Rejtő, Jenő: The three musketeers in Africa; Q 19045

11 operation is completed, you know."_7 Actually, the blow-for-blow skirmishing starts in earnest on the parade ground. Sgt Potrien calls upon three legionnaires who were seen /but not recognized/ the night before belabouring 15 merchants of a caravan in transit to come forward. No one moves. "So you don't answer, eh?" says the sergeant, smiling affably. "When, one day the President of the' Republic will ask me /this is a favourite turn of speech of Potrien's, one that becomes a kind of punch-line at the end of the book. - I.F./: 'Tell me, my dear Potrien, who were the three soldiers who so rudely dispersed that caravan?', what am I to reply to him? Eh?... I'll tell him: 'If you ask me, mon Prosiden

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, it \ías probably some Arab maidens in disguise who did that, for none of the legionnaires reported themselves.'" After this, he bursts into an ill-boding yelling and produces material evidence. The three friends /for it was they who were involved in the fracas/ are found out and sentenced to two weeks in confinement. This is a crucial incident, as it is something that happens while they are in detention that triggers the fantastic adventurous undertaking they embark upon as soon as they are released. In the detention room they find a prisoner who is waiting to join a party of prisoners from the north who are sent to a forced labour camp at Igori, way down south, where the Congo railway is under