To Mattingley the procession of death was stupidly slow. As it issued from the archway of the Vier Prison between mounted guards, and passed through a long lane of moving spectators, he looked round coolly. One or two bold spirits cried out: “Head up to the wind, Maitre Elie!”
“Oui-gia,” he replied; “devil a top-sail in!” and turned a look of contempt on those who hooted him. He realised now that there was no chance of rescue. The militia and the town guard were in ominous force, and although his respect for the island military was not devout, a bullet from the musket of a fool might be as effective as one from Bonapend’s—as Napoleon Bonaparte was disdainfully called in Jersey. Yet he could not but wonder why all the plans of Alixandre, Carterette, and Ranulph had gone for nothing; even the hangman had been got drunk too soon! He had a high opinion of Ranulph, and that he should fail him was a blow to his judgment of humanity.
He was thoroughly disgusted. Also they had compelled him to put on a white shirt, he who had never worn linen in his life. He was ill at ease in it. It made him conspicuous; it looked as though he were aping the gentleman at the last. He tried to resign himself, but resignation was hard to learn so late in life. Somehow he could not feel that this was really the day of his death. Yet how could it be otherwise? There was the Vicomte in his red robe, there was the sinister Undertaker’s Apprentice, ready to do his hangman’s duty. There, as they crossed the mielles, while the sea droned its sing-song on his left, was the parson droning his sing-song on the right “In the midst of life we are in death,” etc. There were the grumbling drums, and the crowd morbidly enjoying their Roman holiday; and there, looming up before him, were the four stone pillars on the Mont es Pendus from which he was to swing. His disgust deepened. He was not dying like a seafarer who had fairly earned his reputation.
His feelings found vent even as he came to the foot of the platform where he was to make his last stand, and the guards formed a square about the great pillars, glooming like Druidic altars. He burst forth in one phrase expressive of his feelings.
“Sacre matin—so damned paltry!” he said, in equal tribute to two races.
The Undertaker’s Apprentice, thinking this a reflection upon his arrangements, said, with a wave of the hand to the rope:
“Nannin, ch’est tres ship-shape, Maitre!”
The Undertaker’s Apprentice was wrong. He had made everything ship-shape, as he thought, but a gin had been set for him. The rope to be used at the hanging had been measured and approved by the Vicomte, and the Undertaker’s Apprentice had carried it to his room at the top of the Cohue Royale. In the dead of night, however, Dormy Jamais drew it from under the mattress whereon the deathman slept, and substituted one a foot longer. This had been Ranulph’s idea as a last resort, for he had a grim wish to foil the law even at the twelfth hour.
The great moment had come. The shouts and hootings ceased. Out of the silence there arose only the champing of a horse’s bit or the hysterical giggle of a woman. The high painful drone of the chaplain’s voice was heard.
Then came the fatal “Maintenant!” from the Vicomte, the platform fell, and Elie Mattingley dropped the length of the rope.