"I understand your sensitiveness, Father, and to return to Blue Beard: once in her presence, I shall treat her not only with effrontery, with haughtiness, but as a victor—I dare say it, as a lion who comes proudly to carry off his prey."
These remarks of the chevalier were interrupted by an unforeseen accident. It was very warm; the door of the dining room which looked on the garden was half open. The chevalier, with back turned to this door, was seated in an arm chair with a wooden back which was not very high. A sharp hissing sound was heard and a quick blow vibrated in the middle of the chevalier's chair.
At this sound Father Griffen bounded from his chair, rushed and took his gun down from a rack placed in his bedroom, and precipitated himself out of doors, crying, "Jean! Monsieur! Take your guns! Follow me, my children! follow me! The Caribbeans are upon us!"
CHAPTER VI.
THE WARNING.
All this took place so rapidly that the chevalier was dumfounded. "Get up! get up!" cried the priest. "The Caribbeans! Look at the back of your chair—get out of the light!"
The chevalier rose quickly, and saw an arrow three feet in length fixed in the back of his chair. Two inches higher and the chevalier would have been pierced through the shoulders. Croustillac seized his sword, which he had left on a chair, and hurried after the priest.
Father Griffen, at the head of his two negroes, armed with their guns, and preceded by his mastiff, sought for the enemy; unfortunately, the door of the dining room opened upon a trellised orchard; the night was dark; doubtless the person who had sped the arrow was already far away, or well hidden in the top of some thick tree.
Snog bounded hither and thither in the eagerness of his search. Father Griffen recalled his two slaves who were too venturesome and would have penetrated into the orchard.
"Well, father, where are they?" said the chevalier, brandishing his sword: "shall we charge upon them? A lantern—give me a lantern; we will visit the orchard and the neighborhood of the house."