Part 10 (1/2)

”She was painted like one of our fis.h.i.+ng-smacks,” interposed Pierre, now too excited to hold his tongue, ”but she did not know the channel.”

”Aye, and she'll try it again,” growled the brigadier, ”if the night be dark. She'll find it clear sailing in, but a hot road out.”

”Tobacco?” I asked, now fully alive to the situation.

The brigadier spat.

”Of course, as full as she'll float,” he answered. He leaned forward and touched me good-humouredly on the shoulder. ”I'm short of men,” he said hurriedly.

”Command me,” I replied. ”I'll do my best. I shall return to-night.” And I rose to take my leave, but he instantly raised his hand in protest.

”You are under arrest, monsieur,” he declared quietly, with a shrug of his shoulders.

I looked at him wide-eyed in astonishment.

”Arrest!” I gasped.

”Do not be alarmed,” he replied. ”It will only be temporary, I a.s.sure you, but since you have so awkwardly stumbled among us there is no alternative but for me to detain you until this _sacre_ affair is well over. I cannot, at all events, let you return to the village to-night.”

”But I give you my word of honour, monsieur,” I declared, ”I shall not open my lips to a soul. Besides, I must dine at eight to-night with Madame de Breville. Your excellency can well understand.”

”I know you have friends, monsieur; they might be inquisitive; and those friends have servants, and those servants have friends,” was his reply. ”No, it is better that you stay. Pierre, give monsieur a carbine and a place ten metres from your own at sundown; then report to me he is there. Now you may go, monsieur.”

Pierre touched me on the shoulder; then suddenly realizing I was under orders and a prisoner, I straightened, saluted the brigadier, and followed Pierre out of the fort with the best grace I could muster.

”Pierre!” I exclaimed hotly, as we stood again in the thicket. ”How long since you've held up anything here--contraband, I mean?”

For a moment he hesitated, then his voice sank to a whisper.

”They say it is all of twenty years, perhaps longer,” he confessed. ”But to-night monsieur shall see. Monsieur is, of course, not exactly a prisoner or he would now be in the third vault from the right.”

”A prisoner! The devil I'm not? Didn't he tell me I was?” I exclaimed.

”_Mon Dieu!_ What will you have, monsieur?” returned Pierre excitedly, under his breath. ”It is the brigadier's orders. I was afraid monsieur might reply to him in anger. Ah, _par exemple!_ Then monsieur would have seen a wild bull. Oh, la! la! When the brigadier is furious----Ah, _ca!_” And he led the way to my appointed ambush without another word.

Despite my indignation at being thus forced into the service and made a prisoner to boot--however temporary it might be--I gradually began to see the humour of the situation. It was very like a comic opera, I thought, as I lay flat on the edge of the thicket and pried away a small opening in the tangle through which I could look down upon the sweep of beach below me and far out to sea. Thus I lay in wait for the smuggling crew to arrive--to be blazed at and perhaps captured.

What if they outnumber us? We might all perish then, with no hope of quarter from these men whom we were lying in wait for like snakes in the gra.s.s. One thing, however, I was firmly resolved upon, and that was to shoot safely over anything that lay in range except in case of self-defence. I was never of a murderous disposition, and the thought of another's blood on my hands sent a fresh s.h.i.+ver along my prostrate spine. Then again the comic-opera side of it struck me. I began to feel more like an extra super in a one-night stand than a real soldier. What, after all, if the smugglers failed us?

I was pondering upon the dangerous effect upon the brigadier of so serious a stage wait, when Pierre crawled over to me from his ambush ten metres from my own, to leave me my ration of bread and wine. He was so excited by this time that his voice trembled in my ear.

”Gaston, my comrade, the fifth down the line,” he whispered, ”has just seen two men prowling on the marsh; they are, without doubt, accomplices. Gaston has gone to tell the brigadier.” He ran his hand carefully along the barrel of my carbine. ”Monsieur must hold high,” he explained in another whisper, ”since monsieur is unaccustomed to the gun of war. It is this little machine here that does the trick.” He bent his eyes close to the hind sight and screwed it up to its notch at one hundred and fifty metres.

I nodded my thanks, and he left me to my bread and wine and crept cautiously back to his ambush.

A black night was rapidly settling. Above me in the great unfathomable vault of sky not a star glimmered. Under the gloom of the approaching darkness the vast expanse of marsh to my left lay silent, desolate, and indistinct, save for its low edge of undulating sand dunes. Only the beach directly before me showed plainly, seemingly illumined by the breakers, that gleamed white like the bared teeth of a fighting line of wolves.

It was a sullen, cheerless sea, from which the air blew over me damp and raw; the only light visible being the intermittent flash from the distant lighthouse on Les Trois Loups, beyond the marsh.