“Me?” de Bennetot almost howled. “Me touch her? Me see her? I’d rather die! … Suppose you do it!”
“I couldn’t. … I’ll be damned if I could,” murmured the Baron huskily.
“But she’s guilty. … She committed those murders.”
“Of course. … Of course. … At least it’s probable that she did. … The only thing is she looked such a gentle creature.”
“Yes,” said de Bennetot. “And she’s so pretty—as beautiful as the Virgin.”
With one accord they fell on their knees on the pebbles and started to pray aloud for the girl who was about to die and on whose behalf they called for “the intervention of the Virgin Mary.”
Godfrey mingled verses from the burial service with prayers and de Bennetot punctuated them at intervals with fervent amens. This appeared to restore their courage a trifle, for they suddenly rose, burning to get the business over.
De Bennetot brought the great boulder he had ready, and tied it firmly to the iron ring. They pushed the boat down the beach into the still water. Then, together, they pushed the other boat down the beach and clambered into it. Godfrey took the two oars while de Bennetot tied the painter of the boat of the doomed woman to the last thwart of the boat they were in, then shipped the rudder.
So they rowed out to sea to the quiet accompaniment of dripping oars. Shadows darker than the night allowed them to make their slow way safely between lowering rocks towards the open sea. But, at the end of twenty minutes, their progress grew slower and slower; and they came to a stop.
“I can’t go any further,” said the Baron in a faint voice. “My arms have given out. It’s your turn.”
“I couldn’t move her a yard,” de Bennetot protested with manifest sincerity.
Godfrey made another attempt and gave it up.
“What’s the use?” he said. “Surely we’ve got far enough out and to spare. What do you think?”
“Of course we have,” said de Bennetot quickly—“especially since there’s a breeze from the shore which will take the boat further out still.”
“Then pull that straw out of the hole.”
“You’ve got to do that,” protested de Bennetot, to whom the act seemed the very act of murder.
“Enough of that nonsense!” growled the Baron savagely, “Get on with it!”
De Bennetot pulled on the painter. The other boat came slowly up alongside, its gunwale rubbing the gunwale of the boat they were in. He had only to lean over to lay his hand on the straw.
“I’m afraid G-G-Godfrey,” he stammered. “By my eternal salvation, it is not I who do this, but you. Understand that.”
Godfrey growled like a wild beast, sprang forward, thrust him aside, bent over the gunwale, and tore the bolt of straw out of the hole.
There came a gurgle of rising water; and it upset him to such a degree that, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, he wished to stop up the hole again.
He was too late, de Bennetot had slipped into his seat and taken up the oars. Recovering all his strength in an access of panic at that sinister sound, he pulled with such violence that a single stroke drove their boat several fathoms from the other.
“Stop!” shouted the Baron. “Stop! I wish to save her! Stop! Curse you! … It’s you who are killing her, not me! … Murderer! I would have saved her!”
But de Bennetot, mad with terror, incapable of hearing or of understanding, was plying the oars with a fury that threatened to break them.
The corpse, for what else could one call this inert creature, helpless and doomed to death in that scuttled boat, remained alone. The sea must inevitably fill the boat in a few minutes, and it must sink beneath the waves.
Godfrey realized that. Therefore, making the best of it, he took the other pair of oars, and without caring whether anyone heard the splashes or not, the two confederates strove with the most desperate efforts to escape with the utmost possible speed from the scene of their crime. They dreaded to hear some faint cry of anguish or the terrible murmur of an object that sinks and over which the water closes forever.
The doomed boat floated almost without movement on the surface of the sea, on which the air, loaded with low clouds, appeared to weigh with an extraordinary heaviness.
D’Etigues and de Bennetot must have been halfway back to the shore. The sound of their flight was no longer heard. At that moment the boat heeled over to starboard; and in a kind of stupor of terror and agony that dazed her, the young woman thought that the end had come. She did not wince; she did not shiver. The acceptance of death produces a state of mind in which one seems already on the other side of the grave.
However she was faintly astonished not to feel the touch of icy water. At the moment it was the thing from which her delicate flesh most shrank. No; the boat was not plunging under. It seemed more likely rather to capsize because somebody had passed a leg over the gunwale. Somebody? But who? The Baron? His confederate?
She learned that it was neither the one nor the other, for a voice which she did not know murmured:
“You can stop being frightened. It’s a friend who has come to rescue you.”
This friend bent over her and without even knowing whether she heard or not, continued: “You have never seen me … my name is Ralph … Ralph d’Andresy. … It’s all right now … I’ve stopped the hole with a stocking rolled round one of the rowlocks. It’s a makeshift; but it will work all right—especially since we are going to get rid of this great boulder.”
With his knife he cut the ropes which fastened the young woman to the stretcher, cut loose the boulder, and succeeded in heaving it overboard.
Then drawing aside the folds of the
