Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/336

 CHAPTER XXXVIII

MÈRE AVANT TOUT

The path was steep and narrow, leading them, moreover, through the most tangled and inaccessible parts of the jungle. Their progress was necessarily tardy and laborious. Fleurette took the lead, supported by Bottle-Jack, whose sea-legs seemed to carry him up-hill with difficulty, and who stopped to take breath more than once. The black girl's wound was painful enough, but she possessed that savage spirit of endurance which successfully resists mere bodily suffering, and walked with an active and elastic, though limping step. Blood, however, was still oozing from her wound, and a sense of faintness, resisted by sheer force of will, threatened at every moment to overpower her. She might just reach the crest of the hill, she thought, and then it would be all over with poor Fleurette; but the rest would need no guide after that point was gained, and the faithful girl struggled on.

Next came Smoke-Jack, in attendance on the ladies, much exhilarated by the dignity of his position, yet ludicrously on his good behaviour, and afraid of committing himself, on the score of manners, by word or deed. The Marquise and her daughter walked hand in hand, wasting few words, and busied each with her own thoughts. They seemed to have exchanged characters with the events of the last few hours. Cerise, ever since her rescue, had displayed an amount of energy and resolution scarcely to be expected from her usual demeanour, making light of present fatigue and coming peril in a true military spirit of gaiety and good-humour; while her mother,