A grunt or an oath were the usual replies, but no one took any further notice of the gigantic coal-heaver and his ragged friends.
At the corner of one of the cross streets, between the Rue du Temple and the Rue des Archives, Sir Percy Blakeney suddenly turned to his followers:
“We are close to the rabble now,” he said in a whisper, and speaking in English; “do you all follow the nearest stragglers, and get as soon as possible into the thickest of the crowd. We’ll meet again outside the prison—and remember the seagull’s cry.”
He did not wait for an answer, and presently disappeared in the mist.
Already a few stragglers, hangers-on of the multitude, were gradually coming into view, and the yells could be distinctly heard. The mob had evidently assembled in the great square outside the prison, and was loudly demanding the object of its wrath.
The moment for cool-headed action was at hand. The Scarlet Pimpernel had planned the whole thing, but it was for his followers and for those, whom he was endeavouring to rescue from certain death, to help him heart and soul.
Déroulède’s grasp tightened on Juliette’s little hand.
“Are you frightened, my beloved?” he whispered.
“Not whilst you are near me,” she murmured in reply.
A few more minutes’ walk up the Rue des Archives and they were in the thick of the crowd. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, Lord Anthony Dewhurst, and Lord Hastings, the three Englishmen, were in front; Déroulède and Juliette immediately behind them.
The mob itself now carried them along. A motley throng they were, soaked through with the rain, drunk with their own baffled rage, and with the brandy which they had imbibed.
Everyone was shouting; the women louder than the rest; one of them was dragging the length of rope, which might still be useful.
“Ça ira! ça ira! À la lanterne! À la lanterne! les traîtres!”
And Déroulède, holding Juliette by the hand, shouted lustily with them:
“Ça ira!”
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes turned, and laughed. It was rare sport for these young bucks, and they all entered into the spirit of the situation. They all shouted “À la lanterne!” egging and encouraging those around them.
Déroulède and Juliette felt the intoxication of the adventure. They were drunk with the joy of their reunion, and seized with the wild, mad, passionate desire for freedom and for life. … Life and love!
So they pushed and jostled on in the mud, followed the crowd, sang and yelled louder than any of them. Was not that very crowd the great bulwark of their safety?
As well have sought for the proverbial needle in the haystack, as for two escaped prisoners in this mad, heaving throng.
The large open space in front of the Temple Prison looked like one great, seething, black mass.
The darkness was almost thick here, the ground like a morass, with inches of clayey mud, which stuck to everything, whilst the sparse lanterns, hung to the prison walls and beneath the portico, threw practically no light into the square.
As the little band, composed of the three Englishmen, and of Déroulède, holding Juliette by the hand, emerged into the open space, they heard a strident cry, like that of a sea-mew thrice repeated, and a hoarse voice shouting from out the darkness:
“Ma foi! I’ll not believe that the prisoners are in the Temple now! It is my belief, friends, citizens, that we have been fooled once more!”
The voice, with its strange, unaccountable accent, which seemed to belong to no province of France, dominated the almost deafening noise; it penetrated through, even into the brandy-soddened minds of the multitude, for the suggestion was received with renewed shouts of the wildest wrath.
Like one great, living, seething mass the crowd literally bore down upon the huge and frowning prison. Pushing, jostling, yelling, the women screaming, the men cursing, it seemed as if that awesome day—the 14th of July—was to have its sanguinary counterpart tonight, as if the Temple were destined to share the fate of the Bastille.
Obedient to their leader’s orders the three young Englishmen remained in the thick of the crowd: together with Déroulède they contrived to form a sturdy rampart round Juliette, effectually protecting her against rough buffetings.
On their right, towards the direction of Ménilmontant, the sea-mew’s cry at intervals gave the strength and courage.
The foremost rank of the crowd had reached the portico of the building, and, with howls and snatches of their gutter song, were loudly clamouring for the guardian of the grim prison.
No one appeared; the great gates with their massive bars and hinges remained silent and defiant.
The crowd was becoming dangerous: whispers of the victory of the Bastille, five years ago, engendered thoughts of pillage and of arson.
Then the strident voice was heard again:
“Pardi! the prisoners are not in the Temple! The dolts have allowed them to escape, and now are afraid of the wrath of the people!”
It was strange how easily the mob assimilated this new idea. Perhaps the dark, frowning block of massive buildings had overawed them with its peaceful strength, perhaps the dripping rain and oozing clay had damped their desire for an immediate storming of the grim citadel; perhaps it was merely the human characteristic of a wish for something new, something unexpected.
Be that as it may, the cry was certainly taken up with marvellous, quick-change rapidity.
“The prisoners have escaped! The prisoners have escaped!”
Some were for proceeding with the storming of the Temple, but they were in the minority. All along, the crowd had been more inclined for private revenge than for martial deeds of valour; the Bastille had been taken by daylight; the effort might not have been so successful on a pitch-black night such as this, when one could not see one’s hand before one’s eyes, and the drizzling rain went through to the marrow.
“They’ve got through one of the barriers by now!” suggested the same voice from out the darkness.
“The barriers—the barriers!” came in sheeplike echo from the crowd.
The little group of fugitives and their friends tightened
