“Stop! stop! I will accompany you,” said one of the guards, on seeing Biscarrat preparing to disappear in the shade of the cavern’s mouth.
“No,” replied Biscarrat,- “there must be something extraordinary in the place; don’t let us risk ourselves all at once. If in ten minutes you do not hear of me, you can come in,- but then all at once.”
“Be it so,” said the young men, who besides did not see that Biscarrat ran much risk in the enterprise, “we will wait for you”; and without dismounting from their horses, they formed a circle round the grotto.
Biscarrat entered then alone, and advanced through the darkness till he came in contact with the muzzle of Porthos’s musket. The resistance against his breast astonished him; he raised his hand and laid hold of the icy barrel. At the same instant Yves lifted a knife against the young man, which was about to fall upon him with all the force of a Breton’s arm, when the iron wrist of Porthos stopped it halfway. Then, like low-muttering thunder, his voice growled in the darkness, “I will not have him killed!” Biscarrat found himself between a protection and a threat,- the one almost as terrible as the other. However brave the young man might be, he could not prevent a cry escaping him, which Aramis immediately suppressed by placing a handkerchief over his mouth. “M. de Biscarrat,” said he, in a low voice, “we mean you no harm, and you must know that if you have recognized us; but at the first word, the first sigh, or the first breath, we shall be forced to kill you as we have killed your dogs.”
“Yes, I recognize you, gentlemen,” said the officer, in a low voice; “but why are you here; what are you doing here? Unfortunate men! I thought you were in the fort.”
“And you, Monsieur,- you were to obtain conditions for us, I think?”
“I did all I could, Messieurs; but-”
“But what?”
“But there are positive orders.”
“To kill us?” Biscarrat made no reply; it would have cost him too much to speak of the cord to gentlemen.
Aramis understood the silence of his prisoner. “M. Biscarrat,” said he, “you would be already dead if we had not had regard for your youth and our ancient association with your father; but you may yet escape from the place by swearing that you will not tell your companions what you have seen.”
“I will not only swear that I will not speak of it,” said Biscarrat, “but I still further swear that I will do everything in the world to prevent my companions from setting foot in the grotto.”
“Biscarrat! Biscarrat!” cried several voices from the outside, coming like a whirlwind into the cave.
“Reply,” said Aramis.
“Here am I!” cried Biscarrat.
“Now go; we depend upon your loyalty”; and he left his hold of the young man, who hastily returned towards the light.
“Biscarrat! Biscarrat!” cried the voices, still nearer; and the shadows of several human forms projected into the interior of the grotto.
Biscarrat rushed to meet his friends in order to stop them, and met them just as they were venturing into the cave. Aramis and Porthos listened with the intense attention of men whose lives depend upon a breath of air.
Biscarrat had regained the entrance to the cave, followed by his friends.
“Oh, oh!” exclaimed one of the guards, as he came to the light, “how pale you are!”
“Pale!” cried another; “you ought to say livid.”
“I?” said the young man, endeavoring to collect his faculties.
“In the name of Heaven, what has happened to you?” exclaimed all voices.
“You have not a drop of blood in your veins, my poor friend,” said one of them, laughing.
“Messieurs, it is serious,” said another. “He is going to faint; does any one of you happen to have any salts?” and they all laughed.
All these interpellations, all these jokes, crossed one another round Biscarrat as the balls cross one another in the fire of a melee. He recovered himself amid a deluge of interrogations. “What do you suppose I have seen?” asked he. “I was too hot when I entered the grotto, and I have been struck with the cold; that is all.”