CHAPTER XXVI.
ZARAILA.
The African day was at its noon.
From the first break of dawn the battle had raged; now, at midday, itwas at its height. Far in the interior, almost on the edge of the greatdesert, in that terrible season when air that is flame by day is ice bynight, and when the scorch of a blazing sun may be followed in an hourby the blinding fury of a snow-storm, the slaughter had gone on, hourthrough hour, under a shadowless sky, blue as steel, hard as a sheet ofbrass. The Arabs had surprised the French encampment, where it lay inthe center of an arid plain that was called Zaraila. Hovering like acloud of hawks on the entrance of the Sahara, massed together for onemighty, if futile, effort--with all their ancient war-lust, and with anew despair--the tribes who refused the yoke of the alien empirewere once again in arms; were once again combined in defense of thoselimitless kingdoms of drifting sand, of that beloved belt of bare anddesolate land so useless to the conqueror, so dear to the nomad. Whenthey had been, as it had been thought, beaten back into the desertwilderness; when, without water and without cattle, it had beencalculated that they would, of sheer necessity, bow themselves insubmission, or perish of famine and of thirst; they had recovered theirardor, their strength, their resistance, their power to harass withoutceasing, if they could never arrest, the enemy. They had cast the torchof war afresh into the land, and here, southward, the flame burnedbitterly, and with a merciless tongue devoured the lives of men, lickingthem up as a forest fire the dry leaves and the touchwood.
Circling, sweeping, silently, swiftly, with that rapid spring, thatmarvelous whirlwind of force, that is of Africa, and of Africa alone,the tribes had rushed down in the darkness of night, lightly as a kiterushes through the gloom of the dawn. For once the vigilance of theinvader served him naught; for once the Frankish camp was surprised offits guard. While the air was still chilly with the breath of the night,while the first gleam of morning had barely broken through the mists ofthe east, while the picket-fires burned through the dusky gloom, andthe sentinels and vedettes paced slowly to and fro, and circled round,hearing nothing worse than the stealthy tread of the jackal, or themuffled flight of a night-bird, afar in the south a great dark cloud hadrisen, darker than the brooding shadows of the earth and sky.
The cloud swept onward, like a mass of cirrhi, in those shadowsshrouded. Fleet as though wind-driven, dense as though thunder-charged,it moved over the plains. As it grew nearer and nearer, it grew grayer,a changing mass of white and black that fused, in the obscurity, into ashadow color; a dense array of men and horses flitting noiselessly likespirits, and as though guided alone by one rein and moved alone by onebreath and one will; not a bit champed, not a linen-fold loosened, not ashiver of steel was heard; as silently as the winds of the desert sweepup northward over the plains, so they rode now, host upon host of thewarriors of the soil.
The outlying vedettes, the advancing sentinels, had scrutinized solong through the night every wavering shade of cloud and moving formof buffalo in the dim distance, that their sleepless eyes, strainedand aching, failed to distinguish this moving mass that was so like thebrown plains and starless sky that it could scarce be told from them.The night, too, was bitter; northern cold cut hardly chillier than thisthat parted the blaze of one hot day from the blaze of another. Thesea-winds were blowing cruelly keen, and men who at noon gladly strippedto their shirts, shivered now where they lay under canvas.
Awake while his comrades slept around him, Cecil was stretched, halfunharnessed. The foraging duty of the past twenty-four hours had beenwork harassing and heavy, inglorious and full of fatigue. The countryround was bare as a table-rock; the water-courses poor, choked withdust and stones, unfed as yet by the rains or snows of the approachingwinter. The horses suffered sorely, the men scarce less. The hay for theformer was scant and bad; the rations for the latter often cut off byflying skirmishers of the foe. The campaign, so far as it had gone, hadbeen fruitless, yet had cost largely in human life. The men died rapidlyof dysentery, disease, and the chills of the nights, and had severelosses in countless obscure skirmishes, that served no end except towater the African soil with blood.
