ked leave to cover the retreat by installing himself in a _kasbah_.

"How many men do you want, Perenna?"

"None, sir."

"What! Surely you don't propose to cover a retreat all by yourself?"

"What pleasure would there be in dying, sir, if others were to die as
well as I?"

At his request, they left him a dozen rifles, and divided with him the
cartridges that remained. His share came to seventy-five.

The detachment got away without being further molested. Next day, when
they were able to return with reinforcements, they surprised the Moors
lying in wait around the _kasbah_, but afraid to approach. The ground was
covered with seventy-five of their killed.

Our men drove them off. They found Private Perenna stretched on the floor
of the _kasbah_. They thought him dead. He was asleep!

He had not a single cartridge left. But each of his seventy-five bullets
had gone home.

What struck the imagination of the public most, however, was Major Comte
d'Astrignac's story of the battle of Dar-Dbibarh. The major confessed
that this battle, which relieved Fez at the moment when we thought that
all was lost and which created such a sensation in France, was won before
it was fought and that it was won by Perenna, alone!

At daybreak, when the Moorish tribes were preparing for the attack,
Private Perenna lassoed an Arab horse that was galloping across the
plain, sprang on the animal, which had no saddle, bridle, nor any sort of
harness, and without jacket, cap, or arms, with his white shirt bulging
out and a cigarette between his teeth, charged, with his hands in his
trousers-pockets!

He charged straight toward the enemy, galloped through their camp, riding
in and out among the tents, and then left it by the same place by which
he had gone in.

This quite inconceivable death ride spread such consternation among the
Moors that their attack was half-hearted and the battle was won without
resistance.

This, together with numberless other feats of bravado, went to make up
the heroic legend of Perenna. It threw into relief the superhuman energy,
the marvellous recklessness, the bewildering fancy, the spirit of
adventure, the physical dexterity, and the coolness of a singularly
mysterious individual whom it was impossible not to take for Arsene
Lupin, but a new and greater Arsene Lupin, dignified, idealized, and
ennobled by his exploits.

One morning, a fortnight after the double murder in the Boulevard
Suchet, this extrao