CHAPTER XXII.

At the spot which the sleigh and the convoy had reached, the road winds round at the higher portion of the level ground, which lies four or five feet below, and as a thick cloud veiled the moon, the doctor, afraid of upsetting his equipage, stopped under the oak.

"We have only about an hour's journey more, Dame Lefevre," said he, "so be of good heart; we are out of danger now."

"Yes," said Frantz; "we have got the worst part over, and now we can let the horse take a little breath."

All the band gathered round the sleigh, and the doctor alighted. Some struck a match to light their pipes, but no one said anything, for they were all thinking of the Donon. What was passing there? Would Jean-Claude succeed in holding his position until the arrival of Piorette? So many painful things, so many mournful reflections passed through the minds of these brave fellows, that no one had the least desire to speak.

When they had been standing for about five minutes beneath the old oak, just as the cloud was slowly retiring, and the pale moonlight streamed through the gorge, all at once, at two hundred paces opposite them, a dark figure on horseback appeared in the footpath among the fir-trees. The moon's rays, falling full on this tall dark figure, revealed distinctly to them a Cossack, with his sheepskin cap, and his long lance under his arm, the point behind. He was coming along at a gentle trot. Frantz had already taken aim, when behind the first appeared another lance, then another Cossack, then another, and among the dark shadows of the trees, and under the pale canopy of heaven, the trampling of horses and glittering of lances announced the approach of the Cossacks in single file, who were coming straight towards the sledge, but leisurely, like people who are searching for something, some with upturned faces, others leaning forward over the saddle as though to look underneath the bushes; altogether there were more than thirty of them.

Judge of the emotion of Louise and Catherine, seated on their sleigh in the middle of the road. They looked at each other in open-mouthed surprise. Another moment, and they would be in the midst of those bandits. The mountaineers seemed stupefied; it was impossible to return: on one side the meadow slope to descend, on the other the mountain to climb. The old farm-mistress, in her distress, took Louise by the arm, exclaiming: "Let us escape into the woods!"

She attempted to get out of the sleigh, but her shoe stuck fast in the straw.

Suddenly one of the Cossacks uttered a guttural exclamation, which ran through the whole line.

"We are discovered!" cried Doctor Lorquin, drawing his sword.

He had hardly said the word when a dozen shots lit up the path from one end to the other, and a regular howling of savages replied to the volley; the Cossacks crossed from the path into the meadow opposite, their reins hanging loosely, knees squared, urging their horses to their utmost speed, and making for the keeper's house with the fleetness of stags.

"Ha! they must be riding to the devil!" cried the doctor.

But the worthy man spoke too soon; at two or three hundred paces down in the valley, the Cossacks suddenly wheeled round, like a flock of starlings describing a circle--then, with poised lance, and nose bent down between their horses' ears, they galloped furiously right down upon the mountaineers, uttering their hoarse war-cry: "Hurrah! hurrah!"

It was a terrible moment!

Frantz and the others flung themselves on the wall to cover the sledge.

Two seconds after, nothing was heard but the clashing of lances and bayonets, cries of rage answering to imprecations; nothing seen under the shadow of the old oak, through whose branches some pale rays of light still glimmered, but horses rearing on their hind legs, wildly tossing their manes, madly striving to leap over the meadow wall, and above, veritably savage faces, with gleaming eyes, uplifted arms, hurling furious blows, advancing, retreating, and uttering wild shouts fit to make the hair stand erect upon your head.

Louise, as pale as death, and the old farm-mistress, with her long thin gray locks, were standing up in the straw.

Doctor Lorquin stood before them, parrying the blows with his sword, and all the while he was warding them off he kept shouting: "Lie down! Death and destruction! keep down, will you?"

But they did not hear him.

Louise, in the midst of this tumult, of these savage shouts, thought of nothing but shielding Catherine; and the old farm-mistress--judge of her terror!--had just recognised Yegof, on a tall, bony horse--Yegof, his tin crown on his head, his matted beard, his lance in hand, and his long sheepskin floating from his shoulders. She saw him there as plainly as if it had been broad daylight; yes, it was he whose sinister face she beheld ten paces off, with its flaming eyes, darting forth his long blue lance and striving to reach her. What should she do? Submit, yield to her fate? Thus it is that the firmest natures feel themselves forced to bow before an inflexible destiny. The old woman believed herself doomed beforehand; she believed herself foredoomed, and gazed on all those ferocious men, yelling and leaping like so many hungry wolves, aiming and receiving blows in the soft clear moonlight. She saw some struck down, and their horses, the bridle hanging over their neck, escaping into the meadow. She saw the uppermost windows in the keeper's house open on the left, and old Cuny, in his shirt-sleeves, level his gun, without daring to fire into the _melee_. She saw all these with singular clearness, and kept saying to herself: "The fool has returned: whatever happens, he will hang my head to his saddle. It must end as it did in my dream!"

