Our hero looked up, and beheld more than a dozen men in uniform, some fifty yards above them, with muskets pointed directly at them.
“Spring over the cliff, Bill, or we’re dead men;” and, with a bound, he threw himself over, instantly followed by Saunders. As they did so, a volley of musketry rattled over the spot, and shattered portions of the rock on which, a moment before, they had been standing.
A man sprang up amongst the gendarmes—it was Augustine Vadier—who, shaking his clenched hand fiercely, exclaimed to the men, “Reload, or, curse them, they will escape, and then follow them.”
The two Englishmen rolled over the ascent, with fragments of rock and red earth clattering down with them, for ten or fifteen yards. Unfortunately, a huge fragment of rock struck our hero on the head, leaving him totally senseless at the foot of the descent. Bill picked himself up, a little bewildered by the rapidity of their descent, but, seeing his master senseless, he gave a shout of rage, and cast back a look of vengeance on the gendarmes scrambling down the rocks; but the men in the boat shouted loudly, “Quick, quick; to the beach.”
Lifting the senseless body of his master, Bill, with a desperate energy, rushed toward the spot where the boat had run right in on the beach. Another volley, the balls rattling all round him, expedited Bill’s movements; but a powerful ally had now come to his aid—the corvette had opened the scene of action; a flash, a wreath of smoke, and then the iron messenger struck the cliff above, scattering the splinters of the rocks into the very faces of the pursuing gendarmes. Augustine Vadier was struck to the earth by a huge splinter of stone in the right eye. The men threw themselves back and lay flat under the rocks, for another gun pealed over the quiet sea, and the iron storm—for this time it was grape—tore up the rocks within ten paces of the Frenchmen, which made them spring to their legs and retreat down the other side of the cliff, dragging the bleeding and furious Augustine Vadier with them.
In the meantime Bill reached the boat, panting with exertion, and two of the men, leaping into the water, ran to his assistance.
“Not dead, I trust,” cried the midshipman, gazing at the still insensible body of our hero, as the men placed him in the bottom of the boat, on a sail.
“Dead!” shrieked Bill, gasping for breath; “if he’s dead, blow my brains out, and I’ll thank you! I don’t care a curse to live if the lubbers have shot the bravest officer that ever breathed,” he continued, the heat-drops pouring down his face, and his emotion blinding him.
“No, thank God! he is not dead,” said the young midshipman, as the boat pulled towards the corvette; “he is bleeding from a cut on the side of the head; but who is he, and who are you, my man? I thought this gentleman was Mr. Julian Arden.”
“Not dead? hurrah!” exclaimed Bill, tossing his cap into the air; “give us your fin; blow me, but you’re a fine lad. Lord love ye! I’m a true salt, though you do see me rigged in this hermaphrodite fashion. That’s Lieutenant Thornton—bless him! he’s coming to—and I’m Bill Saunders. Both of us belong to the old Diamond, and if that ere craft is the Onyx, her commander will be as glad to see Lieutenant Thornton as his own brother.”