"We're all used to how it feels, now we'll see how it looks at a distance," piped one of the soldiers.
Not until he had shouted to them did they notice a division staff-officer who had come up from the road. He had a piece of astounding news to impart before he mentioned official business.
"What do you think of this?" he cried. "Nothing could stop him! Lanstron—yes, Lanstron has gone into that charge with the African Braves!"
In these days, when units of a vast army in the same uniform, drilled in the same way, had become interchangeable parts of a machine, the African Braves still kept regimental fame. They had guarded the stretches of hot sand in one of the desert African colonies of the Browns; and they had served in the jungle in the region of Bodlapoo, which, by the way, was nominally the cause of the war. They had fought Mohammedan fanatics and black savages. It did not matter much to them when they died; now as well as ever. If they had mothers or sisters they were the secrets of each man's heart. The scapegrace youth, the stranded man of thirty who would forget his past, the born adventurer, the renegade come a cropper, the gentleman who had gambled, the remittance man whose remittance had stopped, the peasant's son who had run away from home, criminals and dreamers, some minor poets, some fairly good actors, scholarly fellows who chanted the "Odyssey," and both oath-ripping and taciturn, quiet-mannered fellows who could neither read nor write found a home in the African Braves' muster-roll. Their spirit of corps had a dervish fatalism. They had begged to have a share in the war and Partow had consented. In the night after their long journey, while Westerling's ram was getting its death-blow, they had detrained and started for the front. But the Grays were going as fast as the Braves, and they had been unable to get into action.
"Wait for us! We want to be in it!" cried their impatience. "We'll show you how they fight in Africa! Way for us!"
"Give them a chance!" said Lanstron.
This order a general of corps repeated to a general of division, who repeated it to a general of brigade.
"Give them a chance! Give them a chance!"
Reserves along the route of their advance knew them at a glance by their uniform, their Indian tan, and their jaunty swagger and gave a cheer as they passed. They touched the chord of romance in the hearts of officers, who regarded them as an archaic survival which sentiment permitted in an isolated instance in Africa, where it excellently served. And officers looked at one another and shook their heads knowingly, out of the drear, hard experience in spade approaches, when they thought of that brilliant uniform as a target and of frontier tactics against massed infantry and gun-fire.
"Once will be enough," said the cynical. "There won't be many left to tell the tale!"