But, once the _engagement volontaire_ has been signed, the recruit belongs to the Legion, body and soul, until his term of enlistment is completed. For a condemned murderer to escape from the death-house at Sing-Sing were scarcely more difficult than for a legionary to make good his escape. Neither wealth, nor political pull, nor social influence, not the pleadings of his relatives nor the intercession of his ambassador can effect his discharge. Homesickness, the deadly monotony of life in garrison towns and desert outposts, the systematic brutality of the non-commissioned officers—all these have led _légionnaires_ to make desperate attempts to escape, but those who have succeeded in evading the long arm of French military law are pitifully few. Sometimes the emaciated fugitives are dragged back at the end of a rope tied to the saddle-bow of an Arab police _goumier_ to face a term of servitude in the _bataillons d’Afrique_, the terrible convict corps of the French army; but more often their mutilated bodies are found in the desert, where they have perished from starvation, sunstroke, or Touareg spear. Though the officers of the Legion are as fine as any in the French service, the non-coms, who enjoy a measure of despotic authority inconceivable in the American and British armies, are nearly always harsh and tyrannical and in some cases brutal beyond belief. The _légionnaires_ have little time for idling. They are worked like galley-slaves from five in the morning until five in the afternoon, and though they are permitted a few hours of relaxation at nightfall, their evenings are usually occupied in cleaning their kit and accoutrements in preparation for the morrow. The route-marches to which they are subjected, under an African sun and over burning sands, loaded with the excessively heavy equipment of a legionary, which includes half of a shelter-tent, fire-wood, a blanket, an overcoat, a spare uniform, emergency rations, and in the pouches a hundred rounds of ammunition, are of appalling length, frequently averaging thirty miles a day. Small wonder that throughout the French army the Legion is known as the _cavalerie à pied_!