The Tremendous Event Page 12

  CHAPTER IV

  THE BATTLE

  All things considered, their best chance of safety would have been toplunge into the river and escape by the left bank. But this plan,which would have cut them off from Rolleston and which Simon did notwish to adopt except in the last extremity, must have been foreseen byForsetta, for, as soon as light was clear enough, they saw two trampsgoing up the Somme on the opposite bank. Under these conditions, howwere they to land?

  Shortly afterwards, they saw that their retreat was discovered andthat the enemy was profiting by their hesitation. On the same bank asthemselves, some five hundred yards down-stream, appeared the barrelof a rifle. Up-stream an identical menace confronted them.

  "Forsetta and Mazzani," declared Dolores. "We are cut off right andleft."

  "But there's nobody in front of us."

  "Yes, the rest of the tramps."

  "I don't see them."

  "They are there, believe me, in hiding and well sheltered."

  "Let's rush at them and get by!"

  "To do that, we should have to cover a bare patch under the cross-fireof Mazzani and Forsetta. They are good shots. They won't miss us."

  "Then what?"

  "Well, let's defend ourselves here."

  It was good advice. The cargo of marble blocks, piledhiggledy-piggledy like a child's building-bricks, formed a thoroughcitadel. Dolores and Simon climbed it and at the top selected a fort,protected on all sides, from which they could see the slightestmovements of their enemies.

  "They're coming," Dolores declared, after an attentive scrutiny.

  The river had deposited along the banks trunks of trees and enormousroots, drifting it was impossible to say whence, which Forsetta andMazzani were using to cover their approach. Moreover, at each rushforward they protected themselves with broad planks which they carriedwith them. And Dolores called Simon's attention to the fact that morethings were moving across the bare plain; more shields improvised ofall sorts of stray materials: coils of rope, broken parts of boats,fragments of pontoons and pieces of boilerplate. All these things werecreeping imperceptibly, with the sure, heavy pace of tortoises makingfor the same goal, along the radius that led to the centre. And thecentre was the fortress. The tramps were investing it under the ordersof Mazzani and Forsetta. From time to time a limb or a head appearedin sight.

  "Ah!" said Simon, in a voice filled with rage. "If only I had a fewbullets, wouldn't I stop this inroad of wood-lice!"

  Dolores had made a display of the two useless rifles, in the hope thatthe threatening aspect would intimidate the enemy. But the confidenceof the attackers increased with the inactivity of the besieged. It waseven possible that the two Indians had scented the ruse, for theyscarcely attempted to conceal themselves.

  To show his skill, one of them--Forsetta, Dolores declared--shot downa sea-gull skimming along the river. Mazzani accepted the challenge.An aeroplane, humming in their direction and flying lower than most,seemed suddenly to drop from the clouds and silently glided acrossthe river, over the blocks of marble. When it came level, Mazzanithrew up his rifle, slowly took aim and fired. The pilot was hit, boredownwards, heeled over on either side alternately, until he seemedabout to capsize, and passed on, disappearing in a zig-zag flight likethat of a wounded bird.

  And suddenly, Simon having shown his head, two bullets fired by thetwo Indians ricochetted from the nearest stone surface, detaching afew splinters.

  "Oh, please don't be so imprudent!" Dolores implored.

  A drop of blood trickled down his forehead. She staunched it gentlywith her handkerchief and murmured:

  "You see, Simon, those men will get the better of us. And you stillrefuse to leave me? You risk your life, though nothing can affect theissue?"

  He pushed her away from him:

  "My life is not at stake. . . . Nor yours either. . . . This handfulof wretches will never get at us."

  He was mistaken. Some of the vagabonds were within eighty yards ofthem. They could hear them talking together; and the men's hard faces,covered with grey stubble, shot up from behind their bucklers like thehead of a Jack-in-the-box.

  Forsetta was shouting his orders:

  "Forward! . . . There's no danger! . . . They've no ammunition! . . .Forward, I tell you! The Frenchman's pockets are stuffed with notes!"

  The seven tramps ran forward as one man. Simon levelled his revolverbriskly and fired. They stopped. No one was hit. Forsetta wastriumphant:

  "They're done for! . . . Nothing but short-range Browning bullets!. . . At them!"

  He himself, protecting his body with a piece of sheet-iron, ran up atfull speed. Mazzani and the tramps formed up in a circle at thirty orforty yards.

