The crags were not easy to climb: but, having hitched the musket in my bandolier, I could use both hands, and so pulled myself up by the creepers which festooned the rock here and there in swags as thick as the Gauntlet's hawser. Disappointment met me on the summit. The trees allowed me but sight of the blue horizon; they still hid the shores of the bay and our anchorage. My eminence, however, showed me a track, fairly well defined, crossing the macchia and leading back to the wood.
I was conning this when a shout in my rear fetched me right-about face. Towards me, down and across the farther ridge I saw a man running—Nat Fiennes!
He had caught sight of me on my rock against the skyline, and as he ran he waved his arms frantically, motioning to me to run also for the woods. I could see no pursuer; but still, as he came on, his arms waved, and were waving yet when a bush on the chine above him threw out a little puff of grey smoke. Toppling headlong into the bushes he was lost to me even before the report rang on my ears across the hollow.
I dropped on my knees for a grip on the creepers, swung myself down the face of the crag, and within ten seconds was lost in the macchia again, fighting my way through it to the spot where Nat lay. Wherever the scrub parted and allowed me a glimpse I kept my eye on the bush above the chine; and so, with torn clothes and face and hands bleeding, crossed the dip, mounted the slope and emerged upon a ferny hollow ringed about on three sides with the macchia. There face-downward in the fern lay Nat, shot through the lungs.
I lifted him against one knee. His eyelids flickered and his lips moved to speak, but a rush of blood choked him. Still resting him against my knee, I felt behind me for my musket. The flint was gone from the lock, dislodged no doubt by a blow against the crags. With one hand I groped on the ground for a stone to replace it. My fingers found only a tangle of dry fern, and glancing up at the ridge, I stared straight along the barrel of a musket. At the same moment a second barrel glimmered out between the bushes on my left. "Signore, favorisca di rendersi," said a voice, very quiet and polite. I stared around me, hopeless, at bay: and while I stared and clutched my useless gun, from behind a rock some twenty paces up the slope a girl stepped forward, halted, rested the butt of her musket on the stone, and, crossing her hands above the nozzle of it, calmly regarded us.
Even in my rage her extraordinary wild beauty held me at gaze for a moment. She wore over a loose white shirt a short waist-tunic of faded green velvet, with a petticoat or kilt of the same reaching a little below her knees, from which to the ankles her legs were cased in tight-fitting leathern gaiters. Her stout boots shone with toe-plates of silver or polished steel. A sad-coloured handkerchief protected her head, its edge drawn straight across her brow in a fashion that would have disfigured ninety-nine women in a hundred. But no head-dress availed to disfigure that brow or the young imperious eyes beneath it.
"Are you a friend of this man?" she asked in Italian.
"He is my best friend," I answered her, in the same language.
"Why have you done this to him?"
She seemed to consider for a moment, thoughtfully, without pity.
"I can talk to you in French if you find it easier," she said, after a pause.