Page 7 Advertisements Column 4

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 285, 5 June 1909, Page 7

THE LOST SQUADRON. ♦ — •— ' (Continued from yesterday). ''You are. mad! You are all mad! You do not know, imbeciles tl at you are. that he- who- merely touclii 1 '. 1 ; a victim of the plague will surely die of it. "The plague, you understand,' the deadly, murderous, lost theme plague. See those corpses! What! are the bullets of the enemy, <;r the j dagger of an assassin, compared to such an end as this!" He called to the lieutenant. "Dussault! This man resists my authority ! Shall he meet a soldier's death by my -hand — Aye or No?" The, lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. * "What would be, captain? We are powerless. They are all under the dominion, of a sentiment which I feel myself, and which I am certain you share with me. Nothing can prevail against it." "I know! I know!" rejoined the captain, sadly. Then he raised his drooping head. "I must have discipline," he added. He levelled the pistol at the corporal: "Am I obeyed?"' lie asked. The corporal . stood rigid and im- ' passive. There was a breathless instant. Somehow, Laforce could . not fire. His hand, so sure and steady at all other times, now trembled violently, and his face turned to an ashen grey. No. There were dead enough around him already. No need for more. The 'hand dropped .to his side. "Miserable man! A Mameluke must slay you — not I!" And then, as though these words were an actual permission to do as they pleased, the soldiers seized the ghastly corpses, and bore them to their saddles. The night was come, it would soon be moonlight, and they worked with furious haste. "To think that to-morrow we may all bo as these !" sighed Dussault. Captain Laforce paced his horse to and fro, - inattentive to everything, deep in gloomy troubled thought. Those figures, with, their gj-im 'burdens, passed and repassed before> him like shadows in a dream. At last they were ready to depart. They looked towards the captain and /awaited the word of command. They waited in vain. . 111. Dussault saluted, his chief. "They wait your orders, sir," said he. , "Do they?. I have had about enough of . this sickening business, and I have done with it," a'etorted tho captain. Tlie moon was up, and the sqtiadron was now ranged in serried ranks. Every man supported a dead soldier on the saddle in front of him. A sombre and weird spectacle in that huge and terrible isolation. "Think of France!" suggested the lieutenant, wistfully. "France?" repeated the captain, and fell suddenly silent. "W.e «hall recall all this when we return 'there, if ever we do return," continued the lieutenant. "I have a souvenir here — the «cloak of Maglbire. Poor Magloire. You remember him, sir?" The captain started from his reverie. "Abominable folly!". he muttered, incoherently. "I am responsible, too! Dishonor! ... Well, well ! Is there nothing then for mo?" Leaning over from his saddle, Dussa.ult detached from its fastening a spiled flag with a broken pole. The standard of the lost -squadron! The captain took it from him, and 'bowed his head reverently. "Amen!" said he, solemnly. "Ah, captain;" cried Dussault, "we could not go ba«k without our men, even if we wished to. Let us act, then, as they do, and make the best of it. After all, whether one dies by plague or bullet signifies nothing." "Madness! madness!" murmered tho captain, brokenly. He swung the standard on high, and his voice rang loud and shrill. "March!" A strsinge marc-k indeed was theirs, under the void night, themselves US silent as their shrouded dead, and only- tho jingling of bridle chains making a gentle lullaby as, they cantered along. The moonlight glittered, on helmet and scabbard; and .still no one spoke, nor so much as glanced to the right or left. The time niay have been long or short ; it was perhaps half an hour, perhaps more-, when one of the riders pitched heavily from his horse and rolled over on the sand. No one. heeded him, nor stirred a finger to help. For the lethargy of Lethe was creeping over th<? doomed men. Some were already dozing; others started into a momentary wakef illness for a moment, then collapsed, and moved no more. Soon another saddle was empty; then a third man. vanished unobserved ; a fourth, a fifth, disappeared in similar fashion, and their horses wandered devious. The squadron was crumbling to pieces — disappearing simply like snow figures in the heat of a fire.