  "Ready!" bellowed Forsetta. "Out with your knives!"

  Dolores remarked to Simon that they must not remain in theirobservation-post, since most of their enemies would be able to reachthe foot of the fortress unseen and slip between the marble blocks.They slid through a gap which formed a chimney from the top to theground.

  "There they are! There they are!" said Dolores. "Fire now! . . . Look,here's a chink!"

  Through this chink Simon saw two big ruffians walking ahead of therest. Two shots rang out. The two big ruffians fell. The party haltedfor the second time, hesitating what to do.

  Dolores and Simon profited by this delay to take refuge at the extremeedge of the river. Three single blocks of marble formed a sort ofsentry-box, with an empty space in front of it.

  "Charge!" shouted Forsetta, joining the men. "They're trapped! Mazzaniand I have got them covered. If the Frenchman stirs, we'll shoot himdown!"

  To meet the charge, Simon and Dolores were obliged to stand up andhalf-expose themselves. Terrified by the Indian's threat, Doloresthrew herself before Simon, making a rampart of her body.

  "Halt!" ordered Forsetta, restraining his men's onrush. "And you,Dolores, you leave your Frenchman! Come! He shall have his life ifyou leave him. He can go: it's you I'm after!"

  Simon seized the girl with his left arm and drew her back by mainforce:

  "Not a movement!" he said. "I forbid you to leave me! I'll answer foryour safety. As long as I live those brutes shan't get you."

  And, with the girl pressed against the hollow of his shoulder, hestretched out his right arm.

  "Well done, M. Dubosc!" jeered Forsetta. "Seems that we're sweet onthe fair Dolores and that we're sticking to her! Those Frenchmen areall alike! Chivalrous fellows!"

  With a wave of the hand he gathered up the tramps for the finalattack:

  "Now then, mates! One more effort and all the notes are yours! Mazzaniand I bag the pretty lady. Is that right, Mazzani?"

  All together they came rushing on. All together, at an order fromForsetta, they hurled, like so many projectiles, the pieces of woodand iron with which they had protected themselves. Dolores was nothit, but Simon, struck on the arm, dropped his Browning at the verymoment when he had fired at Mazzani and brought him down. One of thetramps leapt upon the pistol, which had rolled away, while Forsettastruggled with Dolores, avoiding the girl's dagger and imprisoning herin his arms.

  "Oh, Simon! I'm done for!" she screamed, trying to hang on to him.

  But Simon had the five tramps to deal with. Unarmed, with nothing buthis hands and feet to fight with, he was shot at three times by theman who had picked up his pistol and was clumsily firing off the lastfew cartridges. He staggered for a moment under the weight of theother brutes and was thrown to the ground. Two of them seized hislegs. Two others tried to strangle him, while the fifth still kept himcovered with his empty pistol.

  "Simon, save me! . . . Save me!" cried Dolores, whom Forsetta wascarrying off, wrapped in a blanket and bound with a rope.

  He made a desperate effort, escaping his assailants for a few seconds,and, before they had time to come to close quarters again, acting on asudden impulse he threw his pocket-book to them, shouting:

  "Hands off, you blackguards! Share that between you! Thirty thousand!"

  The
bundles of notes fell out of the leather wallet and werescattered over the ground. The tramps did not hesitate, but plumpeddown on their hands and knees, leaving the field to Simon.

  Fifty yards away, Forsetta was running along the river, with his preyslung over his shoulder. Farther on, the two tramps posted on theother bank were punting themselves across on a raft which they hadfound. If Forsetta came up with them, it meant his safety.

  "He won't get there," Simon said to himself, measuring the distancewith his eye.

  With a quick movement, he snatched the knife of one of his aggressorsand set off at a run.

  Forsetta, who believed him to be still struggling with the vagabonds,did not hurry. He had, so to speak, rolled Dolores round his neck,holding her legs, head and arms in front of him and crushing them tohis chest with his rifle and his brawny arms. He shouted to the twomen on the raft, to stimulate their ardour:

  "Here's the girl! She's my share. . . . You shall have all herjewels!"

  The men warned him:

  "Look out!"

  He turned, saw Simon at twenty paces' distance and tried to throwDolores to the ground with a heave of the shoulder, like an irksomeburden. The girl fell, but she had so contrived matters, under coverof the suffocating blanket, that at the moment of falling she had agood grip on the barrel of the Indian's rifle; and in her fall shedragged him down with her.

