He came lurching heavily aft, waving a case bottle by the neck to give emphasis to his commands. The bewildered Ibrahim stared at him owlishly.
The next moment he gave a cry of alarm. Landon had tripped the captain's unsteady feet, and, aided by Muhammed, had taken him forward and flung him into the cockpit. They closed the hatch, secured it, and came aft again. Imperiously Landon repeated his order.
The unfortunate sailor still hesitated. His compatriot took him firmly by the nape of the neck.
"Into the fog, child of indescribable unfaithfulness," he commanded, "or become immediately bait for sharks! Choose!"
The bewildered Ibrahim brought round the tiller with a jerk. Like a rabbit seeking its burrow, the lateen dived fogwards.
As the gray wall surged up to them again, they turned and stared seaward. Landon cursed loudly. The yacht was turning, too, straight towards them. At a word from his master, Muhammed got out the great sweeps and invited Ibrahim imperiously to join him in working them. Landon took the helm.
Two minutes later there was a crashing sound forward and the bowsprit splintered with a shock which made the little vessel shiver throughout its length. A muffled wail of wrath and despair followed from the depths of the cockpit.
The wall of gray was towering above them. Over the bulwarks of the R. F. CruiserDiomèdea lieutenant looked down and anathematized them with a versatility only acquired by a true son of the sea. Landon bowed, smiled, and in perfect French, asked the liberty of being permitted to come aboard.
The lieutenant, surprised beyond measure to hear the accents of the Faubourg from the decks of such an unpromising craft, hastened to forget the collision between theEsmeralda'sbowsprit and theDiomède'spaint, and directed his petitioner to find the companion ladder. A minute's groping in the fog, and Landon stood upon the cruiser's deck.
He bowed elaborately. The lieutenant returned the bow and motioned him towards the quarter-deck. The captain came forward to receive him, smiling amiably.
"I must be perfectly frank with you, Monsieur le Commandant," said Landon, returning the smile. "I come to beg assistance. My yacht is in harbor here, as you are possibly aware. No? The fog has hidden us; we came in last night. With my little son, I went ashore early this morning to leave a card on General d'Amade, to whom I have an introduction. I missed my own boat at the landing-place and was foolish enough to be persuaded to embark with these imbeciles below, of whom one is drunk and the other witless. I have already had an hour of monotonous adventure in the gloom; I am a little tired of being very reasonably cursed by master mariners whose vessels we have been ambitious enough to ram. It struck me that perchance you would be sending a boat ashore within the course of an hour or so, and might permit me to wait on deck and be a passenger in it. If so, my gratitude would be beyond words. It is not only for myself. My little son is delicate; I do not wish to expose him longer than is necessary to the chill of these vile vapors."
Commandant Rattier smiled again, expressed his pleasure in being able to offer assistance to any Englishman—he himself was united to that nation by ties of blood. He would order away his launch immediately. In the meantimeune limonade Ecossaisewould combat the effect of chill and mist. Monsieur would descend to the cabin, would accept some small refreshment?
Monsieur overflowed with thanks. He would dismiss the villains who had led him into such a coil, and then hold himself at M. le Commandant's service.
He leaned over and gave his orders. Muhammed turned to Ibrahim.
"Remove yourself and your master, oh, son of dirt, from these surroundings with the utmost speed, or I have the promise of the captain of this warship that he will send you in chains ashore to answer for your crime in wilfully colliding with his vessel. Your bowsprit? What have I to do with the results of your own vile seamanship? Have haste or Allah alone knows what will betide from the mouth of one of these guns."
He gathered the child up into his arms and stalked with dignity up the companion.
Ten minutes later a launch fussed away from the side of theDiomède. The commandant waved his handkerchief gaily in farewell to his small guest, who, from the encirclement of his father's arm, waved as gaily back. Half a hundredmatelotsgrinned affably at him as they paused in their toil at cabin lights and brass-work. Landon saluted punctiliously and Muhammed's brown eyes expressed a grave approval of his entertainment. The launch's prow was thrust into the gloom.
Another gust sang lazily from the shore and the desert and shivered the fog. The patches of blue joined, grew wider, opened a triumphal arch for the descending sunbeams' entrance. A little more than a mile away the walls of the sea bastions shone white. The launch's speed increased.
Before they reached the quayside the last wisp of vapor had disappeared. Land and sea were swathed in sun. Landon gave a little cackle of amusement and pointed behind him.
"My yacht!" he cried gaily. "My over-anxious master has weighed anchor in pursuit of me. Word must have reached him of my having allowed myself to be persuaded into that vile lateen."
The sub-lieutenant in charge swerved the tiller.
"Let me take you straight to her," he said. "Let me signal her!"
Landon appeared to consider.
"Thanks, a thousand times," he said, "but a small matter of victualling which I promised my steward to deal with has just recurred to my mind. I will see to it and then signal for my own boat. After all, too, I might see a little of the town, now we have the sunshine to illuminate it. A couple of hours ago it was London in November, with a few additional smells!"
The lieutenant laughed and turned the prow towards the shore again. He cast another look over his shoulder.
"Is it possible that your master has information of, or suspects, that very lateen? It appears to me that he is chasing it!"
Landon faced seaward and observed the yacht keenly.
He laughed with great enjoyment.
"He is a character, that skipper of mine," he said. "He is as likely as not to sink the unfortunate boat if he does not find me on board or get a reasonable account of me. I shall have to smooth matters down with a dollar or two."
A minute later the launch slowed up against the little quay. The three passengers stepped ashore, Landon full of compliments and thanks. Still waving adieu, he, Muhammed, and the child paced contentedly off into the town. The lieutenant turned seaward again.
A slightly bewildered frown clouded his face as he approached theDiomède. The yacht had anchored with the lateen alongside her, and a boat was pulling from her towards the warship. The lieutenant considered that for yachtsmen he had never seen a boat's crew pull faster.
Major D'Hubert, Provost Marshal of the French forces occupying Casablanca, grinned widely.
"So you suffered him to escape?" he said.
Commandant Rattier drummed fiercely on the office table.
"Suffered?" he roared. "I entertained him—theescroc! I nourished him; I sent him ashore!"
The soldier smiled and looked at Rattier's companion—Aylmer.
"What open-hearted ingenuousness!" he chuckled. "You and I now, my Captain! When one has been officer of the day a few thousand times, or sat upon a few hundred courts-martial, or acted asmaître de logis, one learns to sift a story then. And this one had its weak points, even for a sailor. Would any one not mentally deranged hire a lateen to take him aboard his own yacht? No, I should have required something better imagined than that—I."
Aylmer shrugged his shoulders.
"The man can make himself of an engaging personality, Major. Our friend acted according to the impulses of his generous soul. But the point is that our man is hidden in the town. We come to you for expert knowledge. Who would be likely to shelter him, and where? You will pardon our insistence and intrusion, but our need is very pressing. It is the child who is our concern, the child."
