FullReads

“You will not come here again?”

“No. If M. Laflamme should not arrive, and you should go alone, leave one pair of oars; then I shall know. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, mademoiselle. A thousand times I will pray for you. Ah, mon Dieu! take care!–you are on the edge of the great tomb.”

She stood perfectly still. At her feet was a dark excavation where was the skeleton of Ovi the King. This was the hidden burial-place of the modern Hiawatha of these savage islands, unknown even to the natives themselves, and kept secret with a half-superstitious reverence by this girl, who had discovered it a few months before.

“I had forgotten,” she said. “Please take my hand and set me right at the entrance.”

“Your hand, mademoiselle? Mine is so–! It is not dark.”

“I am blind now.”

“Blind–blind! Oh, the pitiful thing! Since when, mademoiselle?”

“Since the soldier fired on you-the shock….”

The convict knelt at her feet. “Ah, mademoiselle, you are a good angel. I shall die of grief. To think–for such as me!”

“You will live to love your wife and children. This is the will of God with me. Am I in the path now? Ah, thank you.”

“But, M. Laflamme–this will be a great sorrow to him.”

Twice she seemed about to speak, but nothing came save good-bye. Then she crept cautiously away among the bushes and along the narrow path, the eyes of the convict following her. She had done a deed which, she understood, the world would blame her for if it knew, would call culpable or foolishly heroic; but she smiled, because she understood also that she had done that which her own conscience and heart approved, and she was content.

At this time Laflamme was stealing watchfully through the tropical scrub, where hanging vines tore his hands, and the sickening perfume of jungle flowers overcame him more than the hard journey which he had undergone during the past twelve hours.

Several times he had been within voice of his pursuers, and once a Kanaka scout passed close to him. He had had nothing to eat, he had had no sleep, he suffered from a wound in his neck caused by the broken protruding branch of a tree; but he had courage, and he was struggling for liberty–a tolerably sweet thing when one has it not. He found the Cave at last, and with far greater ease than Carbourd had done, because he knew the ground better, and his instinct was keener. His greeting to Carbourd was nonchalantly cordial:

“Well, you see, comrade, King Ovi’s Cave is a reality.”

“So.”

“I saw the boat. The horses? What do you know?”

“They will be at Point Assumption to-night.”

“Then we go to-night. We shall have to run the chances of rifles along the shore at a range something short, but we have done that before, at the Barricades, eh, Carbourd?”

“At the Barricades. It is a pity that we cannot take Citizen Louise Michel with us.”

“Her time will come.”

“She has no children crying and starving at home like–“

“Like yours, Carbourd, like yours. Well, I am starving here. Give me something to eat…. Ah, that is good–excellent! What more can we want but freedom! Till the darkness of tyranny be overpast–overpast, eh?”

This speech brought another weighty matter to Carbourd’s mind. He said:

“I do not wish to distress you, but–“

“Now, Carbourd, what is the matter? Faugh! this place smells musty. What’s that–a tomb? Speak out, Citizen Carbourd.”

“It is this: Mademoiselle Wyndham is blind.” Carbourd told the story with a great anxiety in his words.

“The poor mademoiselle–is it so? A thousand pities! So kind, so young, so beautiful. Ah, I am distressed, and I finished her portrait yesterday! Yes, I remember her eyes looked too bright, and then again too dull: but I thought that it was excitement, and so–that!”

Laflamme’s regret was real enough up to a certain point, but, in sincerity and value, it was chasms below that of Hugh Tryon, who, even now, was getting two horses ready to give the Frenchmen their chance.