“Those inquiries were made by my orders,” said Valenglay.

“And they led—?”

“To nothing.”

“So that you do not know what I did during my captivity?”

“Just so.”

“I will tell you, Monsieur le President.  It will not take me long.”

Don Luis pointed with a pencil to a spot in Morocco marked on the map.

“It was here that I was taken prisoner on the twenty-fourth of July.  My capture seemed queer to Monsieur le Prefet de Police and to all who subsequently heard the details of the incident.  They were astonished that I should have been foolish enough to get caught in ambush and to allow myself to be trapped by a troop of forty Berber horse.  Their surprise is justified.  My capture was a deliberate move on my part.

“You will perhaps remember, Monsieur le President, that I enlisted in the Foreign Legion after making a fruitless attempt to kill myself in consequence of some really terrible private disasters.  I wanted to die, and I thought that a Moorish bullet would give me the final rest for which I longed.

“Fortune did not permit it.  My destiny, it seemed, was not yet fulfilled.  Then what had to be was.  Little by little, unknown to myself, the thought of death vanished and I recovered my love of life.  A few rather striking feats of arms had given me back all my self-confidence and all my desire for action.

“New dreams seized hold of me.  I fell a victim to a new ideal.  From day to day I needed more space, greater independence, wider horizons, more unforeseen and personal sensations.  The Legion, great as my affection was for the plucky fellows who had welcomed me so cordially, was no longer enough to satisfy my craving for activity.

“One day, without thinking much about it, in a blind prompting of my whole being toward a great adventure which I did not clearly see, but which attracted me in a mysterious fashion, one day, finding myself surrounded by a band of the enemy, though still in a position to fight, I allowed myself to be captured.

“That is the whole story, Monsieur le President.  As a prisoner, I was free.  A new life opened before me.  However, the incident nearly turned out badly.  My three dozen Berbers, a troop detached from an important nomad tribe that used to pillage and put to ransom the districts lying on the middle chains of the Atlas Range, first galloped back to the little cluster of tents where the wives of their chiefs were encamped under the guard of some ten men.  They packed off at once; and, after a week’s march which I found pretty arduous, for I was on foot, with my hands tied behind my back, following a mounted party, they stopped on a narrow upland commanded by rocky slopes and covered with skeletons mouldering among the stones and with remains of French swords and other weapons.

“Here they planted a stake in the ground and fastened me to it.  I gathered from the behaviour of my captors and from a few words which I overheard that my death was decided on.  They meant to cut off my ears, nose, and tongue, and then my head.