we made the voyage across the Mediterranean to Oran, had made a miserable bargain when hiring that cook. The thing was called Jacques. It even answered occasionally to its name if it felt like it. It was malicious, wondrously versed in profanity, addicted to lying, and very filthy.

The first day there was nothing to eat for us until evening. At three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day we were still waiting, very hungry indeed, for our first meal, and I thought it time to have a talk with Mr. Jacques. I told him that our board was paid for and that we wanted something to eat. Quick, too.

The thing answered with a nicely chosen assortment of oaths. He swore like a—well, like a man from Marseilles. He was pleased to inform me that according to his opinion dirty légionnaires were expressly made to do a lot of waiting. If he should happen to have spare time on his hands, he might try and get something to eat for us. But he was not quite sure whether or not he would have time!

Now this pleased me. I knew to a nicety how to arrange matters with this thing.

"Well, my son," I said lovingly, "won't you please take a look at these eight comrades of mine? They are Germans and cannot talk French. But they are very good at smashing things. They're quite experts at that sort of thing. See how they are looking at you? I rather think they are going to beat you horribly."

"Allez donc!" remarked the cook dubiously. He seemed uneasy.

"They are Prussians. Very likely they'll kill you. I am going to help them at it."

The cook took a look at me and a second look at the "Prussians." He was rather pale and seemed to think that he was up against it. First he cursed volubly, then he dived into his dark hole of a kitchen and fetched out a tin filled with macaroni, a number of loaves of bread, and a bucketful of wine—about a gallon. There were no knives, however, exactly four forks for nine men, and one little drinking-cup.

The other day one of these packets foundered somewhere on the Algerian coast. I sincerely hope it was the packet I crossed on, and that Jacques the cook was drowned….

On the evening of the second day a visitor came to us from the first-class part of the boat. He was a sergeant in the Foreign Legion and ventured among the third-class passengers to have a look at his new recruits. Being a Belgian, he could not talk German with them, and so I had the honour of conversation with him for a couple of hours.

Yes, the Germans made fine soldiers, although they were very thick-headed. Such an obstinate race! It would be best for me if I foregathered with Frenchmen only in the Legion. My French needed cultivating badly, said the sergeant. Then he ordered a bottle of wine and talked about the Legion. Lies, mostly. One of his stories is worth the telling however.

In 1880 a young German enlisted in the Legion. He was an excellent soldier, spoke a brilliant French, and was considered a good fellow. A detachment of the Legion, of which he was a member, was suddenly attacked by Arabs near Saida. The commanding officer, a lieutenant, was severely wounded, and all of the non-commissioned officers killed at the first attack. Now the young German took command and led a furious onslaught on the attacking Arabs, managing to hold out until help came. Shot in the breast he was carried into camp, and the colonel of the regiment gave his own Cross of the Legion of Honour to the dying man. The young German asked the surgeon whether he had a chance of life. The doctor said yes, of course. But, finally, the new Chevalier of the Legion of Honour was told the truth and thereupon demanded a short interview with his commanding officer.

Telegrams went flying between the little desert station and the capital of Germany…. In the evening the légionnaire died. A week later a veiled lady appeared in Saida to take the body to the Fatherland. Chevaliers of the Legion of Honour escorted their dead comrade, and the French flag covered the coffin. The young German had been a royal prince of Prussia!

"Do you actually believe this yarn?" I asked the sergeant.

"It's an absolute fact!" said he, very serious and very much offended.

The same story was told me, with slight variations, many times in the Legion. The "royal prince of Prussia" is part and parcel of the unwritten history of the Legion, told from légionnaire to légionnaire, and I have often wondered how much truth there may be in the legend. Very likely the man of Saida had been a German aristocrat, the black sheep of some good family, and in the course of time and telling the Legion had made him a royal prince of Prussia.

Oran came in sight. Nine recruits promptly lined up on deck, staring with wondering eyes at the land to whose shores destiny had sent them to work and wage war for strangers, for a nation whose language even they did not understand. Sandstone cliffs formed a rugged coast-line. From their heights batteries were firing. The target was pontooned in the sea at a distance of about 5000 yards from the shore. But the columns of water thrown up by the bursting shrapnel never reached it. The old sergeant shrugged his shoulders.

"I am not interested in any shooting but in ours," he said; "anyway, at shooting with the old Lebel gun the Legion can beat any on earth."

He was at least loyal to his Legion, the old grey-haired sergeant, even if he did tell so many lies….

The batteries were at any rate excellently masked. It was quite impossible to detect their positions. Even when the old sergeant showed me where they were mounted, I could see nothing. High up on the crags the heavy cannon had been built in, behind little sandhills, flanked by large rocks, the whole arrangement looking so very much like nature that none could have suspected that it was artificial. The positions of the guns were perfect.

We gained the harbour. Suddenly the cliffs opened out East and West, leaving an enormous gap. Out jumped, as from a conjurer's box, the fortress of Oran, a maze of flat-roofed houses on hilly ground. The inner harbour was ridiculously small, just a little square, its room quite taken up by twelve torpedo-boats, two small cruisers and half a dozen merchant ships. We had hardly touched the pier when a corporal jumped on board. The famous corporal of the French army, the maid-of-all-work, the busy French corporal who attends to everything and has more real work to do than all the officers of a company together. He read off our names from a list and marched us off to quarters.

It was a novel scene that met our gaze. Negroes, sparingly attired in loin-cloth and red fez, hurried past in a strange shuffling quickstep, carrying enormous loads on their heads; taciturn Arabs stood around, wrapped from head to foot in white burnous-cloth; officers promenaded with their women-folk and occasionally some fine lady would give us a look of curiosity and compassion. A Spahi orderly galloped by on a foaming horse and yelled in high amusement:

"Bonjour, les bleus!"

We were marched across the city square. The surroundings and houses had nothing typical about them until we began to pass through little alleys and byways, where naked black children were playing and rolling in the dirt and filth.

Then the sand came. The fine African sand that plays such a rôle in a légionnaire's life. But the road was an ideal road, hard as stone under its sandy covering. A generation of légionnaires, now long dead, had built this road leading to the barracks high up in the hills. The road swept in mighty curves along the cliffs. After an hour of marching we came to some very antiquated barracks. They were a counterpart of Fort St. Jean in Marseilles, one of the military hostelries for the many men needed to feed France's colonial stomach. In the courtyard a lieutenant called the roll and seemed very much amused when the new French soldiers answered to their names with a stentorian German: "Hier!"

We were assigned a nasty little hole of a