And, in truth, everything seemed to justify her fears. The mountaineers, too inferior in number, were giving way.

There was a regular hand-to-hand encounter. The Cossacks, leaping up the ascent, fought in the path; one sword-thrust, better directed than the others, reached the back of the old woman's head; she felt the touch of the cold steel just in the nape of her neck.

"Oh! the wretches!" she shrieked, falling back, and supporting herself with her two hands at her back.

Doctor Lorquin himself had just been knocked against the sleigh. Frantz and the rest, surrounded by twenty Cossacks, could not run to their assistance. Louise felt a hand laid upon her shoulder; it was the hand of the fool, still bestriding his tall horse.

At this supreme moment, the poor child, mad with fear, uttered a cry of agony; at the same moment she caught sight of something shining in the dark, the pistols of Lorquin, and, quick as lightning, snatching them from the doctor's belt, she fired both shots at once, scorching the beard of Yegof, whose pale face was lit up by the flash, and shattering the skull of a Cossack who was leaning towards her, his white eyes distended with desire.

In another instant, she seized Catherine's whip, and, standing up, pale as a corpse, she lashed the flanks of the horse, who set off at full gallop. The sleigh flew wildly along; it swayed to the right and left. All of a sudden, there was a violent shock; Catherine, Louise, and all rolled in the snow down the steep descent of the ravine. The horse suddenly stopped short, thrown back upon his haunches, his mouth covered with bloody foam.

Rapid as this fall had been, Louise had seen some shadows pass like the wind behind the trees. She had heard a terrible voice, that of Dives, shout: "Forward! Stab, stab!"

It was but a vision, one of those confused apparitions such as pass before our eyes at our last hour; but as she arose, no doubt remained in the poor girl's mind; a sharp conflict was raging at twenty paces from her, behind a ridge of trees, and Marc was shouting lustily: "Courage, lads! no quarter!"

Then she saw a dozen Cossacks climbing up the opposite side of the mountain, through the bushes, like hares, and above, in the broad light of the moon, Yegof crossing the valley at his utmost speed, like a frightened bird. Several shots were sent after him, but the fool escaped them all, and, drawing himself up to his full height in his spurs, he turned round, brandishing his lance with a defiant air, and uttering a loud hurrah in the shrill tone of a heron who has just escaped from the talons of the eagle, and wings his rapid flight through the air.

Two shots were again sent after him from the keeper's house; something, a shred of his rags, detached itself from the person of the fool, who continued his way, repeating his hurrahs in a hoarse accent while scaling the path his comrades had taken.

And all this vision disappeared as in a dream.

Then Louise turned round; Catherine was standing beside her, not less dumfounded, but not less watchful. They looked at each other for a moment, and then threw themselves into each other's arms with a feeling of inexpressible relief.

"We are saved!" murmured Catherine. And, woman-like, they both began to cry.

"You have behaved bravely," said the farm-mistress--"well, very well. Jean-Claude, Gaspard, and I, we may be proud of you."

Louise was agitated by such profound emotion that she trembled from head to foot. The danger past, her own gentle nature regained the ascendancy; she was at a loss to account for the courage she had just shown.

In another moment, finding themselves a little recovered, they were preparing to climb back into the road, when they saw five or six of the mountaineers and the doctor coming to look after them.

"Ah! it's no use for you to cry, Louise," said Lorquin; "you are a dragon, a right-down imp. Now, your heart's in your mouth to look at you, but we all saw you at work. And, by-the-bye, my pistols--where are they?"

At this moment there was a rustling among the bushes, and the tall form of Marc Dives appeared, sword in hand, while he exclaimed:

"Holloa! Dame Catherine; those are rough adventures. A thousand thunders! what a lucky chance that I should happen to be there! Those beggars would rifle you from head to foot!"

"Yes," said the old farm-mistress, pushing her gray hair under her cap, "it is most fortunate."

"Fortunate! Ah! I believe you. It is not more than ten minutes since I arrived with my ammunition waggon at Cuny's house. 'Don't go to the Donon,' said he to me; 'for the last hour the sky has been all red on that side. There is fighting going on there, you may be sure.' 'You think so?' 'Yes, I do indeed.' 'Then Joson shall go out and look about and see how the land lays.' 'Good.' Joson had no sooner gone than I hear shouts like five hundred devils. 'What's the matter, Cuny?' 'Can't say.' We push the door open, and we see the hurly-burly. Ha!" continued the tall smuggler, "it did not take me long to be among them. I leap on my good horse, Fox, and then forward. What a piece of luck!"

"Ah!" said Catherine, "if we were only sure that our affairs were going as well as the Donon, we might rejoice in good earnest."

