I was once in an earthquake in Italy, and I can give you no better account of that awful moment than to say that the ground rocked beneath our feet—for that was the impression of it—just as it had done at Rocella, where I had seen a town destroyed as though the hand of Almighty God had touched it in anger. It may have been that the rushing winds which smote our faces, the flaming fires which burst from the rock, the swishing of the sea and the distortion of the searchlights contrived this delusion. I cannot tell you truly; but such was my apprehension of it, and such an impression remains. Sick and giddy, and believing that the very mountain would slip away beneath us and cast us down headlong, I clutched the grass and tried to shut the picture from my eyes; while the rolling thunder of the detonation drummed horribly in my ears, and the air came hot as a flame from the sea. As for Jules Marchand, he shrieked like a woman when the shock came, pawed the ground with convulsive hands, and cried out that we were dead men. So thick was the smoke, so impregnated the air with particles of dust, that quite a long while passed before I could as much as see him where he lay. The terror had enveloped us as in a fold of the blackest night, and we were hushed in the darkness, almost afraid of the sound of our own voices.
"Are you hurt, Marchand?" I asked him at last.
His response was a woman's wail of lamentation, and then a cry that he was blinded.
"They have taken away my eyes. My God! I am all blackness; it is dark, my comrade, dark, dark. I shall never see the daytime no more."
"Oh, come," said I, out of patience with his cowardice, "look again, man; look straight out to sea, and then tell me. Can you see nothing now?"
He lifted his head, and one of the searchlights, sending a bright beam swinging over the headland, the light fell full upon his eyes, and he opened them, to blink like a boy and to find a boy's gladness.
"Oh, my dam, I see the sun and the stars altogether!" he cried, and so great was the reaction that he shouted and sobbed all in a breath. I, however, had crawled to the edge of the cliff, and, looking down, I perceived that the inlet to the Caves of Vares was no more.
"They've done it now, Marchand," I cried back to him. "My God! the door is down."
He looked over with me, and a sardonic laugh escaped him. To this day I do not know whether Jules Marchand was a traitor or a friend to Black. Perhaps he was each in turn as the mood suited him. Crime commands no sure allegiance, however splendid the criminal.
"You speak right," he said, with a grin. "The devil have lock the door all right, and the rats is in the trap. Sacre bleu, they all dry the skin to-morrow when the soldier dogs go down. No more Zero now, my comrade; no more of the golds and the silver, eh? Very well, you and me come back by and the by, and we find him, eh? These devils all cold meat to-morrow. And the Captain, he in my own Paris to drink the white wine and eat the good dinner, and care not a ver little dam what happen. So ho! we shall be off immediately, you and me, my comrade."
I made no answer to him. A step upon the grass found me springing to my feet in wild alarm, fearful that the soldiers had already come.
But when I looked again I saw it was the great Captain, and that he stood alone.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CAVERN OF THE TORRENTS
The searchlights of the warships still wavered upon the headland, and must have disclosed his splendid figure as he stood there, upon the very edge of the precipice, defiant and motionless.
A challenge had been thrown out to the civilized world, and these great ships were the answer to it! Doomed as it seemed, beyond any hope of salvation, the door of his prison closed for ever, the soldiers standing sentinels on the hills, thus he answered them. A black figure upon the tremendous rock, so has the world last seen him; and such is the picture of him which dwells most surely in my memory.
I have called him the "Great Captain," and so he shall ever be to me, both for the magnitude of his attainments and the method of them. Betrayed this night, as it would appear, ignominious death awaiting him, never had he been cooler or more scornful of his enemies. I saw a swift glance cast out to sea, another to the distant bivouac, than with an indescribable gesture of contempt, he turned to me.
"At what hour did the Vengeur make this shore, my lad?" he asked in his gentlest tone. I told him it would have been about nine o'clock. "And the soldiers?" he went on. They had come, I said, about an hour ago.
He nodded and addressed himself to Marchand.
"I have no good account of you," he observed; "if you would go to Paris, there is the road. Be swift to take it."
The "Leopard," who had cringed before him like an animal, now drew himself up and answered with all a Frenchman's dignity.
"Captain, I will my life destroy before I go. Why shall you send me away from you?"
"Because you do not know how to be faithful, Marchand."
"Oh, monsieur, say not so. I am mad and I forget. But in my heart there is love for the great Captain always—always."
"Then show it by your conduct now. Come, we will go down."
He spoke as though it were a common affair of a common night, and yet, my God! what an act of madness it seemed to me. To go down into that pit of horrors—a pit from which flight henceforth must be impossible; to court a living tomb; to bend his head to fate and say, "It is decreed"— was this the Black I had known? And yet the command was unmistakable; and we, who would so willingly have fled from these catacombs of darkness and despair, we followed him without a word to share whatever fate his destiny had written.
I would tell you that we did not go in by the chimney I had climbed, but by that other door through which Marchand had visited the Spaniards. Here, in a granite vestibule beneath the hollow of the headland, we found a common wooden ladder some thirty feet in length, and we went down by it to a chill cave wherein a single lamp was burning. From this we passed down a vaulted tunnel, so low that a man must go astoop, so winding that the outstretched hands could hardly direct the feet aright. Beyond there lay the orifice to a black pit and a second ladder, longer than the first, and so frail that a weak head would have reeled to see it bending. Down this we went, and again down a third ladder of like length, until at last we stood in a wide cave, and there discovered the Spaniards in all attitudes of sleep and drowsiness; a company of fierce men, whose capes shielded evil faces from the light, whose wit had been washed out by the bottle long hours ago. Among these Black strode, until, halting before a prone figure, he kicked it with his boot and bade the sleeper awaken.
The man muttered an oath, rolling upon his side and crying out that he should be left to sleep. A second kick opened his eyes and brought him giddily to his feet. He stared wildly at Black, put his hand to his side as though to find his knife, and dropped it as quickly. Then the Captain spoke:
"Your friends are encamped on the high land," he said quietly; "go to them and get your reward."
"My reward, Señor Captain!"
"I have said it. In a week's time you shall be garroted at Vigo. Go and make your peace, then. These others, who have served me well, will know to-morrow who has betrayed them. I leave them to reckon with you should your friends, the soldiers, be so foolish as to lose you. Go, dog of a Spaniard, before I remember what you have done."
He had become angry in an instant, and his anger no living man had yet learned to face. As for the Spaniard, he slunk away like a whipped hound; but he was still at some distance