Corporal Jacques of the Foreign Legion

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

As a matter of fact, there was no struggle involved in the giving up of his plans. Cold plans for the future dictated by commonsense did not stand for a moment before the warm desire to keep the dog and flout Authority. Choc was his mate and he was not going to lose him.

Passing a shop where viands were sold, he bought two sausages and put them in his pocket, then he walked on, striking towards the European quarter.

The band was still playing in the Place Sadi Carnot and the faint sound of it came on the warm, perfumed wind.

To Jacques it seemed a month ago since he had left the Place, and it seemed extraordinary to hear the band at it still.

But he had little time to think of anything except his objective, and that was Oran, eighty miles away.

There is a railway between Sidi-bel-Abbès and Oran, that is to say, a trap for runaway légionnaires. Jacques was not such a fool as to use the railway, or even to walk along the embankments. Time was of no matter to him. The pursuit would be after him before he could reach Oran, even by rail; he had to trust entirely to his disguise and to luck. He recognized that Choc would be his main difficulty; he could not disguise Choc.

He had lit a cigarette and he passed along to the city gates without let or hindrance; a bourgeois taking an evening stroll with his dog excited no comment. At the gates it was the same, and, walking with a leisurely manner with his hands in his pockets, he found the road to Oran and struck along it. It lay before him white in the moonlight, and beyond the gardens of the town, on either side, stretched the sand wastes and rocks of a miserable plain that in daylight is yellow, parched, sun-bitten and murderous in its desolation. A few stunted palms broke the sky-line on the right, whilst on the left could be seen the lights of the railway and the furnace-lit smoke of a train just coming in from Oran. Jacques, noting these, looked up and down the road, to right, to left, not a soul was there to be seen. Then, calling to Choc, he struck into his stride.

Nearly five years of life in the Legion had rendered him almost impervious to weariness in marching. Five kilometres an hour is the regulation pace in full marching order and laden with rifle, ammunition, and equipment. Forty kilometres a day is the minimum on active service.

Five miles or so from Sidi-bel-Abbès a mounted police patrol passed Jacques without halting and with scarcely a glance at him, but they were going towards the town, and would know nothing of his escape.

Then, thinking things over in his mind, he reflected that the fact of his escape would be still unknown even at the barracks, where it was just turning-in time. Légionnaires sometimes outstepped their leave. The pursuit would not be on his heels till to-morrow morning, when, definitely declared absent, his description would be circulated, right to Oran.