"There's a child here who is suffering. First of all I order you to hand him over to me."
"Oh, indeed," he said ironically. "Mademoiselle orders. And by what right?"
"By the right given me by the certainty that before long you will be forced to obey me."
"By whom, my liege lady?"
"By my three friends, Errington, Webster, and Dario."
"Of course ... of course ..." he said. "Those gentlemen are stout young fellows accustomed to field sports, and you have every right to count on those intrepid champions."
He beckoned to Dorothy to follow him and crossed the arena, covered with stones, which formed the interior of the donjon. To the right of a breach, which formed the opposite entrance, and behind a curtain of ivy stretched over the bushes, were small vaulted chambers, which must have been ancient prisons. One still saw rings affixed to the stones at their base.
In three of these cells, Errington, Webster, and Dario were stretched out, firmly gagged, bound with ropes, which reduced them to the condition of mummies and fastened them to the rings. Three men, armed with rifles, guarded them. In a fourth cell was the corpse of the false Marquis. The fifth contained Maître Delarue and Montfaucon. The child was rolled up in a rug. Above a strip of stuff, which hid the lower part of his face, his poor eyes, full of tears, smiled at Dorothy.
She crushed down the sob which rose to her throat. She uttered no word of protest or reproach. One would have said, indeed, that all these were secondary incidents which could not affect the issue of the conflict.
"Well?" chuckled d'Estreicher. "What do you think of your defenders? And what do you think of the forces at my disposal? Three comrades to guard the prisoners, two others posted as sentinels to watch the approaches. I can be easy in mind, what? But why, my beauty, did you leave them? You were the bond of union. Left to themselves, they let themselves be gathered in stupidly, one by one, at the exit from the donjon. It was no use any one of them struggling ... it didn't work. Not one of my men got a shadow of a scratch. I had more trouble with M. Delarue. I had to oblige him with a bullet through his hat before he'd come down from a tree in which he had perched himself. As for Montfaucon, an angel of sweetness! Consequently, you see, your champions being out of it, you can only count on yourself; and that isn't much."