But a sound of shouting recalled the captain to the drawing-room. The gardener's son came tumbling down from his observatory, yelling:
"Saboureux's Farm is on fire! You can see the smoke! You can see the flames!"
The captain leapt out on the terrace.
The smoke was whirling above the barn. Gleams kindled, faint as yet and hesitating. And, suddenly, as though set free, the flames shot up in angry spirals. The wind at once beat them down again. The roof of the house took fire. And, in a few minutes, it was a violent flare, accompanied by the quick blaze of the rotten beams, the dry thatch, the trusses of hay and straw heaped up by the hundred in the barn and in the sheds.
"To work!" shouted the captain, gleefully. "The Col du Diable is blocked by the flames.... They'll last for quite fifteen or twenty minutes ... and the enemy have no other road...."
His excitement communicated itself to the men. Not one of them broke down beneath the weight of the bags, heavy though these were. The captain posted the non-commissioned officers at regular intervals, so that his orders could be passed on from the terrace to every end of the property.
Lieutenant Fabrègues came up. The materials were beginning to fall short and the lofty wall remained inaccessible to the marksmen in several places.
Mme. Morestal behaved like a heroine:
"Take the furniture, captain, the chairs, the tables. Break them up, if necessary.... Burn them even.... Do just as if my husband were here."
"M. Morestal said something about a stock of cartridges," asked the captain.