True, France would fill the gaps up as fast as they occurred, and the"Monitor" would only allude to the present operations when it couldgive a flourishing line descriptive of the Arabs being driven back,decimated, to the borders of the Sahara. But as the flourish of the"Monitor" would never reach a thousand little way-side huts, andsea-side cabins, and vine-dressers' sunny nests, where the memory ofsome lad who had gone forth never to return would leave a deadly shadowathwart the humble threshold--so the knowledge that they were only somany automata in the hands of government, whose loss would merely benoted that it might be efficiently supplied, was not that wine-draughtof La Gloire which poured the strength and the daring of gods into thelimbs of the men of Jena and of Austerlitz. Still, there was a war-lustin them, and there was the fire of France; they fought not less superblyhere, where to be food for jackal and kite was their likeliest doom,than their sires had done under the eagles of the First Empire, when theConscript hero of to-day was the glittering Marshal of to-morrow.
Cecil had awakened while the camp still slept. Do what he would, forcehimself into the fullness of this fierce and hard existence as he might,he could not burn out or banish a thing that had many a time hauntedhim, but never as it did now--the remembrance of a woman. He almostlaughed as he lay there on a pile of rotting straw, and wrung the truthout of his own heart, that he--a soldier of these exiled squadrons--wasmad enough to love that woman whose deep, proud eyes had dwelt with suchserene pity upon him.
Yet his hand clinched on the straw as it had clinched once when theoperator's knife had cut down through the bones of his breast to reacha bullet that, left in his chest, would have been death. If in the sightof men he had only stood in the rank that was his by birthright, hecould have striven for--it might be that he could have roused--someanswering passion in her. But that chance was lost to him forever. Well,it was but one thing more that was added to all that he had of his ownwill given up. He was dead; he must be content, as the dead must be,to leave the warmth of kisses, the glow of delight, the possession ofa woman's loveliness, the homage of men's honor, the gladness ofsuccessful desires, to those who still lived in the light he hadquitted. He had never allowed himself the emasculating indulgence ofregret; he flung it off him now.
Flick-Flack--coiled asleep in his bosom--thrilled, stirred, and growled.He rose, and, with the little dog under his arm, looked out from thecanvas. He knew that the most vigilant sentry in the service had not theinstinct for a foe afar off that Flick-Flack possessed. He gazed keenlysouthward, the poodle growling on; that cloud so dim, so distant, caughthis sight. Was it a moving herd, a shifting mist, a shadow-play betweenthe night and dawn?
For a moment longer he watched it; then, what it was he knew, or feltby such strong instinct as makes knowledge; and, like the blast of aclarion, his alarm rang over the unarmed and slumbering camp.
An instant, and the hive of men, so still, so motionless, broke intoviolent movement; and from the tents the half-clothed sleepers poured,wakened, and fresh in wakening as hounds. Perfect discipline did therest. With marvelous, with matchless swiftness and precision theyharnessed and got under arms. They were but fifteen hundred or so inall--a single squadron of Chasseurs, two battalions of Zouaves, half acorps of Tirailleurs, and some Turcos; only a branch of the main body,and without artillery. But they were some of the flower of the army ofAlgiers, and they roused in a second, with the vivacious ferocity of thebounding tiger, with the glad, eager impatience for the slaughter ofthe unloosed hawk. Yet, rapid in its wondrous celerity as their unitedaction was, it was not so rapid as the downward sweep of the war-cloudthat came so near, with the tossing of white draperies and the shine ofcountless sabers, now growing clearer and clearer out of the darkness,till, with a whir like the noise of an eagle's wings, and a swoop likean eagle's seizure, the Arabs whirled down upon them, met a few yards inadv
ance by the answering charge of the Light Cavalry.
There was a crash as if rock were hurled upon rock, as the Chasseurs,scarce seated in saddle, rushed forward to save the pickets; toencounter the first blind force of attack, and, to give the infantry,further in, more time for harness and defense. Out of the caverns of thenight an armed multitude seemed to have suddenly poured. A moment agothey had slept in security; now thousands on thousands, whom they couldnot number; whom they could but dimly even perceive, were thrown on themin immeasurable hosts, which the encircling cloud of dust served but torender vaster, ghastlier, and more majestic. The Arab line stretched outwith wings that seemed to extend on and on without end; the line of theChasseurs was not one-half its length; they were but a single squadronflung in their stirrups, scarcely clothed, knowing only that the foewas upon them, caring only that their sword-hands were hard on theirweapons. With all the elan of France they launched themselves forwardto break the rush of the desert horses; they met with a terrible sound,like falling trees, like clashing metal.
