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HEAVENS above, the indignation! The entire commune of Bordet was outraged: its rampant patriotism was stirred to its depths.
Think of it! That abominable gang of English desperadoes had been at work in the region. Aye! within a stone's throw of Bordet itself. For Bordet is an important commune, look you! Situated less than half a dozen leagues from Paris, and possessing a fine château which might be termed a stronghold, it had the proud distinction of having harboured important prisoners at different times--aristos, awaiting condemnation and death--when the great prisons of the capital were, mayhap, over-full, or it was thought more expedient to erect a guillotine on the spot.
Thus it was that the ci-devant Bishop of Chenonceaux--a man of eighty who should have known better than to defy the law--and the equally old Curé de Venelle had been incarcerated in Fort St. Arc, and it was from there, and on the very eve of the arrival of Mme la Guillotine and her attendant executioner on a visit to Bordet, that those two old calotins were spirited away under the very nose of Citizen Sergeant Renault, one of the shrewdest soldiers in the department and more keen after spies than a terrier is after rats.
Sergeant Renault was soundly rebuked for what was mercifully termed his carelessness, and he was ordered off to defy Holland to rejoin his regiment, there to expiate his misdemeanour by fighting against the English. And good luck to him, if he came home with all his fingers and toes and the tip still on his nose. The authorities in Paris, on the other hand, despatched a special officer down to Bordet to take over the command of the detachment of National Guard stationed at Fort St. Arc, as well as to supervise the organization of the police in the district.
Now, if the English spies dared to show their
ugly faces in Bordet they would have to deal with Citizen
Papillon--a very different man to that fool Renault, whose
popularity and reputation had effectually gone down with
him. A day or two after the arrival of Papillon, a batch of
prisoners were brought to Fort St. Arc: ci-devant
priests Papillon, sitting in state in the Taverne des
Trois Rats, surrounded by an admiring crowd of citizens,
gave it as his opinion that not the devil himself--so be it
there was a devil--could spirit the aristos out of St. Arc.
"And look you," he went on
sententiously, "look you, citizens all! It has come to
my ears, that there are those among you who, for filthy
lucre, have actually lent a hand to those abominable English
spies in their treacherous devices against the security of
the State. Now, let me tell you this: if I catch any man of
you thus trafficking with those devils I will shoot him on
sight like a dog!"
And he looked so fierce when he said this,
and rolled his eyes so ferociously that many a man felt an
icy shiver coursing down his spine.
"Therefore," concluded Citizen
Papillon, "if any one of you here know aught of the
doings of that gang of malefactors, or of the place of their
abode, let him come forward now like a man, and a patriot,
and impart such information to me."
There was silence after that--silence all the
more remarkable as the Taverne des Trois Rats was densely
packed with men, all of whom hung spellbound on the
irascible sergeant's lips. Citizen Papillon, having
delivered himself of such sound patriotic principles,
proceeded to quench his thirst, and whilst he did so, the
silence gradually broke, firstly into a soft murmur, then
into louder whispering; finally a few words were
distinguishable above a general hum which sounded now like
the buzzing inside a beehive.
"Tell him, Citizen Chapeau!" one or
two men kept on repeating in a hoarse whisper. "It is
thy duty to tell."
Thus admonished and egged on too by sundry
prods from persuasive elbows and fists, a tall, ungainly
youth slowly worked his way in and out of the forest of
tables, chair, and intervening humanity, until he came
within a few feet of the redoubtable Papillon, where he
remained standing, obviously timid and undecided.
"Well, Citizen, what is it?" the
Sergeant condescended to say in an encouraging tone of
voice.
"It is--it is that--" the youth
answered. Then he suddenly blurted out the whole astounding
fact: "It is that I know where the English spies have
their night quarters!" he said.
"What?" And Sergeant Papillon
nearly fell off his chair, so staggered and excited was he.
He appeared quite speechless for the moment, nor did Chapeau
say anything more: his courage had once more sunk into his
sabots. Then someone volunteered the remark:
"Citizen Glapeau lives on the outskirts
of the commune. His father is a mender of
boats."
"Well, what of that?" Papillon
demanded.
"My father and I have seen strange forms
of late prowling about the river bank o' nights,"
Chapeau said with a swift if transitory return to courage.
Papillon, with characteristic keenness,
seized upon these scanty facts, and within a few minutes had
dragged from the timid Chapeau all the information he
needed.
