The sentinel made him repeat it, and answered in execrable French. “Well, I suppose there is no harm in letting you carry it, if the message is urgent. Your father’s somewhere in the garden; I saw him pass that way a minute ago. But you must promise to be back within five minutes.”
“Lord, now,” added the sentry, smiling down at them, “I left just such a pair as you at home, not two months ago. I’d be sorry, much as I love them, to see them anyways here.”
“I like that man,” said Pauline, as she and Jean passed into the yard. The place was empty, save for two soldiers—Lunsbrugers—in green uniform, who were carrying a bench from the chapel towards the small gate of the garden.
“But we have no message for papa,” said Pauline, “unless we tell him that Antoine’s mother has twins.”
“And he won’t be in a hurry to hear that.” Just then a dull noise sounded afar to the southward, and the ground seemed to shake a little. “We will first seek Philomène.”
He had hardly spoken the words when something screamed in the air above and struck the edge of the stable-steps with a terrific crash. The children, frightened out of their lives, dashed for the ladder of the pigeon-house—the nearest solid object to which they could cling. Across the smoke, as they clung and turned, they saw the sentry very coolly shutting the gate. Four or five green-coats ran out of the chapel to help him, but paused a moment as a second and a third shot whistled wide overhead. Then they rushed forward, heads down, to the gate, which was quickly shut and barred. They had not seen the children, who now, climbing up the ladder, stayed not until they had squeezed through the square hole of the platform and crawled into the pigeon-house, where they lay panting.
“They had not seen the children, who now, climbing up the ladder, stayed not until they had squeezed through the square hole of the platform” (page 170).
It was, of course, quite foolish to seek shelter here. For the moment they would have been far safer in the courtyard below, under the lee of the outbuildings. A ball, striking the pigeon-house, would knock it to shivers at one blow. But they had climbed in pure panic, and even now, without any excuse of reason, they felt more secure here.
As a matter of fact the danger was lessening, for with these first shots the artillery to the southward, beyond the trees, had been finding its range and now began to drop its fire shorter, upon the garden below the château. Through their pigeon-holes Jean and Pauline overlooked almost the whole stretch of the garden, the foot of which along the brick wall was closely lined with soldiers—tall red-coats for the most part, with squads of green-jackets here and there and a sprinkling of men who carried yellow knapsacks. They had broken down the cups of the buttresses during the night and laid planks from buttress to buttress, forming a platform that ran the entire length of the wall. Along this platform a part of the defenders stood ready with bayonets fixed in their muskets, which they rested for the moment on the brick coping; others knelt on the flower border close beneath the platform watching at apertures where a few bricks had been knocked out. There were green jackets and yellow, too, in the grove beyond, posted here and there behind the breech-holes—a line of them pushed forward to a hedge on the left—with a line of retreat left open by a small doorway.