D'Hubert made a gesture of assent.
"Apart from my sincere affection for our simpleminded commandant, Monsieur, your tale is good enough for any honest man and a father of babes like myself. But this town of Casablanca is, in effect, a haystack. Your quarry has the best of chances to act the needle."
He opened a door into an outer office and shouted a name.
"Sergeant Perinaud!"
A body filled the doorway and entered, bending the last few inches of its stature. The sergeant saluted and unfolded himself, his eyes reviewing the company with affable respect about two metres above the floor.
"Visit the guardroom at each gate, see the lieutenants of the Spanish police and bring me back a list of parties which have left the town since morning. This is a matter of haste."
The sergeant saluted again and then hesitated.
"Is it permitted first to speak?" he asked.
The major nodded jerkily.
"It is, by chance, the movements of two men and a woman which are in question?" speculated Perinaud.
Major d'Hubert opened his lips, shut them tight, meditated a moment, and then spoke. He turned and looked at his visitors.
"The child? Is it of a stature to be disguised as a woman?" he asked.
The sergeant interrupted with an apologetic gesture.
"The figure of the woman I suggest was not seen by me. She travelled in anarba. My attention was drawn to the party thus. Two hours ago a band of the Beni M'Geel, Berbers, left by the eastern gate as for Ber Rechid. They had with them two Arabs and a woman under the canopy of which I spoke. Arab and Berber, especially if the latter are of the Beni M'Geel, do not usually travel together."
"You observed the men?"
"Not narrowly, my Major. One was of a smiling countenance, hook-nosed, and clad in adjelabof brown. He walked beside thearbaand his talk, as I judged it, was to the woman, who, however, made no reply. The other had the hood of hishaikpulled far over his face. I did not see it."
The major sat down at his desk, wrote a few lines swiftly, dashed sand upon the ink, and handed the completed note to his underling.
"Let that be taken to General d'Amade without delay. Search may at the same time be made in the town for an Englishman, his child, and a Moor attendant who landed from a launch of theDiomèdesome three hours back. The messenger may await the general's answer and bring it to me here."
As the giant saluted for the third time and diminished himself into the doorway, Major d'Hubert confronted his friends with a pessimistic shake of the head.
"My instinct is that Perinaud has already put his finger on the mystery. Your milord must be a man of resource. To have engaged the services of some of these wolves of Beni M'Geel within an hour of landing in a strange town shows more than talent. It amounts to genius."
"This servant of his, Muhammed, is no stranger to the port," said Aylmer. "We learned that before we left Tangier. He is a well-known gun runner, and stands high in his profession. He has made these arrangements."
Commandant Rattier flung aside his taciturnity with a suddenly impulsive oath.
"Name of all little names!" he cried. "Do we sit and discuss this matter as if it were a comedietta in which we take no more than the languid interest of the dilettante! Are they not to be pursued—this past master of perjury and his lieutenant? Are we to mount the town walls and wave them affectionate farewells?"
D'Hubert arched his brows with protest.
"Pursuit? Certainly there is a question of pursuit, if it is allowed. I have just sent aprécisof your story to the commander-in-chief with a request for his leave to send a patrol. In a very few minutes we shall learn whether or no we have his permission."
"Permission!" Rattier roared the word in the major's face. "I, Paul Rattier, do you see, have been made the laughing-stock of the fleet and, in time, no doubt, of half Europe! Am I to wait your general's permission to chase this scoundrel to Timbuctoo, if I so wish? I am the senior officer of marine here. I give myself leave, understand me—I!"
"And these amiable Berbers?" asked the major, sarcastically. "Supposing they turn upon you and demand your reasons, and estimate your powers? Suppose, to be blunt, my friend, they put a bullet through your brains?"
"Would that be any worse than wearing this hat of ridicule which this Baron de Landon has put upon my head? No Moor or Touareg or Berber shall stand between me and the object of my just retaliation, if I confront him!"
A small bell tinkled in a corner. D'Hubert made a gesture of apology as he went towards a cabinet screened from the general office. He came back grinning.
"My Paul," he chuckled, "there will be shortly an insuperable barrier between you and your desire. In another hour you will not be the senior officer of marine at Casablanca. I learn by wireless that theBarfleur, with the admiral on board, enters the roads within the hour."
Rattier stood for an instant motionless. Then he turned and darted for the door.
Before his fingers reached the handle Aylmer's grip was on his shoulder. With a passionate gesture of repulse the commandant shook him off.
"I am not one to await admirals!" he roared. "I go to make arrangements. Within half an hour I leave the town—I. If I have to walk I will follow these Berber scoundrels, yes, if I have to crawl upon my knees!"
As the two wrestled and argued on the threshold, the door opened from the outside. The massive proportions of the sergeant towered over them in respectful amazement. He saluted and deferentially edged a way for himself towards D'Hubert.
"The general was in the act of passing, my Major," he explained. "He read your note and wrote his answer on the back in five words—he was amiable enough to inform me."
The major untwisted the little roll of soiled paper and as he inspected it a smile creased his cheek. He chuckled.
"A half troop of Goumiers!" he read. He looked at the frowning face of the commandant.
"No need to go alone, my Paul. There is your escort." He hesitated a moment, debating. "Do either of you, by chance, speak Arabic?"
"Am I an interpreter?" asked Rattier, bitterly. "Does one need a grammar and dictionary to arrest half a dozen scoundrels who are perfectly well aware why they are being chased, and whom one will take the liberty of shooting if they resist capture? For that plain English or French—or, for all practical purposes, Chinese—will suffice. Avoid alarming yourself on that subject,mon ami."
The major grinned.
"I was not thinking of your quarry but your colleagues, my pigeon. The Goumiers speak their ownargot. They are good-hearted children, but apt to be tempestuous in matters of fighting." He meditated through another minute before he spoke with quick decision. "Sergeant! Prepare to accompany M. le Commandant within fifteen minutes."
Perinaud saluted with entire imperturbability.
"And my instructions, my Major?" he asked.
"To return with the prisoners which Commandant Rattier will indicate to you, or, failing their capture, within twenty-four hours."
"Bien!" Perinaud folded himself anaconda-like into the back office and disappeared. Ten minutes later, a period which D'Hubert filled with much voluble advice, there was the tramping of many horses' feet without. Aylmer and Rattier strolled out into the open at the major's heels.
Under the command of one of their own native officers, forty horsemen of the famous Algerian yeomanry had reined up in the dusty street. They sat in their high peaked saddles, watching keenly the faces of D'Hubert and his companions. Aylmer noted the eager, alert expectation which filled each flashing brown eye. The Goumier, though he has proved his valor in more than one pitched battle against the men of his own blood, is not a man of war as we understand it. Manœuvring, tactics, the orderliness of drill and discipline are not inherent in his nature. But the raid, the foray, the looting expedition are to him the apex and apogee of human bliss. Thin, modest of stomach and worldly possessions, he passes over the quickly reached horizon of the desert and is forgotten of the well-drilled colleagues he leaves behind. But see his return! Swelling with good victuals, jingling with caparison of desert wealth, with chicken and kid pendent from his saddle-bow, who more popular than he? The savory incense of his mess attracts all nostrils; his lavishly scattered loot widens the already capacious circle of his friends. Winning it, or wasting it when won, loot is the pivot on which his reckless, joyous, heedless existence swings.
