The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1878-12-04
THE COLONEL'S SENTENCE.
An Algerian story.

tirne,' said Paul Dupont, French sous-lieu-
tenant in the -th of the line, as he sat sip
ping his coffee in front of the Hotel de la
Regence at Algiers, "but by far the cleaver-
est man I ever met was our old colonel,
Henri de Malet. People said he ought to
have been an avocat, but that was giving
him but half bis due, for I'll be bound he
could have outfanked any lawyer that ever
wore gown. In his latter days he always
went by the name of Solomon the Second
and If you care to hear how he came by it
I'll tell you.
Before he came to us De Malet was mill
tary commandment at Oran, and it was there
that he did one OF bis best strokes-Out
generating a camel driver from Tangier one
ofthose Thoroughbred Moorish rascals, of
whom the saying goes, Two Maltese to
a Jew, and three Jews to a Moor"
some Offense or other, swore that he wasn't
Muley the camel driver at all, but quite an
other man; and as his friends all swore the
same, and he had managed to alter his APP
pearance bit before he was arrested, he
seemed safe to get off But our colonel wasn't
to be done in that way. He pretended to
dismiss the case, and allowed the fellow to
get night out into the street as il all was over,
and then he suddenly shouted after him,
'Muley the camel driver, / want to speak to
you The old rogue, hearing mis- own name,
turned and came back before he could recol-
OF all his cunning.
The fame of this exploit went abroad
like wildnre, and 1t got to be a saying
among US. whenever we heard of any
very clever trick. that it was 'one of
Colonel de Malet's Judgments and so,
when he was transferred from Oran to
Algiers IL was Just as il we all knew him al
ready, although none of us had ever seen
him before. But it wasn't long before we
got a much better story than that about him;
for one night nan dined at our mess who
bad known the colonel out in India, and
told us grand tale of how he had astonish-
ed them all at Pondicherry. 1t seems that
some things had been stolen from the OFF,
GERS quarters, and nobody could tell who
had done IL. The first thing next morning
the colonel went along the line at early pa
rade, giving each OF the native soldiers a
small strip of bamboo; and he said, very
solemnly, My children, there is a guilty
man among us, and it has been revealed to
me by Brahma himself how mis- guilt is TO
be made clear. Let every man of you come
forward in his turn and give me his piece of
bamboo: and the thief, let him do what he
may, will have the longest piece
Now you know what superstitious hounds
those Asiatc fellows always are; and when
they heard this announcement they all
looked at each other like children going to
be whipped. The colonel took the bsmboos
one after another, as solemnly as ii he were
on a court martial but when about a dozen
men had gone past he suddenly sprang for
ward and selzed one of them by the throat,
shouting at the full pitch OF his voice, You
are the mani
Down went the fellow on his knees and
yelled for mercy. confesslng that he was the
man sure enough. AS for the rest, they
looked as frightened as if all the gods in the
cayerns Of Elephanta had come flying down
among them at once; and from that day
IL. 4
the mere sight of the colonel half mile
off.
Glow on earth did you manage that,
oolonel?' asked the senior major, a great fat
fellow, as stupid as a carp.
Nothing simpler, my dear fellow fellow,
answered De Malet, laughing. The strips
were all exactly the same length, and the
thief, fearing to get the longest piece, be-
trayed himself by biting off the end
This, rs you may think, added a good
deal to the colonel's reputation; and when
we had that affair with the Bedouins at
LaghOuat we saw that he could fight as welt
as msneuver In the thick OF the skirmIsh
one of the rogues, seeing De Malet left alone,
flew at him with drawn yataghan, but the
colonel Just dropped on his horses neck and
let the blow pass over him, and then gave
point and ran the fellow right through the
body, as neatly as any fencing master could
have done it. You may be sure that we
LlOuEDL %
but all this was nothing to what was
coming.
well. De Malet had been with us about a
year when the railway was begun from Al
giers to Blidah, and the directing engineer
happened to be one of my greatest friends,
Eugene Latour, as good a fellow as l ever
met. II was quite fete with us whenever
he dined at mess, for his jokes and good sto-
ries kept every one brisk; and then 10 hear
him sing ma fol, il was wonderful. One
minute some rafting refrain that seemed to
set the very chairs dancing, and then sud-
denly low, sad air that fairly brought the
tears into your eyes. They were in mine.
know, every Tune L neard MIN sing tnose
last two verses of The Conscripts Fare
WE'LL
thought to gain rich spoils-Ive gained
OF bullets half score;
1 thought TO C me back corporal
shall come back no more.
Feed my poor dog, pray thee. Rose,
And with him gentle be;
He'll miss his master for awhile
Adieu! remember me!
well as / was saying, Eugene had been
put over the work, and don't know where
they could have found a better man for it.
Whether il poured with rain or came on hot
enough to cook a outlet without fire, IL was
all one to him. There he was at his post
looking after everything, with his eyes in
ten places at once. You may think thai
under such a chief the laborers had nc
chance of idlIDg; and everything was getting
on splendIdly when one morning, as he was
standing on the parapet of bridge, his foo
slipped and down he went, / don't know
how tar The fall would have killed hin
outright il by good luck there hadn't hap
pened TO be an Arab underneath 1.-THE only
time that an Arab was of any use, / should
say) and Eugene, alighting upon him, broke
his own fall and the Bedouin's neck to boot.
- -. q.
tell tales this wouldn't have mattered pin
for an Arab more or less is no such grea
matter; but, as i'll luck would have ii, there
were three or four more of the rascals nea
enough TO see what had happened, and o
course they raised a hue and cry directly
And when il was noised abroad that Chris
tian dog las they politely call us) had killed
a Mussulman, you should have seen what 81
uproar there wasl The people came run
ming together like vultures when came
n