A brown something snaked out of the thicket at his back. Steel flashed in the sun. The Goumier toppled from the saddle, and a brown figure, bowing flat across the horse's withers, seemed to have replaced him almost in the moment of his fall. Spurred desperately by his new rider, the stallion burst away down the cork tree alleys.
A ragged volley rattled out. Splinters flew wide from a dozen trees, but horse and rider fled on. The Goumiers called fiercely on the name of a dozen saints of Islam to qualify their rage as they thrust their chargers out of the tangle in pursuit. Perinaud and their officer yelled strenuous commands.
Crestfallen and sullen, the troopers reined in, listening in silence to the commination addressed to them from the pulpit of the cedar.
"Is one lesson insufficient?" thundered Perinaud. "Do we practise the arts of war or are we conducting a ralli-papier? Like hares you were decoyed into this ambush, and, flinging your red-hot experience to the winds, you are prepared to be drawn, as likely as not, into another. Collect yourselves, morally as well as physically, if you please."
They reined in among the cork trees, and half a dozen, flinging their reins to comrades, pushed back on foot into the cover. A string of oaths and maledictions, twice repeated, told of what they found. They came back with the sullen tread of those bearing the heavy burdens of defeat and death. They laid the bodies of their two comrades at the foot of the cedar.
Rattier, leaning upon Aylmer's arm, swore vehemently. The blood dripped from a gash across his wrist, but he raised it to shake a fist in the direction taken by the fugitive.
"Another item in M. de Landon's ledger, name of all names!" he cried. "But we shall see, my friends, we shall see. The hand is not played out yet, believe me!"
"Perhaps not," agreed Aylmer, "but you, at any rate, have cut out of the deal, or have been cut out," he added significantly, pointing to the wounded arm.
The commandant drew himself away with a fierce jerk.
"I!" he cried. "Is a cut finger—a graze—to send me weeping to the ambulance? The scoundrel who deceived me I pursue to the world's end! He has scored once more. It is the last time—this!"