"Strike me peculiar," remarked the Bucking Bronco. "It's another big gang o' tenderfeet."
"A draft of rookies! Come on--they'll all be for our Company in place of those poumpists,5 and there may be something Anglo-Saxon among them," said Legionary John Bull, and the two men hastily flung their capotes over their sketchy attire and hurried from the room, buttoning them as they went.
Like Charity, the Legionary's overcoat covers a multitude of sins--chiefly of omission--and is a most useful garment. It protects him from the cold dawn wind, and keeps him warm by night; it protects him from the cruel African sun, and keeps him cool by day, or at least, if not cool, in the frying-pan degree of heat, which is better than that of the fire. He marches in it without a tunic, and relies upon it to conceal the fact when he has failed to "decorate" himself with underclothing. Its skirts, buttoned back, hamper not his legs, and its capacious pockets have many uses. Its one drawback is that, being double-breasted, it buttons up on either side, a fact which has brought the grey hairs of many an honest Legionary in sorrow to the cellules, and given many a brutal and vindictive Sergeant the chance of that cruelty in which his little tyrant soul so revels. For, incredible as it may seem to the lay mind, the ingenious devil whose military mind concocts the ordres du jour, changes, by solemn decree, and almost daily, the side upon which the overcoat is to be buttoned up.
Clattering down the long flights of stone stairs, and converging across the barrack-square, the Legionaries came running from all directions, to gaze upon, to chaff, to delude, to sponge upon, and to rob and swindle the "Blues"--the recruits of the Légion Étrangère, the embryo Légionnaires d'Afrique.
In the incredibly maddeningly dull life of the Legion in peace time, the slightest diversion is a god-send and even the arrival of a batch of recruits a most welcome event. To all, it is a distraction; to some, the hope of the arrival of a fellow-countryman (especially to the few English, Americans, Danes, Greeks, Russians, Norwegians, Swedes, and Poles whom cruel Fate has sent to La Légion). To some, a chance of passing on a part of the brutality and tyranny which they themselves suffer; to some, a chance of getting civilian clothes in which to desert; to others, an opportunity of selling knowledge of the ropes, for litres of canteen wine; to many, a hope of working a successful trick on a bewildered recruit--the time-honoured villainy of stealing his new uniform and pretending to buy him another sub rosa from the dishonest quartermaster, whereupon the recruit buys back his own original uniform at the cost of his little all (for invariably the alleged substitute-uniform costs just that sum of money which the poor wretch has brought with him and augmented by the compulsory sale of his civilian kit to the clothes-dealing harpies and thieves who infest the barrack-gates on the arrival of each draft).
As the tiny portal beside the huge barrack-gate was closed and fastened by the Corporal in charge of the squad of "blues" (as the French army calls its recruits6 ), the single file of derelicts halted at the order of the Sergeant of the Guard, who, more in sorrow than in anger, weighed them and found them wanting.
"Sweepings," he summed them up in passing judgment. "Foundlings. Droppings. Crumbs. Tripe. Accidents. Abortions. Cripples. Left by the tide. Blown in by the wind. Born pékins.7 Only one man among them, and he a pig of a Prussian--or perhaps an Englishman. Let us hope he's an Englishman...."
In speaking thus, the worthy Sergeant was behaving with impropriety and contrary to the law and tradition of the Legion. What nouns and adjectives a non-commissioned officer may use wherewith to stigmatise a Legionary, depend wholly and solely upon his taste, fluency and vocabulary. But it is not etiquette to reproach a man with his nationality, however much a matter for reproach that nationality may be.
"Are you an Englishman, most miserable bleu?" he suddenly asked of a tall, slim, fair youth, dressed in tweed Norfolk-jacket, and grey flannel trousers, and bearing in every line of feature and form, and in the cut and set of his expensive clothing, the stamp of the man of breeding, birth and position.
"By the especial mercy and grace of God, I am an Englishman, Sergeant, thank you," he replied coolly in good, if slow and careful French.
The Sergeant smiled grimly behind his big moustache. Himself a cashiered Russian officer, and once a gentleman, he could appreciate a gentleman and approve him in the strict privacy of his soul.
"Slava Bogu!" he roared. "Vile bleu! And now by the especial mercy and grace of the Devil you are a Légionnaire--or will be, if you survive the making...." and added sotto voce, "Are you a degraded dog of a broken officer? If so, you can claim to be appointed to the élèves caporaux as a non-commissioned officer on probation, if you have a photo of yourself in officer's uniform. Thus you will escape all recruit-drill and live in hope to become, some day, Sergeant, even as I," and the (for a Sergeant of the Legion) decent-hearted fellow smote his vast chest.
"I thank you, Sergeant," was the drawled reply. "You really dazzle me--but I am not a degraded dog of a broken officer."
"Gospodi pomilui!" roared the incensed Sergeant. "Ne me donnez de la gabatine, pratique!" and, for a second, seemed likely to strike the cool and insolent recruit who dared to bandy words with a Sergeant of the Legion. His eyes bulged, his moustache bristled, and his scarlet face turned purple as he literally showed his teeth.
"Go easy, old chap," spoke a quiet voice, in English, close beside the Englishman. "That fellow can do you to death if you offend him," and the recruit, turning, beheld a grey-moustached, white-haired elderly man, bronzed, lined, and worn-looking--a typical French army vielle moustache--an "old sweat" from whose lips the accents of a refined English gentleman came with the utmost incongruity.
The youth's face brightened with interest. Obviously this old dear was a public-school, or 'Varsity man, or, very probably, an ex-British officer.
"Good egg," quoth he, extending a hand behind him for a surreptitious shake. "See you anon, what?"
"Yes, you'll all come to the Seventh Company. We are below strength," said Legionary John Bull, in whose weary eyes had shone a new light of interest since they fell upon this compatriot of his own caste and kidney.
A remarkably cool and nonchalant recruit--and surely unique in the history of the Legion's "blues" in showing absolutely no sign of privation, fear, stress, criminality, poverty, depression, anxiety, or bewilderment!
"Now, what'n hell is he doin' in thet bum outfit?" queried the Bucking Bronco of his friend John Bull, who kept as near as possible to the Englishman whom he had warned against ill-timed causticity of humour.
"He's some b'y, thet b'y, but he'd better quit kickin'. He's a way-up white man I opine. What's 'e a'doin' in this joint? He's a gay-cat and a looker. He's a fierce stiff sport. He has sand, some--sure. Yep," and Mr. Hiram Cyrus Milton checked himself only just in time from defiling the immaculate and sacred parade-ground, by "signifying in the usual manner" that he was mentally perturbed, and himself in these circumstances of expectoration-difficulty by observing that the boy was undoubtedly "some" boy, and worthy to have been an American citizen had he been born under a luckier star--or stripe.
"I can't place him, Buck," replied the puzzled John Bull, his quiet voice rendered almost inaudible by the shouts, howls, yells and cries of the seething mob of Legionaries who swarmed round the line of recruits, assailing their bewildered ears in all the tongues of Europe, and some of those of Asia and Africa.
"He doesn't look hungry, and he doesn't look hunted. I suppose he is one of the few who don't come here to escape either starvation, creditors, or the Law. And he doesn't look desperate like the average turned-down lover, ruined gambler, deserted husband, or busted bankrupt.... Wonder if he's come here in search of 'Romance'?"
"Wal, ef he's come hyar for his health an' amoosement he'd go to Hell to cool himself, or ter the den of a grizzly b'ar fer gentle stimoolation and recreation. Gee whiz! Didn't he fair git ole Bluebottle's goat? He sure did git nixt him."
"Bit