The hoofs of the rearing chargers struck each other's breasts, and thesebit and tore at each other's manes, while their riders reeled downdead. Frank and Arab were blent in one inextricable mass as the chargingsquadrons encountered. The outer wings of the tribes were spared theshock, and swept on to meet the bayonets of Zouaves and Turcos as, attheir swift foot-gallop, the Enfants Perdus of France threw themselvesforward from the darkness. The cavalry was enveloped in the overwhelmingnumbers of the center, and the flanks seemed to cover the Zouaves andTirailleurs as some great settling mist may cover the cattle who movebeneath it.
It was not a battle; it was a frightful tangling of men and brutes. Nocontest of modern warfare, such as commences and conquers by a duelof artillery, and, sometimes, gives the victory to whosoever has thesuperiority of ordnance, but a conflict, hand to hand, breast to breast,life for life; a Homeric combat of spear and of sword even while thefirst volleys of the answering musketry pealed over the plain.
For once the Desert avenged, in like, that terrible inexhaustibilityof supply wherewith the Empire so long had crushed them beneath theoverwhelming difference of numbers. It was the Day of Mazagran oncemore, as the light of the morning broke--gray, silvered, beautiful--inthe far, dim distance, beyond the tawny seas of reeds. Smoke and sandsoon densely rose above the struggle, white, hot, blinding; but out fromit the lean, dark Bedouin faces, the snowy haicks, the red burnous, thegleam of the Tunisian muskets, the flash of the silver-hilted yataghans,were seen fused in a mass with the brawny, naked necks of the Zouaves,with the shine of the French bayonets; with the tossing manes andglowing nostrils of the Chasseurs' horses; with the torn, stained silkof the raised Tricolor, through which the storm of balls flew thick andfast as hail, yet whose folds were never suffered to fall, though againand again the hand that held its staff was cut away or was unloosed indeath, yet ever found another to take its charge before the Flag couldonce have trembled in the enemy's sight.
The Chasseurs could not charge; they were hemmed in, packed betweenbodies of horsemen that pressed them together as between iron plates;now and then they could cut their way through, clear enough to reachtheir comrades of the demi-cavalry, but as often as they did so, sooften the overwhelming numbers of the Arabs urged in on them afresh likea flood, and closed upon them, and drove them back.
Every soldier in the squadron that lived kept his life by sheer,breathless, ceaseless, hand-to-hand sword-play, hewing right and left,front and rear, without pause, as, in the great tangled forests of thewest, men hew aside branch and brushwood ere they can force one stepforward.
The gleam of the dawn spread in one golden glow of morning, and theday rose radiant over the world; they stayed not for its beauty or itspeace; the carnage went on, hour upon hour; men began to grow drunkwith slaughter as with raki. It was sublimely grand; it was hideouslyhateful--this wild-beast struggle, this heaving tumult of strivinglives, that ever and anon stirred the vast war-cloud of smoke and brokefrom it as the lightning from the night. The sun laughed in its warmthover a thousand hills and streams, over the blue seas lying northward,and over the yellow sands of the south; but the touch of its heat onlymade the flame in their blood burn fiercer; the fullness of its lightonly served to show them clearer where to strike and how to slay.
It was bitter, stifling, cruel work; with their mouths choked with sand,with their throats caked with thirst, with their eyes blind with smoke;cramped as in a vise, scorched with the blaze of powder, covered withblood and with dust; while the steel was thrust through nerve and sinew,or the shot plowed through bone and flesh. The answering fire of theZouaves and Tirailleurs kept the Arabs further at bay, and mowed themfaster down; but in the Chasseurs' quarter of the field--parted fromthe rest of their comrades as they had been by the rush of that brokencharge with which they had sought to save the camp and arrest thefoe--the worst pressure of the attack was felt, and the fiercest of theslaughter fell.
The Chef d'Escadron had been shot dead as they had first swept out toencounter the advance of the desert horsemen; one by one the officershad been cut down, singled out by the keen eyes of their enemies, andthrowing themselves into the deadliest of the carnage with the impetuousself-devotion characteristic of their service. At the last thereremained but a mere handful out of all the brilliant squadron that hadgalloped down in the gray of the dawn to meet the whirlwind of Arabfury. At their head was Cecil.
