Читать книгу Valiant Dust - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 14

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Sensation ...!

Nine days’ wonder.

An interest in life at last—an absolute tonic and a marvellous cure of incipient cafard.

Le Légionnaire Bombelli had not lived in vain, for he had deserted in the night—and given les légionnaires something to talk about.

Deserted from his sentry-post ...

At least, he was missing from his post, and he could hardly have vanished into thin air, been spirited away, kidnapped.

“What a fool!” said les légionnaires as one man. “What a fool!”

Where on earth did he think he could get to, from there? How long did he think he was going to live in that desert without water?

The silly lunatic knew what a terrible business it had been for the properly-equipped Section to reach the spot where they had built the poste.

And how long did he suppose he was going to escape the attention, and attentions, of the Arabs—Bedouin, Touareg, Hoggar raiders, Moorish mountaineers? What did he suppose they’d do to him when they caught him, as most assuredly they would?

The poor pitiable silly fool. What worse spot could he have chosen in all Africa, from which to attempt to desert.

And what a queer thing, too, that a man who obviously stood high in the favour of the Sergeant-Major should desert! A man who was never “for it,” never in cells, never in trouble of any sort—a man, moreover, with good pickings as an officer’s servant.

Well, well—if they’d been told that one of the Section was going to desert, the very last man they would have expected to do so, would have been Major Riccoli’s ordonnance.

Nor, it transpired, was that the queerest thing about this queer business, for it soon became known that le Légionnaire Bombelli had deserted unarmed.

Absolutely unarmed; for, before going over the wall, he had leant his rifle and fixed bayonet against it, and there they were when the Sergeant of the Guard came to relieve him. Actually, Bombelli’s rifle and bayonet, and no Bombelli. Could you beat it?

Mad, of course—a clear case of cafard.

And yet, who in the whole poste had seemed a less likely subject for an attack of the desert-madness?

That there should have been any other sort of attack was unthinkable.

Bombelli would have given the alarm, fired his rifle, bawled “Aux armes!”

Besides, would rifle-thieves have left the rifle, even if they had taken the trouble to remove Bombelli’s body?

“No, mes enfants,” summed up old Tant de Soif. “Figure to yourselves, if you can, the species of sacred and infected camel that would call itself a rifle-thief and come and kill a sentry—only to carry away his corpse and leave his rifle behind! He would be as bad as this foolish child, Poussin, who, having had a glass of wine, put his uniform to bed and folded himself up, upon the shelf above.

“No, Bombelli has deserted, and by this time to-morrow he’ll be back, his tail between his legs, begging for a cup of water for the love of Christ ... Or else he’ll be brought back by ‘friendlies,’ filleted like a sole, and with a few eyes, ears, lips and other spare-parts missing.”

“Such are not spare-parts,” objected Père Poussin.

Slowly turning a majestic gaze upon the foolish interrupter,

“Indeed?” replied Tant de Soif. “By the time poor Bombelli has been induced to spare them, I should have thought they’d have been remarkably spare parts. But then, of course, unlike yourself, I am not a thinker ... Now, if anyone had said that a rum-bottle was a spare-part of you ...

“Yes. Bombelli has deserted and will either come back alive or be brought back dead—some of him, anyhow.”

But Bombelli neither came back nor was brought back, and of all the puzzled men in Poste One, none was more puzzled than Sergeant-Major Vittorelli—unless it were Major Riccoli.