“Simply, mon Commandant—­very simply.  I was alone, riding midway between you and the main army—­three leagues, say, from each.  I was all alone; only Vole-qui-veut flying with me for fun.  I met a colon.  I knew the man.  For the matter of that, I did him once a service—­saved his geese and his fowls from burning, one winter’s day, in their house, while he wrung his hands and looked on.  Well, he was full of terror, and told me there was fighting yonder—­here he meant—­so I rode nearer to see.  That was just upon sunrise.  I dismounted, and ran up a palm there.”  And Cigarette pointed to a far-off slope crowned with the remains of a once mighty palm forest.  “I got up very high.  I could see miles round.  I saw how things were with you.  For the moment I was coming straight to you.  Then I thought I should do more service if I let the main army know, and brought you a re-enforcement.  I rode fast.  Dieu!  I rode fast.  My horse dropped under me twice; but I reached them at last, and I went at once to the General.  He guessed at a glance how things were, and I told him to give me my Spahis and let me go.  So he did.  I got on the mare of his own staff, and away we came.  It was a near thing.  If we had been a minute later, it had been all up with you.”

“True, indeed,” muttered the Zouave in his beard.  “A superb action, my Little One.  But did you meet no Arab scouts to stop you?”

Cigarette laughed.

“Did I not?  Met them by dozens.  Some had a shot at me; some had a shot from me.  One fellow nearly winged me; but I got through them all somehow.  Sapristi!  I galloped so fast I was very hard to hit flying.  These things only require a little judgment; but some men, pardi! always are creeping when they should fly, and always are scampering when they should saunter; and then they wonder when they make fiasco!  Bah!”

And Cigarette laughed again.  Men were such bunglers—­ouf!

“Mademoiselle, if all soldiers were like you,” answered the Major of Zouaves curtly, “to command a battalion would be paradise!”

“All soldiers would do anything I have done,” retorted Cigarette, who never took a compliment at the expense of her “children.”  “They do not all get the opportunity, look you.  Opportunity is a little angel; some catch him as he goes, some let him pass by forever.  You must be quick with him, for he is like an eel to wriggle away.  If you want a good soldier, take that aristocrat of the Chasse-Marais—­that beau Victor.  Pouf!  All his officers were down; and how splendidly he led the troop!  He was going to die with them rather than surrender.  Napoleon”—­and Cigarette uncovered her curly head reverentially as at the name of a deity—­“Napoleon would have given him his brigade ere this.  If you had seen him kill the chief!”

“He will have justice done him, never fear.  And for you—­the Cross shall be on your breast, Cigarette, if I live over to-night to write my dispatches.”