The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas [read out loud books .TXT] 📗

to his eye, and uttered a cry. He believed that the vessel, which appeared to be distant about cannon-shot, had at a single bound cleared the whole distance. But, on withdrawing the instrument from his eye, he saw that, except the way which the balancelle had been able to make during that brief instant, it was still at the same distance.

“So,” murmured the sailor, “they can see us as we see them.”

“They see us,” said Aramis, and sank again into impassibility.

“What!—they see us!” said Yves. “Impossible!”

“Well, captain, look yourself,” said the sailor. And he passed him the glass.

“Monseigneur assures me that the devil has nothing to do with this?” asked Yves.

Aramis shrugged his shoulders.

The skipper lifted the glass to his eye. “Oh! monseigneur,” said he, “it is a miracle—there they are; it seems as if I were going to touch them. Twenty-five men at least! Ah! I see the captain forward. He holds a glass like this, and is looking at us. Ah! he turns round, and gives an order; they are rolling a piece of cannon forward—they are loading it—pointing it. Misericorde! they are firing at us!”

And by a mechanical movement, the skipper put aside the telescope, and the pursuing ship, relegated to the horizon, appeared again in its true aspect. The vessel was still at the distance of nearly a league, but the maneuver sighted thus was not less real. A light cloud of smoke appeared beneath the sails, more blue than they, and spreading like a flower opening; then, at about a mile from the little canoe, they saw the ball take the crown off two or three waves, dig a white furrow in the sea, and disappear at the end of it, as inoffensive as the stone with which, in play, a boy makes ducks and drakes. It was at once a menace and a warning.

“What is to be done?” asked the patron.

“They will sink us!” said Goenne, “give us absolution, monseigneur!” And the sailors fell on their knees before him.

“You forget that they can see you,” said he.

“That is true!” said the sailors, ashamed of their weakness. “Give us your orders, monseigneur, we are prepared to die for you.”

“Let us wait,” said Aramis.

“How—let us wait?”

“Yes; do you not see, as you just now said, that if we endeavor to fly, they will sink us?”

“But, perhaps,” the patron ventured to say, “perhaps under cover of night, we could escape them.”

“Oh!” said Aramis, “they have, no doubt, Greek fire with which to lighten their own course and ours likewise.”

At the same moment, as if the vessel was responsive to the appeal of Aramis, a second cloud of smoke mounted slowly to the heavens, and from the bosom of that cloud sparkled an arrow of flame, which described a parabola like a rainbow, and fell into the sea, where it continued to burn, illuminating a space of a quarter of a league in diameter.

The Bretons looked at each other in terror. “You see plainly,” said Aramis, “it will be better to wait for them.”

The oars dropped from the hands of the sailors, and the bark, ceasing to make way, rocked motionless upon the summits of the waves. Night came on, but still the ship drew nearer. It might be imagined it redoubled its speed with darkness. From time to time, as a vulture rears its head out of its nest, the formidable Greek fire darted from its sides, and cast its flame upon the ocean like an incandescent snowfall. At last it came within musket-shot. All the men were on deck, arms in hand; the cannoniers were at their guns, the matches burning. It might be thought they were about to board a frigate and to fight a crew superior in number to their own, not to attempt the capture of a canoe manned by four people.

“Surrender!” cried the commander of the balancelle, with the aid of his speaking-trumpet.

The sailors looked at Aramis. Aramis made a sign with his head. Yves waved a white cloth at the end of a gaff. This was like striking their flag. The pursuer came on like a race-horse. It launched a fresh Greek fire, which fell within twenty paces of the little canoe, and threw a light upon them as white as sunshine.

“At the first sign of resistance,” cried the commander of the balancelle, “fire!” The soldiers brought their muskets to the present.

“Did we not say we surrendered?” said Yves.

“Alive, alive, captain!” cried one excited soldier, “they must be taken alive.”

“Well, yes—living,” said the captain. Then turning towards the Bretons, “Your lives are safe, my friends!” cried he, “all but the Chevalier d’Herblay.”

Aramis stared imperceptibly. For an instant his eye was fixed upon the depths of the ocean, illumined by the last flashes of the Greek fire, which ran along the sides of the waves, played on the crests like plumes, and rendered still darker and more terrible the gulfs they covered.

“Do you hear, monseigneur?” said the sailors.

“Yes.”

“What are your orders?”

“Accept!”

“But you, monseigneur?”

Aramis leaned still more forward, and dipped the ends of his long white fingers in the green limpid waters of the sea, to which he turned with smiles as to a friend.

“Accept!” repeated he.

“We accept,” repeated the sailors; “but what security have we?”

“The word of a gentleman,” said the officer. “By my rank and by my name I swear that all except M. le Chevalier d’Herblay shall have their lives spared. I am lieutenant of the king’s frigate the ‘Pomona,’ and my name is Louis Constant de Pressigny.”

With a rapid gesture, Aramis—already bent over the side of the bark towards the sea—drew himself up, and with a flashing eye, and a smile upon his lips, “Throw out the ladder, messieurs,” said he, as if the command had belonged to him. He was obeyed. When Aramis, seizing the rope ladder, walked straight up to the commander, with a firm step, looked at him earnestly, made a sign to him with his hand, a mysterious and unknown sign at sight of which the officer turned pale, trembled, and bowed his head, the sailors were profoundly astonished. Without a word Aramis then raised his hand to the eyes of the commander and showed him the collet of a ring he wore on the ring-finger of his left hand. And while making this sign Aramis, draped in cold and haughty majesty, had the air of an emperor giving his hand to be kissed. The commandant, who for a moment had raised his head, bowed a second time with marks of the most profound respect. Then stretching his hand out, in his turn, towards the poop, that is to say, towards his own cabin, he drew back to allow Aramis