The Maids of Paradise Part 77

Scarlett, I mean! And you, Speed; and you, too, madame; patter your prayers, for you'll get no priest. Lieutenant, withdraw the guard at the wall. Here, captain, march the battalion back to Paradise and take the servants!"

A second later the drums began to beat, but Mornac, furious, silenced them.

"They can hear you at sea!" he shouted. "Do you want a boat-load of marines at your heels? Strike out those torches! Four will do for the garden. March!"

The shuffling tread of the insurgent infantry echoed across the gravel court-yard; torches behind the walls were extinguished; blackness enveloped the cliffs.

"Well," broke out Speed, hoa.r.s.ely, "good-bye, Scarlett."

He held out his hand.

"Good-bye," I said, stunned.

I dropped my hand as two soldiers placed themselves on either side of him.

"Well, good-bye," he repeated, aimlessly; and then, remembering, he went to the Countess and offered his hand.

"I am so sorry for you," she said, with a pallid smile. "You have much to live for. But you must not feel lonely, monsieur; you will be with us--we shall be close to you."

She turned to me, and her hands fell to her side.

"Are you contented?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"I, too," she said, sweetly, and offered her hands.

I held them very tightly. "You say," I whispered, "that it is not--love. But you do not speak for me. I love you."

A bright blush spread over brow and neck.

"So--it was love--after all," she said, under her breath. "G.o.d be with us to-day--I love you."

"March!" cried Mornac, as two soldiers took station beside me.

"I beg you will be gentle with this lady," I said, angrily, as two more soldiers pushed up beside the young Countess and laid their hands on her shoulders.

"Who the devil are you giving orders to?" shouted Mornac, savagely.

"March!"

Speed pa.s.sed out first; I followed; the Countess came behind me.

"Courage," I stammered, looking back at her as we stumbled out into the torch-lit garden.

She smiled adorably. Her forefathers had mounted the guillotine smiling.

Mornac pointed to the garden wall near the bench where we had sat together. A soldier dressed like a Turco lifted a torch and set it in the flower-bed under the wall, illuminating the spot where we were to stand. As this soldier turned to come back I saw his face.

"Salah Ben-Ahmed!" I cried, hoa.r.s.ely. "Do Marabouts do this butcher's work?"

The Turco stared at me as though stunned.

"Salah Ben-Ahmed is a disgraced soldier!" I said, in a ringing voice.

"It's a lie!" he shouted, in Arabic--"it's a lie, O my inspector!

Speak! Have these men tricked me? Are you not Prussians?"

"Silence! Silence!" bawled Mornac. "Turco, fall in! Fall in, I say!

What! You menace me?" he snarled, c.o.c.king his revolver.

Then a man darted out of the red shadows of the torch-light and fell upon Mornac with a knife, and dragged him down and rolled on him, stabbing him through and through, while the mutilated wretch screamed and screamed until his soul struggled out through the flame-shot darkness and fled to its last dreadful abode.

The Lizard rose, shaking his f.a.got knife; they fell upon him, clubbing and stabbing with stock and bayonet, but he swung his smeared and sticky blade, clearing a circle around him. And I think he could have cut his way free had not Tric-Trac shot him in the back of the head.

Then a frightful tumult broke loose. Three of the torches were knocked to the ground and trampled out as the insurgents, doubly drunken with wine and the taste of blood, seized me and tried to force me against the wall; but the Turco, with his shrill, wolf-like battle yelp, attacked them, sabre-bayonet in hand. Speed, too, had wrested a rifle from a half-stupefied ruffian, and now stood at bay before the Countess; I saw him wielding his heavy weapon like a flail; then in the darkness Tric-Trac shot at me, so close that the powder-flame scorched my leg. He dropped his rifle to spring for my throat, knocking me flat, and, crouching on me, strove to strangle me; and I heard him whining with eagerness while I twisted and writhed to free my windpipe from his thin fingers.

At last I tore him from my body and struggled to my feet. He, too, was on his legs with a bound, running, doubling, dodging; and at his heels I saw a dozen sailors, broadaxes glittering, chasing him from tree to shrub.

"Speed!" I shouted--"the sailors from the _Fer-de-Lance_!"

The curtains of the house were on fire; through the hallway poured the insurgent soldiery, stampeding in frantic flight across the court out into the moors; and the marines, swarming along the cliffs, shot at them as they ran, and laughed savagely when a man fell into the gorse, kicking like a wounded rabbit.

Speed marked their flight, advancing coolly, pistol flashing; the Turco, Ben-Ahmed, dark arms naked to the shoulder, bounded behind the frightened wretches, cornering, hunting them through flower-beds and bushes, stealthily, keenly, now creeping among the shadows, now springing like a panther on his prey, until his blue jacket reeked and his elbows dripped.

I had picked up a rifle with a broken bayonet; the Countess, clasping my left arm, stood swaying in the rifle-smoke, eyes closed; and, when a horrid screeching arose from the depths of the garden where they were destroying Tric-Trac, she fell to shuddering, hiding her face on my shoulder.

Suddenly Speed appeared, carrying a drenched little figure, partly wrapped in a sailor's pea-jacket, slim limbs drooping, blue with cold.

"Put out that fire in there," he said, hoa.r.s.ely; "we must get her into bed. Hurry, for G.o.d's sake, Scarlett! There's n.o.body in the house!"

"Jacqueline! Jacqueline! brave little Bretonne," murmured the Countess, bending forward and gathering the unconscious child into her strong, young arms.

Through the dim dawn, through smoke and fading torch-light, we carried Jacqueline into the house, now lighted up with an infernal red from the burning dining-room.

"The house is stone; we can keep the flames to one room if we work hard," I said. A sailor stood by the door wiping the stained blade of his broadaxe, and I called on him to aid us.

A fresh company of sailors pa.s.sed on the double, rifles trailing, their officer shouting encouragement, And as we came in view of the semaph.o.r.e, I saw the signal tower on fire from base to top.

The gray moorland was all flickering with flashes where the bulk of the insurgent infantry began firing in retreat; the marines' fusillade broke out from Paradise village; rifle after rifle cracked along the river-bank. Suddenly the deep report of a cannon came echoing landward from the sea; a sh.e.l.l, with lighted fuse trailing sparks, flew over us with a rushing whistle and exploded on the moors.

All this I saw from the house where I stood with Speed and a sailor, buried in smoke, chopping out blazing woodwork, tearing the burning curtains from the windows. The marines fired steadily from the windows above us.

"They want the Red Terror!" laughed the sailors. "They shall have it!"

"Hunt them out! Hunt them out!" cried an officer, briskly. "Fire!"

rang out a voice, and the volley broke crashing, followed by the clear, penetrating boatswain's whistle sounding the a.s.sault.

Blackened, scorched, almost suffocated, I staggered back to the tea-room, where the Countess stood clasping Jacqueline, huddled in a blanket, and smoothing the child's wet curls away from a face as white as death.