I had no sooner accomplished my revenge than Ben Faka returned with the Kait of Mascara who was to escort us to the town, and we immediately started, accompanied by Fleury, Bourgeois, and little Benedicto. I was so overpowered by illness and fatigue that at length even the Kait took pity on me, and seeing that I was totally unable to walk, ordered Bourgeois and Fleury to lift me up on the mule behind Meurice.
The Kait conducted us to a small house next door to that in which he administers justice, and informed us that this was to be our dwelling. It consisted of two small rooms on the ground floor, and one above which was accessible only by an external staircase in the court. We took up our quarters in the upper room, as it seemed rather less damp than the others. It was quite bare of any sort of furniture, and received a little light and a good deal of cold wind through two loop-holes looking into the court. A plank about three feet wide, fixed against the wall, seemed intended to serve as a bed.
The Kait gave us a piece of an old camel hair tent and two rugs to cover us. The two soldiers had the tent, and Meurice and I the rugs.
The Sultan’s artillery was just passing through Mascara on its road to Tekedemta, and Jean Mardulin who belonged to it, came to visit us; he found us so ill and miserable that he proposed to stay and take care of us,—an offer which we accepted with joy and gratitude. He had scraped together a little money, which he generously placed at our disposal.
Meurice begged for an interview with Lanternier, but the Kait replied, that he had received strict orders from Abd-el-Kader not to allow him to communicate with the other prisoners. We, however, sent him a share of our rations every day by Mardulin.
So far were we from recovering our health that I had now entirely lost the use of my legs, and my headaches daily increased in violence. I begged the Kait twenty times to let me be bled; and at length he sent me the same barber who had operated on Meurice. The barber cupped me on the back of my head, which relieved me very much.
On the morning of the 12th the weather was detestable, the rain fell in torrents, and we suffered even more than usual from cold and damp. Meurice stretched out his hand towards me, as we lay side by side; I took it, and asked him how he felt. He replied that he was no better and felt very cold. I crept closer to him and offered him my haick; but he refused it, saying that he did not suffer more than the day before, but that he felt he had not long to live. “You,” said he, “are young and strong; you will return to Algiers, where you will see my wife—poor Clarisse! tell her how much I loved her, and that my last thought was of her.” He then covered his head with his haick, and for half an hour uttered not a single groan. At the end of that time I took hold of his arm and asked him how he felt: he made no answer, and I uncovered his face—he was dead.
I will not attempt to describe the feelings which crowded upon me as I lay with Meurice’s body by my side. Night was come, and I called the other prisoners, and bade them examine whether our poor companion was really dead. They went to fetch the Kait, who, now that it was too late, ordered a fire for us. Had this been granted us a few days earlier, Meurice might have been saved. Bourgeois and Mardulin undressed the body, rolled it in a rug, and laid it in the opposite corner of the room. They gave me his clothes. The vermin on the haick were so thick that it stood on end; but misery by degrees blunts all our sensibilities, both moral and physical. I rolled myself in his clothes, and at least was warmer.
The next afternoon Mardulin and Bourgeois, assisted by a couple of Jews, whom the Kait had appointed for the purpose, removed the body. They dug a hole just outside the wall of the town, on the road to El Borgj, sewed the body in a ragged piece of old haick, and buried it there.
The weather that night was terrific; the rain fell in torrents, and the wind blew a perfect gale; nevertheless, at sunrise an Arab came to inform the Kait that the corpse of the Christian was half out of the earth. In spite of the weather the Arabs had dug up the body, in order to steal the ragged piece of haick in which Mardulin had sewn it. The Kait affected to be very angry, and promised us that he would punish the thieves; but he made no attempt to discover them. Mardulin immediately went to the spot where he had buried Meurice, enlarged the hole, and replaced in it our unfortunate companion, whom these barbarians would not suffer to rest in peace, even after death.