A Modern Legionary

by John Patrick Le Poer

We struggled on together for about half-an-hour. Then Mac said that he could go no farther, and Giulia and I lifted him out of the saddle and placed him tenderly on the ground. I asked him if he were in much pain; he said that he felt very little, but that his lower limbs were becoming numbed.

"The end cannot be far off," he went on, "and, when I am gone, take my rifle and cartridges, and put as great a distance as possible between yourselves and the Berbers."

"Do not think of us," I replied, "think of yourself; you have but a short time to make your peace with God."

He said nothing to me, but I saw his lips moving in quiet prayer. After some time he said:

"Good-bye, my good comrades; it is nearly over."

Giulia was weeping, and there were tears also in my eyes. I pressed his hand, and Giulia, bending down, kissed him on the forehead. A moment after he ejaculated: "O Lord, have mercy." And at the words his gallant spirit passed away.

We were now lonely indeed. In one morning Giulia and I had lost our two companions—the two men who did not hesitate to risk their lives, as they used to put it, for the comrade in trouble and the woman in distress. The outlook that had been so favourable the day before was now dark and gloomy. Two-thirds of our fighting strength had gone; but that was not the worst: we missed even more the ruined Englishman's stern manner and stout heart, the laughing Irishman's constant wit on the march and steady earnestness in the fight. Both were good friends, of totally different natures, yet equally sympathetic; each made up for what the other lacked. One never minded the gloom that too often sat upon the corporal's brow in listening to the ceaseless jesting and careless laughter of the simple soldier; and when the fight came one felt that Mac would care, and care well, for his share of it, but that the Englishman, while working as a fighting man, was planning as our chief.

People will say: Oh, but you were once sergeant-major, and why did not you command rather than the corporal? Well, for two good reasons. First, if I had once been sergeant-major, he had once been captain. Second, somebody had to be close to Giulia in every fight, for reasons that may be guessed—and who had a better right to be at her side than I?

There was no time for us to bury poor Mac, even had I pick and shovel for the work. Anyway, no soldier thinks much about where his body will lie after death: no grave at all is as good as a place in a trench where hundreds of others are pressing and crowding around. When you have once seen a battlefield grave, where three or four hundred lie like sardines in a tin, you will find little, if indeed any, poetry in the words "God's acre." Not that the burial party should be blamed, be it well understood. Oh no! they must think of the living, especially the wounded, and in a hot climate quick burial is the only thing to prevent a pestilence of the sun.

Giulia and I managed to go about twelve kilometres farther on our road that day. I did not want to go so far, but she insisted. She knew, as I did, that she was not in a fit state to travel such a distance; but some fear of the Berbers who had killed our comrades had taken possession of her heart, and she would not, nay, she could not, rest until we were quite safe from further pursuit. But she could not hold out very long; at last even to sit her horse when going at a mere walking pace was too much for her strength, and she was compelled to yield to my entreaties and to dismount and rest. Poor girl! she was very nervous and excited. Even the struggles that ended in complete success had tried her too much, and now she felt with tenfold anxiety and apprehension the death of the two loyal, brave, and generous comrades who had been so suddenly lost. And a woman always feels the loss of a friend more than a man does, because a man can easily get another, but a women must be always suspicious of those who tender her friendship, lest there be poison in the gift.