D’Artagnan went toward a very small, low window, just large enough to let a man through. He turned it gently on its hinges.
“There,” he said, “is our road.”
“The deuce! it is a very cold one, my dear friend,” said Aramis.
“Stay here, if you like, but I warn you ’twill be rather too warm presently.”
“But we cannot swim to the shore.”
“The longboat is yonder, lashed to the felucca. We will take possession of it and cut the cable. Come, my friends.”
“A moment’s delay,” said Athos; “our servants?”
“Here we are!” they cried.
Meantime the three friends were standing motionless before the awful sight which D’Artagnan, in raising the shutters, had disclosed to them through the narrow opening of the window.
Those who have once beheld such a spectacle know that there is nothing more solemn, more striking, than the raging sea, rolling, with its deafening roar, its dark billows beneath the pale light of a wintry moon.