A Soldier of the Legion

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

Stanton, at his best, was an ideal leader of men. Many a forlorn hope he had led and brought to success through sheer self-confidence and belief in his star. But whether the failure of his mad marriage had disturbed his faith in his own persistent luck, or whether Ahmara's influence made for degeneration, in any case, a blight seemed to have fallen on the once great man's mentality. It had been a boast of his that, though he drank freely when "resting on his laurels" in Europe, he was strong enough to "swear off" at any moment. He had accustomed himself to taking tea and water only in blazing African heat; and since the serious illness that followed his sunstroke he had been forbidden to touch alcohol anywhere, in any circumstances. For a time he had been frightened into obedience to doctors' orders; but gradually he had drifted back into old habits; and after his quarrel with Ahmara at Touggourt he found oblivion in much Scotch whisky, his favourite drink.

Perhaps if all had gone well with Stanton, if Ahmara had not come again into his life and lost him Sanda's childlike worship, he might have pulled himself together after the starting of the caravan. But, as it was, there were black thoughts to be chased away, and the simplest receipt for replacing them with bright ones was to fill his head with fumes of whisky.

When Sanda, riding behind her curtains, or shrinking in her tent, heard Stanton cursing the negro porters, and roaring profane abuse at the camels and camel-drivers, she did not know that he was drunk; but the men knew, and, being sober by religion, ceased to respect him. Among themselves, they began to question the wisdom of his orders, and suspect him of treachery toward themselves. Losing faith in the leader, they lost faith in the wonderful hidden oasis he sought, the oasis peopled by rich Egyptians who had vanished into the desert to escape persecution after the Sixth Dynasty. Arabs and negroes said it must be true after all that the "Chief" was mad, and they had been mad to trust themselves to him, or to believe in the mysterious city lost beyond unexplored mountains and shifting dunes which were but shrouds for dead men. He was either deliberately leading them all to death, for the insane pleasure of it, or else he had some plan for making his own fortune by selling his escort as slaves. Men began to desert whenever they came to an attractive stopping-place where there was food and water. They feigned illness, or fled in the night with their camels into the vastness of the desert, their faces turned once more to the west. For soon, if they stayed, they would pass beyond the zone of known oases, into the terrible land of mystery, charted by no man, a land where it was said the sun had dried up all the springs of water. So the caravan dwindled as slowly, painfully it moved toward the east; and even while he hated him, Max was sometimes moved to pity for the harassed leader. Stanton grew haggard as the desert closed in round him and his disaffected followers; but there were days when, instead of sympathizing reluctantly, Max cursed the explorer for a brute, and cursed himself for saving the brute's life. There were days when Stanton shot or whipped a Soudanese for an impudent word, or ordered a forced march because Sanda had sent to beg respite for some wretch struck down with fever whom she was nursing.

As the men lost faith in Stanton and his vision of the Lost Oasis they attached themselves fanatically to the wife of their Chief, the "Little White Moon," who seldom spoke to her husband save to defend one of their number from his fits of anger, and who, with her golden hair and her skin of snow that the fierce sun could not darken, was like the shining angel who walks at the right hand of a good Mohammedan. They saw no wrong in Ahmara's presence; but she was haughty and high-tempered, and took part against them with Stanton. The whisper ran that the dancing-woman had brought bad luck to the expedition for so long as she was with the caravan; whereas, if fortune were to come, it would come through the white girl who nursed the sick and had a smile or a kind word for the humblest porter. This whisper reached Ahmara's ears through the wives of the camel-drivers, and at first she was anxious to keep it from Stanton lest it should prejudice him and put into his head the idea of leaving her at one of the far apart oasis towns where the caravan took supplies. But the more she turned over the thought in her unenlightened mind, the more impossible it seemed to her that Stanton would give her up. Besides, he was very brave, even braver than the great chiefs of her own race, for they feared unseen things and omens, whereas he laughed at their superstition. She used every art of the professional charmer upon Stanton for the next few days, while she asked herself whether to tell what she had learnt, or not to tell, were wiser.

When she was convinced that she had made herself more indispensable than ever, Ahmara put the story into the form that seemed to her very good. She said that nothing which passed in the caravan could escape her, because the life of the leader was her life. She wished to be for him like a lighted candle set at the door of his tent, the flame her spirit, which felt each breath of evil threatening his safety. The men who hated the Chief for his power or because he had punished them hated her also because she was true to him as the blood that beat in his heart.

"Those who are cowards and find the greatness of thy adventures too great for them, now they have tasted hardship, mutter in secret against thee," Ahmara said. "There are some who mean to band together and refuse to follow thee past the last-known oasis which is marked on thy maps. They say, that from what they have heard, thou art indeed mad to think that a caravan can live in unknown deserts where there is no water. Once they believed in thee so firmly if thou hadst told them thou couldst cause water to spout from dry sand they would have taken thy word for truth. But now the white girl, who is too proud to be thy wife because thy faithful one followed thee into the desert, has bewitched the men. They think she is a marabouta, a saint endowed with magic power, and that her spirit is stronger than thine. They will offer themselves to her man, when we come to the place where the known way ends, if he will promise to lead them straight to Egypt, without wandering across the open desert to seek thy Lost Oasis."

"Her man!" echoed Stanton, the blood suffusing his already bloodshot eyes as in an instant it reddens those of an angry St. Bernard. "What do you mean?"

"Thou knowest without my telling, my Chief. The man whose idol she is. There is but one man—the man who watches over her by day and night, and makes himself her slave."

"You're a fool, Ahmara," Stanton said roughly. "Don't you suppose I've got sense enough to see why you want to put such ideas into my head? You're jealous of my wife. St. George and she are nothing to each other. As for the men, like as not they growl in your hearing because they hope you'll repeat their nonsense to me and give me a fright. That's all there is in it."

"I know thou art a lion and fearest nothing," Ahmara meekly answered. But next day she saw that Stanton watched Max.