Count Hannibal

The minister shook his head. The rider wiped the blood from his eyes,

and turned up his face that he might see the better. But he seemed to be

dazed, and only babbled strange words in a strange patois.

She stamped her foot in passion. "More lights!" she cried. "Lights! How

can they find their way? And let six men go down the digue, and meet

them. Will you let them be butchered between the shore and this?"

But Carlat, who had not been able to collect more than a dozen men, shook

his head; and before she could repeat the order, sounds of battle,

shrill, faint, like cries of hungry seagulls, pierced the darkness which

shrouded the farther end of the causeway. The women shrank inward over

the threshold, while Carlat cried to the men at the chains to be ready,

and to some who stood at loopholes above, to blow up their matches and

let fly at his word. And then they all waited, the Countess foremost,

peering eagerly into the growing darkness. They could see nothing.

A distant scuffle, an oath, a cry, silence! The same, a little nearer, a

little louder, followed this time, not by silence, but by the slow tread

of a limping horse. Again a rush of feet, the clash of steel, a scream,

a laugh, all weird and unreal, issuing from the night; then out of the

darkness into the light, stepping slowly with hanging head, moved a

horse, bearing on its back a man--or was it a man?--bending low in the

saddle, his feet swinging loose. For an instant the horse and the man

seemed to be alone, a ghostly pair; then at their heels came into view

two figures, skirmishing this way and that; and now coming nearer, and

now darting back into the gloom. One, a squat figure, stooping low,

wielded a sword with two hands; the other covered him with a half-pike.

And then beyond these--abruptly as it seemed--the night gave up to sight

a swarm of dark figures pressing on them and after them, driving them

before them.

Carlat had an inspiration. "Fire!" he cried; and four arquebuses poured

a score of slugs into the knot of pursuers. A man fell, another shrieked

and stumbled, the rest gave back. Only the horse came on spectrally,

with hanging head and shining eyeballs, until a man ran out and seized

its head, and dragged it, more by his strength than its own, over the

drawbridge. After it Badelon, with a gaping wound in his knee, and

Bigot, bleeding from a dozen hurts, walked over the bridge, and stood on

either side of the saddle, smiling foolishly at the man on the horse.

"Leave me!" he muttered. "Leave me!" He made a feeble movement with his

hand, as if it held a weapon; then his head sank lower. It was Count

Hannibal. His thigh was broken, and there was a lance-head in his arm.

The Countess looked at him, then beyond him, past him into the darkness.