Rising from the rear as a cathedral tower rises above the encircling dwellings at its base, Perinaud's head and shoulders topped the ranks. His amiable smile, this time, had about it something of more than ordinary deference. It was the near kin of a smirk, and his yellow moustache was twisted fiercely upwards. Aylmer followed the direction of his glance to find it focussed upon Claire Van Arlen.
Her eyes met his. She made him a little gesture, half of appeal, as it seemed, half of command.
As he covered the few yards which separated them, he noted, with a queer tightening of the heart, the deep shadows which had grown beneath her eyes. But at the same time it was not all anxiety or weariness which her face expressed. There was determination also. And this was reflected in Mr. Van Arlen's glance. It dwelled upon Aylmer with expectancy and more than expectancy,—with hope.
Without preamble he answered the question which their eyes had asked. They heard him in silence to the end, and as he finished, the girl's first comment was no more than a little sigh.
"The sergeant's surmise is right; my instinct tells me that," said Aylmer. "A few hours—and I shall be putting the child in your arms again."
She looked up at the double rank of horsemen. A sudden vivid flash of feeling passed over her features. Her breath came with a little pant.
"Ah, if I could ride with you!" she said fiercely. "If I could do more than wait!"
The color mounted to her cheeks, to her brow. A new note sounded in her voice.
"If they show fight—these men? If, rather than lose the child, he"—her voice sank unsteadily for a moment—"does him an injury? You would not spare him?"
He smiled a little wearily.
"So you distrust me still?" he asked. "Why should I spare him? Because, to my shame, we are of one blood?"
Mr. Van Arlen's thin hand rose in deprecation.
"We can leave this matter confidently in Captain Aylmer's hands," he said. "We have only the one thing to think of—the child."
"No!" she cried vehemently. "I want the child, but I want more than that. I want retribution. I want Landon in the dust. I want him made to feel, as I feel. The child is much, but he is not all. Have you forgotten the last eight years of my sister's life? Do you remember what she has undergone and still has to undergo if the father of her son wins this trick, as my heart tells me he will win it? I want vengeance. I want every chance to grasp it seized. I should not hesitate, where his kinsman might."
Aylmer nodded gravely.
"I understand," he said quietly. "Perhaps it is natural. But you keep forgetting the one thing—that I work for my own reward. Even pity would be a frail barrier between me and that."
Watching her keenly, he saw a quiver of repulsion tremble about her lips, but it did not stay. She set them rather into grimness. She looked at him keenly, debatingly, indeed, as if she weighed his words and sought to set a value on them.
"Yes," she said, and there was a breathlessness in her tone as if she slurred words which she did not dare to let herself hear. "I, too, understand. And my father would consider no price too high for the service which won back his grandchild, and removed the menace of Landon's existence from our lives."
Van Arlen bowed unconsciously—his courteous, instinctive inclination of assent.
"Such a service would be beyond price or reward," he said quietly. "We could only do our best."
But there was a queerly puzzled look in his eyes as they wandered from Aylmer to his daughter's face. He frowned a little, still unconsciously, in the throes of an obvious bewilderment.
Aylmer looked at him once, swiftly, speculatively, and then turned steadily towards Claire.
"And you?" he asked quietly.
She did not flinch; she did not even show, this time, any sign of repulsion. The note in her voice now was exasperation, the nervous defiance of one confronting an intolerable situation from which there was no escape.
"I? I should think as my father thinks," she said coolly. She turned as she spoke and looked impatiently at the line of waiting horsemen.
Aylmer nodded.
"Thank you," he said briskly. He made a sign towards Perinaud, who jogged forward leading the spare horse whose bridle he had been holding. Aylmer vaulted into the saddle, and reined in beside his friend Rattier, who, using the pommel for a desk, was writing a few lines of instruction to his lieutenant. A guttural order rumbled from the native officer's lips.
The line of horsemen wheeled and deployed into lines of four. With a jingle of accoutrements, they jogged off into the dust of the allies towards the eastern gate.
"The wells of El Djebir, Monsieur," explained Sergeant Perinaud. "It is here we should find our men, if they are proceeding by the shortest route to their hills. If not—" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.
The horses were roused from their gentle amble into a gallop. The dust rose from fourscore hoofs as the Goumiers raced down in an enveloping cloud upon the cluster of palms and thicket of broom scrub which surrounded the watering-place. They pulled their horses upon their haunches; they shouted in hoarse disappointment. The shadowed resting-place beneath the palms was empty. Not a living soul was in sight.
Perinaud shrugged his shoulders again.
"This is very conclusive, Monsieur. The party we seek has thought fit to leave the open road and to bury themselves in the recesses of the jungle and the northern gorges of the river. They did not do that without a reason. It remains to follow, if we can."
The native officer shouted something and Perinaud turned swiftly in the saddle to stare down the track which they had been following. A white figure bestriding a brown horse was thundering towards them, the rider'shaikfluttering out snowily against the dun background of the earth.
"So Monsieur thought fit to leave me—me!" expostulated Daoud, as he drew rein at Aylmer's side. "I, I who address you, am told by the chance gossip of the Sôk that this expedition has set out without a word of warning, to seek bandits—where?" He threw abroad his arms in derision. "On the broad and open road, within sound, nay, almost within sight, of the patrols of Casablanca. I ask, is it here that knaves are likely to hide their knavery? Your venture and its object are already the pivot on which the laughter of the market-place swings."
He turned and pointed vehemently towards the north.
"Has none of your trained spies had the wit or the courage to tell you that a hundred of these Beni M'Geel Berbers have encamped in the thickets of the Bou Gherba gorge this ten days back? And yet the market-place knows it, as it knows a hundred things beneath your concern."
Perinaud looked the Moor up and down. Then he turned leisurely towards Aylmer.
"He is a safe man, this?" he asked. "You guarantee him?"
Aylmer smiled, and shrugged his shoulders towards the waiting Goumiers.
"They are all for their own hand, these, are they not, Sergeant? Yes, I will guarantee that he seeks to serve me, for the moment, and in serving me, himself. It is the way with these desert folk. They cannot manage large issues, and they split into factions to follow small ones. Let us hear him and, if you see no objection, take his advice. He has been in Casablanca before."
Perinaud grunted and eyed the Moor grudgingly.
"Well, man of infinite knowledge," he said in Arabic. "You propose—what?"
