All is still and desolate; the sun mounts tranquilly into an azure sky.
In this African landscape, which would have fitted equally well into some solitary tract of ancient Gaul, horsemen come into view. They sit their horses proudly, handsome fellows all of them, in their red jackets, blue pantaloons, large white hats slouched over their bronzed faces. There are twelve of them, twelve spahis sent out as scouts in charge of an adjutant, and Jean is one of them.
The air holds no presage of death, no foreboding of ill-omen, nothing but the calmness and purity of the heavens. In the marshes the tall grasses, still wet with the dews of night, are sparkling in the sun; dragon flies are hovering on their long, black-flecked wings; waterlilies are opening their large white calyces.
The heat is already oppressive; the horses stretch their necks to drink, their nostrils wide, sniffing the stagnant water. The spahis halt for a moment to take counsel; they dismount in order to moisten their hats and bathe their foreheads.
Suddenly in the distance dull sounds are heard, like the noise of enormous drums all beaten simultaneously.
“It is the big tom-toms,” said Sergeant Muller, who had some experience of negro warfare.
Instinctively all the men who had dismounted made for their horses.
But a black head had just raised itself above the herbage. An old Marabout had made with his skinny arm a grotesque signal, like a magic order addressed to the reeds of the marsh. A hail of lead showered down upon the spahis.
The shots, steadily and carefully aimed from the shelter of the ambuscade, had all told. Five or six horses had dropped. The remainder, startled and maddened, reared and threw their wounded riders. Jean, also, had sunk to the ground with a bullet through his loins. At the same time, thirty sinister faces emerged from the grass; thirty black demons, covered with mud, bounded out, gnashing their white teeth like enraged monkeys.
O heroic combat, such as Homer might have sung, but which will remain unrecorded, unknown to fame, like so many of these far-away African frays. The poor spahis, in their fight to the death, performed prodigies of strength and valour. Fighting had on them the infuriating effect, which it produces on all such as are brave by nature. They sold their lives dearly, these men, all of whom were young, vigorous, and inured to war. In a few years they will be forgotten, even at St Louis. Who will ever mention their names, the names of those who fell in the land of Diambour, on the plains of Dialakar?