"Monsieur guarantees this fellow, I understand? Well, let him justify himself. I have no objections."
"It is well understood that I deal with this M. de Landon if he is there, I alone? Your man, now, if he suddenly confronts him--" He broke off with a meaning gesture. "I do not wish my interview with him anticipated."
In spite of himself, a smile broke the imperturbability of the sergeant's face. With a suggestive jerk of the hand he dismissed Daoud, who cantered on into and was lost in the jungle of mallow. Perinaud turned sympathetic and now perfectly grave features towards the commandant.
"Monsieur may be easy in his mind," he said quietly. "The man we seek, if I have understood his talents rightly, is hardly likely to be subdued without the display of some force and intelligence."
He turned to give the order to dismount. Rattier watched him with an air of baffled exasperation. There had been a gentle emphasis on the last two words which could scarcely be misunderstood, and as the sailor ruminated over them, his taciturnity showed renewed signs of failing before the rising tide of his wrath. A sudden diversion averted an outbreak.
For a gunshot rang out among the woodland silences into which Daoud had disappeared. It was instantly replied to by the shriller snap of a revolver. And this was followed by a fusillade of five more reports as the weapon was emptied. The Moor's voice was suddenly uplifted.
"To me, Sidi!" he was shouting vehemently. "To me!"
The native officer thundered an order. In a twinkling the men were back in their saddles and, in irregular formation, threading the aisles of thicket at a canter. Aylmer and Rattier followed the sergeant, riding abreast.
There came another report. A bullet whistled between the pair, and from Rattier came a little growl of satisfaction. If there was to be a fight, he seemed to imply, his promised interview with Landon would assume proportions which were entirely pleasing to him. Perinaud increased his horse's pace, flinging alert glances each side of him rather than in front.
A couple of hundred yards at speed and the forest maze opened into a wide clearing, deeply overgrown with mallow and broom. Through the middle of this, his horse laboring against the growth which was full five feet high, rode Daoud, revolver in hand. A short distance ahead of him the green thicket was grooved in half a dozen places, as unseen bodies crashed through. Daoud's aim was poised and then withdrawn a score of times in as many seconds. The flicker of a white _haik_ would show for a brief instant here and there, and then be swallowed by the jungle.