"Are there two courses before us?" asked Daoud, disdainfully. "Or are we to await reinforcements? We have to surround this lair of desert cats."
"Where?" asked Perinaud, laconically.
The Moor wheeled his stallion with an elaborate caracole.
"If the Sidi had used my services from the first," he said, "he would have been saved an hour's ride. Forward, Sidi!"
The sergeant lifted his eyebrows at Aylmer with an air of comical resignation. To the native officer he gave a decisive little nod. With Daoud leading, the brown stallion arching his neck in remonstrance to a tightened rein and goading spur, the column broke formation and in single file turned northwards into the broom scrub which fringes the tilled lands of the Chawia.
The horsemen rode in silence. The mantle of Rattier's taciturnity, rent to rags in D'Hubert's office, seemed to have been restored to its pristine imperviousness, seemed, indeed, to hang heavy upon the spirits of the whole company. Now and again the commandant's lips moved uneasily, but the spoken word died still-born. A Goumier would address fervent maledictions to the memory of the female ancestors of a stumbling horse; curt conferences took place at long intervals between Perinaud and the native officer. But apart from this, the thud of hoofs meeting sand or earth and the dull rap of rein or stirrup leather were all the sounds which broke the stillness. The heavy noontide heat seemed to have swallowed into silence all sound. For sound denotes creative energy, and energy, when the sun is at its zenith in South Morocco, is sapped.
Their course, as Aylmer was quick to notice, led perpetually upward, but in gradients which almost eluded notice. Gray blue in the haze of distance, the rolling uplands culminated in a range of low hills, but these were a full day's march beyond their powers. Their goal, if it were to be reached within daylight, must be nearer than that. His attention, as the hours went monotonously by, was at last drawn to a gap in the far mapped expanse of vegetation.
A line of green, deeper and of more luxuriant growth than the thickets around them, divided the jungle from east to west. Daoud, turning in his saddle, waved his hand in an important gesture.
"The Gorge of the Bou Djerba, Sidi," he said. "It is my advice that I go forward to reconnoitre—alone."
Aylmer looked at Perinaud. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders.
"Monsieur guarantees this fellow, I understand? Well, let him justify himself. I have no objections."
Rattier interrupted.
"It is well understood that I deal with this M. de Landon if he is there, I alone? Your man, now, if he suddenly confronts him—" He broke off with a meaning gesture. "I do not wish my interview with him anticipated."
In spite of himself, a smile broke the imperturbability of the sergeant's face. With a suggestive jerk of the hand he dismissed Daoud, who cantered on into and was lost in the jungle of mallow. Perinaud turned sympathetic and now perfectly grave features towards the commandant.
"Monsieur may be easy in his mind," he said quietly. "The man we seek, if I have understood his talents rightly, is hardly likely to be subdued without the display of some force and intelligence."
He turned to give the order to dismount. Rattier watched him with an air of baffled exasperation. There had been a gentle emphasis on the last two words which could scarcely be misunderstood, and as the sailor ruminated over them, his taciturnity showed renewed signs of failing before the rising tide of his wrath. A sudden diversion averted an outbreak.
For a gunshot rang out among the woodland silences into which Daoud had disappeared. It was instantly replied to by the shriller snap of a revolver. And this was followed by a fusillade of five more reports as the weapon was emptied. The Moor's voice was suddenly uplifted.
"To me, Sidi!" he was shouting vehemently. "To me!"
The native officer thundered an order. In a twinkling the men were back in their saddles and, in irregular formation, threading the aisles of thicket at a canter. Aylmer and Rattier followed the sergeant, riding abreast.
There came another report. A bullet whistled between the pair, and from Rattier came a little growl of satisfaction. If there was to be a fight, he seemed to imply, his promised interview with Landon would assume proportions which were entirely pleasing to him. Perinaud increased his horse's pace, flinging alert glances each side of him rather than in front.
A couple of hundred yards at speed and the forest maze opened into a wide clearing, deeply overgrown with mallow and broom. Through the middle of this, his horse laboring against the growth which was full five feet high, rode Daoud, revolver in hand. A short distance ahead of him the green thicket was grooved in half a dozen places, as unseen bodies crashed through. Daoud's aim was poised and then withdrawn a score of times in as many seconds. The flicker of a whitehaikwould show for a brief instant here and there, and then be swallowed by the jungle.
Daoud would answer these appearances with a bullet, one which apparently invariably missed its mark, for the echo of a mocking triumph greeted them. He turned irritably in the direction of his companions.
He waved his hand significantly, motioning them to deploy right and left, to surround the thicket. Perinaud answered with a comprehending nod.
But Rattier had neither the time nor the inclination for a display of tactics. As Daoud turned his horse to emerge from the mallow, the commandant spurred his charger into the thick of it. And he shouted, he whirled up his right hand, grasping his revolver, with fierce gesticulations of encouragement.
The Goumiers saw, heard, and found little room for hesitation in their mood. Like a torrent released at the breaking of a dam, they followed. Perinaud thundered an ineffectual protest.
It fell on deaf ears. The green brake was furrowed by a dozen lanes before their impact and then, relentlessly, as it seemed, closed behind them. The horses bucked, plunged, but made little headway. From one of them came a sudden whinnying shriek of pain.
Then it sank under its rider as the knife which had severed its tendons slipped back into the cover from which it had been so swiftly and so silently thrust.
The fallen Goumier cleared himself and scrambled to his feet. His face alone was clear in the sea of vegetation, and it was a mask of anger and bewilderment. And then it, too, was gone with a sudden panting cry.
Aylmer gave a little gasp. The head was there and then it was not. It sank into the green as the swimmer sinks into the blue in a shark-infested sea. But this shark was a human one, and its teeth a long Berber knife. The fugitives of the Beni M'Geel had chosen their battle-ground well.
Horse or man, lance or carbine—what were they against the daggers which the tussocks veiled? Mocking cries echoed in the thicket. Another horse shrieked and fell; another face showed white above the green and then was gone. The Goumiers snarled with rage as they spurred furiously forward, but the clinging mallow held them, shackled them, suffocated them with its density. There was a note of panic in their shouts; they battled no longer for victory but for escape.
The leader of the reckless charge was in slightly better case than the majority. Rattier and one or two others, by chance of circumstances, stood in wider spaces, where the dagger men could not reach them unseen. They sat in their saddles, alert for opportunity, quivering with rage, but useless. Their glances flashed from side to side, their eyes gleamed, but opportunity evaded them. And the cries of the unseen enemy still mocked them from the ambush.
Carried away by impulse, Aylmer would have joined the charge. Perinaud's hand fell upon his reins with a grip of iron. Aylmer made as if he would release them by force.
The sergeant made a gesture of appeal.
"No, my Captain! This is serious. A little coolness, a little restraint, and we pull them out of this! But to follow! That spells death for us all!"
He leaped from the saddle, drew his carbine from the bucket, and flung to Aylmer the reins of both horses.
