The camp was large, and a splendid picture of color, movement, picturesque combination, and wonderful light and shadow, as the sun-glow died out and the fires were lighted; for the nights were now intensely cold—­cold with the cutting, icy, withering bise, and clear above as an Antarctic night, though the days were still hot and dry as flame.

On the left were the Tirailleurs, the Zouaves, the Zephyrs; on the right were the Cavalry and the Artillery; in the center of all was the tent of the chief.  Everywhere, as evening fell, the red warmth of fires rose; the caldron of soup or of coffee simmered, gypsy-like, above; the men lounged around, talking, laughing, cooking, story-telling at their pleasure; after the semi-starvation of the last week, the abundance of stores that had come in with other Tringlos besides poor Biribi caused a universal hilarity.  The glitter of accouterments, the contents of open knapsacks, the skins of animals just killed for the marmite, the boughs of pines broken for firewood, strewed the ground.  Tethered horses, stands of arms, great drums and eagle-guidons, the looming darkness of huge cannon, the blackness, like dromedaries couched, of caissons and ambulance-wagons, the whiteness of the canvas tents, the incessant movement as the crowds of soldiery stirred, and chattered, and worked, and sang—­all these, on the green level of the plain, framed in by the towering masses of the rugged rocks, made a picture of marvelous effect and beauty.

Cecil, looking at it, thought so; though the harsh and bitter misery which he knew that glittering scene enfolded, and which he had suffered so many years himself—­misery of hunger, of cold, of shot-wounds, of racking bodily pains—­stole from it, in his eyes, that poetry and that picturesque brilliancy which it bore to the sight of the artist and the amateur.  He knew the naked terrors of war, the agony, the travail, the icy chills, the sirocco heats, the grinding routine, the pitiless chastisements of its reality; to those who do, it can no longer be a spectacle dressed in the splendid array of romance.  It is a fearful tragedy and farce woven close one in another; and its sole joy is in that blood-thirst which men so lustfully share with the tiger, and yet shudder from when they have sated it.

It was this knowledge of war, in its bitter and deadly truth, which had made him give the answer that had charmed Cigarette, to the casual visitor of the encampment.

He sat now, having recovered from the effects of the day of Zaraila, within a little distance of the fire at which his men were stewing some soup in the great simmering copper bowl.  They had eaten nothing for nigh a week, except some moldy bread, with the chance of a stray cat or a shot bird to flavor it.  Hunger was a common thorn in Algerian warfare, since not even the matchless intendance of France could regularly supply the troops across those interminable breadths of arid land, those sun-scorched plains, swept by Arab foragers.