Jacques, seeing this, flung himself flat on the cave floor and waited for the first shot.
But Mansoor did not fire. He seemed content to lie recovering from his exhaustion and holding his enemy at bay.
Jacques had retreated as far as possible into the darkness of the cave, the opening was some nine feet or so from his face, and as he lay on his stomach, his chin resting on his arm, the fact that he was cornered and at the mercy of the other appeared before him in all its bleak simplicity.
Mansoor, when he had rested sufficiently and gauged the possibilities of the situation, would come straight to the cave mouth and then all would be over with Jacques.
But the man with the pistol showed no signs of such an intention yet, he seemed content to wait and watch, keeping a strict blockade till his energy and resolution found themselves again.
Jacques wondered what it would be like when he was dead and lying there always in the cave. Mansoor would not bother to bury him. He thought of what his companions in the Legion would say and think. They would fancy that he had deserted and had succeeded in making his escape. Then appeared before him the blue sea at Oran and Oran itself, with the barracks away up on the heights just as he had seen it on the first day of his arrival in Algeria, more than seven years ago. Then the sea, from a thought, became a vision and shimmered up to him and over him. Mansoor vanished, the cave, the sunlight at its door and the fact that he was held for Death.
Jacques had fallen asleep.
Had you fired a cannon in the ravine he would not have heard it. It was the sleep that follows on high excitement or profound exhaustion.
He was awakened by the bugles of the Legion sounding the réveillé, so it seemed to him for a moment, then the bugles of the Legion became the crying of birds.
Birds were flocking about the ravine, great birds whose shadows swept the ground in front of the cave. With the return of consciousness to Jacques came the return of full mental energy. He remembered everything, and recognized to his astonishment that it was evening, towards sundown, and that Mansoor was still in exactly the same position, his face half sheltered by his arm, taking aim.