  The few seconds which Forsetta needed to recover his weapon were hisundoing. Simon leapt upon him before he could take aim. He stumbledonce more, received a dagger-thrust in the hip and went down on hisknees, begging for mercy.

  Simon released Dolores' bonds; then, addressing the two tramps who,terror-stricken when on the point of touching ground, were now tryingto push off again:

  "See to his wound," he ordered. "And there's the other Indian overthere: he's probably alive. Look after him too, you shall have yourlives."

  The tramps were scattering so rapidly in the distance, with Simon'sbank-notes, that he gave up all idea of pursuing them.

  Thus he remained master of the battle-field. Dead, wounded, or infight, his adversaries were defeated. The extraordinary adventure wascontinuing as it were in a savage country and against the mostunexpected background.

  He was profoundly conscious of the incredible moments through which hewas passing, on the bed of the Channel, between France and England, ina region which was truly a land of death, crime, cunning and violence.And he had triumphed!

  He could not refrain from smiling and, leaning with both hands onForsetta's rifle, he said to Dolores:

  "The prairie! It's Fenimore Cooper's prairie! The Far West! It's allhere: the attack by Sioux, the improvised blockhouse, the abduction,the fight, with the chief of the Pale-Faces coming out victorious!. . ."

  She stood facing him, very erect. Her thin silk blouse had been tornin the struggle and hung in strips around her bosom. Simon added, in atone of less assurance:

  "And here's the fair Indian."

  Was it emotion, or excessive fatigue after her protracted efforts?Dolores staggered and seemed on the verge of fainting. He supportedher, holding her in his arms:

  "You're surely not wounded?" he said.

  "No. . . . A passing giddiness. . . . I have been badly frightened.. . . And I had no business to be frightened, since you were there andyou had promised to save me. Oh, Simon, how grateful I am to you!"

  "I have done what any one would have done in my place, Dolores. Don'tthank me."

  He tried to free himself, but she held him and, after a moment'ssilence, said:

  "She whom the chief calls the fair Indian had a name by which she wasknown in her own country. Shall I tell you what it was?"

  "What was it, Dolores?"

  In a low voice, without taking her eyes from his, she replied:

  "The Chief's Reward!"

  He had felt, in his inner consciousness, that this magnificentcreature deserved some such name, that she was truly the prey whichmen seek to ravish, the captive to be saved at any cost, and that shedid indeed offer, with her red lips and her brown shoulders, the mostwonderful of rewards.

  She had flung her arms about his neck; he was conscious of theircaress; and for a moment they stood like that, motionless, uncertainof what was coming. But Isabel's image flashed across his mind and heremembered the oath which she had required of him:

  "Not a moment's weakness, Simon. I should never forgive that."

  He pulled himself together and said:

  "Get some rest, Dolores. We have still a long way to go."

  She also recovered herself and went down to the river, where shebathed her face in the cool water. Then, getting to work immediately,she collected all the provisions and ammunition that she could find onthe wounded men.

  "There!" she said, when everything was ready for their departure."Mazzani and Forsetta won't die, but we have nothing more to fear fromthem. We will leave them in the charge of the two tramps. The four ofthem will be able to defend themselves."

  They exchanged no more words. They went up the river for another hourand reached the wide bend of which the people from Cayeux had toldthem. At the very beginning of this bend, which brought the waters ofthe Somme direct from France, they picked up Rolleston's trail on atract of muddy sand. The trail led straight on, leaving the course ofthe river and running north.

  "The fountains of gold lie in this direction evidently," Simoninferred. "Rolleston must be at least a day's journey ahead of us."

  "Yes," said Dolores, "but his party is a large one, they have nohorses left and their two prisoners are delaying their progress."

  They met several wanderers, all of whom had heard the strange rumourwhich had spread from one end of the prairie to the other and all ofwhom were hunting for the fountain of gold. No one could give theleast information.

  But a sort of old crone came hobbling along, leaning on a stick andcarrying a carpet-bag with the head of a little dog sticking out ofit.

  The dog was barking like mad. The old crone was humming a tune, in afaint, high-pitched voice.

  Dolores questioned her. She replied, in short, sing-song sentences,which seemed a continuation of her ditty, that she had been walkingfor three days, never stopping . . . that she had worn out her shoes. . . and that when she was tired . . . she got her dog to carry her:

  "Yes, my dog carries me," she repeated. "Don't you, Dick?"

