A thunderbolt broke and reverberated, and, by a strange coincidence, at the same moment two men issued from the obscurity of the vault, and with slow and deliberate steps advanced toward the commander and Honorât de Berrol.
These men were Pog and Erebus.
Pog held a naked sword in his right hand; his left arm was around the neck of Erebus, and he reclined tenderly upon the young man, as a father would lean upon a son. Erebus also held an unsheathed sword in his hand.
Both continued to approach the commander and Honorât.
Suddenly Pierre des Anbiez stood for a moment petrified, then, without uttering a word, quickly stepped back, seized the arm of the Chevalier de Berrol, and pointed to Pog and Erebus, with a gesture of terror.
Notwithstanding the change produced by years in the countenance of Pog, the commander recognised in him the Count de Montreuil, the husband of Emilie, the man whom he believed he had killed, and whose portrait he had preserved as an expiation of his crime.
“Have the dead come back from the grave?” said he, in a low voice, recoiling and dragging Honorât with him as Pog advanced.
The Chevalier de Berrol was ignorant of all that pertained to that terrible tragedy, but he felt a secret horror, less at the appearance of the two pirates than at the evident fright of the commander, whose intrepidity was so well known.
Then, as if to render the solemn scene still more awful, the tempest increased in violence, and the thunder grew louder and more frequent.
Pog stopped.