While Bertha endeavored to bring Michel from his swoon (which was
chiefly caused by suffocation) Jean Oullier reached the outer air,
followed by Courte-Joie, whom Trigaud drew up by the same means he had
used to lower him. A moment more and all three were safely outside.
"Ah _ça!_ were you the only ones in there?" said Courte Joie to Jean
Oullier.
"Yes."
"And the others?"
"They took refuge under the stairway; the ceiling fell before they had
time to get to us."
"Are they dead?"
"I don't think so; for about an hour after the soldiers left we heard
the stones moving and voices. We called to them, but they did not
hear."
"It is a lucky chance we came."
"That it is; without you I could never have got through that wall,
especially with the young baron in such a state. Ha! I've made a fine
campaign of it, faith," muttered Jean Oullier, shaking his head as he
looked at Bertha, who, having drawn Michel's head and shoulders on her
knees and brought him to his senses, was now expressing to him all the
happiness she felt in recovering him.
"And it is not over yet," said Courte-Joie, ignorant of the meaning
the old Vendéan gave to his words, and anxiously looking to the east,
where a broad purple line announced that the day was breaking.
"What do you mean?" asked Jean Oullier.
"I mean that two hours more of darkness would have mightily helped our
safety; a cripple, a fainting man, and a woman are not so easy to
man[oe]uvre on a retreat. Besides, the victors in yesterday's fight
will swarm upon the roads to-day--if they don't beat the woods."
"Yes; but I'm at ease now. I don't have that roof over my head."
"You are only half saved yet, my good Jean."
"Well, let us take precautions."
So saying, Jean Oullier began to search for the cartridge-boxes of the
dead, and took their contents. Then he loaded his gun as coolly as
though he were starting on a hunt, and went up to Bertha and Michel.
The eyes of the latter were closed as if he were unconscious.
"Can you walk?" Jean Oullier said to him.
Michel did not answer. When he first opened his eyes he saw Bertha,
and closed them hastily, conscious of the difficulties of his
position.
"Can you walk?" repeated Bertha, in a tone which the latter could no
longer pretend not to hear.
"I think so," he replied.
In point of fact he had only a flesh wound in the arm; the bone was
not injured.
Bertha had examined the wound and slung the arm about his neck with
her white silk cravat.
"If you can't walk," said Jean Oullier, "I'll carry you."
At this fresh proof of the change in Jean Oullier's feelings to the
young baron, Bertha went up to him.
"You must explain to me why you took away my betrothed husband," she
said, emphasizing the last two words; "and why you persuaded him to
leave his post and be dragged into this affair which has exposed him,
in spite of all the dangers he may have met, to serious and shameful
accusations."
"If Monsieur de la Logerie's reputation has suffered through me,"
replied Jean Oullier, gently, "I will repair it."
"You?" said Bertha, more and more astonished.
"Yes," said Jean Oullier; "for I can and will say openly that with all
his effeminate ways, this young man has shown himself to be full of
courage and constancy."
"Will you really do that, Jean Oullier?" cried Bertha.
"Not only will I do it," said the old Vendéan, "but if my testimony is
not enough I will get that of the brave men beside whom he
fought,--for I now desire that his name be counted honorable and
honored."
"Is it possible that you say that, Jean Oullier?"
Jean Oullier nodded.
"You who would rather see me dead than bearing that name?"
"That's how things change in this world, Mademoiselle Bertha. I desire
now to see Monsieur Michel my master's son-in-law."
Jean Oullier said the words with a look so expressive and a voice so
sad and meaning, that Bertha felt her heart tighten, and she thought
involuntarily of Mary. She was about to question the old keeper, but,
at that moment, the sound of trumpets came down upon the wind from the
direction of Clisson.
"Courte-Joie was right!" exclaimed Jean Oullier. "The explanation you
ask of me, Bertha, you shall have as soon as circumstances permit; for
the present we must think of our own safety." Then, listening
attentively, he added: "Come, let us start! there's not an instant to
lose, I'll answer for that."
Passing his hand through Michel's well arm to support him, he gave the
signal to depart. Courte-Joie was already perched on Trigaud's
shoulders.
"Which way shall we go?" he asked.
"Better make for the lonely farmhouse of Saint-Hilaire," replied Jean
Oullier, who felt Michel staggering under his first few steps. "It is
quite impossible that Monsieur Michel should do the twenty miles to
Machecoul."
"Straight for Saint-Hilaire, then," said Courte-Joie.
