In his own way he had found a duty to do here, though he would have laughed at anyone who should have used the word "duty" in connection with him.
In his own way, amid these wild spirits, who would have been blown from the guns' mouths to serve him, he had made good the "Coeur vaillant se fait Royaume" of his House.

And he was, moreover, by this time, a French soldier at heart and in habit, in almost all things--though the English gentleman was not dead in him under the harness of a Chasseur d'Afrique.
This morning he roused the men of his Chambree with that kindly gentleness which had gone so far in its novelty to attach their liking; went through the customary routine of his past with that exactitude and punctuality of which he was always careful to set the example; made his breakfast off some wretched onion-soup and a roll of black bread; rode fifty miles in the blazing heat of the African day at the head of a score of his chasses-marais on convoy duty, bringing in escort a long string of maize-wagons from the region of the Kabaila, which, without such guard, might have been swooped down on and borne off by some predatory tribe; and returned, jaded, weary, parched with thirst, scorched through with heat, and covered with white dust, to be kept waiting in his saddle, by his Colonel's orders, outside the barrack for three-quarters of an hour, whether to receive a command or a censure he was left in ignorance.
When the three-quarters had passed, he was told M.le Commandant had gone long ago, and did not require him! Cecil said nothing.
Yet he reeled slightly as he threw himself out of saddle; a nausea and a giddiness had come on him.

To have passed nigh an hour motionless in his stirrups, with the skies like brass above him, while he was already worn with riding from sunrise well-nigh to sunset, with little to appease hunger and less to slake thirst, made him, despite himself, stagger dizzily under a certain sense of blindness and exhaustion as he dismounted.
The Chasseur who had brought him the message caught his arm eagerly.
"Are you hurt, mon Caporal ?" Cecil shook his head.

The speaker was one known in the regiment as Petit Picpon, who had begun life as a gamin of Paris, and now bade fair to make one of the most brilliant of the soldiers of Africa.

Petit Picpon had but one drawback to this military career--he was always in insubordination; the old gamin dare-devilry was not dead in him, and never would die; and Petit Picpon accordingly was perpetually a hero in the field and a ragamuffin in the times of peace.