'He wears a diamond ring, the gift of Palenka, which will prove a fortune to whoever gets it,' he heard Guebhard say in a loud voice; 'and he has a plan of the campaign, well worth a thousand ducats to me, and more to Kara Georgevitch!'
But his Montenegrins scarcely needed these incentives to outrage and bloodshed.
Through a hole in the door Cecil, for a moment, saw them crowding and jostling in the narrow passage, by the light of a torch held by one of their number. Ferocious-looking they were, yet men of magnificent physique, in long white camises, open in front, with gaudy waistcoats below; their sashes filled with knives, yataghans sharp as needles, and brass-butted pistols; their faces inflamed by raki, their dark eyes gleaming like those of devils; their white teeth glistening; their wide blue petticoat-trousers reaching to the knee, and their feet encased in thongs and sandals of hide.
A gleam of light flashed inward, as an axe clove a rent in the door, and thereat, for a moment, he saw the gleaming eyes and pallid face of Guebhard, and he fired full at it; but with what effect he never knew.
He fired again and again, at a venture, through the door, and so did his assailants; but their chance bullets went wide of the intended mark; while more than one shriek and hoarse malediction announced that his fire had told on the group wedged in the narrow space without; but now the door was yielding fast, and Cecil, aware that when once it was broken down he would inevitably perish by a death too probably of protracted mutilation and torture, threw open the window and resolved to drop therefrom.
Firing all the chambers of his revolver at the door, through the splintered gaps in which a red light was streaming now, he lowered himself down, just as two of his assailants came rushing round a corner of the house, intending, no doubt, to cut off his retreat; and quitting his hold on the window-sill, he fell down—down—he knew not whither; but it was into the excavation already mentioned, and there he lay for some moments, stunned, confused, and well-nigh senseless, and incapable of further thought or action.
Round the hole, wherein he lay, his pursuers gathered.
'Here he lies!' exclaimed Guebhard, 'stunned or dead!'
'A single shot to make sure!' said one, cocking his long brass pistol.
'Not one!' cried Guebhard, imperatively; 'I hear cavalry moving through the wood—perhaps those we might be sorry to meet. He lies still enough—some of our balls must have hit him—I saw blood in the room.'