And the three robust Bretons went to the boat, and were beginning to place their rollers underneath it to put it in motion, when the distant barking of dogs was heard, proceeding from the interior of the island.
Aramis darted out of the grotto, followed by Porthos. Dawn just tinted with purple and white the waves and plain; through the dim light, melancholy fir-trees waved their tender branches over the pebbles, and long flights of crows were skimming with their black wings the shimmering fields of buckwheat. In a quarter of an hour it would be clear daylight; the wakened birds announced it to all nature. The barkings which had been heard, which had stopped the three fishermen engaged in moving the boat, and had brought Aramis and Porthos out of the cavern, now seemed to come from a deep gorge within about a league of the grotto.
“It is a pack of hounds,” said Porthos; “the dogs are on a scent.”
“Who can be hunting at such a moment as this?” said Aramis.
“And this way, particularly,” continued Porthos, “where they might expect the army of the royalists.”
“The noise comes nearer. Yes, you are right, Porthos, the dogs are on a scent. But, Yves!” cried Aramis, “come here! come here!”
Yves ran towards him, letting fall the cylinder which he was about to place under the boat when the bishop’s call interrupted him.
“What is the meaning of this hunt, skipper?” said Porthos.
“Eh! Monseigneur, I cannot understand it,” replied the Breton. “It is not at such a moment that the Seigneur de Locmaria would hunt. No, and yet the dogs—”
“Unless they have escaped from the kennel.”
“No,” said Goenne, “they are not the Seigneur de Locmaria’s hounds.”
“In common prudence,” said Aramis, “let us go back into the grotto; the voices evidently draw nearer, we shall soon know what we have to trust to.”
They re-entered, but had scarcely proceeded a hundred steps in the darkness, when a noise like the hoarse sigh of a creature in distress resounded through the cavern, and breathless, rapid, terrified, a fox passed like a flash of lightning before the fugitives, leaped over the boat and disappeared, leaving behind its sour scent, which was perceptible for several seconds under the low vaults of the cave.
“The fox!” cried the Bretons, with the glad surprise of born hunters.
“Accursed mischance!” cried the bishop, “our retreat is discovered.”
“How so?” said Porthos; “are you afraid of a fox?”
“Eh! my friend, what do you mean by that? why do you specify the fox? It is not the fox alone. Pardieu! But don’t you know, Porthos, that after the foxes come hounds, and after hounds men?”
Porthos hung his head. As though to confirm the words of Aramis, they heard the yelping pack approach with frightful swiftness upon the trail. Six foxhounds burst at once upon the little heath, with mingling yelps of triumph.
“There are the dogs, plain enough!” said Aramis, posted on the lookout behind a chink in the rocks; “now, who are the huntsmen?”
“If it is the Seigneur de Locmaria’s,” replied the sailor, “he will leave the dogs to hunt the grotto, for he knows them, and will not enter in himself, being quite sure that the fox will come out the other side; it is there he will wait for him.”
“It is not the Seigneur de Locmaria who is hunting,” replied Aramis, turning pale in spite of his efforts to maintain a placid countenance.
“Who is it, then?” said Porthos.
“Look!”
Porthos applied his eye to the slit, and saw at the summit of a hillock a dozen horsemen urging on their horses in the track of the dogs, shouting, “Taïaut! taïaut!”
“The guards!” said he.
“Yes, my friend, the king’s Guards.”
“The king’s Guards! do you say, Monseigneur?” cried the Bretons, growing pale in turn.
“With Biscarrat at their head, mounted upon my gray horse,” continued Aramis.
The hounds at the same moment rushed into the grotto like an avalanche, and the depths of the cavern were filled with their deafening cries.
“Ah! the devil!” said Aramis, resuming all his coolness at the sight of this certain, inevitable danger. “I am perfectly satisfied we are lost, but we have, at least, one chance left. If the guards who follow their hounds happen to discover there is an issue to the grotto, there is no help for us, for on entering they must see both ourselves and our boat. The dogs must not go out of the cavern. Their masters must not enter.”
“That is clear,” said Porthos.
“You understand,” added Aramis, with the rapid precision of command; “there are six dogs that will be forced to stop at the great stone under which the fox has glided—but at the too narrow opening of which they must be themselves stopped and killed.”
The Bretons sprang forward, knife in hand. In a few minutes there was a lamentable concert of angry barks and mortal howls—and then, silence.
“That’s well!” said Aramis, coolly, “now for the masters!”
“What is to be done with them?” said Porthos.
“Wait their arrival, conceal ourselves, and kill them.”
“Kill them!” replied Porthos.
“There are sixteen,” said Aramis, “at least, at present.”
“And well armed,” added Porthos, with a smile of consolation.
“It will last about ten minutes,” said Aramis. “To work!”
And with a resolute air he took up a musket, and placed a hunting-knife between his teeth.
“Yves, Goenne, and his son,” continued Aramis, “will pass the muskets to us. You, Porthos, will fire when they are close. We shall have brought down, at the lowest computation, eight, before the others are aware of anything—that is certain; then all, there are five of us, will dispatch the other eight, knife in hand.”
“And poor Biscarrat?” said Porthos.
Aramis reflected a moment—“Biscarrat first,” replied he, coolly. “He knows us.”
255
The Grotto
In spite of the sort of divination which was the remarkable side of the character of Aramis, the event, subject to the risks of things over which uncertainty presides, did not fall out exactly as the bishop of Vannes had foreseen.
