There was but one way in which Jean del' Peyra could discover the exact position of the Church of Guillem, and that was by being held by the feet and extending himself, lying prostrate, over the edge of the cliff. Leaning over the abyss he looked below and to the right and left in the darkness, then signed to be withdrawn.
"Too much to the left!" he said.
He walked cautiously along the edge till he came to what he believed to be the right spot. Again he was extended over the brink, and was again out in his reckoning.
A third attempt was more successful. With a rapid wave of his hand he signed, and was drawn back.
"I have looked down their chimney," he said, "and heard their laughter come up with the reek, and seen the glow of their hearth. Here! build it here!"
At once a hundred hands were engaged in piling up faggots, heaping casks on them and emptying the sacks over the wood. These sacks had been filled with mutton fat. Stones also were planted on the extreme edge. The process was slow. Caution had to be used lest any of the combustible matter should fall over before set alight, and, dropping on the projecting roof or galleries, give the alarm.
The wall of stones erected outside the faggots served a double purpose. In the first place it contained the masses of pine-wood and other combustibles, and preserved them from lapse, but the main object aimed at was, when overthrown, to break in the tiles of the roof so as to allow the molten pitch from the barrels and the flaming tallow to run in among the woodwork and set it on fire. But for this, there would be no assurance of success.
Considerable time was allowed to pass. It was thought advisable not to precipitate action, but to allow the freebooters to retire to rest.
The men seated themselves in perfect stillness on the grass and on stones. On the inner face of the enormous pile of combustibles lay Rossignol on his bed.
The night was without wind. Not a leaf stirred—there was not even a whisper among the short grass—only the continuous twitter of the crickets and, now and then from far below, yet audible at that height, the croak of a bullfrog in a backwater of the Vézère.