P. C. Wren - The Collected Works of P. C. Wren - Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories

"We were ambushed in that unspeakable jungle, and only Djikki and I survived the fight. . . . We were driven along for days, thrashed with sticks, prodded with spears, tied to trees at night, and bound so tightly that our limbs swelled and turned blue.

"We were given entrails to eat and carefully defiled water to drink. . . . And one morning, as they untied us, that we might stagger on--towards the king's capital--Djikki snatched a machete , a kind of heavy hiltless sword, from a man's hand, and put up such a noble fight as has rarely been fought by one man against a crowd. In spite of what we had been through, he fought like a fiend incarnate. . . . It was Homeric. . . . It was like a gorilla fighting baboons, a tiger fighting dogs.

"That heavy razor-edged blade rose and fell like lightning, and every time it descended, a head or an arm was almost severed from a body--and he whirled and sprang and slashed and struck until the whole gang of them gave ground, and as he bellowed and charged and then smote their leader's head clean from his shoulders, they broke and ran. . . . And Djikki--dripping blood, a mass of gashes and gaping wounds--ran too. . . . With me in his arms. . . .

"And when he could run no longer, he laid me down and cut the hide thongs that bound my wrists and elbows behind me, and those that cut into the flesh of my knees and ankles. Then he fainted from loss of blood. . . .

"I collapsed next day with fever, dysentery, and blood-poisoning, and Djikki--that black ex-cannibal--carried me in his arms, like a mother her baby, day after day, for five weeks, and got food for the two of us as well. . . .

"During that time I tasted the warm blood of monkeys and the cold flesh of lizards. . . . And when, at last, we were found, by pure good luck, near a French post on the Great River, he had not, as I discovered later, eaten for three days (although I had) and he had not slept for four nights. . . . But he had not left me and saved himself, as he could so easily have done. . . .

"Instead of doing thirty miles a day and eating all he got, he did ten miles a day with me in his arms, and gave me the food--pretending he had eaten. . . . The doctor at the Fort said he had never seen anyone so starved and emaciated, and yet able to keep his feet. . . . No, he never left me. . . ."

"And you have left him ," said Miss Vanbrugh.

"I have left him," I replied. . . .

"And Achmet?" she asked.

"The most faithful servant a man ever had," I said. "He has nursed me through fever, dysentery, blindness, wounds, and all sorts of illnesses, as gently and tirelessly as any woman could have done.

"He is a Spahi and a brave soldier. . . . Once I was getting my squadron across a deep crocodile-infested river, swollen and swift, very difficult and dangerous work if you have not had plenty of practice in handling a swimming horse. . . . I crossed first and then returned. Finally, I came over last, and a huge crocodile took my horse--the noise and splashing of the crossing squadron having subsided--and I went down with the pair of them, heavily weighted too. . . . It was my Achmet who spurred his horse back into the water, swam to the spot and dived for me, regardless of crocodiles and the swift current. . . . We were both pretty well dead by the time he managed to grab an overhanging branch, and they dragged us out. . . ."

A silence fell between us. . . .

"Another time, too," I went on, "Achmet and Dufour undoubtedly saved my life--and not only at the risk of their own, but at the cost of horrible suffering.

"We were besieged in a tiny entrenched bivouac, starving and nearly dead with thirst. All that came into that little hell was a hail of tribesmen's bullets by day and a gentle rain of snipers' bullets by night. . . .

"Had we been of the kind that surrenders--which we were not--we should only have exchanged the tortures of thirst for the almost unimaginable tortures of the knives and red-hot irons of the tribesmen and their women. . . . Day by day our sufferings increased and our numbers diminished as men died of starvation, thirst, dysentery, fever, heat-stroke, wounds--or the merciful bullet. . . .

"The day temperature was rarely much above 120° and never below it, and from the sun we had no shelter. Generally a sirocco was blowing at fifty miles an hour, as hot as the blast from the open door of a furnace, and the sun was hidden in the black clouds of its dust. . . . Often it was as though night fell ere noon; and men, whose ration of water was a teacupful a day, had to breathe this dust. Our mouths, nostrils, eyes, ears were filled with it. . . . And, on dark nights, those devils would place fat girbas of water where, at dawn, they would be in full view of men dying of thirst . . . in the hope of luring them from the shelter of rocks and sand-trenches to certain death . . . and in the certainty of adding to their tortures. . . . But my men were Spahis, and not one of them complained, or grumbled, or cast off discipline to make a dash for a girba and death. . . .

"Dufour asked to be allowed to crawl out at night and try to get one of those skins--in which there might still remain a few drops of water--or possibly catch one of the fiends placing a girba --and I would not allow it. . . . I would not weigh Dufour's life against the ghost of a chance of getting a little water--and that poisoned, perhaps. . . . Nor did I feel that I had any right to go myself, nor to send any of my few remaining men. . . .

"Then Achmet volunteered to try. . . .

"But I am wandering . . . what I started to say was this. . . . Three days before we were relieved I was shot in the head, and for those three days Dufour not only maintained the defence of that post, garrisoned by dying men, but devoted half his own tiny ration of water to me and my wound . . . . Achmet threatened to knife him when Dufour tried to prevent him from contributing the whole of his! . . .

"And when the relief-column arrived there was not a man on his feet, except Dufour, though there were several lying, still alive, gripping their rifles and facing their foes. . . .

"Dufour could give no information to the Colonel commanding the relief-column, because he could not speak, and when he sat down to write an answer to a question, he collapsed, and the surgeons took him over. . . ."

"You accepted half Dufour's and the whole of Achmet's water-ration?" asked Miss Vanbrugh.

"I was unconscious from the time I was hit until the day after the relief," I replied. "I should never have recovered consciousness at all had not the excellent Surgeon-Major arrived--nor should I have lived until he did arrive, but for Achmet's bathing my head and keeping it clean and 'cool'--in a temperature of 120° and a howling dust-storm. . . . I learnt all about it afterwards from a Spahi Sergeant who was one of the survivors. . . . Achmet did not sleep during those three days. . . . Nor did he taste water. . . ."

"And I have left him too," I added.

Mary Vanbrugh was silent for a while.

"Major de Beaujolais," she said at length, "suppose there had been only one camel, when you--er--departed from the pass. Suppose the Touareg had contrived to shoot the rest. . . . Would you have taken that camel and gone off alone?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Leaving Maudie--and me?"

"Unhesitatingly," I replied.

She regarded me long and thoughtfully, and then, without speaking, returned to the tent where Maudie slept, dreaming, doubtless, of Sheikhs.

Of course I would have left them. Was I to be another de Lannec and turn aside from the service of my country, imperil the interests and welfare of my Motherland, be false to the traditions of my great and noble Service, stultify the arduous and painful training of a lifetime, fail the trust reposed in me, and betray my General-- for a woman ?