Two horses had been killed under him, and he had thrown himself afreshacross unwounded chargers, whose riders had fallen in the melee, andat whose bridles he had caught as he shook himself free of the deadanimals' stirrups. His head was uncovered; his uniform, hurriedly thrownon, had been torn aside, and his chest was bare to the red folds of hissash; he was drenched with blood, not his own, that had rained on himas he fought; and his face and his hands were black with smoke and withpowder. He could not see a yard in front of him; he could not tellhow the day went anywhere, save in that corner where his own troop washemmed in. As fast as they beat the Arabs back, and forced themselvessome clearer space, so fast the tribes closed in afresh. No ordersreached him from the General of the Brigade in command; except for thewell-known war-shouts of the Zouaves that ever and again rang abovethe din, he could not tell whether the French battalions were not cututterly to pieces under the immense numerical superiority of their foes.All he could see was that every officer of Chasseurs was down, and that,unless he took the vacant place, and rallied them together, thefew score troopers that were still left would scatter, confused anddemoralized, as the best soldiers will at times when they can see nochief to follow.
He spurred the horse he had just mounted against the dense crowdopposing him, against the hard, black wall of dust, and smoke, andsteel, and savage faces, and lean, swarthy arms, which were all thathis eyes could see, and that seemed impenetrable as granite, moving andchanging though it was. He thrust the gray against it, while he wavedhis sword above his head.
"En avant, mes freres! France! France! France!"
His voice--well known, well loved--thrilled the hearts of his comrades,and brought them together like a trumpet-call. They had gone with himmany a time into the hell of battle, into the jaws of death. They surgedabout him now; striking, thrusting, forcing, with blows of their sabersor their lances and blows of their beasts' fore-feet, a passage one toanother, until they were reunited once more as one troop, while theirshrill shouts, like an oath of vengeance, echoed after him in thedefiance that has pealed victorious over so many fields from thesoldiery of France. They loved him; he had called them his brethren.They were like lambs for him to lead, like tigers for him to incite.
They could scarcely see his face in that great red mist of combat, inthat horrible, stifling pressure on every side that jammed them as ifthey were in a press of iron, and gave them no power to pause, thoughtheir animals' hoofs struck the lingering life out of some half-deadcomrade, or trampled over the writhing limbs of the brother-in-arms theyloved dearest and best. But his voice reac
hed them, clear and ringingin its appeal for sake of the country they never once forgot or oncereviled, though in her name they were starved and beaten like rebellioushounds; though in her cause they were exiled all their manhood throughunder the sun of this cruel, ravenous, burning Africa. They could seehim lift aloft the Eagle he had caught from the last hand that had borneit, the golden gleam of the young morning flashing like flame uponthe brazen wings; and they shouted, as with one throat, "Mazagran!Mazagran!" As the battalion of Mazagran had died keeping the groundthrough the whole of the scorching day while the fresh hordes poureddown on them like ceaseless torrents, snow-fed and exhaustless--so theywere ready to hold the ground here, until of all their numbers thereshould be left not one living man.
He glanced back on them, guarding his head the while from the lancesthat were rained on him; and he lifted the guidon higher and higher,till, out of the ruck and the throng, the brazen bird caught afresh therays of the rising sun.
Then, like arrows launched at once from a hundred bows, they charged;he still slightly in advance of them, the bridle flung upon his horse'sneck, his head and breast bare, one hand striking aside with his bladethe steel shafts as they poured on him, the other holding high above thepress the Eagle of the Bonapartes.
The effort was superb.
Dense bodies of Arabs parted them in the front from the camp where thebattle raged, harassed them in the rear with flying shots and hurledlances, and forced down on them on either side like the closing jaws ofa trap. The impetuosity of their onward movement was, for the moment,irresistible; it bore headlong all before it; the desert horsesrecoiled, and the desert riders themselves yielded--crushed, staggered,trodden aside, struck aside, by the tremendous impetus with which theChasseurs were thrown upon them. For the moment the Bedouins gave way,shaken and confused, as at the head of the French they saw this man,with his hair blowing in the wind, and the sun on the fairness of hisface, ride down on them thus unharmed, though a dozen spears were aimedat his naked breast; dealing strokes sure as death, right and left ashe went, with the light from the hot, blue skies on the ensign of Francethat he bore.
They knew him; they had met him in many conflicts; and wherever the"fair Frank," as they called him, came, there they knew of old thebattle was hard to win; bitter to the bitterest end, whether that endwere defeat, or victory costly as defeat in its achievement.