Chapeau's story was simple enough. Close to
the river bank, not a quarter of a league from his father's
hut, there was a derelict cottage. Citizen Papillon would
not know it, as he was a stranger in these parts, but
everyone in Bordet knew the place and could go to it
blindfolded. Eh bien! Chapeau could swear he had seen
vague forms moving about inside the cottage and, in fact--in
fact--well, he himself had taken wine and food there once or
twice--oh, certainly not more than twice--at the command of
a tall foreigner, who might have been an Englishman.
This was neither the place nor the time to
deal with Chapeau's misdemeanour in the matter of parleying
with and feeding the enemies of the country. Sergeant
Papillon for the nonce contented himself with admonishing
the delinquent and frightening him into a state bordering on
imbecility. After which he turned to his subordinate,
Corporal Joly, and fell to whispering with him. It was
understood that measures were being taken for a nocturnal
expedition against the English spies, and after awhile the
agitated throng fled out of the Taverne des Trois Rats and
men returned to their homes to ponder over the events which
were about to plunge the peaceful commune of Bordet
into a veritable hurricane of excitement.
The derelict cottage which stood with its
back to the towpath had no roof; only two of its outside
walls were whole, the others, built of mud and stone, had
partially fallen in. Inside, the place was littered with
debris of plaster and of lath: the front door had gone,
leaving a wide, shapeless gap in its place: the inside walls
were partly demolished, and there was no trace of any
staircase.
In the shelter of these ruins vague forms
were moving. The night was dark and very still after the
rain. The moon was up, but invisible behind a thin veiling
of clouds which tempered her light into a grey half-tone
that lay over the river like a ghost-like pall and made the
shadows appear almost solid upon the banks. The
miscellaneous noises which during the day filled the
immediate neighbourhood of the towpath with life and
animation had long since died away: all sounds were stilled
in the direction of the boat-mender's workshop some two
hundred mètres away. All that could be heard
now was the soughing of the night-breeze through the reeds
or the monotonous drip-drip of lingering raindrops from the
branches of the willow trees. Even the waterfowl and tiny,
prowling beasts were at rest, and the lazy river made no
sound as she lapped her flat banks with silent somnolence.
The men who were sheltering in the derelict
cottage did not speak. They were of the type whom a life of
adventure and of deadly perils constantly affronted, had
endorsed with the capacity for perfect quietude and
protracted silences. It is only the idle and shallow-witted
who are for ever restless and discursive. Of time, they took
no count: the whole of the night was before them, with its
every moment mapped out for action and for thought.
Then suddenly one of them spoke:
"They should be here by now," he
said in a soft whisper, scarce distinguishable from the
soughing of the wind among the rushes, "unless the
worthy Papillon has changed his mind. You'll have to hold
them a good quarter of an hour when they do come," he
added, with a pleasant laugh.
A happy chuckle came in response to this
command.
He who had first spoken straightened out his
tall figure and gazed above the low parapet of broken
masonry toward the remote distance where the solid,
irregular pile of Fort St. Arc stood out spectral, almost
weird, against the midnight sky.
"When Ffoulkes and I have done our
work," he resumed after awhile, "we'll meet as
arranged. I don't know how many of us there will be, but
we'll do our best."
"I believe that my information is
correct," another voice put in quietly. "There are
half a dozen old priests shut up in the topmost story of the
tower they call Duchesse Anne."
"Nothing could be better," the
chief went on, "as the tower is close to the river and
very easy of access. I wonder, now," he added
thoughtfully, "why they chose it."
"I wondered, too," the other
assented. "It seems the prisoners were moved in there
yesterday."
"Well, so long as we have the boats . .
."
"We have two: and Hastings is in charge
of them, in the backwater just below the Venelle
woods."
"Then there is nothing more to
arrange," the chief concluded, "and so long as
you, Tony, and Holte can keep that fool Papillon and his
detachment off our hands until they are too tired to do more
mischief, Ffoulkes and I will have ample time for our work
and should certainly be at the back-water before dawn."
Before any of the others could give reply,
however, he gave a peremptory: "Hush!" then added
quickly: "Here they are! Come, Ffoulkes!"
