Under the red robe

by Stanley John Weyman

He did not finish the sentence, for Clon, as if he well understood his impatience, turned back from the bridge, and, entering the wood to the left, began to ascend the bank of the stream. We had not gone a hundred yards before the ground grew rough, and the undergrowth thick; and yet through all ran a kind of path which enabled us to advance, dark as it was now growing. Very soon the bank on which we moved began to rise above the water, and grew steep and rugged. We turned a shoulder, where the stream swept round a curve, and saw we were in the mouth of a small ravine, dark and sheer-sided. The water brawled along the bottom, over boulders and through chasms. In front, the slope on which we stood shaped itself into a low cliff; but halfway between its summit and the water a ledge, or narrow terrace, running along the face, was dimly visible.

‘Ten to one, a cave!’ the Captain muttered. ‘It is a likely place.’

‘And an ugly one!’ I replied with a sneer. ‘Which one against ten might hold for hours!’

‘If the ten had no pistols—yes!’ he answered viciously. ‘But you see we have. Is he going that way?’

He was. As soon as this was clear, Larolle turned to his comrade.

‘Lieutenant,’ he said, speaking in a low voice, though the chafing of the stream below us covered ordinary sounds; ‘what say you? Shall we light the lanthorns, or press on while there is still a glimmering of day?’

‘On, I should say, M. le Capitaine,’ the Lieutenant answered. ‘Prick him in the back if he falters. I will warrant,’ the brute added with a chuckle, ‘he has a tender place or two.’

The Captain gave the word and we moved forward. It was evident now that the cliff-path was our destination. It was possible for the eye to follow the track all the way to it, through rough stones and brushwood; and though Clon climbed feebly, and with many groans, two minutes saw us step on to it. It did not prove to be, in fact, the perilous place it looked at a distance. The ledge, grassy and terrace-like, sloped slightly downwards and outwards, and in parts was slippery; but it was as wide as a highway, and the fall to the water did not exceed thirty feet. Even in such a dim light as now displayed it to us, and by increasing the depth and unseen dangers of the gorge gave a kind of impressiveness to our movements, a nervous woman need not have feared to tread it, I wondered how often Mademoiselle had passed along it with her milk-pitcher.

‘I think that we have him now,’ Captain Larolle muttered, twisting his moustachios, and looking about to make his last dispositions. ‘Paul and Lebrun, see that your man makes no noise. Sergeant, come forward with your carbine, but do not fire without orders. Now, silence all, and close up, Lieutenant. Forward!’

We advanced about a hundred paces, keeping the cliff on our left, turned a shoulder, and saw, a few paces in front of us, a slight hollow, a black blotch in the grey duskiness of the cliff-side. The prisoner stopped, and, raising his bound hands, pointed to it.