For there was a sudden crash and an echoing roar, while some of the utensils in the great kitchen clattered together, and a piece of earthenware fell from a shelf upon the stone floor, to be shivered to atoms.
“Tonnerre, eh?” said the doctor.
“Non, non, monsieur” cried the man, relapsing into his native tongue for a moment. “It is what you English gentlemen call a great gun from the fort; and look, look! The poor cuisinière much alarm, as you call it.”
For just then, as if catching the contagion from the shrieking of the storm, one of the cook-maids threw herself back into a chair and began to scream.
It was a busy scene for a few minutes while the frightened hysterical woman was hurried out, while with the storm seeming to increase in violence, and amid the trampling of armed men outside, who were hurrying from the barracks, the two English visitors gradually picked up scraps of information which explained the excitement that in spite of the storm was going on outside.
“Messieurs would like to see,” said the friendly waiter. “They will come up-stairs to the long salle whose windows give upon the harbour.”
“But what’s the matter?” cried Rodd. “Is there a wreck?”
“A wreck, sare?” said the waiter, shaking his head. “No, I know not wreck.”
“Has a ship come ashore and is breaking up?”
“Ha, ha! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! You would say naufrage. Non, non, non! It is a sheep in the harbour; a foreign spy. They say it has come to set fire to the town.”