To any but a practised ear, the silence of
the night was still unbroken: only such men as these, whose
senses were keyed up to the presence of danger, like the
beasts in the desert or jungle, could have perceived that
soft and subtle sound of men stirring far away. A detachment
of the National Guard was in truth moving forward stealthily
along the towpath and the adjacent fields from the direction
of Bordet: their thinly-shod feet made no noise on the soft,
rain-sodden earth. They crept along, their backs bent nearly
double, they carried their muskets in their hands and each
man had a pistol in his belt.
In the derelict cottage all was silence
again. Of the four men who had been there, two had gone.
These two were also creeping along under cover of the
darkness, but their way lay in the direction of Bordet. They
appeared as one with the shadows of the night, which
enveloped them as in a shroud. At times they crawled flat on
their faces, like reptiles in the ditches, at others they
flitted like spectres across an intervening field.
When, after awhile, the body of Papillon's
men was in their rear, they struck boldly across to the
towpath, and thereafter, with elbows held to their sides,
swiftly and with measured tread they ran along towards Fort
St. Arc. At a distance of some two hundred
mètres from the pile they halted. A spinney
composed of alders, birch, and ash gave them shelter; the
undergrowth below hid them from view.
"What disgusting objects we must
look," one of the men said with a quaint, happy laugh.
"I vow that confounded mud has even got into my
teeth."
He drew a scented handkerchief from his
pocket and carefully wiped his face and hands.
"I wonder," he said, musing,
"if it is possible for any man to be quite such a fool
as Papillon appears. Well, we shall see."
The other, in the meanwhile, had groped his
way to a dense portion in the undergrowth, whence after some
searching in the dark, he brought out a bundle of clothes.
"Hastings has not failed us," he
said simply. "And the others will be waiting in the
Venelle woods."
Whereupon the two men proceeded to divest
themselves of the rough and mud-stained garments which they
were wearing, and to don the clothes which their friend had
laid ready for them. These consisted of uniforms of the
National Guard, a disguise oft affected by members of the
League of the Scarlet Pimpernel: blue coats with red
facings, white breeches and high, black gaiters reaching
above the knee, all very much worn and stained.
"Excellent!" the taller of the two
men said when he had fastened the last button. "Now,
Ffoulkes, remember! You wait below until I give the signal.
You have the rope, of course?"
He did not wait for a reply, but started to
walk at a quick pace towards the fort. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes,
Bart., one of the smartest exquisites in London, followed
close on his heels, with a heavy-knotted rope wound around
his person.
Everything had been pre-arranged. Within a
few minutes the two men had reached the edge of the spinney,
and the irregular pile of the old fort, with the tower known
as the Duchesse Anne in the foreground, rose grim and
majestic above them. The Duchesse Anne was an irregular
heptagonal tower surmounted by a battlement. There were only
two small windows, one above the other, in the façade
which fronted the spinney: they were perched high up, close
to the battlemented room; one of these windows, the lower
one of the two, showed a dim light.
Above it, to the immediate left, there was a
square, flat projection which might have served as a
look-out place or a concealing closet. A tiny window was cut
into its face. To the right and left of the tower, the
irregular roofs and battlements of the fort, some of them in
ruins, all of them obviously neglected and disused, rose in
irregular masses against the sky. Shallow, rocky slopes,
covered with rough grasses and shrubs, led up to the foot of
the fort, save where these had been cut into to form a
bridge that led to the main entrance portal. The night had
become very dark. Heavy clouds were rolling in from the
south-west, completely obliterating the moon, and a few
heavy raindrops had begun to fall.
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes now wound the knotted
rope around his chief's body, and a minute later the latter
began his ascent of the slopes. Immediately the darkness
swallowed him up. Sir Percy Blakeney, one of the most
powerful athletes of his time, was possessed of almost
abnormal physique and was as agile as a cat. To him the
climbing of a rough, stone wall did not present the
slightest difficulty. Here, a century-old ivy and a stout
iron pipe gave him all the help he needed. Within five
minutes he was on a level with the lower of the two
windows--the one which showed a dim light, like a sleepy,
half-open eye, through the darkness clinging with one hand
to the ivy and with the other to a stone projection, he
peeped in through the window. It was innocent of glass. One
bar of iron divided it vertically in two, leaving, so Sir
Percy ascertained at once, sufficient space for the passage
of a human body. The room on which it gave was large and
bare. Blakeney, for the space of a second or two, thought it
was empty. He seized the iron bar and limbed upon the sill;
this gave him a commanding view of the room. It was innocent
of furniture, save for one chair, and in the corner, on a
level with the window, a table.
