Yet his senses were playing him tricks again. One moment he was here, a piece of driftwood in the great wreck; the next, he was kneeling by Anne-Hilarion's bed, going again through that dreadful parting, promising that he would soon return, and the boy was clinging to him, swallowing his sobs. He could hear them now, blent with the plunge of the tide. He could not keep that promise. Better end it all, and go to Jeannette.
René thrust down a hand, tugged a pistol out of his belt, cocked it, and put it to his head.
But ere the cold rim touched his temple, sky and sea had gone black. Flashes of radiance shot through the humming darkness, steadying at last to a wide sunflower of light, and then . . . he saw distinctly Anne-Hilarion's terrified face, his little outstretched hands. His own sank powerless to the sand, and he was swept out again on the flood of unconsciousness.
(6)
"Not a single blessed patrol, by gad!" thought Mr. Francis Tollemache to himself. "That means they have got at the port wine and beer we landed at Fort Penthièvre: trust the sans-culottes for scenting it out! But, O gemini, what luck for us!"
For Mr. Tollemache was at that moment—midnight—steering a small boat along the shore of Quiberon. On his one hand were the lights of the English squadron, still in the bay; on the other, the Republican camp-fires among the sandhills. The files of Royalist prisoners had started hours ago on their march up the peninsula, but Sir John Warren was still hoping to pick up a fugitive or two under cover of darkness, and Mr. Tollemache's was not the only boat employed on this errand of mercy. But it was emphatically the most daring; nor had Sir John the least idea that Mr. Tollemache was hazarding his own, a midshipman's, and half a dozen other lives in the search for one particular Royalist. Mr. Tollemache, indeed, never intended that he should have.
A rescued Frenchman sat already in the sternsheets—the sergeant of du Dresnay, picked up earlier in the day, who had helped to carry de Flavigny down the beach. Truth to tell, Mr. Tollemache had smuggled him into the boat as a guide, for the task of finding the wounded man in the dark would otherwise have been hopeless. But the sergeant could direct them to the little rock by which his officer had been laid, and, rocks being uncommon on that long sandy shore, he did so direct them. Unfortunately, since Mr. Tollemache, no expert in tongues, could not always follow his meaning, they had not yet found it. Already, indeed, had they made hopefully for some dark object at the water's edge, only to ascertain that it was a dead horse, and Mr. Tollemache's flowers of speech at the discovery had not withered till the body of a drowned Royalist slid and bumped along the boat's side. But meanwhile, even though the shore was unguarded, it was getting momentarily more difficult to see, the tide was rising once again, the men were becoming impatient. After all, it was rather like looking for the proverbial needle.
The French soldier tugged suddenly at the Englishman's arm. "V'là, m'sieur!" he whispered. "There is the place—that is the rock!"
The young lieutenant peered through the gloom, gave a curt order or two, and then, lifted on the swell, the Pomone's boat greeted the sand of Quiberon Bay. Another moment, and Englishman and Frenchman had found what they sought. But only Mr. Dibdin's special maritime cherub averted the discharge of the cocked pistol which the Marquis de Flavigny still grasped in a senseless hand, and which Mr. Tollemache had some difficulty in disengaging before they got him into the boat.
The middy, now in charge of the tiller, desired, as they pulled away, to be informed why his superior officer had been so set on saving this particular poor devil.