was darkness, the charcoal fire only lighting with a dim, red
light the furthest corner of the hut. The soldiers paused automatically
at the door, like machines waiting for further orders.

Chauvelin, who was prepared for a violent onslaught from within, and
for a vigorous resistance from the four fugitives, under cover of the
darkness, was for the moment paralyzed with astonishment when he saw the
soldiers standing there at attention, like sentries on guard, whilst not
a sound proceeded from the hut.

Filled with strange, anxious foreboding, he, too, went to the door of
the hut, and peering into the gloom, he asked quickly,--

"What is the meaning of this?"

"I think, citoyen, that there is no one there now," replied one of the
soldiers imperturbably.

"You have not let those four men go?" thundered Chauvelin, menacingly.
"I ordered you to let no man escape alive!--Quick, after them all of
you! Quick, in every direction!"

The men, obedient as machines, rushed down the rocky incline towards
the beach, some going off to right and left, as fast as their feet could
carry them.

"You and your men will pay with your lives for this blunder, citoyen
sergeant," said Chauvelin viciously to the sergeant who had been in
charge of the men; "and you, too, citoyen," he added turning with a
snarl to Desgas, "for disobeying my orders."

"You ordered us to wait, citoyen, until the tall Englishman arrived
and joined the four men in the hut. No one came," said the sergeant
sullenly.

"But I ordered you just now, when the woman screamed, to rush in and let
no one escape."

"But, citoyen, the four men who were there before had been gone some
time, I think . . ."

"You think?--You? . . ." said Chauvelin, almost choking with fury, "and
you let them go . . ."

"You ordered us to wait, citoyen," protested the sergeant, "and to
implicitly obey your commands on pain of death. We waited."

"I heard the men creep out of the hut, not many minutes after we took
cover, and long before the woman screamed," he added, as Chauvelin
seemed still quite speechless with rage.

"Hark!" said Desgas suddenly.

In the distance the sound of repeated firing was heard. Chauvelin tried
to peer along the beach below, but as luck would have it, the fitful
moon once more hid her light behind a bank of clouds, and he could see
nothing.

"One of you go into the hut and strike a light," he stammered at last.

Stolidly the sergeant obeyed: he went u