stop at nothing he wanted to do. And Max was ashamed, also, because he felt an involuntary rush of pleasure in thinking evil of Stanton. He knew what that meant. He had been jealous of Stanton at Algiers, and he supposed he was mean enough to be jealous of him still. If Sanda knew the truth, would she be disgusted and cease to care for her hero, her "Sir Knight?" Max wondered. But perhaps she would only be sad, and forgive him in her heart. Girls were often very strange about such things. Max, however, could not forgive Stanton for ignoring the exquisite blossom of love that might be his, and grasping instead some wild scarlet flower of the desert not fit to be touched by a hand that had pressed Sanda's little fingers. He did not know whether or not to be equally ashamed of the curiosity which made him say to Pelle that he would see the dancer; but he yielded to it.

Already the great bare cafÉ was filling up. In the dim yellow light of lamps that hung from the ceiling, or branched out from the smoky, white-washed walls, the throng of dark men in white burnouses, crowding the long benches or sitting on the floor, was like a company of ghosts. Their shadows waved fantastically along the walls as they strode noiselessly in, wild as spirits dancing to the voice of their master Satan, the seductive rÄita. At one end of the room sat the musicians, all giant negroes, the scars and tattoo marks on their sweating black faces giving them a villainous look in the wavering light. They were playing the bendir, the tomtom, the Arab flute, as well as the rÄita; but the rÄita laughed the other music down.

This cafÉ was celebrated for the youth and beauty of its dancers, and one after another delicate little sad-faced girls, almost children, danced and waved gracefully their thin arms tinkling with silver bracelets, but the ever-increasing crowd of Arabs and French officers and soldiers (tourists there were none at that time of year) scarcely troubled to look at the dainty figures. They were waiting, eager-eyed. If Max had not known beforehand that something was expected, he would have guessed it. At last she came, the great desert dancer said to be the most beautiful Ouled Nail of her generation.

Max did not see how or whence she arrived, but he heard the rustling and indrawing of breaths that heralded her coming. And then she was there, in the square left open for the dancing. All the light in the room seemed to focus upon her, so did she scintillate from head to foot with spangles. Even he felt a throb of excitement as the tall, erect figure stood in the space between the benches, eying the audience from under a long veil of green tissue almost covered with sparkling bits of gold and silver. On her head she wore a high golden crown, and under the green veil fell a long square shawl of some material which seemed woven entirely of gold. Her dress was scarlet as poppy petals, and she appeared to be draped in many layers of thin stuff that flashed out metallic gleams. For a long moment she stood motionless. Then, when she had made her effect, suddenly she threw up her veil. Winding it around her arm, she snatched it off her head, and paused again, unsmiling, statue-still, except for her immense dark eyes, encircled with kohl, which darted glances of pride and defiance round the silent room. Perhaps she was looking for some one whom she half expected might be there. Max felt the long-lashed eyes fix themselves on him. Then, receiving no response, they passed on and shot a fiery challenge into the eyes of a young caid in a gold-embroidered black cloak, who bent forward from his carpeted bench in a dream of admiration.

She was perfect in her way, a living statue of pale bronze, with the eyes of a young tigress and the mouth of a passionate child. The gold crown, secured with a scarf of glittering gauze, the rows of golden coins that hung from her looped black braids over her bosom and down to the huge golden buckle at her loosely belted waist, gave her the look of an idol come to life and escaped from some shrine of an eastern temple. As she moved, to begin the promised dance, she exhaled from her body and hair and floating draperies strange, intoxicating perfumes which seemed to change with her motions—perfumes of sandalwood and ambergris and attar-of-rose.

For the first time Max understood the meaning of the Ouled Nail dance. This child-woman of the desert, with her wicked eyes and sweet mouth, made it a pantomime of love in its first timid beginnings, its fears and hesitations, its final self-abandon and rapture. Ahmara was a dangerous rival for a daughter of Europe with such a man as Richard Stanton.

When she had danced once, she refused to indulge the audience again, but staring scorn at the company, accepted a cup of coffee from the handsome young caid in the black mantle. She sat beside him with a fierce air of bravado, and ignored every one else, as though the dimly lit room in which her spangles flamed was empty save for their two selves. So she would have sat by Max if he had given back glance for glance; but he pushed his way out quickly when Ahmara's dance was over, and drew in long, deep breaths of desert air, sweet with wild thyme, before he dared let himself even think of Sanda. Sanda, who loved Stanton—with this recompense!

