Part 1 (1/2)

In the Foreign Legion.

by Erwin Rosen.

PROLOGUE

Once upon a time there was a young student at a German University who found life too fresh, too joyous, to care very much for professors and college halls. Parental objections he disregarded. Things came to a climax. And the very next ”Schnelldampfer” had amongst its pa.s.sengers a boy in disgrace, bound for the country of unlimited possibilities in search of a fortune....

The boy did not see very much of fortune, but met with a great deal of hard work. His father did not consider New York a suitable place for bad boys, and booked him a through pa.s.sage to Galveston. There the ex-student contracted hotel-bills, feeling very much out of place, until a man who took a fancy to him gave him a job on a farm in Texas.

There the boy learnt a good deal about riding and shooting, but rather less about cotton-raising. This was the beginning. In the course of time he became translator of a.s.sociated Press Despatches for a big German paper in St. Louis and started in newspaper life.

From vast New York to the Golden Gate his new profession carried him: he was sent as a war correspondent to Cuba, he learned wisdom from the kings of journalism, he paid flying visits to small Central American republics whenever a new little revolution was in sight. Incidentally he acquired a taste for adventure. Then the boy, a man now, was called back to the Fatherland, to be a journalist, editor and novelist. He was fairly successful. And a woman's love came into his life....

But he lost the jewel happiness. The continual fight for existence and battling for daily bread of his American career, so full of ups and downs, was hardly a good preparation for quiet respectability. Wise men called him a fool, a fool unspeakable, who squandered his talents in light-heartedness. And finally a time came when even his wife to be could no more believe in him. The jewel happiness was lost....

The man at any rate recognised his loss; he recognised that life was no longer worth living. A dull feeling of hopelessness came over him. And in his hour of despair he remembered the blood of adventure in his veins. A wild life he would have: he would forget.

He enlisted as a soldier in the French Foreign Legion.

That man was I. I had burned my boats behind me. Not a soul knew where I was. Those who loved me should think that I was dead. I lived the hard life of a legionnaire; I had no hopes, no aspirations, no thought for the future; I worked and marched, slept, ate, and did what I was ordered; suffered the most awful hards.h.i.+ps and bore all kinds of shameful treatment. And during sleepless nights I dreamed of love--love lost for ever....

Some five hundred years I wore the uniform of the Legion. So at least it seemed to me.

Then--the great change came. One day there was a letter for me.

Love had found me out across a continent. I read and read and read again.

That was the turning-point of my life. I broke my fetters, and I fought a hard fight for a new career....

Now the jewel happiness is mine.

ERWIN ROSEN

HAMBURG, 1909

CHAPTER I

LeGIONNAIRE!

In Belfort : Sunrays and fear : Madame and the waiter : The French lieutenant : The enlistment office of the Foreign Legion : Naked humanity : A surgeon with a lost sense of smell : ”Officier Allemand” : My new comrades : The lieutenant-colonel : A night of tears

Another man, feeling as I felt, would have preferred a pistol-bullet as a last resource. I went into the Foreign Legion....

It was evening when I arrived in the old fortress of Belfort, with the intention of enlisting for the Legion. Something very like self-derision made me spend the night in the best hotel.

Awakening was not pleasant. The sunrays played hide-and-seek upon the lace of the cover, clambered to the ceiling, threw fantastic colours on the white little faces of the stucco angels, climbed down again, crowded together in a s.h.i.+ning little heap, and gave the icy elegance of the room a warm tone. Sleepily I stared at their play; sleepily I blinked at the enormous bed with its splendid covering of lace, the curious furniture, the wonderful Persian rug. Then I woke up with a start and tried to think. A thousand thoughts, a thousand memories crowded in upon me. Voices spoke to me; a woman's tears, the whispering of love, a mothers sorrow. And some devil was perpetually drumming in even measure: lost, lost, lost for ever....