When Tschekin's Cossacks joined in the mêlée with the fugitives, Balgonie sprang through the klinket, sword in hand, resolved to succour his friend at all hazards, and fortunately arrived just in time to save him (when struck down and trod under foot) from the bulky giant Nicholas Paulovitch, who, with a clubbed musket, was about to give him a blow that must inevitably have proved fatal.
Paulovitch he ran through the heart—or at least the place where his heart might be supposed to have been—and spurning him off the blade with his foot, hurled the snorting ruffian to the ground, and raised his friend, with the assistance of a soldier and Lieutenant Tschekin.
"Made prisoner, and by you too, Carl!" said Basil, reproachfully and in a low voice, for he was faint with wounds and bruises.
"By me, but to save you."
"Seek rather to save Natalie, if you can," he whispered; "she is, she is—"
"Where, where?" said Balgonie, impetuously and imploringly.
But there was no reply. Basil had fainted, and was borne into the Castle of Schlusselburg, a prisoner of State.
Balgonie never saw the face of his friend again!
So ended, for a time, a scheme, the importance of which was only equalled by its bold recklessness—the scheme of two subaltern officers to revolutionise the vast empire of Russia, and to subvert the firm dominion of Catharine II., one of the most powerful and popular, though licentious, monarchs that ever sat on the barbarous throne of the Czars; and such was the terrible sequel to the Secret Dispatch of Balgonie.
Day had completely broken when he was summoned by Bernikoff. Shuddering as he passed through the court of the Castle and under the very window where the corpse was yet swaying mournfully to and fro in the morning breeze that swept from the broad waters of the vast lake, whose ripples were shining like gold in the first beams of the autumnal sun, Charlie sought the presence of this detestable personage, the thunder of whose wrath he feared was about to descend upon himself.