In front of this table, kneeling upon the
floor, and with their heads buried in their hands, six men
were kneeling. Sir Percy could only see their backs, clad in
black soutanes, shiny at the seams, threadbare across
the shoulders, and the worn soles of their shoes. The men
were praying. One of them was reciting a Litany: the others
gave the responses.
Without another thought, Sir Percy Blakeney
threw one shapely leg over the window-sill, then the other,
and dropped gently down into the room.
In one moment the six men were on their feet,
with a loud cry of triumph which had nothing priestly in its
ring, and through which one voice, hoarse with excitement,
rang out commanding and distinct.
"My gallant Scarlet Pimpernel, so then
we meet at last!"
In less time than that of a heart-beat Sir
Percy realized the magnitude of the trap which had been laid
for him. In less than one second he saw himself surrounded;
at a call from his first assailants, half a dozen more men
had rushed into the room; he felt a dozen pairs of hands
laid about his person and heard the cries of exultation and
the shouts of derision. He saw the pale eyes of his
arch-enemy Chauvelin glistening with triumphant malice as
they met his own across the room.
A dozen pairs of hands! No wonder that
Chauvelin called to him with a complacent grin.
"I think we have fairly caught you this
time, eh, my fine gentleman!"
He looked so evil just then, so cruel and
withal so triumphant that Blakeney's imperturbable humour
got the better of his grim sense of danger. He threw back
his head and a loud, merry peal of laughter woke the echoes
of the old fort.
"By Gad!" he said lightly. "I
verily believe, sir, that you have."
They thought that he meant to sell his life
dearly; one or two of them raised the butt-ends of their
pistols, ready to strike the struggling lion on the head.
But that struggle was brief. Just once he freed himself from
them all. Just once did he send one or two of his
assailants, with a mighty blow of his powerful fists,
sprawling, half-senseless, against the wall. Just once did
Hébert "You fool," he said with a snarl,
"this is not the time to kill At that same moment Blakeney raised his hand,
and before anyone could intervene he flung something white
and heavy with unerring precision and lightning rapidity
through the window. But what was one man's strength--even if
it be almost superhuman--against the weight of numbers?
"You are caught, my fine Scarlet
Pimpernel!" Chauvelin kept on repeating in a shrill,
excited voice, and rubbed his thin, claw-like hands
complacently one against the other "You are caught at
last and this time . . ."
He left the sentence uncompleted, but there
was a world of vengeful malice in those unspoken words.
Quickly enough the end came. One man used the butt-end of
his pistol and struck at the lion from behind. The blow
caught him at the back of the head and for a moment his
senses reeled: whereupon they got him down flat upon the
table and tied him to it with the knotted rope which he had
about him.
Even through half-swooning senses, he was
aware of Chauvelin's thin, colourless face thrust close to
his own.
"Fairly caught, eh, my gallant
Pimpernel?" the Terrorist whispered with a malicious
chortle; "there are four calotins in the room above and
you have fallen like a bird into my trap this time."
"Aye! and been trussed like a
fowl," Sir Percy gave cool reply. "The last time
you trussed me like this was on the sands off Calais. On
that occasion too you had donned clerical garb, my friend.
'Tis all of good augury."
Chauvelin laughed; he felt secure at last. No
more bargaining with the Scarlet Pimpernel, no more
parleyings. The guillotine here in the courtyard of the fort
as soon as it could be brought down from Paris. He would
send a courier for it at once. In less than twelve hours, it
could be here. In the meanwhile, unless indeed supernatural
agencies were at work, there was no fear that this trussed
bundle of anguished humanity could escape out of this trap.
Blakeney securely tied to the table, with
several mètres of rope wound about his body, was as
helpless as his most bitter enemy could have wished. For the
nonce he seemed to have lost consciousness. He lay quite
still, with eyes closed, and slender hands--the hands of an
idealist and of an exquisite--hanging limp and nerveless
from the wrist.
That was the last vision which Chauvelin had
of him as he finally went out of the room in the wake of his
friends. They took the lantern away with them and left the
captured giant in darkness. After which they filed out
through the door and pushed the heavy bolts home. Even so
half a dozen men were left on guard outside: the others
quietly went their way, satisfied.
