The puissant grandson of the mighty Muley Ismail was on a hillock where he could command the whole field, sitting on a carpet under a white umbrella, surrounded by his generals, who were fingering their beards and looking exceedingly downcast, which was not unnatural, seeing that at least half of them expected to be beheaded.
The Sultan’s face was an unpleasant sight. He bit at the stem of his hookah and his fingers twitched, but he was not ungracious to the renegade lancer who did obeisance before him.
“Stand up,” he growled. “Thou of all my askars hast no need to grovel. How comes it that you alone went through?”
“Sidi,” said Ortho, “the Sultan’s enemies are mine—and it was not difficult. I know the way.”
Mahomet’s delicate eyebrows arched. “Thou knowest the way—ha! Then thou art wiser than these . . . these”—he waved his beautiful hand towards the generals—“these sorry camel cows who deem themselves warriors. Tell these ass-mares thy secret. Speak up and fear not.”
Ortho spoke out. He said nothing about his horse having bolted with him, that so far from being heroic he was numb with fright. He spoke with the voice of Fleischmann, deceased, expounded the Prussian’s theory of discipline and tactics as applied to shock cavalry, and, having heard them _ad nauseam_, missed never a point. All the time the Sultan sucked at his great hookah and never took his ardent, glowering eyes from his face, and all the time in the background the artillery thumped and the muskets crackled.
He left the royal presence a Kaid Mia, commanding a squadron, a bag of one hundred ducats in his hand, and a month later the cavalry swept over the astonished Bou Khari as a flood sweeps a mud bank, steeled by the knowledge that a regiment of Imperial infantry and three guns were in their rear with orders to mow them down did they waver. They thundered through to victory, and the Kaid Saïd el Ingliz (which was another name for Ortho Penhale) rode, perforce, in the van—wishing to God he had not spoken—and took a pike thrust in the leg and a musket ball in his ribs and was laid out of harm’s way for months.
But that was past history, and now he was watching his horses come in. They were not looking any too well, he thought, tucked-up, hide-bound, scraggy—been campaigning overlong, traveling hard, feeding anyhow, standing out in all weathers. He was thoroughly glad this tax-collecting tour was at a close and he could get them back into garrison. His men drove them up to their heel-pegs, made them fast for the night, tossed bundles of grass before them and sought the camp fires that twinkled cheerily in the twilight. A couple of stallions squealed, there was the thud of a shoe meeting cannon-bone and another squeal, followed by the curses of the horse-guard. A man by the fires twanged an oud and sang an improvised ditty on a palm-tree in his garden at Tafilet: