Hours of reckless, headlong
delight, when men grew drunk with bloodshed as with wine; hours of
horrible, unsuccored suffering, when the desert thirst had burned in his
throat and the jagged lances been broken off at the hilt in his flesh,
while above-head the carrion birds wheeled, waiting their meal; hours
of unceasing, unsparing slaughter, when the word was given to slay and
yield no mercy, where in the great, vaulted, cavernous gloom of rent
rocks, the doomed were hemmed as close as sheep in shambles. Hours, in
the warm flush of an African dawn, when the arbiter of the duel was the
sole judge allowed or comprehended by the tigers of the tricolor, and to
aim a dead shot or to receive one was the only alternative left, as the
challenging eyes of "Zephir" or "Chasse-Marais" flashed death across the
barriere, in a combat where only one might live, though the root of the
quarrel had been nothing more than a toss too much of brandy, a puff of
tobacco smoke construed into insult, or a fille de joie's maliciously
cast fire-brand of taunt or laugh. Hours of severe discipline, of
relentless routine, of bitter deprivation, of campaigns hard as steel
in the endurance they needed, in the miseries they entailed; of military
subjection, stern and unbending, a yoke of iron that a personal and
pitiless tyranny weighted with persecution that was scarce else than
hatred; of an implicit obedience that required every instinct of
liberty, every habit of early life, every impulse of pride and manhood
and freedom to be choked down like crimes, and buried as though they had
never been.
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