"Down went the fellow on his knees and yelled for mercy, confessing that he _was_ the man, sure enough. As for the rest, they looked as frightened as if all the gods in the caverns of Elephanta had come flying down among them at once; and from that day forth they salaamed to the very ground at the mere sight of the colonel half a mile off.
"'How on earth did you manage that, colonel?' asked the senior major, a great fat fellow, as stupid as a carp.[7]
"'Nothing simpler, my dear fellow,' answered De Malet, laughing. 'The strips were all exactly the same length, and the thief, fearing to get the longest piece, betrayed himself by _biting off the end_.'
"This, as you may think, added a good deal to the colonel's reputation; and when we had that affair with the Bedouins at Laghouat we soon saw that he could fight as well as manoeuvre. In the thick of the skirmish one of the rogues, seeing De Malet left alone, flew at him with drawn yataghan, but the colonel just dropped on his horse's neck and let the blow pass over him, and then gave point and ran the fellow right through the body, as neatly as any fencing-master could have done it. You may be sure we thought none the less of him after that; but all this was nothing to what was coming.
"Well, De Malet had been with us about a year when the railway was begun from Algiers to Blidah, and the directing engineer happened to be one of my greatest friends, Eugène Latour, as good a fellow as I ever met. It was quite a fête with us whenever he dined at mess, for his jokes and good stories kept every one brisk; and then to hear him sing! _ma foi_, it was wonderful! One minute some rattling refrain that seemed to set the very chairs dancing, and then suddenly a low, sad air that fairly brought the tears into your eyes. They were in mine, I know, every time I heard him sing those last two verses of 'The Conscript's Farewell:'
I thought to gain rich spoils--I've gained Of bullets half a score: I thought to come back corporal-- I shall come back no more.
Feed my poor dog, I pray thee, Rose, And with him gentle be: He'll miss his master for a while-- Adieu! remember me![8]
"Well, as I was saying, Eugène had been put over the work, and I don't know where they could have found a better man for it. Whether it poured with rain or came on hot enough to cook a cutlet without fire, it was all one to him: there he was at his post, looking after everything, with his eyes in ten places at once. You may think that under such a chief the laborers had no chance of idling; and everything was getting on splendidly when one morning, as he was standing on the parapet of a bridge, his foot slipped and down he went, I don't know how far. The fall would have killed him outright if by good luck there hadn't happened to be an Arab underneath (the only time that an Arab ever _was_ of any use, I should say), and Eugène, alighting upon _him_, broke his own fall and the Bedouin's neck to boot.