“Listen!” said Tsi, springing to her feet.
They listened, and presently from some distant cave came a murmuring rumble.
“Tsang!”
“Sit down! What comes, comes, and that is the end of it.”
The Breton, on hearing these sounds, looked at the wife, paled, but did not move. Presently the rumble grew more distinct, and the Breton, without a word, left the chamber by the small hole in the end.
It was some time before he returned, and when he came into the circle of light a cry rang from the lips of the wife and, throwing herself on his breast, she clasped her arms about his neck.
Those few moments had altered the Breton. His face was stony and life seemed to have gone from him. When he spoke his tones were less speech than gloomy reverberations.
“They have found us.”
Tsang came up to him, holding in his hands a huge, double-edged sword of the Mings.
“Fate has overtaken me at last,” he commented contentedly. “Thus it ever is. It hauls men out of bed as well as devouring them on fields of battle. Who can hope to escape by panting up into lofty towers or sneaking into the earth’s rumbling guts? Bah! But I can save you and get vengeance for their stealing my house. This is a Ming sword. As they come through that narrow hole I will cut their heads off one by one. You can get out. I will give myself up to the magistrate and tell him that more than fourteen days ago you went down the Si Kiang into Tong King; you can go to Pakhoi then get a junk for Singapore. Let my wife get the babies and take them all with you.”