CHAPTER IX.
At the frontier, in a mountain hamlet. A black night, about one o'clock in the morning; a winter night inundated by cold and heavy rain. At the front of a sinister house which casts no light outside, Ramuntcho loads his shoulders with a heavy smuggled box, under the rippling rain, in the midst of a tomb-like obscurity. Itchoua's voice commands secretly,—as if one hardly touched with a bow the last strings of a bass viol,—and around him, in the absolute darkness, one divines the presence of other smugglers similarly loaded, ready to start on an adventure.
It is now more than ever Ramuntcho's life, to run almost every night, especially on the cloudless and moonless nights when one sees nothing, when the Pyrenees are an immense chaos of shade. Amassing as much money as he can for his flight, he is in all the smuggling expeditions, as well in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him, without necessity, in sport and for a whim.
They have become inseparable, Arrochkoa, Ramuntcho,—and they talk freely of their projects about Gracieuse, Arrochkoa seduced especially by the attraction of some fine prowess, by the joy of taking a nun away from the church, of undoing the plans of his old, hardened mother,—and Ramuntcho, in spite of his Christian scruples which affect him still, making of this dangerous project his only hope, his only reason for being and for acting. For a month, almost, the attempt has been decided upon in theory and, in their long talks in the December nights, on the roads where they walk, or in the corners of the village cider mills where they sit apart, the means of execution are discussed by them, as if the question was a simple frontier undertaking. They must act very quickly, concludes Arrochkoa always, they must act in the surprise of a first interview which shall be for Gracieuse a very disturbing thing; they must act without giving her time to think or to recant, they must try something like kidnapping—
“If you knew,” he says, “what is that little convent of Amezqueta where they have placed her: four old, good sisters with her, in an isolated house!—I have my horse, you know, who gallops so quickly; once the nun is in a carriage with you, who can catch her?—”
And to-night they have resolved to take into their confidence Itchoua himself, a man accustomed to suspicious adventures, valuable in assaults at night, and who, for money, is capable of everything.
The place from which they start this time for the habitual smuggling expedition is named Landachkoa, and it is situated in France at ten minutes' distance from Spain. The inn, solitary and old, assumes as soon as the night falls, the air of a den of thieves; at this moment while the smugglers come out of one door, it is full of Spanish carbineers who have familiarly crossed the frontier to divert themselves here and who drink while singing. And the hostess, accustomed to these nocturnal affairs, has said joyfully, a moment ago, in Basque tongue to Itchoua's folks:
“It is all right! They are all drunk, you can go out!”
Go out! It is easier to advise than to do! You are drenched at the first steps and your feet slip on the mud, despite the aid of your sticks, on the stiff slopes of the paths. They do not see one another; they see nothing, neither the walls of the hamlet along which they pass nor the trees afterward, nor the rocks; they are like blind men, groping and slipping under a deluge, with the music of rain in their ears which makes them deaf.
And Ramuntcho, who makes this trip for the first time, has no idea of the passages which they are to go through, strikes here and there his load against black things which are branches of beeches, or slips with his two feet, falters, straightens up, catches himself by planting at random his iron-pointed stick in the soil. They are the last on the march, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, following the band by ear;—and those who precede them make no more noise with their sandals than wolves in a forest.