The sudden disappearance of the flag above the tower had mystified the garrison no less thoroughly than the British. They knew the Commandant to be aloft there with Sergeant Bédard, and the most of the men could only guess, as their enemies had guessed, that he was giving the signal of surrender.
But this M. Etienne could by no means believe; it belied his brother's nature as well as his declared resolve. And so, while the English captain with great politeness stated his terms—which were unconditional surrender and nothing less—the poor gentleman kept glancing over his shoulder and answering at random, "Yes, yes," or "Precisely—if you will allow me," or "Excuse me a moment, until my brother—" In short, he rambled so that Captain Muspratt could only suppose his wits unhinged. It was scarce credible that a sane man could receive such a message inattentively, and yet this old gentleman did not seem to be listening!
Diane meanwhile stood at the mouth of her shelter with her eyes lifted, intent upon the tower's summit. She, too had seen the flag run down with the bursting of the bomb, and she alone had hit in her mind on the true explanation—that a flying shard had cut clean through the up-halliard close to the staff, and the flag—heavy with golden lilies of her own working—had at once dropped of its own weight. She had caught sight, too, of her father's arm reaching up to grasp it, and she knew why. The flagstaff had a double set of halliards.
She waited—waited confidently, since her father was alive up there. She marvelled that he had escaped, for the explosion had seemed to wrap the battlements in one sheet of fire. Nevertheless he was safe—she had seen him—and she waited for the flag to rise again.
Minutes passed. She took a step forward from her shelter. The firing had ceased and the courtyard was curiously still and empty. Then four of the five militiamen posted to watch the back of the building came hurrying across towards the gateway. She understood—her senses being strung for the moment so tensely that they seemed to relieve her of all trouble of thinking—she understood that a parley was going forward at the gate and that these men were hurrying from their posts to hear it. In her ears the bugles still sounded the "Cease firing "; and still she gazed up at the tower.
Yes—she had made no mistake! The spare halliards were shaking; in a second or two—but why did they drag so interminably?—the flag would rise again.
And it rose. Before her eyes, before the eyes of the parleyers in the gateway and of the British watching from their batteries, it rose above the edge of the battlements and climbed half-way up the mast, or a little short of half-way. There it stopped—climbed a few feet higher—and stopped again—climbed yet another foot—and slowly, very slowly, fluttered downward.
With a dreadful surmise Diane started to run across the courtyard toward the door at the foot of the tower; and even as she started a yell went up from the rear of the fort, followed by a random volley of musketry and a second yell—a true Iroquois war-whoop.
In the gateway Captain Muspratt called promptly to his bugler. The first yell had told him what was happening; that the men of the Forty-sixth, sent round for the feint attack, had found the rear wall defenceless and were escalading, in ignorance of the parley at the gate.
Quick as thought the bugler sounded the British recall, and its notes were taken up by bugle after bugle down the slope. The Major commanding the feint attack heard, comprehended after a fashion, and checked his men; and the Forty-sixth, as a well-disciplined regiment, dropped off its scaling ladders and came to heel.