Captain Bingham, standing grim and bloody at the head of the stairs, made no reply.
“Surrender!” repeated the leader. “Do you not see that your men are all dead and that you are ours?”
“Curse you,” came the reply from the guardsman, “as they went, so will I go. You shall never pass while I live.” And with upraised sword he stood blocking the way to the drawing-rooms.
The leader now crossed swords with Captain Bingham, while two of his men sought to creep by to right and left and either attack, or capture, the Captain from the side. But the officers of the guards were all brilliant swordsmen, and Captain Bingham in that last desperate stand fully vindicated the honor and the reputation of the famous Guards’ corps. Besides, being at the extreme top of the stairway, he held an advantage which served to offset the odds against him. First he wounded the man to the right and an instant later cut down the man on the left. Then, with a quick half-arm cut which laid his opponent’s face open from forehead to chin, he sent the leader reeling backward down the stairs.
When his men saw their leader fall, a howl of dismay and rage went up. There was a quick flash of leveled rifles and a volley. Captain Bingham rose to his full height and for one brief instant his form stood erect and rigid. He raised his sword high aloft and his voice broke into a great hoarse cry—the last salute of the last of the Guards to the cause he served:
“Long live the King!”
Then his sword-arm dropped, the weapon fell clattering from his hand and, with a headlong plunge, he crashed down the stairs over the dead bodies of his men.
CHAPTER X
THE NEW ERA
“The King! The Guards! They have been attacked!” cried Kearns as, breathless and panting, he ran into the Chancellerie.
“Attacked!” repeated Mortimer, standing sword in hand, stern-faced and bleeding from a wound in the arm. “Attacked by whom?”