SOWING GLORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21067, 29 December 1931, Page 13

SOWING GLORY.

By P. C. WREN. Author of " The Young Stager," " Dew nnd Mildew," " Father Gregory."* " Tho Wageti of Virtue." " Beau Ideal," etc., etc. *

(COPYMGUT.)

A MOST ENTERTAINING AND INTERESTING SERIAL.

130 OK. 11. ] CII Al'TEil V.— (Continued.) «* Well, when 1 Mas restored (o the bosom of niv sorrowing section, I found that, in my absence, if not owing to jnv absence, things had gone, from very bad to much worse. Mutiny was brewing Wehlaner was insane; tho corporals,- afraid of him, were still more afraid of their men; and with two or three exceptions, the ' fectimi were as insane as Wehlaner, or y-oise. Wehlaner spent the whole of his time j n dishing out punishments to evei ybody; the corporals spent their time superintending « tho punishments—with their revolvers in their hands; and the men spent all their time in doing the' punishments. " Iri tho daytime, that is to say. " At night, the men who were not in punishment-cells or on guard, spent their time in plotting, some arguing that to kill Wehlancr would be to jump out of the frving-pan into the fire; and others, the majority, objecting that we were already jn the fire, would be better off in prison, and owed it to ourselves, as men, to punish Wrhlaner. "An undesirable little man from Paris—he might have been Matthieu le Maquereau's own brother—was the ringleader. Very eloquent ho was. He showed us how it could*be done in such a way that m particular individual would be identified as the —er —executioner. "11 is plan was that Wehlancr should be 'removed' one night, and that none of us should know anything about it. Also, that an '"anonymous letter should be placed on the table in the corporal's hut, pointing out that an Arab or Arabs had evidently killed Sergeant Wehlaner and that we ''sincerely hoped that no such fate would overtake the corporals. •That, in fact, we worn sure would not, if they agreed with us that the lamented djath of Sergeant Wehlaner was caused by the knife of an Arab.

word in season, thought for our welfare, and by his own example, to keep us cheerful.

\\ hat we fail to realise is how lonely lie must be.

'I here is a photograph of a very lovely girl on tlie table in his room. He must long to hear her voice sometimes. Most of the men utterly refuse to accept the idea of officers having an excuse for suffering from "le cafard." Personally, 1 should say that Lieutenant —, of all men in this " poste," would have most cause, reason, and excuse for getting it; being as ho is, so utterly isolated—indeed insulated. I should iniagino that there are times when he would give all he possesses for an ordinary chat with a man of his own class and position.

As it is, from week's end to week's end, he is dumb, save for the issuing of orders; deaf, save for the hearing of reports; while ho is absolutely devoid of mental and physical recreation. Nous autres " —we have our troubles God knows, hut we have our little pleasures and can nightly gather round the fire and talk. ***#*#

I don't think I am what you would call a credulous person. Quite the reverse, 1 imagine. And yet, when old Pere Coeteau gave mo his word that he is speaking the truth, somehow 1 believe him. Which, of course, may be but a tribute to his convincing way of telling a story.

Anyway, I believe, a story that he told last night. Believed it tllen, I mean. 1 don't know that 1 do now, when 1 come to set it down.

The conversation still ran on the subject of ghosts. I had been sceptical, and remarked that surely if there was one place in the world where ghosts, if there were such things, would appear, it would he a battlefield where men had died sudden and violent deaths, cut off in the midst of their sins, desires and activities—and shovelled into a hole in the ground on which they fell; or a lonely outpost, such as this, for example, where they brooded and suffered and went mad, and died by bullet, knife, disease, or their own hand. And yet who ever heard of a genuine ghost on a battlefield or in an outpost? Pere Coeteau smiled and looked across at his " oopain." "Eh, Thirsty-face?" said he. " 1 suppose you are both going to pretend that you saw the ghost of a dead man—after seeing tho ghost of a dozen empty bottles, eh ?" I chaffed. " No, ' nion enfant,' " was the solemn reply. " I am not going to pretend anything. Least of all that I have seen something that I have never seen. . . I, ' moi qui parle,' Pere Aristide Coeteau, have seen too much that is strange to have any desire or need to invent. I'll tell you about this extraordinary affair, if you like." " Fact or fairy-tale, mon pere '?" I asked. "'Jhe simple truth. It will leap to tlie eye as the. obvious truth, when I tell it. . . When we both te'.l it—Old Thirsty-face and I—for we weie both in it.. " Yes —there are two halves to the story, and they fit together like the two portions of a broken biscuit. Not that I'hirsy-face can tell a tale, the poor dumb animal, but his ' statement,' bald as that of a ' gendarme ' in a police-court, will suffice to show that I am telling the truth." Old Thirsty-face wagged his head in confirmatory nods. "Ah!" he agreed, and added; "It's a story worth a litre of ' pinard 1 at the least."