In spite of their slow advance, by reason of Michel's feebleness in
walking, they were not more than a few hundred steps from the farm,
when Trigaud showed his rider with some pride a sort of club he had
been peeling and polishing with his knife as he walked along. It was
made from the stem of a wild apple-tree, of suitable length, which
Trigaud had spied in the orchard at Pénissière; he thought it
admirably suited to replace the terrible scythe he had shattered at
Chêne.
Courte-Joie gave a cry of anger. Evidently he did not share the
satisfaction with which his companion flourished the knotty bulk of
his new weapon.
"The devil take that animal to the lowest hell!" he cried.
"What's the matter?" asked Jean Oullier, leaving Michel to Bertha's
care and hurrying on to join Courte-Joie and Trigaud.
"Matter!" cried Courte-Joie, "the matter is that this brute has put
the whole band of the red-breeches on our track! May the plague choke
me for not having thought of it before! Ever since we left La
Pénissière he has been a regular Tom Thumb; and, unluckily for us, it
isn't bread crumbs he has strewn along the way, but the twigs, leaves,
bark of his tree. Those scoundrelly soldiers, who, I haven't a doubt,
will find out that we dug among the embers, are by this time at the
other end of the trail this animal has provided for them. Ah, double,
treble, quadruple, brute!" concluded Courte-Joie, by way of
peroration.
Joining action to words he brought down his fist with all his might on
the skull of the giant, who seemed no more conscious of the blow than
if Courte-Joie had merely passed his hand through his hair.
"Damn it!" said Jean Oullier, "what's to be done now?"
"Give up the farm at Saint-Hilaire, where they'd catch us like mice in
a trap."
"But," said Bertha, quickly, "Monsieur Michel cannot possibly go any
farther. See how pale he is!"
"Let us bear to the right," said Jean Oullier, "and make for the
Bouaimé moor, where we can hide among the rocks. To walk faster and
leave fewer tracks, I'll take Monsieur Michel on my shoulders. We'll
walk in file, and Trigaud's steps will hide the rest."
The Bouaimé moor, toward which Jean Oullier now guided the little
troop, lies about three miles from the village of Saint-Hilaire; the
river Maine must be crossed to reach it. It extends on the north as
far as Rémouillé and Montbert; the lay of the land is very uneven and
it is strewn with granite rocks, some evidently placed there by the
hand of man. Druidic stones and dolmens lift their brown heads crowned
with moss amid tufts of heather and the yellow flowers of the gorse
and broom. It was to one of the most remarkable of these stones that
Jean Oullier now guided the little caravan. This stone was flat, and
rested on four enormous corner-stones of granite. Ten or a dozen
persons could easily have lain in its shadow.
Michel was no sooner there than he gave way entirely, and would have
fallen flat on the ground if Bertha had not supported him. She
hastened to gather ferns, which she spread beneath the dolmen; and
Michel was no sooner laid upon them than, in spite of the gravity of
the situation, he fell soundly asleep.
Trigaud was stationed as sentinel on the dolmen; aboriginal statue on
an aboriginal pedestal, he called to mind by his mighty outline the
giants of two thousand years ago, who raised that altar. Courte-Joie,
unstrapped, lay down to rest near Michel, whom Bertha would not leave,
in spite of the exhaustion, both moral and physical, which the
fatigues of the previous day and night had entailed upon her. Jean
Oullier walked away, partly to reconnoitre the situation, and partly
to obtain provisions, of which they stood greatly in need.
For about two hours Trigaud's eyes had roved over the broad expanse of
the savanna before and around him. Not a sound had reached his ear,
attentively listening, except the monotonous hum of bees and wasps
pilfering sweetness from the broom and the wild thyme. The mists which
the sun was drawing from the earth began to assume to Trigaud's eyes a
variety of rainbow tints, the shimmerings of which, added to the rays
of the sun, which were now falling plumb on his tufts of red hair,
benumbed his brain; various somniferous combinations were about to
plunge him into a siesta, not induced, unfortunately for him, by any
meal, when the sudden report of a firearm roused him from his torpor.
He looked in the direction of Saint-Hilaire and saw the white vapor
produced by the shot. Next, he saw a man running at full speed,
apparently making for the dolmen. With one bound Trigaud was off his
pedestal. Bertha, who had resisted sleep, heard the shot and
immediately waked up Courte-Joie.
Trigaud took the cripple in his arms and hoisted him above his head
till he was fully ten feet off the ground, saying but two words,
which, however, needed no commentary:--
"Jean Oullier."
