ong list of black marks stood against
their names. Max feared that there was little hope for Valdez, though he
meant to do what he could to help. And he found it strange that he, a
born soldier as he knew himself to be, should think of tacitly aiding
another to desert, no matter on what pretext. At home in the same
position it could not have been so; but in the Foreign Legion recruits
talked freely, even before old Legionnaires to whom the Legion was
mother and father and country. There was no fear of betrayal. The whole
point of view seemed different. If a man felt that he had borne all he
could, and was desperate enough to risk death by starvation or worse,
why let him go with his comrades' blessing--and his blood on his own
head! If he had money he might get through. If not, he was lost; but
that, too, was his own business.

March was bitterly cold in wind-swept Sidi-bel-Abbes. April was mild;
May warm; June hot; July and August a furnace, but Legionnaires drank no
less of the heavy, red Algerian wine than before the summer heat
engulfed them. Max had heard men say jokingly or solemnly of each other,
"He has the _cafard_." Vaguely he knew that _cafard_ was French for
beetle, or cockroach; that soldiers who habitually mixed absinthe and
other strong drinks with their cheap but beloved _litre_ were often
affected with a strange madness which betrayed itself in weird ways, and
that this special madness was familiarly named _le cafard_. When the hot
wave arrived he saw for himself what the terrible insect could do in a
man's brain.

In the canteen it was bad enough on pay nights--so called "the Legion's
holidays"--but there reigned Madame la Cantiniere, young, good looking,
a respected queen, who would go on march with the Legion in her cart,
and who must at all times to a certain extent be obeyed. But in dim
side-streets of the town, far from the lights of the smart, out-of-doors
cafes, were _casse croutes_ kept by Spaniards who cared nothing for the
fate of Legionnaires when they had spent their last sou. The _cafard_
grew and prospered there. He tickled men's gray matter and kneaded it in
his microscopic claws. There his victims fought each other, for no
reason which they could explain afterward, or mutilated themselves,
tearing off an ear, or tattooing a face with some design to rival Four
Eyes; or they sold parts of their uniforms to buy a little more drink,
or tried to blow out their brains, or the brains of some