"We want men of action, not gabblers like Barrès. I have a boat ready at Les Saintes to take us off, we must get fellows who can ride, for if we are pursued we must borrow horses and make straight across the Camargue."
"Leduc is of that country," said Chardon, "he could guide us, and Violet was a rough-rider in the eleventh hussars."
"But are they men to trust?" demanded Chanot, with a sharp suspicion. A man of the country and an ex-cavalryman might account for Chardon and himself in that wild country and no one be any the wiser. Besides, who would trouble themselves about the fate of a couple of fleeing outlaws?
"They are as good as you will get," said Chardon, "and we shall be more than their match in any case. They cannot get the boat without you, and without a boat on the coast of Les Saintes a man is like an eel in a trap. He can get in but he cannot get out."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF THE BLACK BAND
The last hours of the Black Band in Aramon were marked by many exploits still remembered in the town. Citizens, even men marked for their former devotion to the cause of the workmen, were stopped in the streets and relieved of all they had about them, to their very watches and chains.
Shopkeepers were given the alternative of executing an immediate forced loan or having their premises burnt over their heads. Some, running too complacently to the hiding-places of their wealth, found themselves despoiled of all. The two banks were threatened and squeezed alternately. A poll-tax was levied on the population and exacted at the point of the bayonet.
Underground reaction growled and raged in Aramon, and if the Committee of Public Safety had remained a few days more, it is likely that they would have found themselves hunted and shot like mad dogs.