Another thing that happened at Singapore Le Grand told me afterwards. In the early days of desertion a fellow—I think he was a Belgian—came to Le Grand and proposed that they should go away together.
"I am," said the Belgian, "a baker by trade; you speak English well and can teach me. Let us go together. You will interpret for me and I will work for both. We shall get enough of money in six months to carry us to the United States, and there we shall separate as soon as I know enough of the language to make myself understood."
"No," replied Le Grand; "I volunteered for the war, and I mean to see what fighting means in Tonquin. Moreover, if I went away now, no one I care about would ever have any respect for me again. It is bad enough with me as it is; I will do nothing to make it worse. The most people can allege against me now is folly; no one shall ever be able to charge me with cowardice as well."
Many times the baker renewed his entreaties to Le Grand to go away. Le Grand would not: he knew that hardships—perhaps sickness or wounds or death—lay before him, but better anything than self-reproach and loss of self-respect. Le Grand was right in his own way, because he was, and is (for he is still alive and in a good position), a gentleman; the Belgian baker was wise too in his generation and according to his own lights. He slipped off before the Frenchmen were ordered to supply all the guards. No one knows whether he fell a prey to the sharks or not, and, I may add, no one—not even Le Grand—cares.
The only other important thing that was told to me was that our fellows and the zephyrs became rather dangerous to one another. From the beginning we were not too amiable, but when the commandant put us—at least the other legionaries, for I was at the time in the prisoners' quarters on account of the Bulgarian's escape—to do most of the duties about the ship and put Frenchmen only on sentry, so that no more men of the Legion might desert, things rapidly came to a head. The commandant was lucky in two respects—the voyage to Saigon was short, and a French war vessel accompanied the transport. Had there been a twenty days' voyage without an escort the decks would have been washed red with blood, for, be it remembered, though the average French soldier can conduct himself with propriety in almost any place, the zephyr is a military convict pure and simple. No matter how bad we were, the zephyrs were worse. Well, let me put it in another way: the zephyrs aboard were the bad characters of the French army; we others, the legionaries, were the bad characters of all the other armies of Europe. They, the zephyrs, had no chance of regaining their characters in their own country, where their misdeeds were known; our fellows had started, each with a clean sheet, on joining an alien army. Thus our reputation as a body was bad, but no man had any very ugly charge against his name; the zephyrs were bad by man, by squad, by company, and by battalion. However, they are really amongst the finest fighting men in the world; some people, indeed, say that the zephyrs are second only to the legionaries.
There was no fight. The big war-vessel lay not so far away, and all knew what its shells could do. Strange that we met these very zephyrs afterwards, and our companies and theirs, certainly aided by others, did a hard afternoon's bayonet-work together. We were friends after that, so much so that I believe that one battalion, and that a battalion of zephyrs, is the only one of the French army to speak with liking—all, of course, speak with respect, unless at a distance—of the Foreign Legion. But everything to its own place.
At last we reached Pingeh—a fine harbour. I was set free, as well as all other prisoners save the Italian, and we disembarked, happy again at the change, to take our share in the war against the Black Flags, thinking more of the relief from the cramped quarters than of any dangers that lay before us.
CHAPTER XI