Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/343

 till even Captain George's courtesy would have given way; but a loud yell from the defile they had lately quitted, followed by a couple of shots and a round of British cheers, warned them all that not a moment was to be lost, for that their retreat was even now dependent on the handful of brave men left behind to guard the pass.

"My daughter shall go first, monsieur? Is it not so?" exclaimed the Marquise, with an eagerness of eye and excitement of manner she had not betrayed in all the previous horrors of the night.

"It is better," answered George. "Mademoiselle is perhaps somewhat the lightest." And although he strove to make his voice utterly unmoved and indifferent, there was in its tone a something of intense relief, of deep, heart-*felt joy, that told its own tale.

The Marquise knew it all at last. She saw the past now, not piece by piece, in broken detail as it had gone by, but all at once, as the mariner, sailing out of a fogbank, beholds the sunny sky, and the blue sea, and the purple outlines of the shore. It came upon her as a shot goes through a wild deer. The creature turns sick and faint, and knowing all is over, yet would fain ignore its hurt and keep its place, erect, stately, and uncomplaining, amongst the herd; not the less surely has it got its death-wound.

How carefully he placed Cerise in the frail bark of which she was to be the sole occupant. How tenderly he drew the laced coat between the skirt of her delicate white dress and the flimsy shattered wood-work, worn, splintered, and dripping wet even now. Notwithstanding the haste required, notwithstanding that every moment was of such importance in this life and death voyage, how he seemed to linger over the preparations that brought him into contact with his precious freight. At last they were ready. A farewell embrace between mother and daughter; a husky cheer delivered in a whisper from Bottle-Jack; a hurried thanksgiving for perils left behind; an anxious glance at the opposite shore, and the canoe floated off with its burden, guided by George, who in a few yards was out of his depth and swimming onward in long measured strokes that pushed it steadily before him.

The Marquise, watching their progress with eager restless