“I can't understand how it happened,” he concluded. “Not one of us would have left him if we had thought he would be taken; but his directions were quite precise, and it never occurred to us, when he threw down his cap, that he would wait to let them surround him. He was close beside the roan—I saw him cut the tether—and I handed him a loaded pistol myself before I mounted. The only thing I can suppose is that he missed his footing,—being lame,—in trying to mount. But even then, he could have fired.”
“No, it wasn't that,” Marcone interposed. “He didn't attempt to mount. I was the last one to go, because my mare shied at the firing; and I looked round to see whether he was safe. He would have got off clear if it hadn't been for the Cardinal.”
“Ah!” Gemma exclaimed softly; and Martini repeated in amazement: “The Cardinal?”
“Yes; he threw himself in front of the pistol—confound him! I suppose Rivarez must have been startled, for he dropped his pistol-hand and put the other one up like this”—laying the back of his left wrist across his eyes—“and of course they all rushed on him.”
“I can't make that out,” said Michele. “It's not like Rivarez to lose his head at a crisis.”
“Probably he lowered his pistol for fear of killing an unarmed man,” Martini put in. Michele shrugged his shoulders.
“Unarmed men shouldn't poke their noses into the middle of a fight. War is war. If Rivarez had put a bullet into His Eminence, instead of letting himself be caught like a tame rabbit, there'd be one honest man the more and one priest the less.”
He turned away, biting his moustache. His anger was very near to breaking down in tears.
“Anyway,” said Martini, “the thing's done, and there's no use wasting time in discussing how it happened. The question now is how we're to arrange an escape for him. I suppose you're all willing to risk it?”
Michele did not even condescend to answer the superfluous question, and the smuggler only remarked with a little laugh: “I'd shoot my own brother, if he weren't willing.”