“You forget that they can see you,” said he.
“That is true!” said the sailors, ashamed of their weakness. “Give us your orders, Monseigneur, we are prepared to die for you.”
“Let us wait,” said Aramis.
“How—let us wait?”
“Yes; do you not see, as you just now said, that if we endeavor to fly, they will sink us?”
“But, perhaps,” the patron ventured to say, “perhaps under cover of night, we could escape them.”
“Oh!” said Aramis, “they have, no doubt, Greek fire with which to lighten their own course and ours likewise.”
At the same moment, as if the vessel was responsive to the appeal of Aramis, a second cloud of smoke mounted slowly to the heavens, and from the bosom of that cloud sparkled an arrow of flame, which described a parabola like a rainbow, and fell into the sea, where it continued to burn, illuminating a space of a quarter of a league in diameter.
The Bretons looked at each other in terror. “You see plainly,” said Aramis, “it will be better to wait for them.”
The oars dropped from the hands of the sailors, and the bark, ceasing to make way, rocked motionless upon the summits of the waves. Night came on, but still the ship drew nearer. It might be imagined it redoubled its speed with darkness. From time to time, as a vulture rears its head out of its nest, the formidable Greek fire darted from its sides, and cast its flame upon the ocean like an incandescent snowfall. At last it came within musket-shot. All the men were on deck, arms in hand; the cannoniers were at their guns, the matches burning. It might be thought they were about to board a frigate and to fight a crew superior in number to their own, not to attempt the capture of a canoe manned by four people.
“Surrender!” cried the commander of the balancelle, with the aid of his speaking-trumpet.
The sailors looked at Aramis. Aramis made a sign with his head. Yves waved a white cloth at the end of a gaff. This was like striking their flag. The pursuer came on like a racehorse. It launched a fresh Greek fire, which fell within twenty paces of the little canoe, and threw a light upon them as white as sunshine.
“At the first sign of resistance,” cried the commander of the balancelle, “fire!” The soldiers brought their muskets to the present.
“Did not we say we surrendered?” said Yves.
“Alive, alive, captain!” cried one excited soldier, “they must be taken alive.”
“Well, yes—living,” said the captain. Then turning towards the Bretons, “Your lives are safe, my friends!” cried he, “all but the Chevalier d’Herblay.”
Aramis stared imperceptibly. For an instant his eye was fixed upon the depths of the ocean, illumined by the last flashes of the Greek fire, which ran along the sides of the waves, played on the crests like plumes, and rendered still darker and more terrible the gulfs they covered.
“Do you hear, Monseigneur?” said the sailors.
“Yes.”
“What are your orders?”
“Accept!”
“But you, Monseigneur?”
Aramis leaned still more forward, and dipped the ends of his long white fingers in the green limpid waters of the sea, to which he turned with smiles as to a friend.
“Accept!” repeated he.
“We accept,” repeated the sailors; “but what security have we?”
“The word of a gentleman,” said the officer. “By my rank and by my name I swear that all except M. le Chevalier d’Herblay shall have their lives spared. I am lieutenant of the king’s frigate the Pomona, and my name is Louis Constant de Pressigny.”
With a rapid gesture, Aramis—already bent over the side of the bark towards the sea—drew himself up, and with a flashing eye, and a smile upon his lips, “Throw out the ladder, messieurs,” said he, as if the command had belonged to him. He was obeyed. When Aramis, seizing the rope ladder, walked straight up to the commander, with a firm step, looked at him earnestly, made a sign to him with his hand, a mysterious and unknown sign at sight of which the officer turned pale, trembled, and bowed his head, the sailors were profoundly astonished. Without a word Aramis then raised his hand to the eyes of the commander and showed him the collet of a ring he wore on the ring-finger of his left hand. And while making this sign Aramis, draped in cold and haughty majesty, had the air of an emperor giving his hand to be kissed. The commandant, who for a moment had raised his head, bowed a second time with marks of the most profound respect. Then stretching his hand out, in his turn, towards the poop, that is to say, towards his own cabin, he drew back to allow Aramis to go first. The three Bretons, who had come on board after their bishop, looked at each other, stupefied. The crew were awed to silence. Five minutes after, the commander called the second lieutenant, who returned immediately, ordering the head to be put towards Corunna. Whilst this order was being executed, Aramis reappeared upon the deck, and took a seat near the bastingage. Night had fallen; the moon had not yet risen, yet Aramis looked incessantly towards Belle-Isle. Yves then approached the captain, who had returned to take his post in the stern, and said, in a low and humble voice, “What course are we to follow, captain?”
“We take what course Monseigneur pleases,” replied the officer.
Aramis passed the night leaning upon the bastingage. Yves, on approaching him next morning, remarked that “the night must have been a very damp one, for the wood on which the bishop’s head had rested was soaked with dew.” Who knows?—that dew was, it may be, the first tears that had ever fallen from the eyes of Aramis!
What epitaph would have been worth that, good Porthos?
259
The Round of M. de Gesvres
D’Artagnan was little used to resistance
