The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy [best big ereader .txt] 📗

rock, against which she had been cowering; she saw the little red gleam through the chinks of the hut; she ran up to it and fell against its wooden walls, which she began to hammer with clenched fists in an almost maniacal frenzy, while she shouted⁠—

“Armand! Armand! for God’s sake fire! your leader is near! he is coming! he is betrayed! Armand! Armand! fire in Heaven’s name!”

She was seized and thrown to the ground. She lay there moaning, bruised, not caring, but still half-sobbing, half-shrieking⁠—

“Percy, my husband, for God’s sake fly! Armand! Armand! why don’t you fire?”

“One of you stop that woman screaming,” hissed Chauvelin, who hardly could refrain from striking her.

Something was thrown over her face; she could not breathe, and perforce she was silent.

The bold singer, too, had become silent, warned, no doubt, of his impending danger by Marguerite’s frantic shrieks. The men had sprung to their feet, there was no need for further silence on their part; the very cliffs echoed the poor, heartbroken woman’s screams.

Chauvelin, with a muttered oath, which boded no good to her, who had dared to upset his most cherished plans, had hastily shouted the word of command⁠—

“Into it, my men, and let no one escape from that hut alive!”

The moon had once more emerged from between the clouds: the darkness on the cliffs had gone, giving place once more to brilliant, silvery light. Some of the soldiers had rushed to the rough, wooden door of the hut, whilst one of them kept guard over Marguerite.

The door was partially open; one of the soldiers pushed it further, but within all was darkness, the charcoal fire only lighting with a dim, red light the furthest corner of the hut. The soldiers paused automatically at the door, like machines waiting for further orders.

Chauvelin, who was prepared for a violent onslaught from within, and for a vigorous resistance from the four fugitives, under cover of the darkness, was for the moment paralyzed with astonishment when he saw the soldiers standing there at attention, like sentries on guard, whilst not a sound proceeded from the hut.

Filled with strange, anxious foreboding, he, too, went to the door of the hut, and peering into the gloom, he asked quickly⁠—

“What is the meaning of this?”

“I think, citoyen, that there is no one there now,” replied one of the soldiers imperturbably.

“You have not let those four men go?” thundered Chauvelin, menacingly. “I ordered you to let no man escape alive!⁠—Quick, after them all of you! Quick, in every direction!”

The men, obedient as machines, rushed down the rocky incline towards the beach, some going off to right and left, as fast as their feet could carry them.

“You and your men will pay with your lives for this blunder, citoyen sergeant,” said Chauvelin viciously to the sergeant who had been in charge of the men; “and you, too, citoyen,” he added turning with a snarl to Desgas, “for disobeying my orders.”

“You ordered us to wait, citoyen, until the tall Englishman arrived and joined the four men in the hut. No one came,” said the sergeant sullenly.

“But I ordered you just now, when the woman screamed, to rush in and let no one escape.”

“But, citoyen, the four men who were there before had been gone some time, I think⁠ ⁠…”

“You think?⁠—You?⁠ ⁠…” said Chauvelin, almost choking with fury, “and you let them go⁠ ⁠…”

“You ordered us to wait, citoyen,” protested the sergeant, “and to implicitly obey your commands on pain of death. We waited.”

“I heard the men creep out of the hut, not many minutes after we took cover, and long before the woman screamed,” he added, as Chauvelin seemed still quite speechless with rage.

“Hark!” said Desgas suddenly.

In the distance the sound of repeated firing was heard. Chauvelin tried to peer along the beach below, but as luck would have it, the fitful moon once more hid her light behind a bank of clouds, and he could see nothing.

“One of you go into the hut and strike a light,” he stammered at last.

Stolidly the sergeant obeyed: he went up to the charcoal fire and lit the small lantern he carried in his belt; it was evident that the hut was quite empty.

“Which way did they go?” asked Chauvelin.

“I could not tell, citoyen,” said the sergeant; “they went straight down the cliff first, then disappeared behind some boulders.”

“Hush! what was that?”

All three men listened attentively. In the far, very far distance, could be heard faintly echoing and already dying away, the quick, sharp splash of half a dozen oars. Chauvelin took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

“The schooner’s boat!” was all he gasped.

Evidently Armand St. Just and his three companions had managed to creep along the side of the cliffs, whilst the men, like true soldiers of the well-drilled Republican army, had with blind obedience, and in fear of their own lives, implicitly obeyed Chauvelin’s orders⁠—to wait for the tall Englishman, who was the important capture.

They had no doubt reached one of the creeks which jut far out to sea on this coast at intervals; behind this, the boat of the Daydream must have been on the lookout for them, and they were by now safely on board the British schooner.

As if to confirm this last supposition, the dull boom of a gun was heard from out at sea.

“The schooner, citoyen,” said Desgas, quietly; “she’s off.”

It needed all Chauvelin’s nerve and presence of mind not to give way to a useless and undignified access of rage. There was no doubt now, that once again, that accursed British head had completely outwitted him. How he had contrived to reach the hut, without being seen by one of the thirty soldiers who guarded the spot, was more than Chauvelin could conceive. That he had done so before the thirty men had arrived on the cliff was, of course, fairly clear, but how he had come over in Reuben Goldstein’s cart,