" Some were for this and some were against it, though all agreed that something had got to be done; and while they were still wrangling —and somebody producing some mad, new scheme as soon as everybody .bad agreed on some other mad scheme —something was done. "It was done by poor old Muller, too, though I'll swear he was as innocent as—young Hermann here, ho being just such another. "He put ' paid ' to Wehlaner's account all right, and it seemed to ine like what they call poetic justice, though personally I've never come across either. Either poets or justice, I mean. " Still it was a curious and interesting end, in that unspeakable desert outpost, to a story that must have begun in some' German village, where their Greta probably still lives—and has forgotten them both by this time, I daresay very happily, with yet a third fool.

" Wehlaner was having more and more sentries posted, and so posted that nothing could happen to one of them without another seemg-^it. "Tilings were quietening down a bit, until, one night, I was posted over the Store-house, in sight of the sentry at tlie south-west corner of the parapet walk.

" Well, it occurred in those days, happier for myself und for France, when I was a sergeant again, a sergeant of the Legion, this time; and as ' le bon Dieu ' for Ilis own inscrutable purposes willed it, I, Aristide Coeteau, was in sole comnrand of the "outpost known as Fort Vigaud. " I do not say this would have been the case, but for the fact that Adjud:i nt Zolle had pulled the trigger of his revolver when its muzzle was in his mouth; and Sergeant-major Baerlin, out on patrol, had been lost for ever, together with six better men than himself, in a sandstorm. " Anyhow, here was I in sole command olf Fort Vigaud, with four corporals and thirty-seven good men. . . " it wasn't what you'd call a gay life. Not a bit like Paris. Not a bit like this, even; where we could see a convoy once a fortnight, and get news of the great world—such as that Captain Blanc has stopped a bullet with his big paunch; or that the tribesmen have captured a carload of onions. . .

"1 was just - beginning to think that my two hours hadn't much longer to run, when, in the perfect stillness and eilence, I heard the slight but unmistakable sound of a sharp movement. " Now, as we all know, a sentry, especially toward tho end of his spell of duty, doesn't make any swift and sudden movement -whatever, except for some very good reason. " I turned and glanced up, and, sure enough, the sentry had sprung into a ready position and thrown up his rifle readv to shoot.

" Like lightning I did the same—in the same direction.

" There was the ghost, and in a second or two it would emerge from shaddow into the faint moonlight that fell across the door of the hut. " Then several things happened almost simultaneously. Wehlaner threw open the hut door just as the ghost was crossing it The sentry fired and .Wehlaner fell " I fired and the ghost fell. ... " We had both scored a bull's-eye this time, all right. " Then the sentry threw a fit, and when everybody came running tlieic were three men on the ground " Our good Sergeant Wehlaner, shot through the chest and evidently pretty close to the h?lit " \n Arab—in a white garment; no turban; and 'with his face completely whitened with clay or whitewash shot through the lipad " Arid the sentry, groaning and .writhing and foaming at the month. " And who do you think the sentry was ? Mil Her. " And when they'd dumped Wehlaner on his cot and brought Muller up before him, old Muller went on like the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, Nebuchadnezzar and Emile Zola ioiled into one. " He pointed his shaking finger in .Wehlaner's grey face and shouted: "'Greta! 'Greta! It was Greta killed vou after all I saw her . . . I saw'her ghost She pointed and bade me fire ; and I did I never saw you at all/'. . . . But Greta did!. . . Greta did! She came for you. . . . She came to . . . " Wehlaner's jaw dropped, and he died." CHAPTER VI. Joy. " L'Adjudant " Sartene has been transferred or gone on leave, and Lieutenant V— has taken his place. Long may he remain, for he is a good oflicei —experienced, cool, competent, firm, liciicl and just—and that is all we ask. It was time he came, for Sergeant Bartak, a Bulgarian, though not a hard and bullying brute, is a depraved and vicious beast, which is infinitely worse. Compared with him, Sergeant Pflugge, Been in restrospcct, seems a gentle angel

