Unfortunately, the blood which poured from the wound fell on Trigaud's hands. He saw that blood, gave a roar of fury,--as though he felt nought but that which injured his companion,--and charged madly on the soldiers like a wild-boar on its hunters.
In an instant Courte-Joie and Trigaud were surrounded; a dozen sabres whirled above their heads, a dozen pistol muzzles threatened their bodies, and one gendarme seized Courte-Joie. But Trigaud's club descended; it fell upon the leg of the gendarme and crushed it; the hapless rider uttered a terrible cry and fell from his horse, which fled across the moor.
At the same instant a dozen shots were fired; Trigaud had a ball in the breast, and Courte-Joie's right arm, broken in two places, hung helpless at his side. The giant seemed insensible to pain; with his trunk of a tree he made a moulinet which broke two or three sabres and warded others.
"To the cross! to the cross!" cried Courte-Joie. "It is well to die there."
"Yes," muttered Trigaud; hearing his master speak of dying he brought down his club convulsively on the head of a horseman, who fell like a log. Then, executing the order he had received, he walked backward to the cross--to cover as much as possible the body of his friend with his own body.
"A thousand thunders!" shouted a corporal; "we are wasting time and lives and powder on those beggars."
So saying, he spurred his horse and forced it with one bound upon the two Vendéans. The horse's head struck Trigaud full in the chest, and the shock was so violent that it brought the giant to his knees. The soldier profited by the chance to strike Courte-Joie a blow which entered his skull.
"Throw me at the foot of the cross and escape if you can!" said Courte-Joie, in a failing voice. "It is all over with me." Then he began the prayer: "Receive my soul, God!"
But the colossus no longer obeyed him; maddened with blood and fury he uttered hoarse, inarticulate cries, like those of a lion at bay; his eyes, usually dull and lifeless, cast out flames; his lips drew up, exposing the clenched and savage teeth ready to render eraunch for eraunch with a tiger. The gallop of the horse had carried the soldier who wounded Courte-Joie to some distance. Trigaud could not reach him; but he measured the space with his eye, and whirling the club above his head, he flung it hissing through the air as if from a catapult.
The rider forced his horse to rear, and so avoided the blow; but the horse received it on his head. The creature beat the air with his forefeet as he fell over backward, and rolled with his rider on the ground.