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At the end of the year, my uncle was pleased grimly to express himself as satisfied, and to send me forthwith to the Military School of Saumur, where selected Cavalry-Sergeants of good family and superior education are made into officers.

Here nothing amusing occurred, and I was glad when, once more, wires were pulled and I was instructed to betake myself and my new commission to Algeria and present myself at the Quartier des Spahis at Sidi-bel-Abbès.

I shall never forget my first glimpse of my new home. It is indelibly etched upon the tablets of my memory.

I stood at the great gates in the lane that separates the Spahis' barracks from those of the Foreign Legion, and thought of the day--so recently passed--when I had stood, a wretched civilian, at those of the Blue Hussars in St. Denis. . . .

Outside the red-white-and-blue-striped sentry-box stood a bearded dusky giant, a huge red turban crowning the snowy linen kafiya that framed his face; a scarlet be-medalled Zouave jacket covering a gaudy waistcoat and tremendous red sash; and the most voluminous skirt-like white baggy trousers almost concealing his great spurred cavalry-boots. A huge curved cavalry-sabre hung at his left side, and in his right hand he bore a carbine.

"And so this is the type of warrior I am to lead in cavalry-charges!" thought I, and wondered if there were any to equal it in the world.

He saluted me with faultless smartness and precision, and little guessed how I was thrilled to the marrow of my bones as I returned the first salute I had received from a man of my own Regiment.

Standing at the big open window of the Salle de Rapport in the regimental offices near the gate, was a strikingly smart and masculine figure--that of an officer in a gold-frogged white tunic (that must surely have covered a pair of corsets), which fitted his wide shoulders and narrow waist as paper fits the walls of a room.

Beneath a high red tarbush smiled one of the handsomest faces I have ever seen. So charming was the smile, so really beautiful the whole man, that it could be none other than Raoul d'Auray de Redon, here a couple of years before me.

I know now that one man can really love another with the love that is described as existing between David and Jonathan. . . . I do not believe in love "at first sight," but tremendous attraction, and the strongest liking at first sight, soon came, in this case, to be a case of love at second sight. . . . To this day I can never look upon the portrait of Raoul d'Auray de Redon, of whom more anon, without a pang of bitter-sweet pain and a half-conscious prayer. . . .

By the Guard-Room stood a group that I can see now--a statuesque sous-officier in spotless white drill tunic and trousers, white shoes and a tarbush (miscalled a fez cap)--l'Adjudant Lescault; an elderly French Sergeant-Major in scarlet patrol-jacket, white riding-breeches with a double black stripe down the sides, and a red képi with a gold band; an Arab Sergeant, dressed like the sentry, save for his chevrons; and the Guard, who seemed to me to be a mixture of Arabs and Frenchmen--for some of them were as fair in complexion as myself.

Beyond this group stood a Lieutenant, examining a horse held by an Arab groom, and I was constrained to stare at this gentleman, for beneath a red tunic he wore a pair of the colossal Spahi white skirt-trousers, and these were gathered in at the ankle to reveal a pair of tiny pointed-toed patent shoes. His other extremity was adorned by a rakish peaked képi in scarlet and gold.

My future brothers-in-arms these. . . .

I glanced beyond them to the Oriental garden, tree-embowered, which lay between the gates and the distant low-colonnaded stables that housed the magnificent grey Arab horses of the Regiment; and feeling that I could embrace all men, I stepped forward and entered upon my heritage. . . .

§ 2

Nevertheless, it was not very long before life at the depôt in Sidi-bel-Abbès grew very boring indeed. One quickly grew tired of the mild dissipations of our club, the Cercle Militaire, and of the more sordid ones of the alleged haunts of pleasure boasted by that dull provincial garrison-town.

Work saved me from weariness, however, for I worked like a blinded well-camel--at Arabic--in addition to the ordinary duties of a cavalry-officer.

To the Spahis came Dufour, sent by my uncle at my request, and together we pursued our studies in the language and in disguises. Nor was I sorry when, at the earliest possible moment, my uncle again pulled wires, and I was ordered to Morocco.

In that fascinating country I was extremely lucky--lucky enough, after weary garrison-duty at Casa Blanca, or rather Ain Bourdja, outside its walls, Rabat, Mequinez, Fez, Dar-Debibagh and elsewhere--to be at the gory fight of R'fakha and to charge at the head of a squadron; and to play my little part in the Chaiova campaigns at Settat, M'koun, Sidi el Mekhi and the M'karto.

After the heavy fighting round, and in, Fez, I was a Captain, and had two pretty little pieces of metal and ribbon to hang on my tunic; and in the nasty little business with the Zarhoun tribe (who took it upon them to close the roads between Fez and Tangier and between Meknes and Rabat) I was given command of the squadron that formed part of the composite battalion entrusted with the job. . . .

With this squadron was my good Dufour, of course, a non-commissioned officer already wearing the medaille militaire for valour. Of its winning I must briefly tell the tale, because the memory of it was so cruelly and poignantly before my mind in the awful hour when I had to leave him to his death, instead of dying with him as I longed to do. . . .

On that black day I saw again, in clear and glowing colours, this picture:

I am charging a great harka of very brave and fanatical Moors, at the head of my squadron. . . . We do not charge in line as the English do, but every man for himself, hell-for-leather, at the most tremendous pace to which he can spur his horse. . . . Being the best mounted, I am naturally well ahead. . . . The earth seems to tremble beneath the thundering onrush of the finest squadron in the world. . . . I am wildly happy. . . . I wave my sabre and shout for joy. . . . As we are about to close with the enemy, I lower my point and straighten my arm. (Always use the point until you are brought to a standstill, and then use the edge with the speed and force of lightning.) The Moors are as cunning as they are brave. Hundreds of infantry drop behind rocks and big stones and into nullahs, level their long guns and European rifles, and blaze into the brown of us. Hundreds of cavalry swerve off to right and left, to take us in flank and surround us, when the shock of our impact upon the main body has broken our charge and brought us to a halt. They do not know that we shall go through them like a knife through cheese, re-form and charge back again--and even if we do not scatter them like chaff, will effectually prevent their charging and capturing our silent and almost defenceless little mountain-guns. . . .

