But John à Cleeve, kneeling upon the hatchway, understood nothing of this. What beat on his brain was the vision of a face below—the face of the officer commanding—turned upwards in blank astonishment at his shout of "Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"
The Indians were battering the hatch with their musket-butts. The bolt shook. He pressed his weight down on the edge, keeping his head well back to be out of the way of bullets. Luckily the timbers of the hatch were stout, and moreover it had a leaden casing, but this would avail nothing when the Indians began to fire at the hinges—as they surely would.
He found himself saying aloud in French, "Run, mademoiselle!—I won't answer for the hinges. Call again to the red-coats! They will help."
But still, while blow after blow shook the hatch, Diane crouched motionless, staring at him with wild eyes.
"They will help," he repeated with the air of one striving to speak lucidly; then with a change of tone, "Give me your pistol, please."
She held it out obediently, at arm's length; but as he took it she seemed to remember, and crept close.
"Non—non!" she whispered. "C'est a moi-que tu le dois, enfin!"
From the staircase—not close beneath the hatch, but, as it seemed, far below their feet—came the muffled sound of shots, and between the shots hoarse cries of rage.
"Courage!" whispered John. He could hear that men were grappling and fighting down there, and supposed the Forty-sixth to be at hand. He could not know that the parleyers at the gate, appalled for an instant by the vision of Diane with a dozen savages in chase, had rallied at a yell from Dominique Guyon, pelted after him to the rescue, and were now at grips with the rearmost Oneidas—a locked and heaving mass choking the narrow spirals of the stairway.
"Courage!" he whispered again, and pressing a knee on the edge of the hatch reached out a hand to steady her. What mattered it if they died now—together—he and she? "Tu dois"—she loved him; her lips had betrayed her. "Tu dois"—the words sang through him, thrilling, bathing him in bliss.