How long Sir Percy remained thus pinioned in
total darkness, he could not have told you. Time for him had
ceased to be. That he had not been altogether blind to the
possibility of this danger was proved by the fact that he
had a message ready for Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, in his pocket,
carefully weighted with a disc of lead. It contained less
than half a dozen words and was characteristic both of the
man and of his friends, in whom he trusted. The words were
"Am helpless. Wait for signal." This message he
had succeeded in flinging out of the window before he had
been finally All that prescience could accomplish had
therefore been done; from henceforth luck, indomitable will
and untiring pluck could alone save this reckless adventurer
from the consequence of his own daring.
Indomitable will and pluck--the pluck to wait
and to remain quiescent at this moment when the husbanding
of strength perhaps meant ultimate safety. He did not
struggle, nor did he waste his energies, great as they were,
in futile attempts to free himself from his bonds. The men,
who had set the cunning trap, were not likely to have
bungled over the tying of knots; therefore Blakeney,
pinioned and helpless, was content to wait and to watch--to
watch for this swift passage of fortune--the quaint, old
saying in which he had so often professed belief: "Of
fortune the wayward god with the one hair upon his bald
pate, the one hair which he, who is bold may seize and
therewith enchain the god to his chariot."
He waited and listened. No sound came from
the other side of the door: the soldiers on guard were
probably asleep; but overhead men were stirring; shuffling
footsteps moved to and fro across the floor. The old
calotins were watching and praying, and he who had
set out to rescue them lay like an insentient log, the
victim of a clumsy feint. At thought of this Sir Percy swore
inwardly, and his fine, sensitive lips broke into a
self-deprecating smile.
But presently he fell asleep.
When he awoke, he did so because the darkness
about him had become less dense. The moon had tom a rent in
her mantle of clouds: she peeped in through the window; a
shaft of her pale, cold light lay along the floor.
Pinioned as he was, Sir Percy could not do
more than slightly raise his head and turn his eyes so as to
search with cat-like glance the remotest angles of his
prison. Then suddenly his roaming eyes alighted upon an
object which lay on the floor just beneath the window. A
knife! the one wherewith Hébert had tried to stab him
and which Chauvelin had knocked out of his colleague's hand.
There it had lain all this while--an unseen salvation.
Strength? of course it required strength! and
pluck and determination! But here was a man who had all
three in a more than a human degree. Tied to the table, his
arms and legs helpless, he had just his powerful shoulders
as a leverage, and to a certain extent his elbows. With
their aid he started first a gentle oscillating movement of
the table, which was a rickety one, the floor being old too,
made of deal planks roughly put together and very uneven.
Gradually by regular pressure first with one shoulder and
elbow, then with the other, the table rocked more and more:
presently it tottered, partly swung back again, staggered
again and finally came down with a terrific clatter on the
floor, bearing its human burden with it to the ground. A
broken arm, leg, or shoulder? Perhaps! The adventurer would
not think of that! If he did not succeed in getting out of
this, he would be no worse off with a broken limb than he
had been before. And there was always the chance! At this
moment it meant life to him and to others.
The fraças had, of course, roused the
soldiers on guard. Sir Percy lying prone now, with the table
on top of him, heard them stirring the other side of the
door. Anon the bolts were pushed open, the heavy latch
lifted. The chance! my God, the chance! The chance of what
those miserable soldiers would do when they found the
prisoner in such a precarious position. And then there was
the knife! My God, do not let them see that knife . . . and
guess! Blakeney lying there, half-numb with the fall,
bruised more than he knew, could just perceive its dim
outline in the penumbra less than half a dozen feel: away.
There followed a couple of minutes of suspense more
agonizing perhaps than any through which the bold Scarlet
Pimpernel had gone through this night. He heard the
footsteps of the soldiers entering the room. One, two, three
of them. One came up close to him, and laughed. Then the
others laughed too. No doubt, the mysterious Englishman,
endowed by popular superstition with supernatural powers,
looked The knife still lay there on the ground, not
half a dozen feet away, and the moon once more veiled her
light behind a bank of grey clouds.
To drag himself along the ground with
scarcely any noise was still a difficult task, but it was
not a superhuman one. Slowly, painfully but surely Blakeney
soon lessened the distance between himself and that weapon
of salvation. Five minutes later his hand had closed on the
knife, and he was rubbing its edge against that portion of
the rope which he was able to reach. The labour was arduous
and time was speeding on. Darkness had once more become
absolute: through the open window there came the scent of
moisture, and the faint sound of dripping rain upon the
ivy-leaves. A distant church-clock struck three--two hours
then before the break of dawn!--two hours and there was such
a lot more to be done.
