While the Seraph slept dreamlessly, with the tents of the French camparound him, and the sleepless eyes of Cigarette watched afar off thedim, distant forms of the vedettes as they circled slowly round at theiroutpost duty--eight leagues off, through a vast desert of shadow andsilence, the two horsemen swept swiftly on. Not a word had passedbetween them; they rode close together in unbroken stillness; they werescarcely visible to each other for there was no moon, and storm-cloudsobscured the skies. Now and then their horses' hoofs struck fire from aflint-stone, and the flash sparkled through the darkness; often not eventhe sound of their gallop was audible on the gray, dry, loose soil.
Every rood of the road was sown thick with peril. No frowning ledge ofrock, with pine-roots in its clefts, but might serve as the barricadebehind which some foe lurked; no knot of cypress-shrubs, black even onthat black sheet of shadow, but might be pierced with the steel tubes ofleveled, waiting muskets.
Pillaging, burning, devastating wherever they could, in what was to thema holy war of resistance to the infidel and the invader, the predatorytribes had broken out into a revolt which the rout of Zaraila, heavyblow though it had been to them, had by no means ended. They were stillin arms, infesting the country everywhere southward; defying regularpursuit, impervious to regular attacks; carrying on the harassingguerilla warfare at which they were such adepts. And causing thusto their Frankish foe more irritation and more loss than decisiveengagements would have produced. They feared nothing, had nothing tolose, and could subsist almost upon nothing. They might be driven intothe desert, they might even be exterminated after long pursuit; but theywould never be vanquished. And they were scattered now far and wide overthe country; every cave might shelter, every ravine might inclose them;they appeared here, they appeared there; they swooped down on a convoy,they carried sword and flame into a settlement, they darted like aflight of hawks upon a foraging party, they picked off any vedette, ashe wheeled his horse round in the moonlight; and every yard of the sixtymiles which the two gray chargers of the Chasseurs d'Afrique must coverere their service was done was as rife with death as though its courselay over the volcanic line of an earthquake or a hollow, mined andsprung.
They had reached the center of the plain when the sound they had longlooked for rang on their ears, piercing the heavy, breathless stillnessof the night. It was the Allah-il-Allah of their foes, the war-cry ofthe Moslem. Out of the gloom--whether from long pursuit or some nearhiding-place they could not tell--there broke suddenly upon them thefury of an Arab onslaught. In the darkness all they could see were theflash of steel, the flame of fierce eyes against their own, the whitesteam of smoking horses, the spray of froth flung off the snortingnostrils, the rapid glitter of the curved flissas--whether two, ortwenty, or twice a hundred were upon them they could not know--theynever did know. All of which they were conscious was that in an instant,from the tranquil melancholy around them of the great, dim, naked space,they were plunged into the din, the fury, the heat, the close, crushing,horrible entanglement of conflict, without the power to perceive or tonumber their foes, and only able to follow the sheer, simple instinctsof attack and of defense. All they were sensible of was one of thoseconfused moments, deafening, blinding, filled with violence and rage anddin--an eternity in semblance, a second in duration--that can never betraced, never be recalled; yet in whose feverish excitement men do thatwhich, in their calmer hours, would look to them a fable of some Amadisof Gaul.
How they were attacked, how they resisted, how they struck, how theywere encompassed, how they thrust back those who were hurled on them inthe black night, with the north sea-wind like ice upon their faces, andthe loose African soil drifting up in clouds of sand around them, theycould never have told. Nor how they strained free from the armed ringthat circled them, and beat aside the shafts of lances and the blades ofswords, and forced their chargers breast to breast against the fence ofsteel and through the tempest of rage, and blows, and shouts, and wind,and driven sand, cut their way through the foe whose very facethey scarce could see, and plunged away into the shadows across thedesolation of the plain, pursued, whether by one or by the thousand theycould not guess; for the gallop was noiseless on the powdered soil, andthe Arab yell of baffled passion and slaughterous lust was half drownedin the rising of the wind-storm. Had it been day, they would have seentheir passage across the level table-land traced by a crimson streamupon the sand, in which the blood of Frank and Arab blended equally.
As it was, they dashed headlong down through the darkness that grew yetdenser and blacker as the storm rose. For miles the ground was levelbefore them, and they had only to let the half-maddened horses, that hadas by a miracle escaped all injury, rush on at their own will throughthe whirl of the wind that drove the dust upward in spiral columns andbrought icy breaths of the north over the sear, sunburned, southernwastes.
For a long space they had no sense but that of rapid, ceaseless motionthrough the thick gloom and against the pressure of the violent blasts.The speed of their gallop and the strength of the currents of air werelike some narcotic that drowned and that dizzied perception. In theintense darkness neither could see, neither hear, the other; theinstinct of the beasts kept them together, but no word could be heardabove the roar of the storm, and no light broke the somber veil ofshadow through which they passed as fast as leopards course through thenight. The first faint streak of dawn grew gray in the east when Cecilfelt his charger stagger and sway beneath him, and halt, worn out andquivering in every sinew with fatigue. He threw himself off the animalin time to save himself from falling with it as it reeled and sank tothe ground.
