The last game was now four all. This next hand must settle it one way or the other. He undid his sash, and I put away my sword belt. He was cool, this Englishman, and I tried to be so also, but the perspiration would trickle into my eyes. The deal lay with him, and I may confess to you, my friends, that my hands shook so that I could hardly pick my cards from the rock. But when I raised them, what was the first thing that my eyes rested upon. It was the king, the king, the glorious king of trumps! My mouth was open to declare it when the words were frozen upon my lips by the appearance of my comrade.
He held his cards in his hand, but his jaw had fallen, and his eyes were staring over my shoulder with the most dreadful expression of consternation and surprise. I whisked round, and I was myself amazed at what I saw.
Three men were standing quite close to us−fifteen metres at the furthest. The middle one was of a good height, and yet not too tall−about the same height, in fact, that I am myself. He was clad in a dark uniform with a small cocked hat, and some sort of white plume upon the side. But I had little thought of his dress. It was his face, his gaunt cheeks, his beak-like nose, his masterful blue eyes, his thin, firm slit of a mouth which made one feel that this was a wonderful man, a man of a million. His brows were tied into a knot, and he cast such a glance at my poor Bart from under them that one by one the cards came fluttering down from his nerveless fingers. Of the two other men, one, who had a face as brown and hard as though it had been carved out of old oak, wore a bright red coat, while the other, a fine portly man with bushy sidewhiskers, was in a blue jacket with gold facings. Some little distance behind, three orderlies were holding as many horses, and an escort of lancers was waiting in the rear.
‘Heh, Crauford, what the deuce is this?’ asked the thin man.
‘D’you hear, sir?’ cried the man with the red coat. ‘Lord Wellington wants to know what this means.’
My poor Bart broke into an account of all that had occurred, but that rock-face never softened for an instant.
‘Pretty fine,’ pon my word, General Crauford,’ he broke in. ‘The discipline of this force must be maintained, sir. Report yourself at headquarters as a prisoner.’
It was dreadful to me to see the Bart mount his horse and ride off with hanging head. I could not endure it. I threw myself before this English General. I pleaded with him for my friend. I told him how I, Colonel Gerard, would witness what a dashing young officer he was. Ah, my eloquence might have melted the hardest heart; I brought tears to my own eyes, but none to his. My voice broke, and I could say no more.
‘What weight do you put on your mules, sir, in the French service?’ he asked. Yes, that was all this phlegmatic Englishman had to answer to these burning words of mine. That was his reply to what would have made a Frenchman weep upon my shoulder.
‘What weight on a mule?’ asked the man with the red coat.
‘Two hundred and ten pounds,’ said I.
‘Then you load them deucedly badly,’ said Lord Wellington. ‘Remove the prisoner to the rear.’
His Lancers closed in upon me, and I––I was driven mad, as I thought that the game had been in my hands, and that I ought at that moment to be a free man. I held the cards up in front of the General.
‘See, my lord!’ I cried; ‘I played for my freedom and I won, for, as you perceive, I hold the king.’
For the first time a slight smile softened his gaunt face.
‘On the contrary,’ said he, as he mounted his horse, ‘it was I who won, for, as you perceive, my king holds you.’
* December, 1894.
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