While uttering the last words he drew a pistol from his waist belt. At this moment cries were heard.
"What is it? What is the matter?"
"Look, captain! People are coming at last to our help: we are saved!" Sergeant Boileau exclaimed, rising like a spectre by his side, and seizing his arm.
The count freed himself with a smile.
"You are mad, my poor comrade," he said, looking in the direction indicated, where a cloud of dust really rose, and was rapidly approaching; "no one can come to our aid. We have not even," he added with bitter irony, "the resource of the shipwrecked crew of the Méduse! We are condemned to die in this infernal desert. Farewell, all—farewell!"
He raised the pistol.
"Captain," the sergeant cried reproachfully, "take care! You have no right to kill yourself. You are our chief, and must be the last to die: if not, you are a coward!"
The count bounded as though a serpent had stung him, and made a gesture as if to rush on the sergeant. The expression of his face was so savage, his movement so terrible, that the sergeant was terrified, and recoiled. The captain profited by this second respite, put the muzzle of the pistol to his temple, and pulled the trigger. He fell to the ground, with his skull fractured.
The adventurers had not yet recovered from the stupor this frightful event had thrown them into, when the cloud of dust they had noticed burst violently asunder, and they perceived a troop of mounted Indians, in the midst of whom were a woman and two or three white men, galloping toward them at full speed. Convinced that the Apaches had come up to deal them the final blow, like vultures collecting round a fallen buffalo, they did not even attempt an impossible resistance.
"Oh!" one of the hunters shouted, as he leaped from his horse and rushed toward them, "the poor fellows!"