Beau Geste (Unabridged)

A group of Legionnaires reaches Fort Zinderneuf to find everyone dead, and a note in one of the sergeant's hands confesses to the theft of a precious gem called "the Blue Water." The mystery of the gem and the deaths actually begins 15 years earlier. A kindly woman named Thatcher is raising 3 orphans, the Geste brothers, and to support them she sells the family jewel, the Blue Water, and replaces it with a fake. Young Michael "Beau" Geste and his brothers witness this deed, and to protect their guardian, they steal the phony gem and join the Foreign Legion. The mystery begins to unfold when the brothers are sent to North Africa and encounter a tyrannical sergeant.