The légionnaire was looking now to the east. He had determined to make for the great south road and strike along it back to Sidi-bel-Abbès. He was stiff and so exhausted from want of food that he could take little pleasure in his triumph and the prospect of the reward.
His one idea was rest and food and drink. As he tramped along, making due east, he found by good chance one of those tiny oases which occur here and there in this part of the Algerian desert. Here, by a well scarcely bigger than a slop basin, grew a prickly pear bush with ripe fruit on it. He drank from the well and cut some of the pears, taking care to avoid the prickles, then, having smoked a pipe, he started again by the light of the moon, which was now burning white and clear.
By the well he had heard the far-off crying and quarrelling of the birds from the ravine; he could hear it still as he walked, the sound growing ever fainter, till it ceased altogether before he struck the road just at the milestone that marked the forty-first kilometre from Sidi-bel-Abbès.
Here he was lucky enough to fall in with a cart going in the direction of the town, and obtained a lift to the rest-house, which lay five miles ahead and where for a couple of francs, which he had taken from the pocket of Mansoor, he obtained a bed for the night and some food.
At four o'clock the next afternoon, Jacques, in the highest of spirits, dusty and tired, yet stepping out vigorously, saw the roofs and mosque minarets of Sidi-bel-Abbès breaking up before him against the sky.
He was going to enter that town as a conqueror. He gloated over the idea. What a good joke! His name by this had without doubt been posted as the name of a deserter, the Legion would be speculating on his escape, they would see him returning, jeer over the fact—and then!
Besides, what a smack it would be at the Arab police. The police and the légionnaires are not friends. The police have the power to arrest an escaped légionnaire, and more than that, they receive a reward for his capture. You can fancy, then, how sharp they were on the look-out for prey of this sort, and the ill-feeling that results.
Jacques, trudging along, had quite forgotten the police, also the fact that he had no doubt been posted as a deserter by this. All of a sudden the sound of horse-hoofs on the road behind him made him turn his head. Two horsemen were approaching at full speed. They had been scouting amongst the broken ground on the eastern side of the road, and the dusty figure of the légionnaire tramping along had attracted their attention.
They overhauled him, recognized him at once as the man for whom a reward was out, and whilst one of them held him under the muzzle of a pistol, the other clapped a handcuff on his right wrist. The handcuff was attached to a couple of fathoms of thin steel chain, and next moment they were mounted and trotting for Sidi-bel-Abbès, Jacques running behind them in the dust of the road.
A nice triumphal entry for a corporal of the Legion.