The errand on which he went was one, as he was well aware, from which it were a thousand chances to one that he ever issued alive.
It was to reach a distant branch of the Army of Occupation with dispatches for the chief in command there, and to do this he had to pass through a fiercely hostile region, occupied by Arabs with whom no sort of peace had ever been made, the most savage as well as the most predatory of the wandering tribes. His knowledge of their tongue, and his friendship with some men of their nation, would avail him nothing here; for their fury against the Franks was intense, and it was said that all prisoners who had fallen into their hands had been put to death with merciless barbarities. This might be true or not true; wild tales were common among Algerian campaigners; whichever it were, he thought little of it as he rode out on to the lonely plains. Every kind of hazardous adventure and every variety of peril had been familiar with him in the African life; and now there were thoughts and memories on him which deadened every recollection of merely physical risk.
“We must ride as hard and as fast as we can, and as silently,” were the only words he exchanged with Rake, as he loosened his gray to a gallop.
“All right, sir,” answered the trooper, whose warm blood was dancing, and whose blue eyes were alive like fire with delight. That he had been absent on a far-away foraging raid on the day of Zaraila had been nothing short of agony to Rake, and the choice made of him for this duty was to him a gift of paradise. He loved fighting for fighting's sake; and to be beside Cecil was the greatest happiness life held for him.
They had two hundred miles to traverse, and had received only the command he had passed to Rake, to ride “hard, fast, and silently.” To the hero of Zaraila the general had felt too much soldierly sympathy to add the superfluous injunction to do his uttermost to carry safely and successfully to their destination the papers that were placed in his care. He knew well that the errand would be done, or the Chasseur would be dead.
It was just nightfall; the after-glow had faded only a few moments before. Giving their horses, which they were to change once, ten hours for the distance, and two for bait and for rest, he reckoned that they would reach the camp before the noon of the coming day, as the beasts, fresh and fast in the camp, flew like greyhounds beneath them.
Another night ride that they had ridden together came to the minds of both; but they spoke not a word as they swept on, their sabers shaken loose in their sheaths, their lances well gripped, and the pistols with which they had been supplied sprung in their belts, ready for instant action if a call should come for it. Every rood of the way was as full of unseen danger as if laid over mines. They might pass in safety; they might any moment be cut down by ten score against two. From every hanging scarp of rugged rock a storm of musket-balls might pour; from every screen of wild-fig foliage a shower of lances might whistle through the air; from every darkling grove of fir trees an Arab band might spring and swoop on them; but the knowledge scarcely recurred to the one save to make him shake his sword more loose for quick disengagement, and only made the sunny blue eyes of the other sparkle with a vivid and longing zest.
The night grew very chill as it wore on; the north wind rose, rushing against them with a force and icy touch that seemed to freeze their bones to the marrow after the heat of the day and the sun that had scorched them so long. There was no regular road; they went across the country, their way sometimes leading over level land, over which they swept like lightning, great plains succeeding one another with wearisome monotony; sometimes on the contrary, lying through ravines, and defiles, and gloomy woods, and broken, hilly spaces, where rent, bare rocks were thrown on one another in gigantic confusion, and the fantastic shapes of the wild fig and the dwarf palm gathered a hideous grotesqueness in the darkness. For there was no moon, and the stars were often hidden by the storm-rack of leaden clouds that drifted over the sky; and the only sound they heard was the cry of the jackal, or the shriek of the night bird, and now and then the sound of shallow water-courses, where the parched beds of hidden brooks had been filled by the autumnal rain.
The first five-and-twenty miles passed without interruption, and the horses lay well and warmly to their work. They halted to rest and bait the beasts in a rocky hollow, sheltered from the blasts of the bise, and green with short, sweet grass, sprung up afresh after the summer drought.
“Do you ever think of him, sir?” said Rake softly, with a lingering love in his voice, as he stroked the grays and tethered them.