Seven Frozen Sailors Part 23

I pulled, and drew the short bent.

He took a cap from a small cylindrical metal case he carried in his pocket, and fixed it on the nipple of his pistol. Then he handed the weapon to me.

I took it from him, examined it with the greatest care--I see it now; it was an old-fashioned firearm of Spanish make,--stood a pace only back from him, fixed my eye on his, with a sudden jerk flung the pistol fifty paces behind me, and throwing myself upon Marc, bore him to the ground, and held him there in a vice!

Then began our struggle for life!

At first, the advantage was mine. I was a-top. In strength we had always been pretty equally matched. Sometimes I had been able to throw Marc, sometimes he had thrown me. Now the contest was unequal. It is true I had the advantage of fighting for life, but the struggle was with the supernatural strength of a madman. I had dropped my stick before taking the pistol from the hand of Marc. In this tussle it would have been of no service to me. This was man to man.

I pinned mad Marc to the ground, my hands on his arms, my knees on his chest. He writhed, and tore, and struggled under me. No word was spoken between us. The advantage was with me. Thus we continued for what seemed an immense length of time--for what was, perhaps, a quarter of an hour. It was an incessant struggle with us both; with me to keep Marc Debois down--with Marc to master me.

I felt my strength giving way. My joints were stiffening, my fingers becoming numb with the pressure. Besides this, I was in a profuse sweat, caused by the violent exertion, and partly by the alarm at what would happen if I should, in turn, be under the giant frame of Marc. It was to the accident of throwing him first, by my sudden and unexpected attack, that I owed the last fifteen minutes of my life. If I spoke, I found it made him more violent in his efforts to master me. I thought the sound of my voice maddened him the more.

My brain seemed clogged. At first, thought had followed thought with painful rapidity. My life had pa.s.sed before me in panoramic procession.

Now I had a novel feeling, such as I had never experienced before. Was I--the thought was terrible!--was I, under the horrible fascination of Marc's eye--losing my reason? I made an effort to think. To rouse myself I multiplied fifteen by sixty. Nine hundred--nine hundred seconds of my life had pa.s.sed in this fearful struggle with a madman!

How many more seconds had I to live? How much longer could I hold my own? Not long! I was rapidly becoming exhausted. I commended myself to the Almighty.

Hark! wheels--coming.

Marc hears the sound, too. I am weak now. He makes one gigantic effort. I am overcome. His great fingers fasten with a desperate clutch upon my throat. He will tear out my gullet.

I become insensible.

When I come to myself I am seated on the box of the carriage which had conveyed Cecile and M. Andre to the chateau. It had pa.s.sed us on its way back.

We are near Benevent.

It is three strong men's work inside the chaise to restrain Marc and keep him from murdering them.

We drive to the office of police. A little crowd follows us. I am able to give some formal evidence. Then I am taken home. The unfortunate man is placed under proper restraint. There is a great buzz of excitement in Benevent.

n.o.body recognises Marc; he is so changed. I do not disclose his name.

It is better to wait the course of events.

After the fearful peril of the last hour, I am astonished to find myself alive. I am alive, and thankful.

After the struggle in the defile I was unable to leave my bed for some days. I had been much tried both in mind and body; but I received the kindest attention from the good friends around me.

In these little places every trifle creates a mighty stir. All Benevent came to inquire after my health. I had been killed. No; well, then, nearly done to death by a murderous a.s.sa.s.sin escaped from the galleys.

The police knew him. It was the same man who five years before had attempted the life of the Emperor. He had a homicidal mania. There were a hundred different reports--none of them true.

I was examined and re-examined; examined again, and cross-examined. You have formed the conclusion that I am a witness, if I choose, out of whom not much can be got. I battled the Maire, the prefect, the police. I had been attacked by a man who carried a pistol, and I was rescued by some persons returning from M. Andre's chateau in a chaise. What could be more simple? And these are the facts duly entered--wrapped in plenty of official verbiage--in police record.

I had everybody's sympathy. I had something better. Sympathy one can't spend; francs one can. A subscription was raised for my benefit. I was compelled to accept the money--a thousand francs of it. The rest--some odd hundreds of francs and a bundle of warm clothing, intended for me by some Benevent valetudinarian, together with thirteen copies of religious books and two rosaries--I presented to the cure for distribution among the poor of his parish.

But I had a weight on my mind even francs could not remove--Marc and Cecile.

She, poor woman, was happy in being rich; in having fine dresses and gaiety; in being an old man's idol. It is so with women. She was, I found, the donor of some of the religious books and of one of the two rosaries. Perhaps, then, at the chateau all was not happiness for the mistress. At times she still mourned for Marc.

And Marc?

After months of the greatest anxiety on my part, lest in his ravings he should betray himself, he was happily restored to reason.

The doctor said it happened through his seeing me.

He knew me as I sat in the room with him. His keepers said he had raved always of "Cecile, Cecile!" What of it? It led to no suspicion of his ident.i.ty with Marc Debois. Are there not hundreds of Ceciles?

The wretched man's memory was a blank. As I had done him a most terrible injury, I tried to repair--in some slight degree--to atone.

He was lodged with me in my dear mother's cottage. I used to lead him about like a child. I took him every day to the sea to see the shipping. This by degrees brought back his memory of his profession.

At last all came back, save the scene in the defile. He told me he had also been on a desolate island. Whether the same as mine, or an adjacent desert, I shall never know. A ship took him off, too, and landed him at Ma.r.s.eilles. He tramped it to Benevent, and arrived there in time to see Cecile just married to M. Andre.

No wonder that his mind gave way.

He implored my forgiveness.

I implored his.

He was silent, sullen. No one knew his name. I explained that he was an old shipmate. This hardly satisfied the people. At Benevent they love a mystery.

Marc solved it for them. He disappeared, without saying good-by. I guessed that he had gone to sea again.

He had said, the night before he left us, "Pierre, I will not wreck her life as she has wrecked mine. I will not seek her; but G.o.d save her if she crosses my path in this life."

I was right; he had gone to sea. I got a letter a week after, with the Ma.r.s.eilles postmark on it.

"I am mate of the _Lepante_," Marc said.

Months had pa.s.sed since their marriage--about a year. Cecile was a mother. She called upon me in her carriage one day. A nurse was in attendance upon her, carrying in her arms a little child. It was a girl, two months old. Cecile was proud; but M. Andre chuckled incessantly, as old c.o.c.ks will. I, with my terrible secret, could hardly bear to look at her.

"You are not friendly with me now, M. Crepin," she said; "not as you used to be. I desire to keep all my old friends, and to make as many new ones as I can."

I replied as well as I could; for I was thinking of Madame Debois, and not of Madame Andre, as she was now called.

"I have come to ask a favour. Say you will grant it me?"

Like a Frenchman, I bowed complaisantly.

Cecile went on, like a Frenchwoman, flatteringly, "Pierre--for I will call you by the old name; I like it best--I cannot be so stiff with an old friend as to keep calling you Monsieur Crepin; but, if you will let me, I will call you Captain Crepin."

Again I bowed, slightly mystified.

"Captain Crepin, you are--you are brave. All Benevent knows it. You are an able and experienced seaman."