Courte-Joie shaded his eyes with his hand and had no difficulty in
recognizing the old Vendéan; but he noticed that instead of making
direct for the dolmen, Jean Oullier had taken to the opposite hill and
was heading for Montbert. He also observed that instead of running on
the slope of the hill, where he might have been sheltered from the
eyes of his pursuers, the old huntsman had chosen the most exposed
places, keeping in full view of whoever was within three miles of him.
Jean Oullier, he knew, was far too wary to act heedlessly; he must
have some good reason for his present behavior; no doubt he was
attracting the enemy's attention to himself in order to divert it from
the rest of the party. Courte-Joie therefore concluded that the wisest
thing for him and his companions to do was to stay in their present
shelter and await events, carefully watching, meantime, all that
happened.
Whenever intelligence was needed instead of senses, Courte-Joie no
longer trusted to Trigaud. He had himself hoisted to the top of the
dolmen, although, small as his truncated body was, he thought best not
to display it too openly on that pedestal. He therefore lay down flat
on his stomach with his face turned in the direction of the hill up
which Jean Oullier was proceeding.
Soon, at the very place whence the Vendéan had issued, he saw a
soldier, then another, then a third; he counted them up to twenty.
They did not seem eager to measure speed with their game; they simply
spread over the moor to cut off his retreat in case he attempted to
return. These equivocal tactics increased Courte-Joie's watchfulness;
for they led him to think that the soldiers had some other object in
view than the mere pursuit of the Vendéan. The hill which the latter
was mounting ended, about half a mile from the point where Jean
Oullier then was, in a sharp point of rocks, at the foot of which was
a bog. It was on that spot, no doubt because Jean Oullier was aiming
for it, that Courte-Joie's attention was now fixed.
"Hum!" said Trigaud, suddenly.
"What is it?" asked Courte-Joie.
"Red-breeches," replied the other, pointing to the bog.
Courte-Joie followed the direction of Trigaud's finger and saw the
barrel of a gun in the midst of the reeds; then a form. It was that of
a soldier, and he, like the one first seen on the heath, was followed
by twenty others. Courte-Joie saw them crouching among the reeds like
sportsmen on the watch. Their game was Jean Oullier. If he descended
by the point of rocks, as he was evidently about to do, he must fall
into the ambush.
There was not a moment to be lost in warning him. Courte-Joie did not
hesitate; he seized his gun and fired it, taking care to hold the
muzzle below the bushes and to fire behind the dolmen. Then he looked
hastily back to the scene of action.
Jean Oullier had heard the signal and knew the ring of Courte-Joie's
little gun; he was not mistaken for a moment as to the reasons that
constrained his friend to abandon the concealment he was preserving
for them at such cost to himself. Instantly he made a half turn, and
instead of continuing his way to the steep descent and the bog, he
rapidly descended the hill he had been climbing. He no longer ran, he
flew; no doubt some plan had occurred to him, and he was hurrying to
put it into execution. At the rate he was coming down he would join
his friends in a few moments.
But in spite of Courte-Joie's precautions to conceal the smoke of his
shot, the soldiers had seen the direction from which it came, and
those on the moor as well as those in the bog joined forces behind
Jean Oullier (who was still coming down at a great pace), and seemed
to be consulting together while awaiting orders.
Courte-Joie glanced about him, apparently studying each point of the
horizon; he wet a finger and lifted it to discover the direction of
the wind, and felt the heather anxiously, to be sure that the sun,
which was hot, and the wind, which was keen, had dried it thoroughly.
"What are you doing?" asked Bertha, who had watched the different
phases of this prologue, fully aware of the imminence of the danger,
and was now helping Michel, who seemed more depressed than suffering,
to get on his feet.
"What am I doing,--or rather what am I going to do, my dear young
lady?" replied the cripple. "I am going to make a glorious bonfire;
and you can boast to-night, if the fire saves you, as I hope it will,
that you never saw the like before."
So saying, he gave Trigaud several lighted bits of tinder, which the
latter stuck into bundles of dried herbage, which he placed at
intervals of ten feet among the heather, blowing each of them into a
flame with his powerful lungs. He was placing his last bundle as Jean
Oullier came up the slope, which led to the dolmen.
"Up! up!" cried the latter. "I am not ten minutes in advance of them."
"Yes, but this will give us twenty," said Courte-Joie pointing to the
twigs of heather which were beginning to curl and crackle with the
flames, while a dozen or more spiral lines of smoke were rising in the
air.
