CHAPTER XLI. THE COMBAT
The clouds piled high in the west, spread rapidly over the sky which had been so serene. The increasing murmur of the waves, the plaintive moan of the wind, which was gradually rising, the distant rolling of the thunder, all announced a terrible storm.
The little boat reached the shore, a lonely beach girded by blocks of reddish granite. The commander and Honorât landed, when Hadji, who had preceded them a few steps, stopped and said to Pierre des Anbiez, “Monseigneur, follow this path hollowed out of the rock, and you will soon arrive at the ruins of the Abbey of St. Victor. Pog-Reis awaits you there.”
Without replying to Hadji, Pierre des Anbiez resolutely entered a sort of crevasse formed by a rent in the rock, and scarcely large enough for a man to pass through.
Honorât, not less courageous, followed him, reflecting at the same time that a traitor, placed on the crest of the two rocks between which they rather glided than walked, could easily crush them by rolling upon them some one of the enormous stones which crowned the escarpment. The tempest was gradually approaching. The loud voices of the wind and the sea, which threatened more and more, at last burst forth into fury, and were answered from the height of the clouds by the thunderbolts. The elements had entered upon a tremendous struggle.
The commander walked with long strides. In the violence of the storm he saw an omen; it seemed to him that the vengeance of Heaven clothed itself in a terrible majesty before striking him.
The more he reflected, the more the strange dream related by the Bohemian appeared to him a manifestation of the divine will.
By one of the ordinary phenomena of thought, Pierre des Anbiez in one second recalled every detail of bloody tragedy which was the consequence of his love for the wife of Count de Montreuil, the birth of his unfortunate child, the death of Emilie, and the murder of her husband. All of these events came back to his mind with awful precision, as if the crime had been committed the day before.
The narrow passage which wound across the rocks enlarged somewhat, and the commander and Honorât issued from this granite wall, and found themselves opposite the ruins of the Abbey of St. Victor. In this spot they beheld no one.