These were potent words, and for one moment the abbé hesitated. He lowered his point with an angry side glance upon his interrupter, and the affair would then have finished had not a dark figure stopped out from the shadow under the cliff, and thrown itself into position with the muffled warning, "En garde!"
"Ah, dog!" cried La Salle, starting forward through the rain with scarcely a ray of light between him and his adversary.
When a line of lightning broke the sky, an exclamation burst from his lips and his bold cheek blanched. During that momentary illumination La Salle beheld his enemy clearly. He saw a mean man clad in a suit of faded red with torn and stained ruffles; his hair gathered behind and tied with a piece of grass; his hat broken out of shape and adorned sadly with half a plume. And when Laroche held up a lantern, the fighting priest saw further that what he had taken for a negroid skin was merely a mask which covered the stranger's face, slit with holes for the eyes and mouth.
"This," muttered La Salle, cold with terror as he warded off an attack which was far more aggressive than that of Van Vuren, "this is the work of Satan."
Roussilac touched D'Archand, pointing along the path which bent down to the river, and whispered, "Wait for the lightning."
When the flash passed, the master saw the big figure of the Dutchman hurrying to reach his ship, his sword still drawn in his hand.
"Then, who is this?" exclaimed D'Archand, with a frightened oath, indicating through the beating rain the man behind the mask.
Roussilac signed himself, and said nothing.
Laroche hurried up, his big face streaming, the lantern shaking in his hands like a will-o'-the-wisp, his attitude grotesque with terror.
"What witchcraft is here?" he shouted. "See you how this Dutchman has changed body and appearance as well as name?"