When he has reached the coast in safety, the game of hide-and-seek begins anew. He often lies for days in some little coast town, where the Mediterranean tramp-steamers touch, concealed in a shed or in some old boat on the shore, till a ship carrying the German or English flag comes into port. He swims out to this ship in the middle of the night, climbs on board, and hides in one of the ship's boats, or in the coal-bunker. He first makes his appearance when the ship is on the high seas as a more or less pleasant surprise for the captain. He is now safe--they can hardly throw him overboard. There are, moreover, a great many captains who shut their eyes when a runaway of this sort is discovered, and even if the ship is still lying in port do not give him up. There are some even who carry their humanity so far as to stand a certain amount of unpleasantness with the authorities for his sake. These are mostly German ships, and above all, ships from Hamburg. Deserters from the Legion land over and over again in the old Hansa town, and again and again you may read in the Hamburg daily papers that deserters have arrived with such and such a ship, and have been taken charge of by the police authorities. Now and then they go just as they stand, in their uniform, with bayonet and all the rest of it, to the paper's offices and tell the worried editor about their life and sorrows in the Legion.... These are those who have had luck; the tiny proportion of penniless deserters who are successful in their flight. Not freedom but prison awaits the large majority at the finish of their attempt. The Arab gendarmes are paid a bonus on the deserters they arrest, which amounts to many thousand francs a year! The regiment is acquainted with many other means of desertion, if by "desertion" you understand every means by which the deserter can free himself from work in the Legion. In the terrible heat of summer, when the difference in temperature between day and night is simply enormous, sickness, in many a grim form, stalks through Algeria. The drinking water becomes infected, and typhoid sets in: the légionnaire who is tired of active service can be pretty sure of a long spell of illness. But to make quite certain he helps matters artificially--with an extraordinary measure in vogue in the Legion: he drinks a mixture of absinthe and milk. Every veteran in the Legion swears this hellish drink never fails to bring on an attack of fever! The object of this suicidal method of desertion is naturally to avoid work in the Legion by a long spell of sickness--its object is always attained; mostly so effectively that the man never takes his place on parade again, but rests for ever in the Legion's cemetery!