, and they are rusty enough to suggest that it rains at
Hassi-Inifel three hundred days in the year. Furthermore, where were
you this afternoon? Among the four Frenchmen who compose the post, I
found only on my arrival one convict, opposite a quart of eau-de-vie.
We will change all that, I hope. At ease."

"Captain," I said, and my voice was colorless, while Chatelain
remained frozen at attention, "I must tell you that the Sergeant was
with me, that it is I who am responsible for his absence from the
post, that he is an irreproachable non-commissioned officer from every
point of view, and that if we had been warned of your arrival--"

"Evidently," he said, with a coldly ironical smile. "Also, Lieutenant,
I have no intention of holding him responsible for the negligences
which attach to your office. He is not obliged to know that the
officer who abandons a post like Hassi-Inifel, if it is only for two
hours, risks not finding much left on his return. The Chaamba
brigands, my dear sir, love firearms, and for the sake of the sixty
muskets in your racks, I am sure they would not scruple to make an
officer, whose otherwise excellent record is well known to me, account
for his absence to a court-martial. Come with me, if you please. We
will finish the little inspection I began too rapidly a little while
ago."

He was already on the stairs. I followed in his footsteps. Chatelain
closed the order of march. I heard him murmuring, in a tone which you
can imagine:

"Well, we are in for it now!"

II

CAPTAIN DE SAINT-AVIT

A few days sufficed to convince us that Chatelain's fears as to our
official relations with the new chief were vain. Often I have thought
that by the severity he showed at our first encounter Saint-Avit
wished to create a formal barrier, to show us that he knew how to keep
his head high in spite of the weight of his heavy past. Certain it is
that the day after his arrival, he showed himself in a very different
light, even complimenting the Sergeant on the upkeep of the post and
the instruction of the men. To me he was charming.

"We are of the same class, aren't we?" he said to me. "I don't have
to ask you to dispense with formalities, it is your right."

Vain marks of confidence, alas! False witnesses to a freedom of
spirit, one in face of the other. What more accessible in appearance
than the immense Sahara, open to all those who are willing to be
engulfed by it? Yet what is more secret? Aft