The first night of his arrival, he began it himself, and, under the
pretext of examining the country round, he went along the high road.
I must tell you, that the little village which served as our fortress
was a small collection of poor, badly built houses, which had been
deserted long before. It lay on a steep slope, which terminated in a
wooded plain. The country people sell the wood; they send it down the
ravines, which are called _coulées_, locally, and which lead down to the
plain, and there they stack it into piles, which they sell thrice a year
to the wood merchants. The spot where this market is held, is indicated
by two small houses by the side of the high road, and which serve for
public-houses. The captain had gone down there by one of these
_coulées_.
He had been gone about half-an-hour, and we were on the look-out at the
top of the ravine when we heard a shot. The captain had ordered us not
to stir, and only to come to him when we heard him blow his trumpet. It
was made of a goat's horn, and could be heard a league off, but it gave
no sound, and in spite of our cruel anxiety we were obliged to wait in
silence, with out rifles by our side.
It is nothing to go down these _coulées_; one need only let oneself
glide down, but it is more difficult to get up again; one has to
scramble up by catching hold of the hanging branches of the trees, and
sometimes on all fours, by sheer strength. A whole mortal hour passed
and he did not come, nothing moved in the brushwood. The captain's wife
began to grow impatient; what could he be doing? Why did he not call us?
Did the shot that we had heard proceed from an enemy, and had he killed
or wounded our leader, her husband? They did not know what to think, but
I myself fancied, either that he was dead, or that his enterprise was
successful, and I was merely anxious and curious to know what he had
done.
Suddenly we heard the sound of his trumpet, and we were much surprised
that instead of coming from below, as we had expected, it came from the
village behind us. What did that mean? It was a mystery to us, but the
same idea struck us all, that he had been killed, and that the Prussians
were blowing the trumpet to draw us into an ambush. We therefore
returned to the cottage, keeping a careful look out, with our fingers on
the trigger, and hiding under the branches, but his wife, in spite of
our entreaties, rushed on, leaping like a tigress. She thought that she
had to avenge her husband, and had fixed the bayonet to her rifle, and
we lost sight of her at the moment that we heard the trumpet again, and
a few moments later we heard her calling out to us:
"Come on! come on! he is alive! it is he!"
We hastened on, and saw the captain smoking his pipe at the entrance of
the village, but strangely enough he was on horseback.
"Ah! Ah!" he said to us, "you see that there is something to be done
here. Here I am on horseback already. I knocked over a uhlan yonder, and
took his horse; I suppose they were guarding the wood, but it was by
drinking and swilling in clover. One of them, the sentry at the door,
had not time to see me before I gave him a sugar plum in his stomach,
and then, before the others could come out, I jumped on to the horse and
was off like a shot. Eight or ten of them followed me, I think, but I
took the cross-roads through the woods; I have got scratched and torn a
bit, but here I am, and now, my good fellows, attention, and take care!
Those brigands will not rest until they have caught us, and we must
receive them with rifle bullets. Come along; let us take up our posts!"
We set out. One of us took up his position a good way from the village
of the cross-roads; I was posted at the entrance of the main street,
where the road from the level country enters the village, while the two
others, the captain and his wife were in the middle of the village, near
the church, whose tower served for an observatory and citadel.
We had not been in our places long before we heard a shot followed by
another, and then two, then three. The first was evidently a chassepot;
one recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of a
whip, while the other three came from the lancers' carbines.
The captain was furious. He had given orders to the outpost to let the
enemy pass and merely to follow them at a distance, if they marched
towards the village, and to join me when they had gone well between the
houses. Then they were to appear suddenly, take the patrol between two
fires, and not allow a single man to escape, for posted as we were, the
six of us could have hemmed in ten Prussians, if needful.
"That confounded Piédelot has roused them," the captain said, "and they
will not venture to come on blindfold any longer. And then I am quite
sure that he has managed to get a shot into himself somewhere or other,
for we hear nothing of him. It serves him right; why did he not obey
orders?" And then, after a moment, he grumbled in his beard: "After all,
I am sorry for the poor fellow, he is so brave and shoots so well!"
The captain was right in his conjectures. We waited until evening,
without seeing the uhlans: they had retreated after the first attack,
but unfortunately we had not seen Piédelot either. Was he dead or a
prisoner? When night came, the captain proposed that we should go out
and look for him, and so the three of us started. At the cross-roads we
found a broken rifle and some blood, while the ground was trampled down,
but we did not find either a wounded man or a dead body, although we
searched every thicket, and at midnight we returned without having
discovered anything of our unfortunate comrade.
"It is very strange," the captain growled. "They must have killed him
and thrown him into the bushes somewhere; they cannot possibly have
taken him prisoner, as he would have called out for help. I cannot
understand it all." Just as he said that, bright, red flames shot up in
the direction of the inn on the high road, which illuminated the sky.
"Scoundrels! cowards!" he shouted. "I will bet they have set fire to the
two houses on the market-place, in order to have their revenge and then
they will scuttle off without saying a word. They will be satisfied with
having killed a man and setting fire to two houses. All right. It shall
not pass over like that. We must go for them; they will not like to
leave their illuminations in order to fight."
"It would be a great stroke of luck, if we could set Piédelot free at
the same time," some one said.
The five of us set off, full of rage and hope. In twenty minutes we had
got to the bottom of the _coulée_, and we had not yet seen anyone, when
we had got within a hundred yards of the inn. The fire was behind the
house, and so all that we saw of it was the reflection above the roof.
However, we were walking rather slowly, as we were afraid of a trap,
when suddenly we heard Piédelot's well-known voice. It had a strange
sound, however, for it was at the same time dull and vibrating, stifled
and clear, as if he was calling out as loud as he could with a bit of
rag stuffed into his mouth. He seemed to be hoarse and panting, and the
unlucky fellow kept exclaiming: "Help! Help!"
We sent all thoughts of prudence to the devil, and in two bounds we were
at the back of the inn, where a terrible sight met our eyes.