“To the left! to the left!” cried Biscarrat, who in his first assault had seen the passage to the second chamber, and who animated by the smell of powder wished to guide his soldiers in that direction. The troop accordingly precipitated themselves to the left,- the passage gradually growing narrower. Biscarrat, with his hands stretched forward, devoted to death, marched in advance of the muskets. “Come on! come on!” exclaimed he, “I see daylight!”
“Strike, Porthos!” cried the sepulchral voice of Aramis.
Porthos breathed a sigh; but he obeyed. The iron bar fell full and direct upon the head of Biscarrat, who was dead before he had ended his cry. Then the formidable lever rose ten times in ten seconds, and made ten corpses. The soldiers could see nothing; they heard sighs and groans; they stumbled over dead bodies, but as they had no conception of the cause of all this, they came forward jostling one another. The implacable bar, still falling, annihilated the first platoon without a single sound having warned the second, which was quietly advancing. But this second platoon, commanded by the captain, had broken a thin fir growing on the shore, and with its resinous branches twisted together, the captain had made a torch.
On arriving at the compartment where Porthos, like the exterminating angel, had destroyed all he touched, the first rank drew back in terror. No firing had replied to that of the guards, and yet their way was stopped by a heap of dead bodies,- they literally walked in blood. Porthos was still behind his pillar. The captain, on lighting up with the trembling flame of the fir this frightful carnage, of which he in vain sought the cause, drew back towards the pillar behind which Porthos was concealed. Then a gigantic hand issued from the shade and fastened on the throat of the captain, who uttered a stifled rattle; his outstretched arms beating the air, the torch fell and was extinguished in blood. A second after, the corpse of the captain fell close to the extinguished torch and added another body to the heap of dead which blocked up the passage.
All this was effected as mysteriously as if by magic. On hearing the rattling in the throat of the captain, the soldiers who accompanied him had turned round; they had caught a glimpse of his extended arms, his eyes starting from their sockets, and then the torch fell and they were left in darkness. By an unreflective, instinctive, mechanical impulse the lieutenant cried, “Fire!” Immediately a volley of musketry flamed, thundered, roared in the cavern, bringing down enormous fragments from the vaults. The cavern was lighted for an instant by this discharge, and then immediately returned to a darkness rendered still thicker by the smoke. To this succeeded a profound silence, broken only by the steps of the third brigade, now entering the cavern.
Chapter LXXVIII: The Death of a Titan
AT THE moment when Porthos, more accustomed to the darkness than all these men coming from open daylight, was looking round him to see if in this night Aramis were not making him some signal, he felt his arm gently touched, and a voice low as a breath murmured in his ear, “Come.”
“Oh!” said Porthos.
“Hush! hush!” said Aramis, still more softly.
And amid the noise of the third brigade, which continued to advance, amid the imprecations of the guards left alive, of the dying breathing their last sigh, Aramis and Porthos glided imperceptibly along the granite walls of the cavern. Aramis led Porthos into the last compartment but one, and showed him in a hollow of the rocky wall a barrel of powder weighing from seventy to eighty pounds, to which he had just attached a match. “My friend,” said he to Porthos, “you will take this barrel, the match of which I am going to set fire to, and throw it amid our enemies; can you do so?”
“Parbleu!” replied Porthos; and he lifted the barrel with one hand. “Light it!”
“Stop,” said Aramis, “till they are all massed together, and then, my Jupiter, hurl your thunderbolt among them.”
“Light it,” repeated Porthos.
“On my part,” continued Aramis, “I will join our Bretons, help them to get the canoe to the sea, and will wait for you on the shore. Throw your barrel strongly, and hasten to us.”