And for the moment they recoiled under the shock of that fieryonslaught; for the moment they parted and wavered and oscillated beneaththe impetus with which he hurled his hundred Chasseurs on them, withthat light, swift, indescribable rapidity and resistlessness of attackcharacteristic of the African Cavalry.
Though a score or more, one on another, had singled him out withspecial and violent attack, he had gone, as yet, unwounded, save for alance-thrust in his shoulder, of which, in the heat of the conflict, hewas unconscious. The "fighting fury" was upon him; and when once thishad been lit in him, the Arabs knew of old that the fiercest vulture inthe Frankish ranks never struck so surely home as his hand.
As he spurred his horse down on them now, twenty blades glitteredagainst him; the foremost would have cut straight down through the boneof his bared chest and killed him at a single lunge, but as its steelflashed in the sun, one of his troopers threw himself against it, andparried the stroke from him by sheathing it in his own breast. The blowwas mortal; and the one who had saved him reeled down off his saddleunder the hoofs of the trampling chargers. "Picpon s'en souvient," hemurmured with a smile; and as the charge swept onward, Cecil, with agreat cry of horror, saw the feet of the maddened horses strike to pulpthe writhing body, and saw the black, wistful eyes of the Enfant deParis look upward to him once, with love, and fealty, and unspeakablesweetness gleaming through their darkened sight.
But to pause was impossible. Though the French horses were forced withmarvelous dexterity through a bristling forest of steel, though theremnant of the once-glittering squadron was cast against them in asheadlong a daring as if it had half the regiments of the Empire at itsback, the charge availed little against the hosts of the desert that hadrallied and swooped down afresh almost as soon as they had been, for theinstant of the shock, panic-stricken. The hatred of the opposed raceswas aroused in all its blind, ravening passion; the conquered hadthe conquering nation for once at their mercy; for once at tremendousdisadvantage; on neither side was there aught except that one instinctfor slaughter, which, once awakened, kills every other in the breast inwhich it burns.
The Arabs had cruel years to avenge--years of a loathed tyranny, yearsof starvation and oppression, years of constant flight southward, withno choice but submission or death. They had deadly memories to washout--memories of brethren who had been killed like carrion by theinvaders' shot and steel; of nomadic freedom begrudged and crushed bycivilization; of young children murdered in the darkness of the caverns,with the sulphurous smoke choking the innocent throats that had onlybreathed the golden air of a few summers; of women, well beloved, tornfrom them in the hot flames of burning tents and outraged beforetheir eyes with insult whose end was a bayonet-thrust into theirbreasts--breasts whose sin was fidelity to the vanquished.
They had vengeance to do that made every stroke seem righteous and holyin their sight; that nerved each of their bare and sinewy arms as withthe strength of a thousand limbs. Right--so barren, so hopeless, sounavailing--had long been with them. Now to it was added at lastthe power of might; and they exercised the power with the savageruthlessness of the desert. They closed in on every side; wheelingtheir swift coursers hither and thither; striking with lance and blade;hemming in, beyond escape, the doomed fragment of the Frankish squadrontill there remained of them but one small nucleus, driven closetogether, rather as infantry will form than as cavalry usually does--aring of horsemen, of which every one had his face to the foe; a solidcircle curiously wedged one against the other, with the bodies ofchargers and of men deep around them, and with the ground soaked withblood till the sand was one red morass.
Cecil held the Eagle still, and looked round on the few left to him.
"You are sons of the Old Guard; die like them."
They answered with a pealing cry, terrible as the cry of the lion inthe hush of night, but a shout that had in it assent, triumph, fealty,victory, even as they obeyed him and drew up to die, while in theirfront was the young brow of Petit Picpon turned upward to the glare ofthe skies.
There was nothing for them but to draw up thus, and await theirbutchery, defending the Eagle to the last; looking till the last towardthat "woman's face of their leader," as they had often termed it, thatwas to them now as the face of Napoleon was to the soldiers who lovedhim.
There was a pause, brief as is the pause of the lungs to take a fullerbreath. The Arabs honored these men, who alone and in the midst of thehostile force, held their ground and prepared thus to be slaughtered oneby one, till of all the squadron that had ridden out in the darkness ofthe dawn there should be only a black, huddled, stiffened heap ofdead men and of dead beasts. The chief who led them pressed them back,withholding them from the end that was so near to their hands when theyshould stretch that single ring of horsemen all lifeless in the dust.