"That fire won't burn fast enough or hot enough to stop them," said
Jean Oullier. "Besides," he added, after studying the condition of the
atmosphere, "the wind will send the flame in the direction that we
must take."
"Yes; but flame, _gars_ Oullier, carries smoke," said Courte-Joie,
triumphantly; "and that's what I'm counting on. The smoke will hide
how few we are and where we are going."
"Ah! Courte-Joie, Courte-Joie," muttered Oullier between his teeth,
"if you had your legs what a poacher you'd be!"
Then, without saying another word, he picked Michel up and put him on
his shoulders (in spite of the young man's assurance that he could
walk well enough, and did not wish to cause that additional fatigue to
the old Vendéan), and followed Trigaud, who had already started with
his rider on his back.
"Take mademoiselle's hand!" called Courte-Joie to Jean Oullier; "and
tell her to shut her mouth and take in a long breath; in ten minutes
we sha'n't be able to see or breathe."
In fact the ten minutes had not expired before the ten columns of
smoke were blended into one and formed a dense sheet stretching to
right and left five hundred feet, while the flames roared sullenly
behind them.
"Can you see sufficiently to guide us?" said Jean Oullier to
Courte-Joie; "for the most important thing of all is not to go astray,
and next, not to get separated."
"We have no other guide than the smoke," replied Courte-Joie. "Let us
follow that boldly and it will take us where we want to go; but don't
lose sight of Trigaud as head of the column."
Jean Oullier was one of those men who know the value of words and
time; he therefore contented himself with saying:--
"Forward, march!" giving the example and seeming no more hindered by
Michel's weight than Trigaud was by Courte-Joie's.
They walked thus for fifteen minutes without getting out of the smoke
which their conflagration, spreading with amazing rapidity under the
force of the wind, rolled up about them. Once or twice Jean Oullier
muttered to Bertha, who was half suffocated:--
"Can you breathe?"
To which she replied with an almost inarticulate yes. As for Michel,
the old keeper cared not at all; he was certain to keep up with the
rest, inasmuch as he, Jean Oullier, had him on his shoulders.
Suddenly Trigaud, who marched at their head guided by Courte-Joie, and
utterly indifferent to where he went, stepped back abruptly. He had
set his feet in water, which the smoke had prevented him from seeing,
and he was now knee-deep in it. Aubin uttered a cry of joy.
"We've done it!" he said; "the smoke has led us as straight as the
best-broken hound ever led a sportsman."
"Ah!" exclaimed Jean Oullier.
"You understand now, don't you, my _gars?_" said Courte-Joie, in a
tone of triumph.
"Yes; but how shall we reach the island?"
"How? Why, there's Trigaud."
"True; but when the soldiers miss us won't they suspect the trick?"
"Of course, if they do miss us; but I intend they sha'n't."
"Go on."
"They don't know how many we are. We will put Mademoiselle Bertha and
the wounded man in safety, and then, as if we had made a mistake and
found our way blocked by the pond, you and I and Trigaud will land,
and show them by a few shots where we are. After that, being free of
incumbrance, we can easily get into the woods of Gineston, and return
to the island after dark."
"But these poor children will be left without food!"
"Pooh!" said Courte-Joie, "it won't kill them to go twenty-four hours
without eating."
"So be it." Then, with a sort of sad contempt for his want of
intelligence, "Last night," he continued, "must have addled my brain,
or I should have thought of all this myself."
"Don't expose yourselves uselessly," said Bertha, half joyous at the
thought of the _tête-à-tête_ which these strange circumstances were
giving her with the man she loved.
"Don't trouble about that," replied Jean Oullier.
Trigaud took Michel in his arms, without unhorsing Courte-Joie (which
would have made him lose time) and entered the pond. He walked thus
till the water was up to his middle; then he hoisted Michel to his
head in case the water mounted higher. It stopped, however, at the
level of the giant's breast. He crossed the pond to a sort of island
about twelve feet square, which seemed in the midst of that stagnant
water to be nothing more than a vast duck's-nest. It was covered with
a forest of reeds.
Trigaud deposited Michel among the reeds and returned for Bertha, whom
he carried in the same manner and put down, as he might a bird, beside
the young Baron de la Logerie.
"Lie down flat among the reeds in the middle of the island!" called
Jean Oullier from the shore. "Lift the reeds you have just bent down,
and I can promise that no one will find you!"
"Very good," replied Bertha; "and now, my friends, think only of
yourselves."