"Stay where you are, will you?" he bade them. "The first of you who moves a step, I shoot him down!"
Walking backwards, while keeping the men covered with his revolver, he drew Dolores to the end of the promontory. The tramps had not budged a foot.
"Come," whispered Simon. "We have nothing to fear from them."
The boat, completely capsized, squat and clumsy as the shell of a tortoise, barred the second half of the river. In foundering she had spilt on the sloping shore a deck cargo of timber, now sodden, but still sound enough to enable Rolleston's gang to build a footbridge twelve yards long across the arm of the river.
Dolores and Simon crossed it briskly. It was easy after that to go along the nearly flat bottom of the keel and to slide down the chain of the anchor. But, just as Dolores reached the ground, a violent concussion shook the chain, of which she had not yet let go, and a shot rang out from the other bank.
"Ah!" she said. "I was lucky: the bullet has struck one of the links."
Simon had faced round. Opposite them, the tramps were venturing on the footbridge one by one.
"But who can have fired?" he demanded. "Those beggars haven't a rifle."
Dolores gave him a sudden push, so that he was protected by the bulk of the wreck:
"Who fired?" she repeated. "Forsetta or Mazzani."