“Monsieur, I dared. I listened at the General’s door, and I heard him laugh softly to himself—he who never laughs—and he said: ‘Greet thee, Zamiel! Ten years I have given thee to make me a god, or our compact is ended!’ Monsieur, the ten years are passed, and to-night he stands again, as he stood then, at the parting of the ways.”
A flash, more brilliant than any that had yet shown, weltered and was gone. The dying soldier lifted his head quickly, with a fearful cry:
“Ne savoir à quel saint se vouer! I saw him again—but now, before I fell, I saw the red man again, and he passed into the Emperor’s tent!”
The thunder followed on his word, with a rolling slam that shook the island.
“Lebrun!” cried the young officer. “Lebrun!”
The head was like a stone in his hands; he peered down sickly; the soul of the corporal had been shaken out of him with the crash.
And, even as de Sainte Croix rose, the storm broke, and under cover of it, and of the tearing wind and rain, began the first of those silent movements which were to precipitate the gathered hosts of the French upon the opposite shore—and victory.
A moment later the young man was back at his post, amid a shadowy flurry of equerries and staff officers. All seemed confusion, but it was the kaleidoscopic agitation which falls into place and order. As he stood, the enemy’s guns, startled into action, flashed deep and melancholy from the distant blackness, their roar mingling with the thunder’s.
It was in an instant of quivering light that, looking down, he was aware of something strange and red standing by his side. It might have been a child, a dwarf, a cuirassier’s scarlet cloak, grotesquely alive. In the momentary blinding darkness which followed it was lost to him. He heard, as his eyes recovered their focus, a measured voice speaking close by:
“I think we have them, M. de Sainte Croix, since I have resolved to renew my compact with Destiny.”