"If Monsieur will be so obliging?" he said quickly, and turned towards the nearest tree, a cedar which towered twenty feet above the dwarfed bolls of cork. He climbed lithely, rapidly, resting, at last, within a few feet of the top. He leaned his carbine upon a bough, took a steady aim, and fired.
A shriek answered the report—a shriek muffled in the blanket of the broom.
"Courage, mes enfants!" said Perinaud, placidly. "That accounted for one, and from here I see all. There are but six. Give me time and the affair completes itself effectually."
Again he dwelled upon his aim, hesitated, fired, shook his head in self-reproach and fired again. This time he gave a little nod of satisfaction.
"Two!" he cried complacently. "Two, my children!" and the report of his rifle punctuated the announcement. "So!" went on the sergeant, as if he commented on the score at a rifle range. "So! We write full stop toMonsieur le troisième. Aha!Messieurs quatrième,cinquièmeandsixième—it is poor stuff to push through, the broom. No, I do not see you, Messieurs, but I see where you run like rabbits, and perhaps we may chance a bullet—there!"
The report of the last cartridge in the magazine was answered by another yell. A brown-clad body shot into the air out of the undergrowth and subsided limply. Perinaud nodded again.
"Through the brain, my friend, through the brain. Yes, I still see you, my two little doves. We have to reload. Four for one magazine of five cartridges is not bad, you will allow. You are trapped, are you not? In the broom you cannot escape me; in the open you will be ridden down. Well, it is to be in the broom, is it? So!Voilà, Monsieur le cinquième!That closes your account. As for you, my sixth friend, you have chosen the thicket, have you? You are very still; we must speculate, we must invite the co-operation of chance, who is a good friend to Sergeant Perinaud as a rule. There! No, is that not in the middle of the target? We must try again. Umph! I wonder if you are, after all, dead, my pigeon. Holà, there! Monsieur le Commandant. If you will be good enough to step fifteen long paces to the right, following the motion of my hand, you will be able to inform me if my last shot was a bull's-eye, an outer, or even—shame to me if it is so—a miss. Yes, Monsieur, that is the spot. Where the patch of broom outcrops between those two stumps of cork."
Rattier beat a road laboriously through the clinging stems as the sergeant's finger motioned. A sudden muffled exclamation burst from him; he lurched sideways, stumbled, and fell prone. The green stalks rustled and shook as something brown and indistinguishable shot through them in the direction in which the waiting Goumiers were thickest.
Perinaud gave a warning cry.
"Look to yourselves! I cannot shoot; he is in line between us!"
One of the horsemen shouted and spurred his stallion towards the fringe of the undergrowth furthest from the point at which the charge had entered it. His impulsive action countered Perinaud's manifest purpose of firing, for he, too, had seen the agitation of the mallow in that direction. The horseman bounded forward, the horse clearing the obstructions in a series of jerky little leaps. Beside the edge of the clearing they halted, the man searching the cover in front of him and on each side keenly.
A brown something snaked out of the thicket at his back. Steel flashed in the sun. The Goumier toppled from the saddle, and a brown figure, bowing flat across the horse's withers, seemed to have replaced him almost in the moment of his fall. Spurred desperately by his new rider, the stallion burst away down the cork tree alleys.
A ragged volley rattled out. Splinters flew wide from a dozen trees, but horse and rider fled on. The Goumiers called fiercely on the name of a dozen saints of Islam to qualify their rage as they thrust their chargers out of the tangle in pursuit. Perinaud and their officer yelled strenuous commands.
Crestfallen and sullen, the troopers reined in, listening in silence to the commination addressed to them from the pulpit of the cedar.
"Is one lesson insufficient?" thundered Perinaud. "Do we practise the arts of war or are we conducting aralli-papier? Like hares you were decoyed into this ambush, and, flinging your red-hot experience to the winds, you are prepared to be drawn, as likely as not, into another. Collect yourselves, morally as well as physically, if you please."
They reined in among the cork trees, and half a dozen, flinging their reins to comrades, pushed back on foot into the cover. A string of oaths and maledictions, twice repeated, told of what they found. They came back with the sullen tread of those bearing the heavy burdens of defeat and death. They laid the bodies of their two comrades at the foot of the cedar.
Rattier, leaning upon Aylmer's arm, swore vehemently. The blood dripped from a gash across his wrist, but he raised it to shake a fist in the direction taken by the fugitive.
"Another item in M. de Landon's ledger, name of all names!" he cried. "But we shall see, my friends, we shall see. The hand is not played out yet, believe me!"
"Perhaps not," agreed Aylmer, "but you, at any rate, have cut out of the deal, or have been cut out," he added significantly, pointing to the wounded arm.
The commandant drew himself away with a fierce jerk.
"I!" he cried. "Is a cut finger—a graze—to send me weeping to the ambulance? The scoundrel who deceived me I pursue to the world's end! He has scored once more. It is the last time—this!"
He raised himself to his full height in a grandiloquent gesture and—fell fainting into Perinaud's arms. The sergeant grunted morosely and pointed to a crimson stain which had welled through the blue tunic and was rapidly spreading.
"If it is not serious, I thank Our Lady and all the listening Saints for this!" he said devoutly. "He is impossible as a colleague on reconnaissance, this energetic commandant. It was his recklessness which led these men into a trap which at any other moment they would have avoided. We have lost two men and five horses by the result of this escapade. What are your suggestions now, Monsieur?"
Aylmer hesitated.
"For the moment have you not done enough?" he asked. "After all, your service is to France, not to intruders like myself. My Moorish servant and I might continue to reconnoitre alone. Your hands are full enough, are they not?"
The other looked at him queerly.
"Perhaps Monsieur thinks that so far we have been a hindrance rather than a help to his purposes. Monsieur has reason. At the same time we might justly, in my opinion, be permitted another chance to repair our prestige."
Aylmer smiled. Perinaud's voice was chilly. The glance he directed at the crestfallen Goumiers let it be inferred that his words were also designed to reach their address. They shuffled and kicked at the ground restlessly as they listened.
"It is for you, of course, to direct matters, Sergeant!" he said quickly. "But the commandant, without a doubt, must be removed at once to hospital."
"Without a doubt, Monsieur," agreed Perinaud, with sudden cheerfulness. "We will escort him and the dismounted men out of the forest into the open farm lands, where patrols are not infrequent and nothing is to be feared. They will then be about twenty kilometres from the town. The best mounted will proceed as quickly as possible to fetch the ambulance. Of the others, twenty will escort the commandant's stretcher—it is perfectly feasible to make a good one of poles which we will cut and over which we will button two greatcoats—the five new-madefantassinswill walk. The remaining dozen and you and I, Monsieur, will proceed—with energy, if you please, but certainly with prudence."
Perinaud closed his little homily with the satisfied air of an orator who has arrived at and correctly delivered an anticipated peroration.
