noon
She was a thorough scamp , but a thorough soldier , as she classified herself . Her own sex would have seen no good in her ; but her comrades-at-arms could and did . Of a surety , she missed virtues that women prize ; but , not less of a surety , had she caught some that they miss . Singing her refrain , on she dashed now , swift as a greyhound , light as a hare ; glancing here and glancing there as she bounded over the picturesque desolation of the Cashbah ; it was just noon , and there were few could brave the noon-heat as she did ; it was very still ; there was only from a little distance the roll of the French kettle-drums where the drummers of the African regiments were practicing . `` Hola ! '' cried Cigarette to herself , as her falcon-eyes darted right and left , and , like a chamois , she leaped down over the great masses of Turkish ruins , cleared the channel of a dry water-course , and alighted just in front of a Chasseur d'Afrique , who was sitting alone on a broken fragment of white marble , relic of some Moorish mosque , whose delicate columns , crowned with wind-sown grasses , rose behind him , against the deep intense blue of the cloudless sky . He was sitting thoughtfully enough , almost wearily , tracing figures in the dry sand of the soil with the point of his scabbard ; yet he had all the look about him of a brilliant French soldier , of one who , moreover , had seen hot and stern service .