These preparations completed, the Moor departed, taking with him, as a means of correspondence with the two pirates, two pigeons raised on board the chebec of Erebus, and habituated to seek and to recognise this vessel, which they regained with a jerk of the wing as soon as they perceived it, at a distance beyond the power of the eye of man.
At the end of fifteen days, the two galleys and the chebec began to cruise and beat about in view of the coasts of Provence.
As we have said, the month of December was Pog’s gloomy month, the period in which his cruel instincts were exasperated to a ferocious monomania.
He had dared present himself under an assumed name to the Marshal of Vitry, only to examine at leisure the state of the coast and the fortifications of Marseilles, as he had the audacious design of surprising and ravaging the city, and burning the port. He counted on his understanding with some Moors established in Marseilles, to make himself master of the boom of the harbour.
However absurd or impossible it may appear, this attack, or rather this surprise, might have been successful. Pog did not despair of it If the arrangements that he had manipulated failed at his signal, he was sure at least of being able to lay waste a coast which was without defence, and the little city of La Ciotat, for reason of its proximity to Maison-Forte, must in this case share the fate of Marseilles.
In the tumult of the battle, Reine des Anbiez could easily be carried off.
We have seen that the manoeuvres of the Bohemian succeeded.
A long time hidden among the rocks which bordered upon Maison-Forte, he had several times seen Reine in the balcony of the window of her oratory, and had observed that this window often remained open. Thanks to his agility, the Bohemian had introduced himself there twice in the evening,—the first time with the crystal vase containing a Persian amaryllis, a bulbous plant which blooms in a few days; the second time with the miniature.
Certain of having established these mysterious antecedents sufficiently well to excite the curiosity of Reine, and thus force her to think of Erebus, Hadji, thinking he could present himself at Maison-Forte without awakening suspicion, was returning to the house of Raimond V., and on the way met the recorder Isnard and his retinue.
Fifteen days after his arrival at Maison-Forte, the chebec, at the setting of the sun, began to cruise at large. Hadji then sent one of the pigeons as the bearer of a letter, informing Erebus that he was loved, and Pog where he could attempt a landing, in case he should be compelled to renounce his intention of surprising Marseilles.