“Here, I say, Ya-Bon! Why did you get in front of me? It’s all right, my lad, I’m coming!”
The two adversaries had rolled over on the grass. Patrice stooped down, seeking to rescue the negro. He touched the hair of an animal and then Ya-Bon’s clothes. But the two were wriggling on the ground in so compact a mass and fighting so frantically that his interference was useless.
Moreover, the contest did not last long. In a few minutes the adversaries had ceased to move. A strangled death-rattle issued from the group.
“Is it all right, Ya-Bon?” whispered the captain, anxiously.
The negro stood up with a grunt. By the light of a match Patrice saw that he was holding at the end of his outstretched arm, of the one arm with which he had had to defend himself, a huge dog, which was gurgling, clutched round the throat by Ya-Bon’s implacable fingers. A broken chain hung from its neck.
“Thank you, Ya-Bon. I’ve had a narrow escape. You can let him go now. He can’t do us any harm, I think.”
Ya-Bon obeyed. But he had no doubt squeezed too tight. The dog writhed for a moment on the grass, gave a few moans and then lay without moving.
“Poor brute!” said Patrice. “After all, he only did his duty in going for the burglars that we are. Let us do ours, Ya-Bon, which is nothing like as plain.”
Something that shone like a window-pane guided his steps and led him, by a series of stairs cut in the rocks and of successive terraces, to the level ground on which the house was built. On this side also, all the windows were round and high up, like those in the streets, and barricaded with shutters. But one of them allowed the light which he had seen from below to filter through.
Telling Ya-Bon to hide in the shrubberies, he went up to the house, listened, caught an indistinct sound of voices, discovered that the shutters were too firmly closed to enable him either to see or to hear and, in this way, after the fourth window, reached a flight of steps. At the top of the steps was a door.