And chance, who may have been listening, offered yet another of her favors to her protégé. As the little column debouched from the trees into the open expanse of alluvial country, a cloud of brown dust was rising on the far side of the fringing barley fields. Perinaud gave an exclamation of content.
"It is the Tirailleurs with their major," he explained. "They have patrolled the Ber Rechid road and made a reconnaissance to get cattle. They will have an ambulance, or at least a mule litter."
He put his horse to the gallop. The others, following more sedately, saw him reach and disappear among the ranks of white-uniformed men, whose cummerbunds and tarbooshes winked a cheerful scarlet against the dun fallow or green cropping of the fields. And there was an air of animation about the column accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that innumerable kids frisked about their mothers as the captured goats were herded along the track, while droves of small, wiry cattle bellowed and butted at each other, their captors, and every moving object within reach of their serviceable little horns.
Perinaud, who had dismounted, was standing and speaking with an air of respect and precision to a mounted officer. The latter turned as Aylmer and his companions approached, and the former could barely restrain a start of consternation and surprise. For a deep, flaming groove dinted the man's forehead from temple to temple, while the hand which he raised in salute was one huge scar from knuckles to wrist. His brown eyes inspected Aylmer with friendly attention.
"At your service,mon Capitaine," he said. "Sergeant Perinaud has explained your needs."
Aylmer began to express his thanks. The other nodded pleasantly and gave an order. From the rear an ambulance was trotted forward: a gray-moustached doctor in uniform swung himself from his saddle and bent over Rattier, who was still unconscious.
A moment later he looked up.
"Loss of blood," he said laconically. "He has a gash two fingers deep behind the shoulder. Severe, but not serious—with care. We will see to him."
The officer nodded again. He looked at Aylmer.
"And yourself, Monsieur?" he asked.
Aylmer made a gesture towards the forest and the distant uplands.
"With your leave, we will continue our—investigations, Major," he said.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
"The forest,mon ami? We, do you see, have confined our operations so far to the plough lands, the open. I have no store of experience to draw upon for your advice. You will be pioneers. I shall hope to have the benefit of your experience on your return. Maillot is my name, Monsieur, and I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at the headquarters of my regiment outside the Fedallah Gate. For the moment, then,au revoir!"
He smiled cheerfully, saluted, and gave an order. The tramp and jingle of the march were renewed. The dust cloud began to form again where it had settled, and the Tirailleurs swung off seawards with the elastic step which those who wear thegodillotacquire, and which makes them the envy of their colleagues in the regulars who are doomed to the precise lacing of thesoulier. Perinaud made a gesture of admiration, as with Aylmer and his half score of Goumiers he watched them go.
"Monsieur has seen the bravest man and the finest leader of all the troops of France," he remarked.
"Major Maillot?"
"But certainly the major, Monsieur. He needs no medals to prove what he is and where he has been. His deeds are witnessed on his brow and hands."
He hesitated and then spoke quickly.
"I have no wish to vaunt the deeds of Frenchmen to you, a foreigner, Monsieur, but that is a man in whom we may take an honest pride. The scar you saw came to him by Settat. He and a picket were cut off from the main body by a hidden reserve of the enemy. They retreated fighting and were within measurable distance of safety. And then one of our fallen, whom they had left for dead, cried aloud out of the hands of the enemy. How these savages were dealing with him I shall not disgust Monsieur by telling. Suffice it to say that they were working the will of devils upon him and, in spite of his manhood, he shrieked. The major heard, and like a thunderbolt turned and charged straight for the enemy, and his men, without a thought of the peril, turned with him, a dozen perhaps, against five score. But those hundred Moors were in full retreat before the main body of the regiment raced up to the rescue, and they picked their major up wounded as you have seen, lying across the body of the man he had fought to save, with seven dead foes ringed round him.... They have a confident air, these Tirailleurs of ours. Some say an insolent one. Well, Monsieur, they have their pride, it must be allowed, but God knows when they are led as that man leads they have a right to it."
Aylmer nodded. Slowly they turned their horses' heads forestwards again. Perinaud looked at the line of trees abstractedly and then back again at the receding column.
"France does not desert her children if she remembers," he remarked quietly. "It is well that we met these men and their major. He is a man who will see to it that we are not forgotten, if chance wills that we do not soon return. The task of seeking us would be one after his own heart, and his Tirailleurs would think with him." He smiled confidently. "So we may go forward with an easy mind,mon Capitaine. We are pioneers, as the major said. To pioneers should come adventures, if they are worthy of their name."
He touched his stallion's flank with the spur. The little band of horsemen cantered up and into the shadow of the cork trees. And there was an air of arrogance and recklessness about the riders. All trace of discomfiture of an hour back was gone. It was as if the Tirailleurs had breathed an infection of valor around them—a bacillus of intrepidity which their major had cultivated with the point of his untiring sword.
"That our friends have left is obvious," said Daoud. "The question is how long ago and whither."
The litter of a recently disturbed encampment cumbered the ground. Rags, the feathers of lately plucked chickens, the ashes of recently extinguished fires abounded. But whether the camp had been struck days or only hours before it was impossible to determine. Night as well as day had been rainless, and the dry dust left no trail perceptible to European eyes. Daoud, however, examined the soil carefully.
"They have gone south," he declared at last. "They have struck out of the forest and back towards the plain. This grows interesting."
Perinaud gave a sniff.
"The reason is obvious," he said a little contemptuously. "Where did they obtain water? From the spring which welled up at the foot of that cactus to the left. But now it is dry and cracking mud."
Daoud nodded grudgingly.
"Possibly," he allowed. "The nearest wells are at Ain Djemma."
"Held in force by two companies of the Legion," said Perinaud. "They are hardly likely to show themselves there. No, if they have gone south they are seeking the Wad el Mella. They will follow the stream through the gorge towards their own foothills from which it issues."
"This river? How far is it?" asked Aylmer.
"Eight kilometres, possibly ten," said Perinaud. "There areduarsand encampments along its banks in a dozen places. We ought to get news of our men, even if we do not overtake them."
"Our horses have come a matter of thirty kilometres already," said Aylmer.
"Then as soon as possible they must do ten more," answered the sergeant, energetically. "Without water we cannot camp, any more than our friends of the Beni M'Geel.En avance!"
Aylmer drew his horse up beside Perinaud's as for the second time they left the shelter of the trees and ambled out on to the plain. The westering sun was turning it to broad belts of dun, and yellow, and green, as the slanting beams fell upon earth, or marigold weed, or crops. Four or five miles distant to their front the rolling uplands culminated in a belt of squat but far-branching trees.
"There, one may suppose, are the river and the gorge," he suggested. "The inhabitants of theseduars, of which you speak? How will they greet us?"
Perinaud shrugged his shoulders.
"It remains for Fate to show us, Monsieur. There were some drastic whippings of the Moors within this district a few weeks back. How well they have learned the lesson taught them then we shall have to prove."
