CHAPTER X
THE GALLEY-ON-LAND
At three o'clock a search party of friends and gendarmes from thePalace, at which the occurrence had aroused something of a flutter, cameback to the place.
The Guardsmen offered to scour the woods in a body. Lecour soberlyrecommended a different plan, which they adopted, and placing his sixfriends and several royal gamekeepers in Indian file he started at theirhead. They followed him without speaking and watched him closely as,with an intentness quite un-French, he bent down to see farther throughthe trees, examined the branches for newly-broken twigs, the displacedstones, the crushed mosses, disturbed grass, and soft places of theground, and the little indications read and looked for by trappers andIndians. As he entered the woods the traces of the first rush back ofthe robbers gave a mass of easy clues and an initial direction.Following on they came to a marsh, where they found footmarks, andreadily put together the number of the thieves and the physicalcharacter of each. In an open place the trail would be an unconcealedtrack across the grass; in dry woods perhaps it would be lost for manyyards. Its discovery, of course, was not altogether so marvellous amatter as they thought. But it helped Germain's reputation afterwards.
At last they came into a tangled and difficult region called Apremont,where the rocky ridges were broken into intractable ruins--the mostsavage portion of the forest. Strange cliffs of shale, eaten by weatherand earthquake into the most picturesque columns and caves, confrontedthem. Here the signs became rare and the advance tedious, but the littlecolumn still breathlessly followed the woodsman. They were rewarded byfinding a neighbourhood where the damp mosses showed many tracksconverging, and as Grancey thought he distinguished a distant soundGermain listened and heard what he judged to be the faint refrain of asong. He now adopted greater caution, placing his gamekeepers in a bodyto remain ready at call, and at different points setting his friends ineasy reach of each other.
Grancey and he crept along, guided by the uncertain sounds of the song,but found that they grew fainter. On this they retraced their path andwere gratified to hear the sound increase again. They discovered a pointwhere it would not grow any louder, and here Germain paused. "I have thesecret!" he whispered, and placed his ear to the ground. The Baronimitated him. True enough the singing was _below_. They caught othervoices now. Lecour pondered a few moments. He followed an irregular rentin the rock and disappeared to one side. Returning on tiptoe, excitedfor the first time, he beckoned Grancey to accompany him and led the waywith the greatest precaution to a long crack in the side of a hill,scarcely discernible without the closest scrutiny, through which theaccents came quite audibly, and they caught sight of the objects belowin a grey light. They made out a narrow, oblique cavern, formed by thewidening of what geologists call a "fault" in the shaly rock. Eight men,all in rags with one exception, were sitting and lying about. Stretchedon the ground, drinking alternately from a bottle, were two, one of whomwas singing snatches of a rambling _vaudeville_.
Grancey touched Germain and pointed out that their firearms were in aheap at the entrance, and that a rope attached there and coiled looselyshowed their means of exit down the face of the cliff.
The man who was not in rags was standing up, the centre of attraction.He appeared to be a visitor.
"Stay with us the night," said the leader, a big man of ferocious browsand keen black eyes. "Our friend, his Majesty, has sent us some of hisvenison."
"The Big Hog?" said the stranger.
A round of laughter echoed through the cavern. The stoutness of the Kinghad given rise to this nickname among the people.
"When his head is ours it will be better than his venison," he added.
About this man's face there was something strikingly horrible andsubtle. His countenance was the image of a grinning death's-head. Itsintelligent, stealthy, and sinister sunken eyes, its depressed nose andheartless fixed grin aroused repulsion. Its bearing of distinct couragealone somewhat reclaimed it. His cloak was thrown back, showing a goldlace belt stuck with knives and pistols, while on his head was a greencap, which Grancey recognised as the cap of the galley felons.
"What news of the Galley-on-land, Admiral?" asked the robber leader.
"All goes well."
"How many at our oars?"
"Two hundred and forty-eight."
"Besides friends?"
"Besides thirty-four friends. We are all in the salt country now exceptyourselves and the bench at Paris. We reviewed in the pines of Morlaixlast month. Such brave ragmen! Forty-seven had killed a hog."
The circle's eyes glistened.
"Yes, the hogs fear us, but the Galley is dark as wind."
"You should have seen the hogs to-day," cried the cave leader; "stupidbeasts, too fat to jump."
"Why didn't you stick them?"
"Sacre Dieu! not here; it's too near the Big Hog."
"The Big Hog does not worry us at Morlaix. Since the salt-tax is raisedfour _sous_ in the pound we are all in the Brittany marshes, passingsalt into Maine. In Maine a poor man can eat no meat because he can haveno brine. You can guess that where the people squeal so there is roomfor our profit. We lie in the marshes; we gather our piles of salt; wecreep out by night through the woods, and--flip--past the salt-guardsinto Maine. Guards, guards, guards--blue men, black men, green men--allover France. Sacre! they are an itch--a leprosy. Do we hate them, weall?"
"By the oath of the Green Cap," they cried all together.
"Well, we _were_ vagabonds," he continued, "in the Morlaix woods. Ourgreat fire lit up the pines at midnight and our men of rags crept up onall sides to the feast. Some brought white bread, some black, some apigeon or two from the lord's dovecotes, and every one his bottle ofwine. There we told what we were doing and planned the campaign. You mayswear we were jolly that night. They have sent me to visit your bench ofFontainebleau, and pray you for the ransom-money of Blogue, who lies inBordeaux prison to be hanged. Two of his guards can be settled foreighty livres. You are rich, they say, and can pay it."
