"You'll excuse me, mademoiselle."
He scrambled on to his mount. The donkey began by backing; and it threw the good man into such a state of exasperation that he belabored its head and belly with thumps and kicks. The donkey suddenly gave in and went off like an arrow.
Dorothy called out to him:
"Look out, Maître Delarue! The confederates have been warned!"
The notary heard the words, on the instant leaned back in the saddle, and tugged desperately at the reins. But nothing could stop the brute. When Dorothy got clear of the ruins of the outer wall, she saw him a long way off, still going hard.
Then she began to run again, in a growing disquiet: d'Estreicher's whistle had been meant for confederates posted on the mainland at the entrance to the peninsula the access to which they were guarding. She said to herself:
"In any case if I don't get through, Maître Delarue will; and it is clear that Saint-Quentin will be warned and be on his guard."
The sea, very blue and very calm, had ebbed to right and left, forming two bays on the other side of which rose the cliff of the coast. The path down the gorge was distinguishable by the dark cutting she saw in the mass of trees which covered the plateau. Here and there it rose to some height. Twice she caught sight of the flying notary.
But as in her turn she reached the line of the trees, a report rang out ahead, and a little smoke rose in the air above what must have been the steepest point in the path.
There came cries and shouts for help; then silence. Dorothy doubled her speed in order to help Maître Delarue; undoubtedly he had been attacked. But after running for some minutes at such a pace that no sound could have reached her ears, she had barely time to spring out of the path to get out of the way of the furiously galloping donkey whose rider was crouching forward on its back with his arms knotted round its neck. Maître Delarue, since his head was glued to the further side of its neck, did not even see her.