“Fine! I’ll send my car over to get you in five minutes. My man will drive you down to Solliès-Pont, and you’ll be there by 3:40. There’s no way of going on by auto, is there?”
“To the Grand Cap? Impossible, Admiral. Even Valaury is difficult for wagons.”
“You know the way?”
“I think so. I went over the ground once last year, during evolutions. Beyond Valaury you have to take a trail, a sort of mountain road.”
“But a horse can do it?”
“It was on a horse that I went there.”
“Very well, then. Try to make it. But the Grand Cap is a good hour and a half beyond Solliès-Pont, and it gets dark at five. You understand that?”
“I’ll spend the night up on the Cap, of course.”
“Yes. And it won’t be so bad. There’s an officers’ building there with good beds. The guard will fix you up. And you can come back in the morning. Sorry to give you a job like this, Narcy. But I don’t just see any other way out of it. We’ve got to get word to the people there. I had thought of sending a car around, by way of Revest. But just our luck! The road is torn up all the way from Ragas to Morière. The simplest thing is for someone who knows the road to ride out from Solliès-Pont. And you seem to be the only man in sight.”