Then he turned at once to de Peyre and said hurriedly but authoritatively:
"Order all forward. They are there. We may be in time to save some. Also to trap these mountain wolves. Forward, I say! Give the word of command."
From de Peyre that word went forth, harsh and raucous as bellowed from the lips of the rough soldier who had fought at Senef and Ensisheim and had himself taken orders from Turenne and Condé. A moment later every man who was mounted was spurring toward the thin streak of flame that rose in the night air half a mile ahead, while the milice followed on foot as fast as they were able.
"Pray God, no more horrors are being perpetrated," Buscarlet muttered as he rode by Martin's side down the dusty road. Then murmured: "God forgive them. God forgive them. They are mad."
"He may forgive them," said Baville, who had caught his words, and paraphrasing unconsciously as he spoke the words of one by whose side he would have been accounted obscure and humble. "He may. I never will. Oh, that Julien arrives ere long! Then--then--then--they shall know what it is to outrage Languedoc thus."
The flames grew more furious as all neared the tower whence they issued. It was the tower of the church at Frugéres; behind those flames rose the thick white smoke from the burning material below. Also great pieces of the copings were falling from the summit, and sometimes a pinnacle or gargoyle fell too. And once as they drew near there came a smothered clang, followed a moment later by a deep sonorous clash, and those approaching rapidly knew that the great bell had fallen from its beam, probably by now burned through, and had been hurled far down below.
Upon the air as this happened there rose a psalm, a hymn of praise, telling how the false priests of Baal had been consumed by the flames of God's wrath in ages long since past, also the shouts and cries of many voices. Yet none of those shouts were derisive, none scornful or contemptuous. Instead, the shouts and cries of avengers who testified to justice being done on sinners; who approved of the justice, yet saw no reason for adding rejoicing to that approval.
"See," cried Baville, "they are there. Behold! They move below the tower. We have them. De Peyre, give the order to charge. At them, among them, spare none."
The belief in witchcraft was not yet dead in the world. People still believed in sorcery and enchantment. What wonder, then, that the dragoons thought there was some necromancy in the fact that, as they tore down the dusty road, their blades gleaming in the light cast by the flames, all against whom they rode vanished suddenly? Were there one moment, gone the next. It seemed incredible. Half a hundred men had been before them when they were five minutes' distance off; now that they had reached the burning church, not a living soul was to be seen. Truly it savoured of the miraculous. Yet, ere many months had passed--indeed, but a few weeks--these soldiers, and others too who were soon to join them, learned that no foe against whom they had ever been opposed possessed so thoroughly the art of sudden disappearance as did these fanatics, known later as the Camisards. For, trained in their mountain homes to every physical feat--to leaping great chasms, climbing dizzy heights unaided by aught but their strong and agile feet and hands, descending giddy precipices as easily as their own goats--they could disappear, disperse, as quickly and as thoroughly as the snow wreath under the spring sun. Could lure on bodies of their enemies to sports fraught with danger to all but themselves, into quagmires and morasses, lonely mountain passes and fatal hilltops, then themselves vanish and be no more seen.
It was so now upon this second night of their uprising.