It was of no use to fire madly into the rocky cavern, the prisoner remained uninjured and undiscoverable.
After waiting another day or two, and vainly endeavouring to smoke their enemy out of his concealment, an engineer with other officials were sent for from Corte, and it was arranged that the cave should be blown up by gunpowder. The desperate man inside, for whose death, just though it certainly was, it seemed pitiful to think that the assistance of so many of his fellow-creatures should be required, overheard the proposal, and resolved at last to take flight.
He waited, however, for night, when, under cover of the darkness, he escaped from his hiding-place. He had already got away to some distance when a ball hit him in the leg; but, with the despair of the hunted animal, he struggled on, leaving a bloody trail upon the ground as he passed.
When morning dawned, the gendarmes found the outlaw, who for years had been their terror and the object of their pursuit, lying faint and exhausted among the rocks. Yet, even then, they feared to approach too near the dying brave, and creeping up cautiously, they fired upon him whilst yet he was unconscious of their approach, and in another moment Arrighi lay upon the slope of Monte Rotondo, a dead man.
The next day the bodies of six men—three bandits and three soldiers—were carried in a sad procession down the hill-side to the plain below, and the French Government was rid of three of the most celebrated and intrepid of Corsican bandits.
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME MORE ABOUT BANDITS.
Some of the Corsican bandits have been, not only objects of admiration, but of love, to their fellow-countrymen in general, who willingly contributed to their support. Even if their first adoption of lawless life were not due to their dislike of a foreign government—for long not quite palatable to the free wild people of the interior—yet their after-life consisted of a series of skirmishes against, and contests with, a police towards whom the majority of the islanders owed some grudge or other. One of the most celebrated of these men, and one who became, in the eyes of his own people, a hero of romance, was a bandit of the name of Teodoro, who lived at the commencement of the present century.
Teodoro became a bandit, not from any private quarrel, or from fear of the consequences of any deed of violence, but to escape joining the ranks of the French soldiery, by whom he had been somewhat roughly seized and enrolled amongst their number.
The young Corsican had no objection to a warlike occupation, but he did not choose to lose his liberty, nor had he any wish to fight for the masters of his country.
So he escaped to the mountains, by his daring spirit and love of adventure becoming at once the terror of his enemies and the darling of his countrymen.