The Tremendous Event Part 34

"Simon, Simon!" cried the terrified girl.

One of the tramps roared:

"The girl! Carry her off! She'll fetch her weight in gold!"

Simon tried to reach her. Twenty hands opposed his desperate efforts; and, while defending himself, he saw Isabel pushed towards the barricades by the two tramps. She stumbled and fell. They were trying to raise her when suddenly two shots rang out and both fell headlong.

"Simon! Antonio!" cried a voice.

Through the fray Simon saw Dolores, sitting erect on a horse all covered with foam. Her rifle was levelled and she was firing. Three of the nearest aggressors were struck. Simon contrived to break away, run to Isabel and join Dolores, to whom Antonio at the same time was bringing Lord Bakefield.

Thus the four were together again, but each was followed by the rabble of persistent marauders, and these were reinforced by dozens of others, who loomed out of the fog and doubtless imagined that the stake in such a battle, in which the number of their opponents was so small, must be the capture of some treasure.

"There are more than a hundred of them," said Antonio. "We are done for."

"Saved!" cried Dolores, who now ceased firing.

"Why?"

"Yes, we must hold out . . . one minute. . . ."

Dolores' reply was drowned in the uproar. Their a.s.sailants came along with a rush. With their backs against the horse, the little party faced in all directions, firing, wounding, killing. With his left hand Simon discharged his revolver, while with his right hand, which gripped his rifle by the barrel, whirling it to terrible effect, he held the enemy at a distance.

But how could they resist the torrent, continually renewed, that rushed upon them. They were submerged. Old Lord Bakefield was struck senseless with a stick; and one of Antonio's arms was paralysed by a blow from a stone. Any further resistance was out of the question. The hideous moment had come when people fall, when their flesh is trampled underfoot and torn asunder by the enemy's claws.

"Isabel!" murmured Simon, crus.h.i.+ng her pa.s.sionately in his arms.

They dropped to their knees together. The beasts of prey fell upon them, covering them with darkness.

A bugle sounded some distance away, scattering its lively notes upon the air. Another call rang out in reply. It was a French bugle sounding the charge.

A great silence, heavy with fear, petrified the h.o.a.rdes of pillagers.

Simon, who was losing consciousness, felt that the weight above him was lightened. Some of the beasts of prey were taking flight.

He half-raised himself, while supporting Isabel, and the first thing that struck him was Antonio's att.i.tude. The Indian, with drawn face, was gazing at Dolores. Slowly and steadily he took a few steps towards her, like a cat creeping up to its prey, and suddenly, before Simon could intervene, he leapt on the crupper behind her, pa.s.sed his arms under hers and dug his heels into the horse, which broke into a gallop along the barricades, towards the north.

From the opposite direction, through the mist, appeared the sky-blue uniforms of France.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR THE NEW TERRITORIES

"My fault! . . . Now aren't you convinced, as I am, that this is a ramification of my fault, ending in a _cul-de-sac_? So that all the eruptive forces immobilized in the direction of this blind alley have found a favourable position . . . so that all these forces . . . you grasp the idea, don't you?"

Simon grasped it all the less inasmuch as Old Sandstone was becoming more and more entangled in his theory, while he, Simon, was wholly absorbed in Isabel and had ears for hardly anything but what she was telling him.

They were all three a little way outside the barricades, among the groups of tents around which the soldiers, in overalls, and fatigue-caps, were moving to and fro and preparing their meals.

Isabel's face was already more peaceful and her eyes less uneasy.

Simon gazed at her with infinite tenderness. In the course of the morning the fog had at last dispersed. For the first time since the day when they had travelled together on the deck of the _Queen Mary_, the sun shone in a cloudless sky; and one might almost have thought that nothing had occurred between that day and this to divide them.

All evil memories faded away. Isabel's torn dress, her pallor and her bruised wrists were the reminder merely of an adventure already remote, since the glorious future was opening out before them.

Inside the barricades, a few soldiers scurried round the arena, stacking the dead bodies, while others, farther back, stationed on the wreck of the _Ville de Dunkerque_, removed the sinister shapes hanging from their gibbets. Near the submarine, in an enclosed s.p.a.ce guarded by many sentries, some dozens of prisoners were herded and were joined at every moment by fresh batches of captives.

"Of course," resumed Old Sandstone, "there are many other obscure points; but I shall not leave this until I have studied all the causes of the phenomenon."

"And I," said Simon, laughing, "should very much like to know how you managed to get here."

This was a question which possessed little interest for Old Sandstone, who replied, vaguely:

"How do I know! I followed a crowd of good people. . . ."

"Good looters and murderers!"

"Oh, do you think so? Yes, it may be . . . it seemed to me, sometimes.

. . . But I was so absorbed! So many observations to make! Besides, I was not alone . . . at least, on the last day."

"Really? Who was with you?"

"Dolores. We made the whole of the last stage together; and it was she who brought me here. She left me when we came in sight of the barricades. For that matter, it was impossible to enter this enclosure and examine the phenomena more closely. Directly I went forward, pom-pom went the machine-gun! At last, suddenly, the crowd burst the dike. But what puzzles me now is that these eruptions seem already to be decreasing in violence, so that we can foresee the end of them very shortly. True, on the other hand. . . ."

But Simon was not listening. He had caught sight, in the arena, of the captain commanding the detachment, with whom he had not been able to exchange more than a few words that morning, as the officer had at once gone in pursuit of the fugitives. Simon led Isabel to the tent, set aside for her, in which Lord Bakefield was resting, and joined the captain, who cried:

"We are straightening things out, M. Dubosc. I've sent a few squads north; and all these bands of cut-throats will fall into my hands or into those of the English troops, who, I'm told, have arrived. But what savages! And how glad I am that I came in time!"

Simon thanked him in the name of Lord Bakefield and his daughter.

"It's not I whom you should thank," he replied, "but that strange woman, whom I know only by the name of Dolores, and who brought me here."

The captain related how he had been operating since three o'clock in the out-posts of Boulogne, where he was garrisoned, when he received from the newly-appointed military governor an order instructing him to move towards Hastings, to take possession of the country as far as mid-way between the two coasts and to put down all excesses ruthlessly.

"Well, this morning," he said, "when we were patrolling two or three miles from there, I saw the woman ride up at a gallop. She told me in a few words what was happening inside these barricades, which she had not been able to pa.s.s, but behind which Simon Dubosc was in danger.

Having succeeded in catching a horse, she had come to beg me to go to your a.s.sistance. You can imagine how quickly I marched in the direction she gave me, as soon as I heard the name of Simon Dubosc.

And you will understand also why, when I saw that she in her turn was in danger, I rushed in pursuit of the man who was carrying her off."

"What then, captain?"

"Well, she returned, quite quietly, all alone on her horse. She had thrown the Indian, whom my men picked up in the neighbourhood, rather the worse for his fall. He says he knows you."

Simon briefly related the part which Antonio had played in the tragedy.

"Good!" cried the officer. "The mystery is clearing up!"

"What mystery, captain?"

"Oh, something quite in keeping with all the horrors that have been committed!"