“Will you parley?” I asked, listening intently for the gallop of my promised gendarmes. If I could only gain time and save Buckhurst. He was there in the carriage; I had seen him spring into it when the Germans burst in among the trees.
“Foulez-fous fous rendre? Oui ou non?” shouted the officer, in his terrible French.
“Eh bien,... non!” I cried, and ran for the château.
I heard the Uhlans dismount and run clattering and jingling up the stone steps. As I gained the doorway they shot at me, but I only fled the faster, springing up the stairway. Here I stood, sabre in hand, ready to stop the first man.
Up the stairs rushed three Uhlans, sabres shining in the dim light from the window behind me; I laid 57 my forefinger flat on the blade of my sabre and shortened my arm for a thrust—then there came a blinding flash, a roar, and I was down, trying to rise, until a clinched fist struck me in the face and I fell flat on my back.
Without any emotion whatever I saw an Uhlan raise his sabre to finish me; also I saw a yellow-and-black sleeve interposed between death and myself.
“No butchery!” growled the big officer who had summoned me from the lawn. “Cursed pig, you’d sabre your own grandmother! Lift him, Sepp! You, there, Loisel!—lift him up. Is he gone?”
“He is alive, Herr Rittmeister,” said a soldier, “but his back is broken.”
“It isn’t,” I said.
“Herr Je!” muttered the Rittmeister; “an eel, and a Frenchman, and nine long lives! Here, you hussar, what’s the matter with you?”