In the few minutes that passed before she met Sebastien Francesca had
regained self control. To his reproof, "This was foolish; why did you
linger?" she calmly replied, "I wished to make sure that all the people
were out."
He nodded approval. "Then no one is left?"
"No one."
"_Bueno!_ We have no more than time to make the hills. Pancho's beast is
stronger than yours. Give him the child." She had begun to hope, but it
died within her as he went on: "In my rooms are valuable papers. 'Twill
take but a moment to get them. Ride on, you. My horse goes two paces to
your one. I can catch you halfway to the hills."
She almost fainted when he rode off, for just as surely as though she
had seen him questioning the fugitive women she knew now that he was
aware of Seyd's presence. She reined her animal around to follow, then
checked it sharply under a sudden inspiration.
"Why do you wait, Pancho?" she asked, sharply. "While you sleep the
flood will be on us. Ride! Ride your hardest! I will follow."
The _mozo_, to tell the truth, was damning with inward tremblings the
luck that had placed him in such jeopardy. Only the fear of Sebastien
had kept him from bolting, and now, without even a backward glance, he
laid on with quirt and spurs and galloped off with Roberta, leaving
Francesca free to carry out her plan.
It was quite simple. In this, the rainy season, the shade trees were
draped from crown to foot with green lace of morning glories, and on the
outer edge of the nearest clump a banyan had been converted into a huge
tent which would have stabled a hundred horses. Parting the lacework of
leaves with one hand, after she had ridden under it, Francesca obtained,
through the gateway, an oblique view of the guardhouse at the moment
Sebastien closed the iron doors. The crash of the bars carried to her
tree, and had he looked that way he might have seen the curtain of
leaves swing under the forward move of her beast. But, controlling the
impulse, she reined it back again. When Sebastien raced past a couple of
minutes later she dropped her hand and shrank in sudden fear.
It was, however, impossible for him to see her. Moreover, the
intervening clumps prevented him from discovering that she was not with
Pancho until he came bursting out on his heels in open pasture half a
mile ahead.
"_Tonto!_ where is thy mistress?"
The _mozo's_ look of frightened surprise proclaimed at once his
ignorance and fear. Both had reined in, and under the other's deadly
look Pancho cowered behind his bent arm. Sickly green patches stained
his dull chocolate. When Sebastien pulled a pistol from his holster he
bowed down to the saddle horn, his face in his hands. Leaning over,
Sebastien placed the muzzle against the fellow's head. His finger even
had tightened. Then, checking the impulse, came Roberta's whimper,
"Senor! oh, senor!" Above it rose a distant thunderous roar, and,
glancing northward, he saw in the far distance a writhing movement in
the jungle beyond the pastures.
"Off, fool! Save the child!"
Striking the man's shoulders with the pistol, he wheeled his horse and
shot away, heading back to the hacienda. Riding, he kept one eye on the
green wave that was moving with the speed of the wind over the jungle.
As he passed in among the shade trees it boiled over the far edge of the
pastures, and from beneath the swaying trees emerged a muddy wall
crowned with bristling black. Traveling more swiftly in the open, it
came on at an acute angle which had its point in the flooded lands along
the river, its base in the jungle close to the hills, and when Sebastien
dashed out of the timber the point had passed the hacienda.
Even then he must have known it for hopeless. The thunderous diapason
had risen into a furious crescendo which was spaced by the tear and
crash of uprooted trees, and, higher than his head, the liquid wall was
coming on under the pressure of the yellow frothing sea that stretched
behind to the limit of sight. Yet, laying on quirt and spurs, he raced
down its front in a desperate spurt for the gates.
While he was still a hundred yards away the wave struck the northern
wall of the compound that fenced the buildings. Built solidly of stone,
it melted, vanished without a premonitory shiver, and in its overthrow
accomplished good. Catching root and branch in the debris, the grinding
welter of fallen trees hesitated, then piled in a huge tangled bar upon
the line of cottages and stables which intervened between the wall and
house.
To Sebastien, however, this brought no respite. Shooting along the
eastern wall, the wave outraced him and beat him to the gate by a long
fifty yards.
* * * * *
While Francesca was still under the banyan she had heard the roaring
diapason of the flood. Clothed in dripping lacery of leaves and flowers
torn away by the beast's leap from the spur, she galloped into the
patio, and when she dismounted the vines still twined around her limbs.
Without waiting to tear them off she threw all of her strength into a
vain effort to swing the bars of the guardhouse doors, but, swollen by
the rain, they were fast in the staples.
"Oh, _what_ shall I do?"
Her cry carried through to Seyd. After a fruitless attempt on the door
he was just about to attack the window bars with an oaken club he had
found in one corner. Now, tearing away the sacks of maize that blocked
the one small square window on her side, he thrust it between the bars.
"Knock them up with this!"
But after the bars yielded the rusty doors defied her strength. "They
will not budge! Oh, I cannot move them!"
Again his practical sense served. "Slip a stirrup over the staple, then
start your horse gently. Fine!" He heard the groan of the moving door.
"Key gone! Never mind, I can shoot out the lock. Stand away--off to one
side."
Above the roar of the flood Sebastien heard the shots. A few seconds
later he saw Seyd look out of the gateway, then rush back in. Behind the
gates an iron ladder led up to a lookout post on top of the guardhouse,
and, racing down the front of the wave, Sebastien saw Seyd rise above
the low parapet and lift Francesca to his side.
At the same moment they saw him. In Francesca's outstretched hands
Sebastien saw her impulse to save. In the sudden covering of her eyes he
read his fate. The fifty yards that lay between him and the gates might
just as well have been a thousand, for, less than half the distance
away, the great yellow comber rose high over his head.
Before it broke, however, he did two things--reined his horse to face
it, then, just before he went under the grinding welter, with the same
easy courtesy which he would have shown to a kinsman or a friend, he
turned in the saddle and waved his hand.