Aylmer hesitated.
"It is not with the purpose of getting embroiled in skirmishes that I have come," he said quietly. "You understand that my duty, for the moment, is to keep myself alive until my object is achieved."
Perinaud grinned drily.
"That is a remark which a poltroon would not have dared to make, Monsieur, and shows you to be a brave man. Be assured that my efforts towards maintaining an unperforated skin will be as energetic as your own. Hysterical madness, such as we were involved in in the forest, shall not recur, if I can help it. My purpose is to camp, as soon as we reach water, and then to allow your omniscient Monsieur Daoud to conduct his investigations under cover of the darkness."
As the red disk of the sun sank below the seaward horizon, they topped the gentle rise which terminated in a belt of trees. Not far below them, belling musically through the dusk, came the song of the ripples. Half a mile away, on the far side of the gorge, a dim light twinkled in the growing darkness.
Perinaud pointed towards a group of palms.
"Here, Monsieur," he explained, "you will find dry earth. You have your cloak. Your saddle is a practical pillow. I have bread, a ration or two of preserved soup, some beans, coffee, a tin of milk, sugar. At theduar, where we see that light, are—possibly—chickens. But we are quite as likely to receive a bullet. What does Monsieur advise?"
Aylmer smiled.
"An immediate picnic. In the friendliest ofduarscannibal hordes thirsting for our blood would await us, if we were reckless enough to sleep among them. I prefer to housekeepà la belle étoile."
The sergeant nodded and gave his orders. Sentries slipped right and left into the night. A tiny fire was kindled in a hollow between two boulders. The tins of preserved soup gave up their secrets, and the ration bread proved that the military bakers of France have discovered the secret of making loaves which will remain fresh and eatable through a whole week of desert marches. Coffee succeeded—coffee made in the empty vegetable tin, and worthy of Maxim's or the Ritz.
Daoud drank his portion, shrugged his shoulders fatalistically at the sleeping places which the Goumiers were preparing, and then, without comment, vanished into the night.
Aylmer lay back upon his cloak, his head pillowed upon his arm, his pipe between his teeth. He was enjoying to the full the sensations of a pleasantly weary and well-fed horseman. The first drowsy challenge of sleep touched his eyes and brain.
The very next instant, as it seemed to him, he was on his feet, revolver in hand, searching the dark aisles of the forest on either side. A shout had echoed from one of the sentries, a hoarse challenge followed almost on the instant by a shot.
The cry was repeated, shriller this time with the insistence of anxiety. "Au secours!" came the Goumier's voice. "Au secours!There are a score of them; they are all around me!"
In silence, but with a wave of the hand, Perinaud dispersed his men into open order and doubled towards the sounds of conflict. Aylmer ran with them, making more noise in his heavy boots than the whole of the party made in theirsouliers. He heard Perinaud whisper an emphatic oath of disgust as he tripped over a fallen branch and smashed heavily through a cactus bush. The next instant both of them fell together, over a soft, woolly obstruction, which stirred faintly under their feet. Meanwhile, half a dozen rifles were flashing red in the night, and the woodland echoes tossed the reports from thicket to thicket.
Perinaud swore again viciously, scrambled to his feet, and shouted.
"Imbeciles! Cease fire!" he thundered. "They are sheep, these Moors of yours, sheep! A pretty night's work! You have killed probably a dozen, and we have no means of transport."
Shamefacedly the Goumiers crowded round to feel the fatness of the victim which had lain in Aylmer's path. As they felt and appraised it, their voices resumed a note of philosophic content. It was indeed a slur upon the collectedness of the Goumiers as a whole that Hassan el Fehmi, the sentry, had been betrayed into this indiscretion. But the dead sheep, look you, was of an unlooked-for plumpness, and breakfast must be partaken of sooner or later. There would be cutlets, and room might be found on a saddle or two for a couple ofgigots. No, this was not all loss, this night alarm. There were compensations.
Perinaud declined to meet these representations in the spirit in which they were made.
"Looters! Robbers of hen roosts!" he cried. "The whole of your thoughts are centered, as ever, on your unworthy stomachs. The compensation for this outrage will be made to the owners from your pay, let me tell you, from your pay! You have raised the country on us with your shootings; within a matter of minutes we shall have the Moors here in earnest, be assured of that!"
Wrathfully he led the way back to the bivouac and carefully extinguished every cinder of the fire.
"And now," he ordered, "our duty is to wait—beside our horses. If it will not inconvenience Monsieur, I should be obliged if he will defer sleeping, for the present. If we are not molested for the next hour or two, it will be different. The moon rises before midnight and after that a couple of sentries will amply suffice."
It was a memory which stayed by Aylmer for many a month—that long, silent, and very weary vigil of the next few hours. He sat, with his back supported by a palm trunk, the haltering rein of his horse in his hand, his eyes trying vainly to pierce the gloom which surrounded him, and his ears strained to attention.
The forest, though in the windless calm not a leaf fluttered, was full of disquieting noises. There were rustlings, faint, half perceptible crackings of twigs, dull, muffled, resistant sounds from the earth which must surely be caused by human footfall. Once his whole frame sprung into startled alertness as a night bird shrieked in the cork branches not twenty yards away. The faint but distinct after-echo of a chorussed sigh told him how a dozen other pulses had leaped with his. The quick, irregular darting run of a small animal—a jerboa or a forest rat—produced a little less disturbing effect. But the soft, stolid breathing of his horse, as its breath beat past his shoulder, was a soothing, soporific sound which his nerves welcomed, yet seemed to protest against as tending to lull him into an unalert insecurity. With a sudden qualm of reproach he found his head dropping sideways and smiting lightly the trunk of the palm. He drew himself up with a quick, decisive tautening of his muscles. He would not sleep; his eyelids almost ached with the intensity with which he held them apart.
Sleep, like fate, is a tricky jade to defy. It was Perinaud's voice, level and stolid, but with a faint note of sarcasm, which aroused him.
"Monsieur may now sleep in comfort if he will," suggested the sergeant. "There is little fear from surprise with such a moon."
Aylmer blinked. The round white orb was sending its rays in full flood through the broad fans of the palm leaves overhead. It tinged the cork trees with silver radiance; it produced an effect of grateful coolness in the cinder-dry thickets and powdery earth. It was as if dew had fallen, a dew of light. And the shadows of the gorge were of a velvet blackness in contrast.
Aylmer looked carefully round. It was as Perinaud said. The forest spaces were clear; one could trace them almost as distinctly as in the daylight. No enemy could steal upon them unseen.
And so it was with a little sigh of content that he laid his head back upon his saddle, pulled his cloak more disposedly about him, and prepared to give nature freely what during the past three hours she had stolen.