  "She's mad," Simon muttered.

  The old woman nodded in assent and addressed them in a confidentialtone:

  "Yes, I'm mad. . . . I used not to be, but it's the gold . . . therain of gold that has made me mad. . . . It shoots into the air like afountain . . . and the gold coins and the bright pebbles . . . fall ina shower. . . . So you hold out your hat or your bag and the goldcomes pouring into it. . . . My bag is full. . . . Would you like tosee?"

  She laughed quietly and, beckoning to Simon and Dolores, took her dogby the scruff of the neck, dropped him on the ground and half-openedher bag. Then, again in her sing-song voice:

  "You are honest folk, aren't you? . . . I wouldn't show it to any oneelse. . . . But you won't hurt me."

  Dolores and Simon eagerly bent over the bag. With her bony fingers theold woman first lifted a heap of rags kept there for Dick's benefit;she then removed a few shiny red and yellow pebbles. Beneath these layquite a little hoard of gold coins, of which she seized a generoushandful, making them clink in the hollow of her hand. They were oldcoins of all sizes and bearing all sorts of heads.

  Simon exclaimed excitedly:

  "She comes from there! . . . She has been there!"

  And shaking the mad woman by the shoulders, he asked:

  "Where is it? How many hours have you been walking? Have you seen aparty of men leading two prisoners, an old man and a girl?"

  But the madwoman picked up her dog and closed her bag. She refused tohear. At the most, as she moved away, she said, or rather sang to theair of a ballad which the dog accompanied with his barking:

  "Men on horseback. . . .
They were galloping. . . . It was yesterday.. . . A girl with fair hair. . . ."

  Simon shrugged his shoulders:

  "She's wandering. Rolleston has no horses. . . ."

  "True," said Dolores, "but, all the same, Miss Bakefield's hair isfair."

  They were much astonished, a little way on, to find that Rolleston'strail branched off into another trail which came from France and whichhad been left by the trampling of many horses--a dozen, Doloresestimated--whose marks were less recent than the bandits' footprints.These were evidently the men on horseback whom the madwoman had seen.

  Dolores and Simon had only to follow the beaten track displayed beforetheir eyes on the carpet of moist sand. The region of shells had cometo an end. The plain was strewn with great, absolutely round rocks,formed by pebbles agglomerated in marl, huge balls polished by all thesubmarine currents and deep-sea tides. In the end they were packed soclose together that they constituted an insuperable obstacle, whichthe horsemen and then Rolleston had wheeled round.

  When Simon and Dolores had passed it, they came to a wide depressionof the ground, the bottom of which was reached by circular terraces.Down here were a few more of the round rocks. Amid these rocks lay anumber of corpses. They counted five.

  They were the bodies of young men, smartly dressed and wearing bootsand spurs. Four had been killed by bullets, the fifth by a stab in theback between the shoulders.

  Simon and Dolores looked at each other and then each continued inindependent search.

  On the sand lay bridles and girth, two nosebags full of oats,half-emptied meat-tins, unrolled blankets and a spirit-stove.

  The victims' pockets had been ransacked. Nevertheless, Simon found ina waistcoat a sheet of paper bearing a list of ten names--PaulCormier, Armand Darnaud, etc.--headed by this note:

  "Foret-d'Eu Hunt."

  Dolores explored the immediate surroundings. The clues which she thusobtained and the facts discovered by Simon enabled them to reconstructthe tragedy exactly. The horsemen, all members of a Norman hunt,camping on this spot two nights before, had been surprised in themorning by Rolleston's gang and the greater number massacred.

  With such men as Rolleston and his followers, the attack hadinevitably ended in a thorough loot, but its main object had been thetheft of the horses. When these had been taken after a fight, therobbers had made off at a gallop.

  "There are only five bodies," said Dolores, "and there are ten nameson the list. Where are the other five riders?"

  "Scattered," said Simon, "wounded, dying, anything. I daresay weshould find them by searching round? But how can we? Have we the rightto delay, when the safety of Miss Bakefield and her father is atstake? Think, Dolores: Rolleston has more than thirty hours' start ofus and he and his men are mounted on excellent horses, while we. . . .And then where are we to catch them?"

  He clenched his fists with rage:

  "Oh, if I only knew where this fountain of gold was! How far from itare we? A day's march? Two days'? It's horrible to know nothing, to goforward at random, in this accursed country!"