"Yes, yes, Frantz told me all about that--that's the devil; there must be always some hitch," replied Marc. "In short--in short, we are still stuck fast here, with our feet in the snow. Let us hope that Piorette will not leave his comrades long in that plight, and now let us empty our glasses, which are still half full."

Other smugglers had just arrived, saying that that wretch of a Yegof might be back soon, with a lot more of his own sort at his back.

"That is true," replied Dives. "We will return to the Falkenstein, since that is Jean-Claude's order; but we cannot take our waggon with us; it would prevent our taking the cross-roads, and, in an hour, all those bandits would be down on us tooth and nail. Let us go, in the first place, back to Cuny's; Catherine and Louise will not be sorry to drink a cup of wine, nor the others either; it will warm their hearts for them. Come up, Bruno!"

He took the horse by the bridle. Two wounded men had just been laid on the sleigh. Two others having been killed, with seven or eight Cossacks lying dead upon the snow, their large boots wide apart, were obliged to be abandoned, and they proceeded directly towards the house of the old ranger. Frantz was consoling himself for not having been at the Donon. He had run two Cossacks through, and the sight of the inn besides tended to put him into good humour. In front of the door the ammunition waggon was stationed. Cuny came out to meet them, exclaiming:

"Welcome, Dame Lefevre; what a night for women! Sit down! What is going on up above there?"

Whilst they were hastily draining a bottle, he was obliged to have everything explained to him over again. The good old man, dressed in a simple jerkin and green breeches, with his wrinkled face and bald head, listened eagerly, his eyes quite round with surprise, his hands clasped as he exclaimed:

"Good God! good God! what times we live in! Now-a-days you cannot go along the high road without the risk of being attacked. It is worse than the old stories of the Swedes."

And he shook his head.

"Come," cried Dives, "time presses; let us be going!"

When all were ready to start, the smugglers led the waggon, which contained some thousands of cartridges and two little barrels of brandy, about five hundred yards off; they then unharnessed the horses.

"Now, keep going on!" cried Marc, "in a few minutes we will rejoin you."

"But what are you going to do with that vehicle there?" asked Frantz. "Since we have not time to take it back to the Falkenstein, better put it safe under Cuny's shed than leave it in the middle of the road."

"Yes, to get the poor old fellow strung up when the Cossacks arrive, for they will be here before another hour. Don't trouble yourself about anything. I know what I'm about."

Frantz rejoined the sleigh, which set out on its way. In a short time they passed the sawpit, and then took a short cut to the right to reach the farm of Bois-des-Chenes, whose tall chimney was discernible three-quarters of a league off.

When they were halfway up the mountain, Marc Dives and his men overtook them, calling out to them: "Halt! stop a little while. Look down below there."

And they all, having looked behind towards the bottom of the gorge, saw the Cossacks caracoling round the cart, to the number of two or three hundred.

"They are here! Let us fly!" cried Louise.

"Stay a little," replied the smuggler; "we have nothing to fear."

He was just speaking, when an immense sheet of flame extended its two crimson wings from one mountain to the other, illuminating the woods and rocks to their very summits, as well as the little house of the ranger, then came such an explosion that it made the very earth tremble.

And as all the bewildered spectators stood looking at each other, for the moment speechless and spell-bound with fear, Marc's loud peals of laughter mingled with the sounds that still rang in their ears.

"Ha! ha! ha!" he exclaimed, "I was sure that the beggars would stop around the waggon to drink my brandy, and that the match would have time to reach the powder! You think they are likely to follow us, do you? I tell you what, their arms and legs are by this time hanging to the branches of the fir-trees! Come on; and may Heaven do as much to all those who attempt to cross the Rhine!"

All the escort, the mountaineers, the doctor--everybody, had grown silent again. So many terrible emotions inspired each one with endless thought, quite different from those of ordinary life. They could not help saying to themselves: "What are men, thus to destroy, torment, devour, and ruin each other? What have they done, that they should hate each other so? And what can the ferocious spirit that excites them to it be, if it's not the devil himself?"

Dives and his men alone could behold such things unmoved, and while they galloped away, laughed and applauded themselves.

"For my part," said the tall smuggler, "I never saw such a capital joke. Ha! ha! ha! I shall never stop laughing at it, if I live for a thousand years."

Then all of a sudden a gloom came over him, and he exclaimed:

"For all that, this must be Yegof's work. We must be blind not to see that it is he who led the Germans to the Blutfeld. I should be sorry if he had met his end by the blowing up of my cart. I have something better in store for him. All I desire is, that he may keep all right until we chance to meet each other somewhere in the corner of a wood. If I have to wait a year, ten, twenty years, no matter, so it comes at last. The longer I shall have waited, the better my appetite will be: tit-bits are good cold, like boar's head cooked in white wine."

He said this in a laughing, good-humoured way, but those who knew him augured from it no good to Yegof.

In half an hour after they had all arrived before the farm of Bois-des-Chenes.