A quarter of an hour later the first piece of
rope had given way, and the slow process of disentangling it
had begun. It required an infinity of patience and above all
absolute noiselessness. But it was done in time. At last the
prisoner was free from the rope and he was able gently to
crawl away from under the table. A moment later he was at
the window peering out in the darkness. A thin drizzle was
falling, and the soft, moist air of early morning cooled his
burning forehead.
"By God!" he murmured to himself.
"May I never be in so tight a hole again. All my
compliments, my good M. Chauvelin. The trap was
magnificently laid. But I was a fool to fall into it. I
wonder if there is anyone down there now----"
Leaning out of the window, he detached a
small piece of loose mortar from the outside wall and let it
fall into the depth below. At once his keen ear detected the
sound of men stirring down there, sitting up, mayhap, to
listen, or merely turning over in their sleep.
"They've left nothing to chance,"
he murmured with a good-humoured chuckle. Fortunately, when
his enemies brought him down they had not searched through
his pockets, so now from an inner one he took a pencil and a
tablet, and, blindly, for the darkness was complete, he
wrote a long message to his friend. When he had finished, he
listened for a moment; no sound now came from below;
whereupon he gave a gentle call, like the melancholy hooting
of an owl. It was answered immediately from out of the midst
of the spinney, and Blakeney then flung the second message
to Sir Andrew--a message of instructions, on the fulfilment
of which depended not so much his own life, as that of four
helpless, innocent priests.
After which he wound the precious, knotted
rope once more around his person, threw one leg over the
sill, and, a moment later, started to climb once more up the
side of the ancient, ivy-covered wall.
Midnight had struck at the church tower of
Ste Cunégonde when Sergeant Papillon returned from
his expedition to the derelict cottage. After a siege
lasting over a quarter of an hour, during which those
satané Englishmen had kept up a wild fusillade
from the ruined house and succeeded in putting half a dozen
of Papillon's best men hors de combat, the Sergeant
had given the order to charge, and the men had, indeed,
boldly rushed into the place--only to find the cottage
entirely deserted! It was scoured in every nook and cranny,
but not a sign of human life could there be found, nothing
but the usual heap of debris, the litter of broken laths, of
masonry and scrap-iron. The Englishmen had vanished as
if the earth had swallowed them up. Indeed, the silence and
desolation appeared spectral and terrifying. And it was in
very truth the earth that had swallowed up those mad
Englishmen. They must have crept through a disused drain
which gave from a back room of the cottage direct into the
bank of the river. Here they must have lain perdu
half-in and half-out of the water, hidden by the reeds,
until the soldiers were busy searching the cottage, when no
doubt they made their way, under cover of the reeds, and
along the bank to a place of safety.
Papillon had been obliged to leave the
wounded in the derelict cottage and had returned somewhat
crestfallen, glad to find that his discomfiture was not
counted against him. In very truth he could not guess that
his expedition had succeeded over-well in its object, which
was to throw dust in the eyes of that astute Scarlet
Pimpernel by persuading him that here were a lot of louts
and fools whom it was mighty easy to hoodwink. Since then
the mysterious Englishman had been captured and was now
lying a helpless prisoner in one of the topmost rooms of the
Duchesse Anne. There was nothing to fear from him. The
English spy, completely helpless, was so well guarded, that
not a host of his hobgoblins could trick his warders now. A
dozen men outside his door, he himself little more than an
insentient log, and a good watch at the foot of the tower!
What cabalistic power was there to free him from it all?
Chauvelin, Hébert and the other Terrorists--all
members of the Committee of Public Safety, who looked
strangely out of the picture in their clerical garb, with
the tricolour sash peeping out beneath their
soutanes--finally retired satisfied, leaving Papillon
and the men whom he had brought back with him on duty in the
guard-room for the night. They would be relieved one hour
before break of dawn.