With the usual result. Sleep deserted him. He closed his eyes resolutely; he breathed with exact precision; he even counted an imaginary flock of sheep as they passed sedately between two supposititious hurdles. He remained broadly awake, his eyes rebelling against their imprisonment till at last he gave up trying to coerce them. He searched his pocket, found tobacco and a pipe, and smoked. His brain became suddenly active.
He reviewed the circumstances of the last few days. He debated his position, appraised his progress. It was typical of his temperament equability that he did this; it was part of the dogged resolution with which he approached the vital problems of his career. He knew that for the first time he had encountered passion, and that it had mastered him. He had seen Claire Van Arlen perhaps half a dozen times before he realized this, and realized it, too, with a certain ingenuous wonder at the thing which had such power over him. But he had made no attempt to combat it. He knew that this girl had become for him the pivot of existence. As matters had gone, he had scarcely had the opportunity for introspection. Passion had gripped him, and now passion's authority had gone beyond the limits of question. He set his face unswervingly towards his goal. The days of debating an alternative path had gone by.
He sighed. Up the path he had chosen had he made any progress? Yes, one great step had been taken. She knew the goal he sought; he had made it absolutely plain. He had read repulse in her eyes as she first divined it. He had read it again, but tinged with a thrill of curiosity, at his second allusion. The third time? There he was beaten. She had seemed to fling him a sort of encouragement. Why? What was her intention here? She had not softened towards him; instinct told him that. And yet—and yet. He sighed again. There were many barriers in this road he had set out upon—barriers which must be levelled one by one. Dislike, suspicion, but not, thank God, apathy. No—from the first he had interested her—from the moment of their first meeting he had been forced into prominence in her regard.
A hand fell lightly upon his shoulder, bringing him back with a start from the possibilities of romance to the facts of an everyday African world. The most engrossing of these, for the moment, was Daoud's face.
There was a sense of importance in the Moor's aspect, the importance of discovery. Aylmer realized this at once.
"You have discovered—what?" he asked sharply.
Daoud waved his hand with a magnificent and comprehensive gesture.
"All, Sidi," he answered. "The two we seek, with the child, are in an encampment of Berber tribesmen within an hour's march."
Aylmer scrambled to his feet. He made but little noise as he did so, but there was a corresponding movement in the half-dozen recumbent figures beside him. Perinaud, raising himself upon his elbow, looked thoughtfully at the scout.
"Well, my friend?" he asked amiably. "Your researches take us where?"
"Five miles further up the ravine," said Daoud. "It is more than a camp. A village of some importance. Our friend who escaped from the broom thicket has not arrived there. There was no alertness, no watch kept. By the time I left snores were echoing from practically every tent and dwelling of mud. We are not expected."
Perinaud nodded.
"Bien.The moment of attack then—?"
"Is now, Sidi. By the time we reach it the dawn will have come."
Aylmer fumbled for his watch. It was true. The hour was between four and five. The wan light of the false morning was, indeed, faintly paling the east. He looked at Perinaud.
The sergeant nodded.
"Short rest for the horses, Monsieur," he said, "but that we cannot help. The time is short enough, as it is."
He motioned the waiting figures of the Goumiers into activity. The sentries were recalled. A tiny fire was kindled, and coffee made with incredible quickness while the saddles were being flung upon the horses' backs.
Aylmer gulped his portion gratefully, for the dew-brimmed air was chill. But within twenty minutes of Daoud's return, the half score of horsemen were following him in single file along the river bank.
Progress was slow, the path imperceptible or devious. The light of morning was no longer yellow, but alive with the rose red of sunrise as they halted, at a gesture from their leader, and gazed between the trunks of a grove of palms.
White against the green of crops a dozen houses lined the edge of an oval space, which some winter floods of bygone years had hewn deep in the surrounding alluvial soil. The forest thickets grew up to the fringe of the arable land, divided from it by hedges of cactus. Between the house and the river was an encampment of brown, dilapidated tents. The land immediately in front of these was bare and open, as if some ceaseless traffic had beaten all vegetation down. On an eminence stood a lime-washed, dome-topped shrine.
"If possible, we should surround and examine each house or tent in silence, and one by one," suggested Daoud.
"A matter of hours," said Perinaud. "No, let our men form rank where their rifles command each doorway, and I will see to the summoning of the inhabitants. For the moment, softly. Keep your horses off the rock, but avoid the thickest of the jungle. Show judgment, my children, show judgment!"
He finished with a little oath of surprise. For almost at his horse's feet, or, at the furthest, a bare five yards from him, a man had suddenly risen from a thicket—a man clad in a dirtydjelab, who viewed the sitting horsemen with every sign of amazement and sudden panic. In another moment, and with a shrill cry, he had darted through the palm grove and was flying across the crop lands, straight towards the line of silent tents.
Perinaud struck spurs into his stallion.
"Take him!" he cried, and his voice had a queer note of exasperation as he tried to make it vehement and yet hold it below the level of a shout. He led the charge which raced across the herbage. Aylmer, carried away by the sudden infection of repressed excitement, thundered at his side. The dark spot of brown made by thedjelabof the fugitive seemed, for the moment, to comprehend all that was vital in existence. He must not reach the tents, he must not give the alarm. Although he was a matter of fifty yards or more behind his quarry, owing to the start the runner had gained by the intervening palms, Aylmer began to lean forward in the saddle, to thrust out his arm, feel a tenseness, a twitching in his fingers as if he already grasped the hood of the garment which rose and fell with its owner's every stride.
A yell burst from Perinaud's lips—a yell of rage and warning!
"A trap!" he cried. "The silos! The silos! Pull wide! Pull wide!"
Aylmer heard a crash. A Goumier on his right seemed to have been swallowed with his horse into the very earth. He gripped his own rein, moved by a sudden and imperfectly comprehended pulse of fear, and wrenched at his bridle. His horse fought under the strain, made a half-hearted attempt to halt, and was carried by mere impetus another fifty yards. There came another crash; another Goumier's horse disappeared, while the man, spilled from the saddle, rolled over a dozen times across the hardened flat. Perinaud's stallion, its eyes wild, its nostrils round with terror, spread out its legs and skated forward to the very brink of—what?
A huge round hole, beneath which was darkness only. Aylmer saw it, saw that he himself must reach it, and comprehended as in a flash the sergeant's cry.
The silos!
Even his narrow experience of things Moroquin had taught him what the word meant. They were the underground grain cellars of the villagers, sunk in the earth, unfenced, often coverless, and, as now, open traps for the unwary. The thought and the flash of apprehension which it kindled added force to the grip with which he tore at the reins.
Too late!
His realization of the hideous fall which was inevitable was swift as a lightning flash, and yet at the same time the thing itself seemed to arrive with a horrible deliberation. His thews were tense, his knees clutched the saddle. And then, and the feeling was as if he watched for the culmination of a well-understood and expected movement of familiar machinery—his horse's feet slid grudgingly over the edge. The black hole in the earth rose instantly—rose and sucked him down. There was a shock and then night fell—a night impenetrable.