There was only one way—the way she had gone that evening. The waves to-night broke not much less gently on this shore of tragedy than they had done on that placid strand. Yes, there lay, as always of late in Fortuné's life, the call. But it had never been so hard to follow. Nevertheless he believed the English squadron to be cruising somewhere off the little isles of Houat and Hoedic, and the former of these could not be more than ten miles away. If Providence would but complete the miracle and put him in the way of coming by a boat—a possible but an unlikely occurrence—he would take it for an omen, and make an attempt to reach the fleet.
And so, supporting his mangled arm again with the other, he began to get with difficulty to his feet, reflecting as he did so that even if there were a boat on the shore he could not launch it, injured as he was, and that in any case, if he showed himself near it, he would probably be fired on by some unseen sentry. Luckily the moon was near her setting. He must therefore look for this problematical boat before she set, but not attempt to embark till afterwards, when it would be much darker.
Directly he was on his feet, La Vireville became aware of a black blotch on the waters of the bay, a little to his left, and a few yards from shore. He stood there staring at it, utterly unbelieving. Was this the answer of Providence? Two fantastic thoughts immediately visited him: the first, that she, with whom he had almost seemed, a moment ago, to hold converse, had known that the boat was there; the second, that Anne-Hilarion must really need him. It was quite a small boat, yet, as far as he could see by straining his eyes in the moonlight, it had a mast ready stepped—a vital point, since he must have a sail. Then he tried to calculate the distance of the boat from the edge of the water, because he thought it very unlikely that in his present condition he could swim out to her. If the tide were ebbing, however, he might possibly reach her by wading.
"I shall be taking the deuce of a deal of trouble for you, Anne," he said out loud, "and I expect it will come to the same thing in the end—a volley at ten paces." But he sat down again to wait for the moon's setting, his back against the bank of sand that was the edge of the barley-field, trying to keep his hot thoughts off the great pain that he was suffering, wishing that he had not made away with his sling, and facing the more than probability that the fresh injury would in the end be his undoing.
Twelve hours later, shivering with fever under a hot noon sun, he was lying becalmed somewhere to the east of Houat. He had almost lost his sense of direction, and in any case there was no wind. The oars he naturally could not use. He had eaten nothing since the day before, he was very thirsty, he had been soaked to the skin in getting to the boat, and his wounded arm was causing him such a martyrdom that if he could have cut it off and thrown it overboard he would willingly have done so. Half the time Anne-Hilarion seemed to be sitting beside him, asking why they did not sail faster, and once, at least, he answered him very seriously, "Because, mon petit, your uncle has such extraordinary bad luck,"—to which Anne had contended that it was good luck, not bad, or that it might at least be regarded as mixed. And then the fugitive found himself saying something about the devil's own luck, and a voice replied, "André had that kind of luck too, but it failed him in the end." Who was André? Was he in the boat too? If he were, then perhaps his sister was with him, and perhaps she could do something for this terrible pain which was driving him crazy—as once she had with her cool fingers eased his foot. . . .
And Fortuné raised his throbbing head from the gunwale to look for her—but he was quite alone in the boat, and the boat was alone, motionless, in the midst of a shining sea. How the sun stared at him—and yet he was so cold! His head fell back again inert, and he returned once more to the vision of that tragic line of fallen, writhing figures, an ineffaceable glimpse of which his senses had caught and recorded as he leapt the wall.
Later still, as daylight faded, the little boat, lifting sideways with every long shoreward wave, her sails racketing madly about, drifted nearer and nearer to the iron rocks of Houat, where the surf was always pounding. The wished-for wind had sprung up just at sunset, but the helmsman, lying face upwards in the sternsheets, much as François the fisherman had once lain, was in no condition to utilise it, or even to avert the disaster to which it was hurrying him.
Author's Note.—It is a matter of historical fact that one émigré did escape shooting at Quiberon by throwing his gold to the firing-party, exactly as described.