"Massena cannot stir another yard," he said. "Do you think they followus still?"
There was no reply.
He strained his sight to pierce the darkness, but he could distinguishnothing; the gloom was still too deep. He spoke more loudly; still therewas no reply. Then he raised his voice in a shout; it rang through thesilence, and, when it ceased, the silence reigned again.
A deadly chill came on him. How had he missed his comrade? They must befar apart, he knew, since no response was given to his summons; or--thealternative rose before him with a terrible foreboding.
That intense quiet had a repose as of death in it, a ghastly lonelinessthat seemed filled with desolation. His horse was stretched before himon the sand, powerless to rise and drag itself a rood onward, and fastexpiring. From the plains around him not a sound came, either of friendor foe. The consciousness that he was alone, that he had lost foreverthe only friend left to him, struck on him with that conviction whichso often foreruns the assurance of calamity. Without a moment's pausehe plunged back in the direction he had come, leaving the charger onthe ground to pant its life out as it must, and sought to feel his wayalong, so as to seek as best he could the companion he had deserted. Hestill could not see a rood before him, but he went on slowly, with somevague hope that he should ere long reach the man whom he knew death orthe fatality of accident alone would keep from his side. He could notfeel or hear anything that gave him the slightest sign or clew to aidhis search; he only wandered farther from his horse, and risked fallingafresh into the hands of his pursuers; he shouted again with all hisstrength, but his own voice alone echoed over the plains, while hisheart stood still with the same frozen dread that a man feels when,wrecked on some barren shore, his cry for rescue rings back on his ownear over the waste of waters.
The flicker of the dawn was growing lighter in the sky, and he could seedimly now, as in some winter day's dark twilight, though all around himhung the leaden mist, with the wild winds driving furiously. It was withdifficulty also that he kept his feet against their force; but he wasblown onward by their current, though beaten from side to side, and hestill made his way forward. He had repassed the ground already traversedby some hundred yards or more, which seemed the length of many miles inthe hurricane that was driving over the earth and sky, when some outlinestill duskier than the dusky shadow caught his sight; it was the body ofa horse, standing on guar
d over the fallen body of a man.
Another moment and he was beside them.
"My God! Are you hurt?"
He could see nothing but an indistinct and shapeless mass, without formor color to mark it out from the brooding gloom and from the leadenearth. But the voice he knew so well answered him with the old love andfealty in it; eager with fear for him.
"When did you miss me, sir? I didn't mean you to know; I held on as longas I could; and when I couldn't no longer, I thought you was safe not tosee I'd knocked over, so dark as it was."
"Great Heavens! You are hurt, then?"
"Just finished, sir. Lord! It don't matter. Only you ride on, Mr. Cecil;ride on, I say. Don't mind me."
"What is it? When were you struck? O Heaven! I never dreamt----"
Cecil hung over him, striving in vain through the shadows to read thetruth from the face on which he felt by instinct the seal of death wasset.
"I never meant you should know, sir. I meant just to drop behind anddie on the quiet. You see, sir, it was just this way; they hit me as weforced through them. There's the lance-head in my loins now. I pressedit in hard, and kept the blood from flowing, and thought I should holdout so till the sun rose. But I couldn't do it so long; I got sick andfaint after a while, and I knew well enough it was death. So I droppeddown while I'd sense left to check the horse and get out of saddle insilence. I hoped you wouldn't miss me, in the darkness and the noise thewind was making; and you didn't hear me then, sir. I was glad."
His voice was checked in a quick, gasping breath; his only thought hadbeen to lie down and die in the solitude so that his master might besaved.
A great sob shook Cecil as he heard; no false hope came to him; he feltthat this man was lost to him forever, that this was the sole recompensewhich the cruelty of Africa would give to a fidelity passing thefidelity of woman; these throes of dissolution the only payment withwhich fate would ever requite a loyalty that had held no travail weary,no exile pain, and no danger worthy counting, so long as they wereencountered and endured in his own service.
"Don't take on about it, sir," whispered Rake, striving to raise hishead that he might strain his eyes better through the gloom to seehis master's face. "It was sure to come some time; and I ain't in nopain--to speak of. Do leave me, Mr. Cecil--leave me, for God's sake, andsave yourself!"
"Did you leave me?"
The answer was very low, and his voice shook as he uttered it; butthrough the roar of the hurricane Rake heard it.
"That was different, sir," he said simply. "Let me lie here, and go youon. It'll soon be over, and there's naught to be done."
"O God! is no help possible?"
"Don't take on, sir; it's no odds. I always was a scamp, and scamps diegame, you know. My life's been a rare spree, count it all and all; andit's a great, good thing, you see, sir, to go off quick like this. Imight have been laid in hospital. If you'd only take the beast and rideon, sir--"
"Hush! hush! Would you make me coward, or brute, or both?"
