The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-06-26
me some more kouseoussow. :

third Chasseurs d'Afrique In the front line
| halted at carry" on the crest OF a sand
| ridge, which hid the horizon from sight;
| the still, hot air of the Sahara was sud-
denly pervaded with something that reused
| us to our feet in an instant. Santander
whipped out his ever ready sketch book
and began blocking in the landscape and
! the position OF the troops, while Thevenot
snatched his note book and 'stylograph."
/ OF the scene which now gathered upon
US can, IN respect to time place or rela-
| tive succession of detail, remember moth
| ing, only out Of that dark chaos can res
cue few detached and fragmentary i'm
pressions-all the more vivid. neverthe-
| less, from their isolation, all the more dis
| tinct from the gray blue Of the background
against which they trace themselves.
Instantly, somewhere disquietingly near,
an event, or rather whir, Of events that
rushed and writhed themselves together
into quivering maze of dizzying complex
! ity, suddenly evolved and widened ike the
fierce, quick rending open Of some vast
scroll, and there were zigZag hurryings to
and fro and q surging heavenward OF
J torrent of noises-noises Of men and noises
of feet, noises of horses and noises Of arms
noises that hustled fercely upward above
the brown mass and closed together in the
desert air, blending or joining one with
another, joining and separating, reuniting
and dividing; noises that rattle; noises that
clanked; noises that doomed or shriued or
Numbered or quavered, and one well
known noise that at regular intervals, was
! dominant over all as of mighty food of
planks and boards falling from some vast
height upon the earth beneath And then
came sight of biue-gray tremulous curtains
but whether Of smoke or dust | could
not say-tum bling and billowing. bellying
out with the hot tempest breath of the
battle demon that ragged within and whose
outermost fringes we're torn by serrated
files of flashing steel and waVering ranks
of red.
| And this was all at first. 1 knew we had
been attacked and that behind those boil
ing smoke balows, sonewh here and some
how, though exactly how and where |
could not tell, men, Infatuated into beasts,
were graphing and struggling, each man,
striving to kill his fellow.
And now we were in the midst Of a hoi-
low square of our soldiery, yet how we
came there / cannot recall. though re-
member-trivial enough as it was-that
bD6 WdtcI VI puc 0cALC ulctsAC my C1OOHCo
heavy and clinging and uncomfortable
remember this, although mortal fear sat
upon me of being shot down by some Of
our own frenzied soldiers. And then came
that awful rib cracking pressure, as from
some outward. unseen cause. the square
was thrown back upon itself
The smell of sweat, of horses and men,
the odor of the powder smoke, the blind
oil de- 4
the horrible fear-greater than all others
of being pushed down beneath those thou
sands of trampiing feet, the terrible pitch
of excitement that sicksns and weakens,
the momentary eonsciousness-vanishin
as soon as felt-that this was what men
called war" and that we were experience
ing the stern reality of what we had SO
often read.
1t was not inspiring. not thrilling; there
was no romance no poetry about it; there
was nothing In it but the hideous jar, one
against the other, of men drunk with the
blood lust that eighteen hundred years had
not quenched, and all It's 50 called sublim-
ity and glory faded out OF sight at the
magic Of its real presence.
l looked at Bah Azzoun; he was stand
ing at the gunwale of the scow-somehow
unloaded pistol in his hand. He WIS
watching the battle on the bank. His
nostrils quivered, and he shifted his feet
exactly like an excited thoroughbred. On
a sudden a trooper of the Eleventh Cuiras-
siers came spinning round and round out
of the brown of battle, gulping up blood,
and pitched. wheeling, face downward,
into the soft ooze where the river licked at
the bank, raising rudy bubbles in the
same as he blew his life breath in gasps
into it, and raking it into gridiron pat
terms as his quiveging. blue fingers closed
into fists.
Instantly afterward came mighty rush
across the river beneath our very bows
Forty odd cuirassiers burst into il, fol-
lowed by eighty or a hundred Kabyles. /
can recall just how the horse hoofs ratified
on the saucer like cakes of dry mud and
flung them up in countless fragments be-
hind them. They were a fine sight, those
Kabyles, with their fierce, red horses, their
dazzling white bournOus, their long, thin,
murderous rife barrels, laundering and
splashing past, while from the whole mass
of them, from under the shadow of every
white haik, from every black bearded lip,
was rolling their war cry. Allah, Allah-u-
AllahP
What long dormant recollections stirred
in Bah Azzoun at this old battle shouti
AS he faced them now he was no longer
the cold, cynical boulevardier of the morn
ing He looked as he must have looked
when be played-a sixteen-year-old boy
about the feet Of the horses In his fathers
black tent. He saw the long lines of the
douars of his native home; be saw the
camels and the caravan crawling toward
the sunset; he saw the women grinding
meal; he saw his father. the bearded sheik;
battle; he saw the palm broad spear points
and the blue yataghans- He was no longer
the Parisien, the product of civilization"
the race problem" In an instant OF time
ell the long years of culture and education
were rs a garment stripped away. Once
more he stood and stepped the Kabyle,
and with these recollectsons has long for
gotten native speech came rushing 20 his
tongue, and in one long. shrill, exultapt
cry ne answered his countrymen n their
own language, -Aliah-iI-ALIah, Moham-
med ressoui Allah"
He passed me AZ a bound, leaped from |
the scow upon the back OF a riderless horse.
and, mingEng with the band Of the ka- |
byies, sped ost Of sight.
And that was the last ever saw Of Bah |
Azzoun.-ArgoRaat
There are many simple and effective dis |
infecteGts, among which are coffee poaRd- |
I'd and burned On al iron plate, sugar |