Part 24 (2/2)

Rattier interrupted.

”It is well understood that I deal with this M. de Landon if he is there, I alone? Your man, now, if he suddenly confronts him--” He broke off with a meaning gesture. ”I do not wish my interview with him antic.i.p.ated.”

In spite of himself, a smile broke the imperturbability of the sergeant's face. With a suggestive jerk of the hand he dismissed Daoud, who cantered on into and was lost in the jungle of mallow. Perinaud turned sympathetic and now perfectly grave features towards the commandant.

”Monsieur may be easy in his mind,” he said quietly. ”The man we seek, if I have understood his talents rightly, is hardly likely to be subdued without the display of some force and intelligence.”

He turned to give the order to dismount. Rattier watched him with an air of baffled exasperation. There had been a gentle emphasis on the last two words which could scarcely be misunderstood, and as the sailor ruminated over them, his taciturnity showed renewed signs of failing before the rising tide of his wrath. A sudden diversion averted an outbreak.

For a gunshot rang out among the woodland silences into which Daoud had disappeared. It was instantly replied to by the shriller snap of a revolver. And this was followed by a fusillade of five more reports as the weapon was emptied. The Moor's voice was suddenly uplifted.

”To me, Sidi!” he was shouting vehemently. ”To me!”

The native officer thundered an order. In a twinkling the men were back in their saddles and, in irregular formation, threading the aisles of thicket at a canter. Aylmer and Rattier followed the sergeant, riding abreast.

There came another report. A bullet whistled between the pair, and from Rattier came a little growl of satisfaction. If there was to be a fight, he seemed to imply, his promised interview with Landon would a.s.sume proportions which were entirely pleasing to him. Perinaud increased his horse's pace, flinging alert glances each side of him rather than in front.

A couple of hundred yards at speed and the forest maze opened into a wide clearing, deeply overgrown with mallow and broom. Through the middle of this, his horse laboring against the growth which was full five feet high, rode Daoud, revolver in hand. A short distance ahead of him the green thicket was grooved in half a dozen places, as unseen bodies crashed through. Daoud's aim was poised and then withdrawn a score of times in as many seconds. The flicker of a white _haik_ would show for a brief instant here and there, and then be swallowed by the jungle.

Daoud would answer these appearances with a bullet, one which apparently invariably missed its mark, for the echo of a mocking triumph greeted them. He turned irritably in the direction of his companions.

He waved his hand significantly, motioning them to deploy right and left, to surround the thicket. Perinaud answered with a comprehending nod.

But Rattier had neither the time nor the inclination for a display of tactics. As Daoud turned his horse to emerge from the mallow, the commandant spurred his charger into the thick of it. And he shouted, he whirled up his right hand, grasping his revolver, with fierce gesticulations of encouragement.

The Goumiers saw, heard, and found little room for hesitation in their mood. Like a torrent released at the breaking of a dam, they followed.

Perinaud thundered an ineffectual protest.

It fell on deaf ears. The green brake was furrowed by a dozen lanes before their impact and then, relentlessly, as it seemed, closed behind them. The horses bucked, plunged, but made little headway. From one of them came a sudden whinnying shriek of pain.

Then it sank under its rider as the knife which had severed its tendons slipped back into the cover from which it had been so swiftly and so silently thrust.

The fallen Goumier cleared himself and scrambled to his feet. His face alone was clear in the sea of vegetation, and it was a mask of anger and bewilderment. And then it, too, was gone with a sudden panting cry.

Aylmer gave a little gasp. The head was there and then it was not. It sank into the green as the swimmer sinks into the blue in a shark-infested sea. But this shark was a human one, and its teeth a long Berber knife. The fugitives of the Beni M'Geel had chosen their battle-ground well.

Horse or man, lance or carbine--what were they against the daggers which the tussocks veiled? Mocking cries echoed in the thicket. Another horse shrieked and fell; another face showed white above the green and then was gone. The Goumiers snarled with rage as they spurred furiously forward, but the clinging mallow held them, shackled them, suffocated them with its density. There was a note of panic in their shouts; they battled no longer for victory but for escape.

The leader of the reckless charge was in slightly better case than the majority. Rattier and one or two others, by chance of circ.u.mstances, stood in wider s.p.a.ces, where the dagger men could not reach them unseen.

They sat in their saddles, alert for opportunity, quivering with rage, but useless. Their glances flashed from side to side, their eyes gleamed, but opportunity evaded them. And the cries of the unseen enemy still mocked them from the ambush.

Carried away by impulse, Aylmer would have joined the charge. Perinaud's hand fell upon his reins with a grip of iron. Aylmer made as if he would release them by force.

The sergeant made a gesture of appeal.

”No, my Captain! This is serious. A little coolness, a little restraint, and we pull them out of this! But to follow! That spells death for us all!”

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