The words broke in an agony from him. The time had been when he hadbeen himself stretched in what he had thought was death, in just suchsilence, in just such solitude, upon the bare, baked earth, far frommen's aid, and near only to the hungry eyes of watching beasts of prey.Then he had been very calm, and waited with indifference for the end;now his eyes swept over the remorseless wastes, that were growingfaintly visible under the coming dawn, with all the impatience, theterror, of despair. Death had smitten down many beside him; buoyantyouth and dauntless manhood he had seen a thousand times swept under thegreat waves of war and lost forever, but it had an anguish for him herethat he would never have known had he felt his own life-blood well outover the sand. The whole existence of this man had been sacrificed forhim, and its only reward was a thrust of a lance in a midnight fray--agrave in an alien soil.
His grief fell dully on ears half deafened already to the sounds of theliving world. The exhaustion that follows on great loss of blood wasupon the soldier who for the last half hour had lain there in thedarkness and the stillness, quietly waiting death, and not once seekingeven to raise his voice for succor lest the cry should reach and shouldimperil his master.
The morning had broken now, but the storm had not lulled. The northernwinds were sweeping over the plains in tenfold violence, and the rainsburst and poured, with the fury of water-spouts on the crust of theparched, cracked earth. Around them there was nothing heard or seenexcept the leaden, angry mists, tossed to and fro under the hurricane,and the white light of the coming day breaking lividly throughthe clouds. The world held no place of more utter desolation, moreunspeakable loneliness; and in its misery Cecil, flung down uponthe sands beside him, could do nothing except--helpless to aid, andpowerless to save--watch the last breath grow feebler and feebler, untilit faded out from the only life that had been faithful to him.
By the fitful gleams of day he could see the blood slowly ebbing outfrom the great gap where the lance-head was still bedded with its woodenshaft snapped in two; he could see the drooped head that he had raisedupon his knee, with the yellow, northern curls that no desert suns haddarkened; and Rake's eyes, smiling so brightly and so bravely still,looked up from under their weary lids to his.
"I'd never let you take my hand before, sir; just take it once now--willyou?--while I can see you still."
Their hands met as he asked it, and held each other close and long; allthe loyal service of the one life, and all the speechless gratitude ofthe other, told better than by all words in that one farewell.
A light that was not from the stormy dusky morning shone over thesoldier's face.
"Time was, sir," he said, with a smile, "when I need to think as how,some day or another, when I should have done something great and grand,and you was back among your own again, and they here had given me theCross, I'd have asked you to have done that before all the Army, andjust to have said to 'em, if so you liked, 'He was a scamp, and hewasn't thought good for naught; but he kept true to me, and you see itmade him go straight, and I aren't ashamed to call him my friend.' Iused to think that, sir, though 'twas silly, perhaps. But it's best asit is--a deal best, no doubt. If you was only back safe in camp---"
"O God! cease! I am not worthy one thought of love like yours."
"Yes, you are, sir--leastways, you was to me. When you took pity on me,it was just a toss-up if I didn't go right to the gallows. Don't grievethat way, Mr. Cecil. If I could just have seen you home again in yourplace, I should have been glad--that's all. You'll go back one day, sir;when you do, tell the King I ain't never forgot him."
His voice grew faint as the last sentence stole from his lips; he layquite still, his head leaned back against his master; and the day came,with the north winds driving over the plains and the gray mists tossedby them to and fro like smoke.
There was a long silence, a pause in which the windstorm ceased, andthe clouds of the loosed sands sunk. Alone, with the wastes stretchingaround them, were the living and the dying man, with the horse standingmotionless beside them, and, above, the gloom of the sullen sky. No aidwas possible; they could but wait, in the stupefaction of despair, forthe end of all to come.
In that awful stillness, in that sudden lull in the madness of thehurricane, death had a horror which it never wore in the riot of thebattlefield, in the intoxication of the slaughter. There was no pity inearth or heaven; the hard, hot ground sucked down its fill of blood; theicy air enwrapped them like a shroud.
The faithfulness of love, the strength of gratitude, were of no avail;the one perished in agony, the other was powerless to save.
In that momentary hush, as the winds sank low, the heavy eyes, halfsightless now, sought with their old wistful, doglike loyalty the faceto which so soon they would be blind forever.
"Would you tell me once, sir--now? I never asked--I never would havedone--but may be I might know in this last minute. You never sinned thatsin you bear the charge on?"
"God is my witness, no."
The light, th
at was like sunlight, shone once more in the aching,wandering eyes.
"I knew, I knew! It was--"
Cecil bowed his head over him, lower and lower.
"Hush! He was but a child; and I--"
With a sudden and swift motion, as though new life were thrilling inhim, Rake raised himself erect, his arms stretched outward to the east,where the young day was breaking.
"I knew, I knew! I never doubted. You will go back to your own some day,and men shall learn the truth--thank God! thank God!"
Then, with that light still on his face, his head fell backward; andwith one quick, brief sigh his life fled out forever.