As he walked back to camp, to take what rest he could before the early start, he met a sergeant of his company, a tall Russian, supposed to be a Nihilist, who had saved himself from Siberia by finding sanctuary in the Legion.

"I have sent two men to look for you," he said. "The colonel wants you. Go to his tent at once."

Max went, and at the tent door met Richard Stanton coming out. Max recognized his figure rather than his features, for the light was at his back. It shone into the Legionnaire's face as he stepped aside to let the explorer pass, but Stanton's eyes rested on the corporal of the Legion without interest or recognition. The colonel had just bidden him good-bye, and he strode away with long, nervous strides. "Will he go to the cafÉ and see Ahmara with the caid?" The thought flashed through Max's mind, but he had no time to finish it. Colonel DeLisle was calling him into the tent.

The only light was a lantern with a candle in it; yet saluting, Max saw at once that the colonel's face was troubled.

"Have I done anything I oughtn't to have done?" he questioned himself anxiously, but the first words reassured as much as they surprised him.

"Corporal St. George, I sent for you because you are the only one among my men of whom I can ask the favour I'm going to ask."

"A favour—from me to you, my Colonel?" Max echoed, astonished.

"Yes. You asked me for one the other night, and I granted it because it was easy, but this is different. This is very hard. If you do the thing, you will lose the march and the fight which we may come in for at the end. Is there anything that could make up to you for such a sacrifice?"

"But, my Colonel," answered Max, "you have only to give me your orders, and whatever they may be I shall be happy to carry them out." He spoke firmly, yet he could not hide the fact that this was a blow. He had looked forward to the march, hard as it might be, and to the excitement at the end as a thirsty man looks forward to a draught of water.

"But I am not going to give you any orders," said DeLisle. "It would not be fair or right. This is a private matter. I have just received a letter from my daughter with rather bad news. I told you she was staying in the house of one of the great chiefs of the south, a friend of years' standing, who has a daughter of her age. I needn't give you details, but Sanda has unfortunately offended this man in perhaps the one way an Arab, no matter how enlightened, cannot forgive. From what she tells me I can't wholly blame him for his anger, but—it's impossible for her to stop longer in his house. Not that she's in danger—no! that's incredible, Ben RÂana being the man he is. An Arab's ideas of hospitality would prevent his offering to send a guest away, no matter how much he might want to be rid of her. Yet I can't endure the thought of asking him for a caravan and guard after what seems to have happened. You realize that it is impossible for me to go myself. My duty is with my regiment. Once before, you watched over my daughter on a journey—watched over her as a brother might watch over a sister. That is why I ask, as a favour from one man to another, whether you would be willing to go to the Agha's house and escort my daughter here to Touggourt. I know how much I am exacting of a born soldier like yourself."

"My Colonel, you are conferring on me the Cross of the Legion of Honour!" Max cried out impulsively.

"Then you accept?"

"I implore you to accept me for the service."

"But do you thoroughly understand what it means? We go on without you. It will be hopeless for you to follow us. I give you eight days' leave, which will be ample time for the engaging of a small caravan—three or four good men and the wife of one to act as servant to my daughter—going to Ben RÂana's place at Djazerta, arriving again at Touggourt, and returning to Bel-AbbÉs. I shall have to send you back there, you see. There's nothing else to do."

"I understand, my Colonel. But though I'm sorry to lose the experience, I'd rather be able to do this for you and for Mademoiselle DeLisle than anything else."

"Thank you. That's settled then, except details. We'll arrange them at once, for you must get off to-morrow as soon as possible after our start. Another man must be appointed in your place, Corporal. At Sidi-bel-AbbÉs you shall have special work while we are gone. There hasn't been much time for thinking since I got the news, but I have thought that out. At first, I may as well tell you, my idea was to ask Stanton to put off his expedition and go to Ben RÂana's. But—something I heard to-night turned me against that plan. I should like to have another man with you out of the regiment in case of trouble. Not that there can be trouble! But I shouldn't feel justified in asking for a second volunteer. All the men are so keen! It's bad enough to send one away on a private matter of my own, and——"

In his flush of excitement the soldier interrupted his colonel.

"Sir, I know of one! My friend would be glad to go with me!"

"You speak of Garcia again?"

"Yes, my Colonel."

"Are you sure of him?"

"I am sure."

"Very well. Talk to him then. Come back to me afterward, and I'll give you all instructions."

The name of the Agha and the name of the place where he lived were ringing through Max's head. Ben RÂana—Djazerta!

The father of the girl ManÖel Valdez loved and must save was the Agha of Djazerta. Now Valdez need not desert!