"Sergeant Chatelain is afraid of no one, Lieutenant. He has been at Abomey, against the Amazons, in a country where a black arm started out from every bush to seize your leg, while another cut it off for you with one blow of a cutlass."
"Then what they say, what you yourself—"
"That is talk."
"Talk which is repeated in France, Chatelain, everywhere."
He bent his head still lower without replying.
"Ass," I burst out, "will you speak?"
"Lieutenant, Lieutenant," he fairly pled, "I swear that what I know, or nothing—"
"What you know you are going to tell me, and right away. If not, I give you my word of honor that, for a month, I shall not speak to you except on official business."
Hassi-Inifel: thirty native Arabs and four Europeans—myself, the Sergeant, a Corporal, and Gourrut. The threat was terrible. It had its effect.
"All right, then, Lieutenant," he said with a great sigh. "But afterwards you must not blame me for having told you things about a superior which should not be told and come only from the talk I overheard at mess."