" No, there was no news ;it all, and nothing happened. When I say nothing happened 1 am forgetting that the sun rose every morning arid set every evening; but nothing else happened, except that I kept mv scoundrelly ' legionnaires ' so busy that they had scarcely time to grumble; barely time to scratch themselves; and no time to hatch plots. " Mind you, I wasn't harsh or tyrannical like some of these slave-drivers of sergeants—like Pflugge ' par exemple 1 merely kept, them on the run front 'reveille' to 'lights out'! And when, there was really nothing else to do, I had a truly enormous hole dug in the middle of "the parade-ground, and then had it filled in again. "Of course, this was all very uiill for ' les legionnaires ' and the corporals who had to drive them to it, but it wasn't bo good for me. I had too little to do, and too much time in which to think. " Positively, in a few weeks I began to wish they'd fend an officer or even an ' adjudant,' or a sergeant-major to give me something to do. " You must understand there was no ' Village Negre ' ; no ' douar '; no nomad camp; no anything; ' rien du tout. " There wasn't a human being nearer than the garrison of Fort Gherdieh and that was fifty kilometres away to our left flank. Just such another Godforsaken, man-forgotten, deseit-hell-hole as our own; and the next nearest was the oasis and town of Oued-el-Kebir, a hundred and eighty kilometres behind us, which was the base, where there were a. company ot ours, a battalion of Senegalese, and some i3att. I) Afs s. " Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. And if, just to keep them from getting fat, one took 'les legionnaires' for a promenade out into the desert, which was all soft loose shifting dunes, there was always the chance, if not the probability, of losing ourselves and dying of thirst, or of being buried alive in a sandstorm. " And hot! You little ones have never felt heat. You don't know what it is. Whatever vou touched burnt you like the top of t. stove, and at night everybody -slept naked on the roof of the barrack huts.

of light. I gather from what the men say, that his vice is*"distinctly Bulgarian, and nobody in the " poste " felt that Adjud.int " Sartene would hold any sort of impartial inquiry if there were real trouble between Bartak and a victim. It is that sense (or certainty) of injustice that is at the root of the hideous tragedies which lie beneath the bald notifications stating that " le legionnaire" X— is sentenced to death—or a _ long period of penal servitude —for striking Sergeant V—. . . . We feel now that the mere presence of Lieutenant V-- will prevent trouble; find that if it does not do so, I he trouble will be investigated, and be dealt with impartially. A great cloud has been lifted from the mind of Hans J'etsel, the chubby little German in whom Sergeant Bartak Was beginning to interest himself unduly. Lieutenant V—'s first order was that We should occupy the barracks, finished °r not. He is a real good sport. Never interferes unnecessarily; never worries, clnvvies and hounds men for the sake of fioing it; and does his best, by a kindly

" Some of I lie mad ones wero very funny. Oil, very amusing. " 1 think the funniest, perhaps, was Iloorne, who thought he was a crab, and could on I v move sideways. \ou will conceive that it caused a certain amount o confusion in the ranks, when on the word ' march !' everybody stepped forwards and Iloorne stepped sideways. " His corporal thought he was shamming mad, until I said: 'All right. Let him step sideways into the cells and Lie a hermit- crab.' " But when I looked in through the hole and saw him waving his legs in (1,0 air when he fed himself with both claws at, once, P decided that anyway he was better where he was. That sort of thing spreads, and may ' le bon Genoral Dieu punish me it I lie, but I beaan to feel a bit like a crab myself. I caught myself wishing I knew what sort of noise crabs make, and I d have made it, too. , . T , . " And then, ' mes anus, I began to soc things. 'Moi'-the commandant o that fort, upon whom the honour of France and those forty-one worthless lives depended! (To be continued daily.)