The Knight of Malta Part 55

Pog was too closely occupied with the disabled condition in which he found his galleys, to lend attention to the last words of Hadji. One of the spahis picked up the casket, and placed it in Pog's chamber, to which the latter had descended, after leaving the galley in the command of the pilot.

This chamber was entirely covered with a coa.r.s.e red woollen material.

On this tapestry could be seen, here and there, a great number of black crosses traced by the hand with charcoal. Among them a small number of white crosses appeared, drawn with chalk.

A copper lamp threw a wan and sepulchral light in this room.

The only furniture of the room consisted in a bed, covered with a tiger-skin, two chairs, and an oak table, hardly square.

When the Moor had dressed the wounds of the captain, he retired.

Pog, left alone, remained seated, resting his head on his hand, and reflecting upon the events of the night His vengeance was only half satisfied.

His precipitate retreat humiliated his self-love, and aroused new resentments in his heart.

Nevertheless, he smiled as he thought of the evil he had wrought, and rose from his seat, saying:

"It is always so! My night will not have been lost, if--"

Then he took a piece of charcoal, and made several black crosses on the tapestry. From time to time he paused, as if to collect his thoughts. He had just traced a black cross when he said to himself:

"That Baron des Anbiez was killed! I think so, and I hope so. From the hollow vibration of the handle of the battle-axe in my hand, I thought I felt his skull broken. But the baron wore a helmet, his death is not certain. We will not make a false estimate of victims." After this lugubrious pleasantry, he erased the cross, and began to count the white crosses.

"Eleven," said he, "eleven chevaliers of Malta, slain by my hand.

Oh! they are surely dead, for I would have killed myself a thousand times on their bodies, rather than have left in them one breath of life."

He then sank into a gloomy silence. Suddenly, standing up, his arms crossed on his breast, his head bowed, he said, with a deep sigh:

"For more than twenty years I have pursued my vengeance,--my work of destruction. For twenty years has my sorrow diminished? Are my regrets less desperate? I do not know. Without doubt I feel a horrible joy in saying to man: 'Suffer--die.' But after--after! Always regret--always!

And yet I have no remorse, no! It seems to me that I am the blind instrument of an all-powerful will. Yes, that must be. It is not the love of gain which guides me. It is an imperious necessity, an insatiable need of vengeance. Where am I going? What will be the awakening from this b.l.o.o.d.y life which sometimes seems to me a horrible dream? When I think upon what was formerly my life, on what I was myself, it is something to drive me mad,--as I am. Yes, I must be mad, for sometimes there are moments when I ask myself: 'Why so many cruel deeds?' To-night, for instance, how much blood--how much blood! That old man! Those women! Oh, I am mad, furiously mad! Oh, it is terrible! What had they done to me?"

He hid his face in his hands. After a few moments of sullen reflection, he cried, in an agonising voice:

"Oh, what had I done to him,--to the one who hurled me from heaven to h.e.l.l? I never did him a wrong! What had I done to her,--to his accomplice? I surrounded her with all the adoration, all the idolatry that man could feel here below for a creature. And, yet! Oh!--this sorrow,--will it always be bleeding? Will this memory always be so dreadful,--always burning like a hot iron? Oh, rage! Oh, misery! Oh, to forget! to forget! I only ask to forget!"

As he uttered these words, Pog fell with his face on the bed, tore the tiger-skin in his convulsed hands, and groaned with a sort of hollow, stifled roar.

The paroxysm lasted some time, and was succeeded by a heavy stupor.

Suddenly he straightened himself up, his complexion paler than usual, his eyes brilliant, and his lips contracted.

He pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead to fasten the bandage around his wound, which had become disarranged. As he let his arm fall from weakness, he felt near the part.i.tion an object which he had not remarked. It was the casket which Hadji had thrown on board the _Red Galleon_, and that one of the men had left in the captain's chamber.

Pog mechanically took up the casket and placed it on his knees. The Maltese cross embossed on the lid met his sight, and made him start.

He threw it abruptly away from him; the scarf became untied, and fell open.

Quite a large number of letters rolled on the floor, with two medallions, and a long tress of blond hair.

Pog was seated on his bed; the medallions had fallen a considerable distance from him.

The light in his chamber was pale and fluctuating.

By what miracle of love, of hatred, or of vengeance, did he recognise instantly the features that he had never forgotten?

The event was so startling, so dreadful, that at first he believed himself to be the sport of a dream.

He did not dare move. His body leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the medallion, he feared every moment to see what he took for a vision of his excited imagination vanish from his sight.

Finally, falling on his knees, he threw himself upon the medallions, as if he feared they might escape his grasp.

He seized the portraits. One of them represented a woman of resplendent beauty. He was not mistaken; he had recognised it.

The other was the face of a child.

The pirate let the medallion fall on the floor; he was petrified with amazement. He had just recognised Erebus! Erebus, at least, as he was fifteen years before, when he had carried him away from the coasts of Languedoc!

Still doubting what he saw with his own eyes, he rallied from this pa.s.sing weakness, picked up the medallion, recalled his memories with exactness, to provide against every error, and again examined the portrait with a consuming anxiety. It was Erebus, indeed,--Erebus at the age of five years.

Then Pog threw himself on the floor with the letters, and read them on his knees without a thought of rising. The scene was something terrible,--ghastly.

This man, pale, stained with blood, kneeling in the middle of that lugubrious chamber, read with eagerness the pages which revealed to him, at last, the dark mystery which he had sought for so many years.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV. THE LETTERS

We will now put before the eyes of the reader the letters that Pog was reading with such painful attention.

The first had been written by himself, about twenty years before the period of which we now speak. So striking was the contrast between his life then,--a life calm, happy, and smiling,--and the life of a pirate and murderer, that one might be moved to pity the unhappy man, if only by comparing him as he was, to what he had been in the past.

The height from which he had fallen, the depth of infamy to which he had descended, must have moved the most obdurate heart to pity!

These letters will unveil also what mysterious tie united the Commander des Anbiez, Erebus, and Pog, to whom we restore his real name, that of Count Jacques de Montreuil, former lieutenant of the king's galleys.

M. de Montreuil--Pog--had written the following letter to his wife on his return from a campaign of eight or nine months in the Mediterranean.

This letter was dated from the lazaretto, or pest-house, in Ma.r.s.eilles.

The galley of Count de Montreuil, having touched at Tripoli, of Syria, where the plague had been declared, was compelled according to custom to submit to a long quarantine.

Madame Emilie de Montreuil lived in a country house situated on the borders of the Rhone, near Lyons.

_First Letter_.

"_Lazaretto de Ma.r.s.eilles_, December 10,1612.

"On board the _Capitaine_.