The Tremendous Event Part 25

Forsetta was shouting his orders:

"Forward! . . . There's no danger! . . . They've no ammunition! . . .

Forward, I tell you! The Frenchman's pockets are stuffed with notes!"

The seven tramps ran forward as one man. Simon levelled his revolver briskly and fired. They stopped. No one was. .h.i.t. Forsetta was triumphant:

"They're done for! . . . Nothing but short-range Browning bullets!

. . . At them!"

He himself, protecting his body with a piece of sheet-iron, ran up at full speed. Mazzani and the tramps formed up in a circle at thirty or forty yards.

"Ready!" bellowed Forsetta. "Out with your knives!"

Dolores remarked to Simon that they must not remain in their observation-post, since most of their enemies would be able to reach the foot of the fortress unseen and slip between the marble blocks.

They slid through a gap which formed a chimney from the top to the ground.

"There they are! There they are!" said Dolores. "Fire now! . . . Look, here's a c.h.i.n.k!"

Through this c.h.i.n.k Simon saw two big ruffians walking ahead of the rest. Two shots rang out. The two big ruffians fell. The party halted for the second time, hesitating what to do.

Dolores and Simon profited by this delay to take refuge at the extreme edge of the river. Three single blocks of marble formed a sort of sentry-box, with an empty s.p.a.ce in front of it.

"Charge!" shouted Forsetta, joining the men. "They're trapped! Mazzani and I have got them covered. If the Frenchman stirs, we'll shoot him down!"

To meet the charge, Simon and Dolores were obliged to stand up and half-expose themselves. Terrified by the Indian's threat, Dolores threw herself before Simon, making a rampart of her body.

"Halt!" ordered Forsetta, restraining his men's onrush. "And you, Dolores, you leave your Frenchman! Come! He shall have his life if you leave him. He can go: it's you I'm after!"

Simon seized the girl with his left arm and drew her back by main force:

"Not a movement!" he said. "I forbid you to leave me! I'll answer for your safety. As long as I live those brutes shan't get you."

And, with the girl pressed against the hollow of his shoulder, he stretched out his right arm.

"Well done, M. Dubosc!" jeered Forsetta. "Seems that we're sweet on the fair Dolores and that we're sticking to her! Those Frenchmen are all alike! Chivalrous fellows!"

With a wave of the hand he gathered up the tramps for the final attack:

"Now then, mates! One more effort and all the notes are yours! Mazzani and I bag the pretty lady. Is that right, Mazzani?"

All together they came rus.h.i.+ng on. All together, at an order from Forsetta, they hurled, like so many projectiles, the pieces of wood and iron with which they had protected themselves. Dolores was not hit, but Simon, struck on the arm, dropped his Browning at the very moment when he had fired at Mazzani and brought him down. One of the tramps leapt upon the pistol, which had rolled away, while Forsetta struggled with Dolores, avoiding the girl's dagger and imprisoning her in his arms.

"Oh, Simon! I'm done for!" she screamed, trying to hang on to him.

But Simon had the five tramps to deal with. Unarmed, with nothing but his hands and feet to fight with, he was shot at three times by the man who had picked up his pistol and was clumsily firing off the last few cartridges. He staggered for a moment under the weight of the other brutes and was thrown to the ground. Two of them seized his legs. Two others tried to strangle him, while the fifth still kept him covered with his empty pistol.

"Simon, save me! . . . Save me!" cried Dolores, whom Forsetta was carrying off, wrapped in a blanket and bound with a rope.

He made a desperate effort, escaping his a.s.sailants for a few seconds, and, before they had time to come to close quarters again, acting on a sudden impulse he threw his pocket-book to them, shouting:

"Hands off, you blackguards! Share that between you! Thirty thousand!"

The bundles of notes fell out of the leather wallet and were scattered over the ground. The tramps did not hesitate, but plumped down on their hands and knees, leaving the field to Simon.

Fifty yards away, Forsetta was running along the river, with his prey slung over his shoulder. Farther on, the two tramps posted on the other bank were punting themselves across on a raft which they had found. If Forsetta came up with them, it meant his safety.

"He won't get there," Simon said to himself, measuring the distance with his eye.

With a quick movement, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the knife of one of his aggressors and set off at a run.

Forsetta, who believed him to be still struggling with the vagabonds, did not hurry. He had, so to speak, rolled Dolores round his neck, holding her legs, head and arms in front of him and crus.h.i.+ng them to his chest with his rifle and his brawny arms. He shouted to the two men on the raft, to stimulate their ardour:

"Here's the girl! She's my share. . . . You shall have all her jewels!"

The men warned him:

"Look out!"

He turned, saw Simon at twenty paces' distance and tried to throw Dolores to the ground with a heave of the shoulder, like an irksome burden. The girl fell, but she had so contrived matters, under cover of the suffocating blanket, that at the moment of falling she had a good grip on the barrel of the Indian's rifle; and in her fall she dragged him down with her.

The few seconds which Forsetta needed to recover his weapon were his undoing. Simon leapt upon him before he could take aim. He stumbled once more, received a dagger-thrust in the hip and went down on his knees, begging for mercy.

Simon released Dolores' bonds; then, addressing the two tramps who, terror-stricken when on the point of touching ground, were now trying to push off again:

"See to his wound," he ordered. "And there's the other Indian over there: he's probably alive. Look after him too, you shall have your lives."

The tramps were scattering so rapidly in the distance, with Simon's bank-notes, that he gave up all idea of pursuing them.

Thus he remained master of the battle-field. Dead, wounded, or in fight, his adversaries were defeated. The extraordinary adventure was continuing as it were in a savage country and against the most unexpected background.

He was profoundly conscious of the incredible moments through which he was pa.s.sing, on the bed of the Channel, between France and England, in a region which was truly a land of death, crime, cunning and violence.

And he had triumphed!

He could not refrain from smiling and, leaning with both hands on Forsetta's rifle, he said to Dolores:

"The prairie! It's Fenimore Cooper's prairie! The Far West! It's all here: the attack by Sioux, the improvised blockhouse, the abduction, the fight, with the chief of the Pale-Faces coming out victorious!

She stood facing him, very erect. Her thin silk blouse had been torn in the struggle and hung in strips around her bosom. Simon added, in a tone of less a.s.surance:

"And here's the fair Indian."

Was it emotion, or excessive fatigue after her protracted efforts?

Dolores staggered and seemed on the verge of fainting. He supported her, holding her in his arms:

"You're surely not wounded?" he said.

"No. . . . A pa.s.sing giddiness. . . . I have been badly frightened.