We thunder on, an irresistible avalanche of men and horses, and, like a swimmer diving from a cliff into the sea--I am into them with a mighty crash. . . . A big Moor and his Barbary stallion go head-over-heels, as my good horse and I strike them amidships, like a single projectile; and, but for the sword-knot whose cord is round my wrist, I should have lost my sabre, pulled from my hand as I withdrew it from beneath the Moor's right arm. . . .

I spur my horse; he bounds over the prostrate horse and man; I give another big Moslem my point--right in the middle of his long black beard as I charge past him--and then run full tilt into a solid mass of men and horses. I cut and parry; slash, parry and cut; thrust and strike, and rise in my stirrups and hack and hew--until I am through and spurring again to a gallop. . . . And then I know that my horse is hit and going down, and I am flying over his head and that the earth rises up and smashes my face, and strikes my chest so cruel a blow that the breath is driven from my body, and I am a living pain. . . .

Oh! the agony of that struggle for breath, after the smashing crash that has broken half my ribs, my right arm and my jaw-bone. . . . And, oh! the torture of my dead horse's weight on my broken leg and ankle. . . .

And why was my throat not being cut? Why no spears being driven through my back? Why was my skull not being battered in? . . .

I got my dripping face from out of the dust, wiped it with my left sleeve, and got on to my left elbow. . . .

I was the centre of a terrific "dog-fight," and, standing across me, leaping over me, whirling round and round, jumping from side to side like a fiend and a madman, a grand athlete and a great hero--was Dufour. . . . Sick and shattered as I was, I could still admire his wonderful swordsmanship, and marvel at his extraordinary agility, strength, and skill. . . . Soon I realized that I could do more than admire him. I could help, although pinned to the ground by my horse and feeling sick, shattered, and smashed. . . . With infinite pain I dragged my revolver from its holster, and rejoiced that I had made myself as good a shot with my left hand as with my right.

Then, lying on my right side, and sighting as well and quickly as I could in so awkward a position, I fired at a man whose spear was driving at Dufour's back; at another whose great sword was swung up to cleave him; at a third, whose long gun was presented at him; and then, after a 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 sūq 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,' grunted 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 barefooted 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 may be Becque, of course," I said doubtfully.

"I believe it is he," replied Raoul, "and I also believe you're the man to make certain. . . . What about continuing that little duel--with no Sergeant Blüm to interrupt, eh?"

"If it is he, and I can manage it, the duel will be taken up at the point where it was stopped owing to circumstances beyond Monsieur Becque's control," I remarked.

"Yes. I think ce bon Becque ought to die," smiled Raoul, "as a traitor, a renegade and a spy. . . . For those things he is--as the French-born son of a Frenchman, and as a soldier who has worn the uniform of France and taken the oath of true and faithful service to the Republic."

"Where was he born?" I asked.

"Paris," replied Raoul. "Bred and born in Paris. He was known to the police as a criminal and an anarchist from his youth, and it appears that he got into the Blue Hussars by means of stolen or forged papers in this name of Becque. . . . They lost sight of him after he had served his sentence for incitement to mutiny in the Blue Hussars. . . ."

And we talked on far into the night in Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf's great moonlit garden.

Next day, Raoul departed on his journey of terrible hardships--a camel-man in the employ of Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf, to Lake Tchad and Timbuktu, with his life in his hands and all his notes and observations to be kept in his head.

§ 4

Of the man who might or might not be Becque, I saw nothing whatever in Zaguig. He may have taken fright at Raoul's sudden and inexplicable assault upon him, and thought that his secret was discovered, or he may have departed by reason of the approach of the French forces. On the other hand he may merely have gone away to report upon the situation in Zaguig, or again, he may have been in the place the whole time.

Anyhow, I got no news nor trace of him, and soon dismissed him from my mind. In due course I was relieved in turn by Captain de Lannec and returned to Morocco, and was sent thence into the far south, ostensibly to organize Mounted Infantry companies out of mules and the Foreign Legion, but really to do a little finding-out and a little intelligence-organizing in the direction of the territories of our various southern neighbours, and to travel from Senegal to Wadai, with peeps into Nigeria and the Cameroons. I was in the Soudan a long while.

Here I had some very instructive experiences, and a very weird one at a place called Zinderneuf, whence I went on leave via Nigeria, actually travelling home with a most excellent Briton named George Lawrence, who had been my very senior and revered fag-master at Eton!

It is a queer little world, and very amusing.

And everywhere I went, the good Dufour, brave, staunch and an extraordinarily clever mimic of any kind of native, went also, "seconded for special service in the Intelligence Department"--and invaluable service it was. At disguise and dialect he was as good as, if not better than, myself; and it delighted me to get him still further decorated and promoted as he deserved.

And so Fate, my uncle, and my own hard, dangerous and exciting work, brought me to the great adventure of my life, and to the supreme failure that rewarded my labours at the crisis of my career.

Little did I dream what awaited me when I got the laconic message from my uncle (now Commander-in-Chief and Governor-General):

"Return forthwith to Zaguig and wait instructions."

Zaguig, as I knew to my sorrow, was a "holy" city, and like most holy cities, was tenanted by some of the unholiest scum of mankind that pollute the earth.

Does not the Arab proverb itself say, "The holier the city, the wickeder its citizens"?