Читать книгу Beau Ideal - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 7

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The sun had risen and set once more, causing a spot of light to travel slowly across a portion of the interior of the silo, with the search-light effect of illuminating brilliantly the tiny area upon which it rested, while leaving the rest of the place in darkness darker than that of night.

There was curiously little movement, and less sound, in the silo—the uneasy stirring of a nightmare-ridden sleeper, a heavy sigh, a faint groan, the clank of a chain. Talk had ceased, and scarcely a sentence had been uttered for hours.

The last subject of general conversation had been that of the cause of their abandonment to a lingering and terrible death in that dreadful tomb. Speculation had wandered from sudden Arab attack and the annihilation of the Company, to the familiar theory of wanton malice and deliberate devilish punishment. Men, condemned from the Legion for military “crimes,” had advanced the former theory; civilian prison criminals, the latter.

The Frenchman who had attempted to recite the Burial Service had accepted neither of these views.

“We are forgotten,” he had said.... “We are the Forgotten of Man, as distinguished from our friends the Touareg, the Forgotten of God. It is perfectly simple, and I can tell you exactly how it happened.

“As you may be aware, mes amis, a list of les hommes punis is made out, by the clerk of the Adjudant, every morning, before the guard is changed. The form on which he writes the names is divided into columns showing the class of punishment and the number of days each man has still to do.... And the clerk of the Adjudant, God forgive him, has written the number of our days under the heading salle de police, or cellules, or consigne, and has left the column ‘prison,’ blank. So, each day, our sentences are being reduced by one day, in those places where we are not, and the Sergeant of the Guard for each day, observes that there are no men in ‘prison,’ for the column so headed is blank.... We are not in ‘prison’ because we are not recorded as being in ‘prison’—and therefore we cannot be released from ‘prison.’...”

And Jacob the Jew had observed:

“Convincing and very cheering.... Monsieur must have been a lawyer before he left the world.”

And the man had replied:

“No.... An officer.... Captain of Spahis and in the Secret Service—about to die, and unashamed.... No!—I should say Légionnaire Rien of the Seventh Company of the Third Battalion of the First Regiment of the Foreign Legion.... I was wandering in my mind....”