"Forward, march!" giving the example and seeming no more hindered by Michel's weight than Trigaud was by Courte-Joie's.
They walked thus for fifteen minutes without getting out of the smoke which their conflagration, spreading with amazing rapidity under the force of the wind, rolled up about them. Once or twice Jean Oullier muttered to Bertha, who was half suffocated:--
"Can you breathe?"
To which she replied with an almost inarticulate yes. As for Michel, the old keeper cared not at all; he was certain to keep up with the rest, inasmuch as he, Jean Oullier, had him on his shoulders.
Suddenly Trigaud, who marched at their head guided by Courte-Joie, and utterly indifferent to where he went, stepped back abruptly. He had set his feet in water, which the smoke had prevented him from seeing, and he was now knee-deep in it. Aubin uttered a cry of joy.
"We've done it!" he said; "the smoke has led us as straight as the best-broken hound ever led a sportsman."
"Ah!" exclaimed Jean Oullier.
"You understand now, don't you, my gars?" said Courte-Joie, in a tone of triumph.
"Yes; but how shall we reach the island?"
"How? Why, there's Trigaud."