“Friends,” answered De Chaste, with some indignation in his voice, “you hurt me more by your suspicions than if you ran a sword through my body; and I take Heaven to witness, I will be the last man to quit this island, and will die rather than abandon any of you to the mercy of the marquis, whose countrymen gave such instance of their treatment of the French last year in the Floridas. Let fifty or a hundred of you surround my house yonder, and insure my stay: it will be time enough to dishonor yourselves and nation when I set the example.”
Which the mutineers did for the present, despite the taunts of their leader-elect, who, struggling furiously with his captors, had all the while been calling to the others to fall upon the officers, or loose him and he would give them example. The commandant was a favorite with the troops.
“We will wait until to-morrow,” they agreed among themselves, “and general or no general, he is a dead man if he lifts a finger to betray us.”
Señor Hilo de Ladron, for his part, came to the conclusion, after this failure, that the French camp was no place for him, and communicated his views to his faithful Damon.
“I’d like to have split his head open, he hadn’t so much as a cap on to save it,” he said to Wolfang, “and then we might have done as we pleased with the rest. But, hang it, you’re such a liar, the men only half believed the story from the first, and letting him talk upset their resolution altogether. It’s his turn now, and we must get out of this hornet’s nest before daylight.”
“Where to go?” the captain asked.
“If you are born to be drowned, you can stay behind, you wont be safe otherwise,” Hilo answered indifferently. “I’m for the mountains at first, and who knows but I may find it to my interest in the end to visit the marquis with the count for sponsor.”
“Oh, if you keep such good company,” the captain returned, with a grotesque bow and grin showing his comprehension of Hilo’s plans, “I’m your excellency’s humble servant!” And in an hour’s time these fast friends had slipped through the line of sentries, scaled the breast-work, and sat down to wait for light a mile or two from camp.
The impossibility of hearing ordinary discourse at that distance will cause the finale of this story to be very different from what it might have been under more favorable circumstances. For a herald, or courier, or valet, had just then arrived from the camp of the marquis, at the intrenchments, bringing a letter to the Commandant de Chaste, who presently sent through the village to find Don Hilo, as we all know now, without success.
[To be continued.