"Yes, we can afford it," cried the cavern-chief boastfully.
"I thought so, handsome ragmen," returned the visitor. He dropped thepoint for a moment and suddenly throwing his right hand free from hiscloak rose into a curious strain of eloquence which made manifest thenature of this strange organisation, or at least the aims which the manof the death's-head chose to claim for it.
"Let us never forget, comrades, who we are--that our Order is theavenger of the wrongs of the people. Give me each your sufferings that Imay treasure them in the common treasury. Give me the tears that havebeen shed, the deaths, the starvations, the griefs, the insults, thecruelties, that I may heap them one upon another in a secret place,whence, on a day which I see rising very bright out of the days of thisgeneration, we shall thrust them out all bleeding and dreadful to flyforth together swift as eagles for the hearts of the rich. Hugues de laTour, what wrongs have you to tell?"
"Admiral," cried the young man hoarsely, after drinking a gulp from abottle, his eyes bloodshot, and swinging his knife, "I have sufferedtill my blood runs like a current of fire against all who are in ease. Ihate the King, the Church, the rich, the judges, the strong, the fair.My father was a noble of the Court, my mother a Huguenot, and wedded tohim by the rite of the Reformed Religion, his own pretended faith. Withthis excuse he threw her off. He denied her the name of wife and us ofhis children. His servants pushed her from his door. She died in agarret at Dijon. I took my little sister by the hand, and travelling tomy father's door in Versailles awaited his entry into his carriage. Wecaught his skirts and cried, "Our father!" With his own hands he threwus to the pavement. For years I felt, brothers, what you havefelt--cold, hunger, and disdain--but I hoarded the thought of 'Justice'as the friend of the wronged.
"I at length petitioned the magistrature. My papers were unheeded. Iappealed to the Minister. The Minister was silent. I found a way ofpresenting our griefs and claims to the King himself. For answer, asealed warrant empowered the monster of our
life to throw us intoprison. There my poor sister died; I escaped. Join me to yourgalley-oars. I hate all monarchs, decrees, nobles, priests, courtiers.Crime is justice, justice is the system of crime!"
"Very good, Hugues la Tour," commended the Admiral, "you shall have yourhands full of true justice."
"I," shouted a violent man of haggard countenance, "was a cultivator ofAuvergne. By incredible hardship I made myself owner of a plot ofground. My woman and I lived scantily on our daily black bread and'pepperpot'; we spent nothing; we had no comforts, but from year toyear, as the _sous_ were piled away in our hoard, we kept our eyes onthe neighbouring acre of moorland. One year a drought came. Our _sous_were diminished by famine. It was then the tax gatherer came upon us,his claims heavier than in the years before, for one of the village taxcommissioners was jealous of us. The rest of our _sous_ were notsufficient; we could not borrow. A bailiff, a 'blue man,' was placed inour cabin at our cost. The suit went through the Court: we werediscomfited. They took my possessions, as at the commencement they haddesigned to do. They starved my wife; they killed my children. I, too,will kill."
"I also," shouted another. "The tithe was my ruin."
"The worse avarice is the cassock's," said the visitor. "A day of bloodapproaches, a day of cutting of priests' throats and burning ofchurches."
"I--I can say nothing," another grumbled. "I have always been in ragsand a vagabond. Is it my fault? Who taught me to steal, to strike?"
"Brave rowers," exclaimed the visitor, "I thank you, and as Blogue hasto be ransomed, let us see what you have restored to justice."
"Here is for Blogue, and a little more," exclaimed the cavern-chief,throwing over a packet he had been making up, "when the disciples arelucky, the apostle must not lack."
He then spread out a large black kerchief, and placed upon it, one byone, in the sight of all, the watches, jewels and purses taken from thecoach.
There was one part of this which was perhaps the only thing in theirpower by which they could have disturbed Lecour's self control justthen. When he saw Cyrene's brooch in these felonious hands his bloodboiled up and he stamped his foot involuntarily on the rock.
Horror! The loose shaly stones gave way with a rush beneath him. Down heslid into the cavern, saved in his descent only by the slope and ledgesof the "fault." The astonished bandits fled back with a shout. BeforeGermain could move, however, the robber captain sprang upon him, and,locking him in a desperate embrace, they quickly rolled to the doorwaywhere, in their struggle, the pile of firearms was swept out into thegorge. The giant lifted him bodily and threw him out down the face ofthe cliff. At this terrible moment the Indian quickness of his earlylife came to his rescue, for even as he fell he caught the rope, andslid down to the bottom. There he shouted for the gamekeepers. He couldsee the robbers looking over the entrance and seeming to debate.Immediately after, two bodies shot down upon him from the cavern, and hefound himself face to face with the big man and the Admiral. Theysprang upon him in concert, and while the former held him, the secondsped off up the gorge and was lost to sight. The robber captain detainedhim with a grip of immense power, until three more slid down and madeoff. Then, hearing the shouts of the gamekeepers close at hand, hesprang towards the opposite cliff, climbed straight up it from ledge toledge with miracles of muscle, and disappeared over the top. Threewretches who were still in the cave were secured, fighting savagely. Onewas la Tour.