"You are great warriors," he cried, in the Sabir tongue; "surrender; wewill spare!"
Cecil looked back once more on the fragment of his troop, and raisedthe Eagle higher aloft where the wings should glisten in the fuller day.Half naked, scorched, blinded; with an open gash in his shoulder wherethe lance had struck, and with his brow wet with the great dews of thenoon-heat and the breathless toil; his eyes were clear as they flashedwith the light of the sun in them; his mouth smiled as he answered:
"Have we shown ourselves cowards, that you think we shall yield?"
A hurrah of wild delight from the Chasseurs he led greeted and ratifiedthe choice. "On meurt--on ne se rend pas!" they shouted in the wordswhich, even if they be but legendary, are too true to the spirit of thesoldiers of France not to be as truth in their sight. Then, with theirswords
above their heads, they waited for the collision of the terribleattack which would fall on them upon every side, and strike all thesentient life out of them before the sun should be one point higher inthe heavens. It came; with a yell as of wild beasts in their famine, theArabs threw themselves forward, the chief himself singling out the "fairFrank" with the violence of a lion flinging himself on a leopard. Oneinstant longer, one flash of time, and the tribes pressing on them wouldhave massacred them like cattle driven into the pens of slaughter. Ereit could be done, a voice like the ring of a silver trumpet echoed overthe field:
"En avant! En avant! Tue, tue, tue!"
Above the din, the shouts, the tumult, the echoing of the distantmusketry, that silvery cadence rung; down into the midst, with theTricolor waving above her head, the bridle of her fiery mare betweenher teeth, the raven of the dead Zouave flying above her head, and herpistol leveled in deadly aim, rode Cigarette.
The lightning fire of the crossing swords played round her, the glitterof the lances dazzled her eyes, the reek of smoke and of carnage wasround her; but she dashed down into the heart of the conflict as gaylyas though she rode at a review--laughing, shouting, waving the torncolors that she grasped, with her curls blowing back in the breeze, andher bright young face set in the warrior's lust. Behind her, by scarcelya length, galloped three squadrons of Chasseurs and Spahis; tramplingheadlong over the corpse-strewn field, and breaking through the massesof the Arabs as though they were seas of corn.
She wheeled her mare round by Cecil's side at the moment when, with sixswift passes of his blade, he had warded off the Chief's blows and senthis own sword down through the chest-bones of the Bedouin's mighty form.
"Well struck! The day is turned! Charge!"
She gave the order as though she were a Marshal of the Empire, thesun-blaze full on her where she sat on the rearing, fretting, half-bredgray, with the Tricolor folds above her head, and her teeth tightgripped on the chain-bridle, and her face all glowing and warm and fullof the fierce fire of war--a little Amazon in scarlet and blue andgold; a young Jeanne d'Arc, with the crimson fez in lieu of the silveredcasque, and the gay broideries of her fantastic dress instead of thebreastplate of steel. And with the Flag of her idolatry, the Flag thatwas as her religion, floating back as she went, she spurred her marestraight against the Arabs, straight over the lifeless forms of thehundreds slain; and after her poured the fresh squadrons of cavalry, theruby burnous of the Spahis streaming on the wind as their darling ledthem on to retrieve the day for France.
Not a bullet struck, not a saber grazed her; but there, in the heatand the press of the worst of the slaughter, Cigarette rode hitherand thither, to and fro, her voice ringing like a bird's song over thefield, in command, in applause, in encouragement, in delight; bearingher standard aloft and untouched; dashing heedless through a storm ofblows; cheering on her "children" to the charge again and again; and allthe while with the sunlight full on her radiant, spirited head, and withthe grim, gray raven flying above her, shrieking shrilly its "Tue, tue,tue!" The Army believed with superstitious faith in the potent spellof that veteran bird, and the story ran that, whenever he flew above acombat, France was victor before the sun set. The echo of the raven'scry, and the presence of the child who, they knew, would have a thousandmusket-balls fired in her fair young breast rather than live to see themdefeated, made the fresh squadrons sweep in like a whirlwind, bearingdown all before them.
Cigarette saved the day.