minor poets, some fairly good actors, scholarly fellows who chanted the “Odyssey,” and both oath-ripping and taciturn, quiet-mannered fellows who could neither read nor write found a home in the African Braves’ muster-roll.  Their spirit of corps had a dervish fatalism.  They had begged to have a share in the war and Partow had consented.  In the night after their long journey, while Westerling’s ram was getting its death-blow, they had detrained and started for the front.  But the Grays were going as fast as the Braves, and they had been unable to get into action.

“Wait for us!  We want to be in it!” cried their impatience.  “We’ll show you how they fight in Africa!  Way for us!”

“Give them a chance!” said Lanstron.

This order a general of corps repeated to a general of division, who repeated it to a general of brigade.

“Give them a chance!  Give them a chance!”

Reserves along the route of their advance knew them at a glance by their uniform, their Indian tan, and their jaunty swagger and gave a cheer as they passed.  They touched the chord of romance in the hearts of officers, who regarded them as an archaic survival which sentiment permitted in an isolated instance in Africa, where it excellently served.  And officers looked at one another and shook their heads knowingly, out of the drear, hard experience in spade approaches, when they thought of that brilliant uniform as a target and of frontier tactics against massed infantry and gun-fire.

“Once will be enough,” said the cynical.  “There won’t be many left to tell the tale!”

And the African Braves knew how the army felt.  They had a reputation out of Africa to sustain, this band of exotics among the millions of home-trained comrades.  They didn’t quite believe in all this machine business.  Down the slopes with their veteran stride, loose-limbed and rhythmic, they went, past the line of the Galland house, with no fighting in sight.  What if they had to return to Africa without firing a shot?  The lugubrious prospect saddened them.  They felt that a battle should be ordered on their account.

“You will take that regiment’s place and it will fall back for support, while you storm the knoll beyond!” said the brigade commander, a twinkle in his eye.

“Is it much of a job, do you think?” asked the colonel of the Braves.

He had two fingers’ length of service colors on his blouse.  Lean he was and bony-jawed, with deep-set eyes.  He loved every mother’s son of the Braves, from illiterate to the chanter of the “Odyssey”; from peasant’s son to penniless nobleman, and thought any one of his privates rather superior to a home brigade commander.

“A pretty good deal.  I think the Grays’ll make a snappy resistance,” said the brigade commander honestly.  “The way we feel them out, they’re getting back their wind, and for the first time we’ll be fighting them up-hill.  Yes, there’s a sting in a retreating army’s tail when it gets over its demoralization.”