noon
And in the silence around him Salah Ben-Ahmed the Marabout recited the fatha , bearing witness to the eternal unity of God . * * * * * Late that night the light cavalry from Lorient rode into Paradise . At dawn the colonel , established in the mayory , from whence its foolish occupant had fled , sent for Speed and me , and when we reported he drew from his heavy dolman our commissions , restoring us to rank and pay in the regiment _ de marche _ which he commanded . At sunrise I had bade good-bye to the sweetest woman on earth ; at noon we were miles to the westward , riding like demons on Buckhurst 's heavy trail . I am not sure that we ever saw him again , though once , weeks later , Speed and I and a dozen hussars gave chase to a mounted man near St. Brieuc , and that man might have been Buckhurst . He led us a magnificent chase straight to the coast , where we rode plump into a covey of Prussian hussars , who were standing on their saddles , hacking away at the telegraph-wires with their heavy , curved sabres . That was our first and last sight of the enemy in either Prussian or communistic guise , though in the long , terrible days and nights of that winter of ' 71 , when three French armies froze , and the white death , not the Prussians , ended all for France , rumors of insurrection came to us from the starving capital , and we heard of the red flag flying on the Hôtel-de-Ville , and the rising of the carbineers under Flourens ; and some spoke of the leader of the insurrection and called him John Buckhurst .