One of the balls which pierced his heart had also pierced a letter that was worn next it.
That letter was mine—the fatal letter transmitted to him by the perfidious Rouvigny, of whose treason I was yet ignorant.
Such was the fate of the faithful and brave De Losme!
CHAPTER XXXII.
STORY OF EULALIE CONTINUED.
I was still mourning for Adrien, when my father wrote me to join him by the first ship for Martinique, as France had now become a land of horror, where daily—yea, hourly—massacres took place in every city and hamlet, and where, under the general title of aristocrats, priests, nuns, and noblesse were butchered, banished, or maltreated, with a barbarity worthy of the industrious cruelty of Caffres or Carib Indians.
In a month after this, I sailed from Havre in the corvette Egalité, and without emotion saw the two light-houses on the steep white brow of Cape la Hêve sink like stars into the blue evening sea, for I was more dead to the world than when in the convent of St. Ursule, and (save for my father's sake) careless whether or not I ever saw the isle of Martinique.
I shall not detain you with the monotony of the voyage, though its even tenor was broken by two startling incidents—our flight from a British frigate, which followed us pertinaciously for ten days, and shot away some of our spars and sails, and might have taken us, but for a dark and stormy night, in which we lost sight of each other; the second incident had more direct reference to myself, for on that night I had a narrow escape from a monster of the deep.
I was awakened by water pouring into the little berth in which I slept; when, lo! it was discovered that a swordfish had driven its nasal weapon into the ship, through a double sheathing of iron, a planking three inches thick and deep, into one of the frigate's timbers, where it was found torn from the animal's body.
A fortnight after this, I reached Martinique, to find that the horrors I had left behind me in France had commenced there with equal, or, if possible, with greater fury. The inhabitants—white, black, and coloured—were in revolt; the garrisons were in mutiny, and all was havock, bloodshed and disorder.