It all occurred when the church-clock of Ste
Cunégonde was striking four. Some of the soldiers had
been relieving the tedium of the night by playing dominoes,
others by recounting the legendary adventures which popular
belief ascribed to the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel. All
around, the place was still. It was good to think of that
turbulent Englishman lying so still and helpless in the room
above. Then suddenly the voice of the sentry rang with a
quick challenge through the silence of the night. It was
immediately followed by the sharp report of a musket-shot,
and before Papillon and his men could collect their somewhat
sleepy senses the passage and vestibule outside the
guard-room, as well as the courtyard beyond, were filled
with awesome sounds of men shouting, of hoarse commands, of
cries, objurgations and curses. Papillon stepped out of the
guard-room. In a moment the confused hubbub was changed into
the one terrifying phrase repeated by a number of rushing,
gesticulating men: "The Englishman has escaped!"
"Where? How?"
But nobody could say for certain. The facts
appeared to be that the sentry at the bridge-head had heard
a sound, and seen a man running from the direction of the
river. Both the sentinels fired, but in the darkness they
missed their man. Just then the detachment of National
Guard, who had come from their headquarters at Bordet to
relieve Papillon, came into view at the bridge-head. With
them was one of the members of the Committee of Public
Safety, still in his clerical garb and with the tricolour
scarf gleaming beneath his soutane. He shouted a
peremptory order: "After him, Citizen Soldiers! or by
Satan your heads shall pay for it, if the Englishman
escapes!" This order the sentry dared not disobey,
seeing whence it came, and both the men immediately gave
chase, aided by those who had been on guard at the foot of
Duchesse Anne.
But beyond that no one knew anything
definite, and presently the question was raised: "Had
the Englishman really escaped?"
This, Sergeant Papillon set out immediately
to ascertain. A winding stone staircase leads from the
vestibule into the tower. He went up, followed by his own
men, while the relief guard remained in the vestibule.
No sooner, however, had the last of the
Sergeant's men disappeared round the bend of the stairs,
than these newcomers silently and without haste filed out of
the vestibule, crossed the narrow courtyard, the entrance
portal and the bridge, and a minute later had disappeared
amidst the undergrowth of the spinney. Stealthily, warily,
but with unerring certainty they made their way through the
thick scrub, striking inland first then immediately behind
St. Arc and back toward the river. They had thus walked in a
complete semi-circle around the fort, and reached that
portion of it which consists of a hollow, ruined tower
rising sheer out of the water and abutting on the
battlemented roof of the main building.
"Now," said one of the men in a
quick whisper, "we should soon be seeing Blakeney up
there, and those poor old priests being lowered by him from
the roof."
Hardly were the words out of his mouth than
the melancholy cry of an owl came softly sounding from the
battlements above.
"And here he is! God bless him!"
came fervently as if in unison from the hearts of the
others.
Blakeney had succeeded in the task which he
had set out to do. He had climbed into the room under the
roof where four unfortunate priests had been imprisoned,
preparatory to their being sent to death, for the crime of
adhering to their religion and administering it in the way
they believed the Divine Master had taught them to do. Their
gallant rescuer had soon found a means of breaking through
the ceiling and getting out upon the roof. With the help of
the table, the chairs, and the precious rope, he contrived
to aid these four unfortunates to escape from their hideous
prison. They were sturdy country-folk, these old priests,
and did not shrink from perilous adventure, encouraged as
they were by a kindly voice and helped along by a sure and
firm hand.
And whilst the Duchesse Anne tower, the
staircases, vestibule and courtyard of the fort were singing
from end to end with shouts, and words of command, with
curses and derisive laughter, the Scarlet Pimpernel, in a
remote corner of the fort which the tumult and confusion had
not yet reached carefully lowered his four old
protégés down from the roof into the arms of
his friends. Quietly he did it, without haste and without
delay, but aided by the members of his league not one whit
less devoted, less resourceful than he. There were just five
minutes in which the work of rescue had to be done; after
which the confusion and the search would spread to this
lonely spot, and the noble act of self-sacrifice would have
been offered up in vain.
But it was all accomplished in the time, and
soon the little party, under cover of that darkest moment
which comes just before the dawn, were speeding up the river
bank toward the Venelle woods, where in a lonely backwater
one of their gallant band of heroes was waiting for them
with the boats.
The chief was the last to step into the boat,
and as the others began to row, and the four old priests
reverently whispered a prayer of thanksgiving to God, he
looked with eyes curiously filled with regret on the grim
pile that stood out vaguely silhouetted against the dark
sky.
"By Gad!" he murmured with an
entirely happy little laugh. "I would not have missed
this night's adventure for a fortune. I am quite sorry to
go."
(End.)
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