Belle Rose: A Romance of the Cloak and Sword — page 232: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

216 A SCENE UPON THE OCEAN. from the brigadier’s lips; he plunged his bloody spurs into his horse’s sides and passed beyond his whole troop at abound. It wasa wild and furious race. The foam flew from the red nostrils of the horses; their flanks were stained with drops of blood; Belle-Rose and Cornelius pricked them with the points of their swords; Bouletord flew like a stone hurled from a sling. But Belle-Rose and Cornelius were some distance ahead, and Déroute, who preceded them by a hundred steps, was shortening the space which separated him from the sea. The pursuit had lasted for a quarter of an hour, and the horses were grad- ually weakening, when on turning a hillock, at the foot of which a road passed, they saw the sea laving with its waves the gray sand. Déroute applied the whip to his horse and arrived like a thunderbolt upon the shore. A floating bark, raised by the mounting tide, was balanced upon the crest of the waves. ‘Whose bark?’’ said he, on setting foot upon the shore. ‘*Mine!’’ said an old fisherman wearing a brown cloak. ‘‘Open your sail to the wind; here are two gentlemen who are being pursued. Do you wish to save them?”’ The old sailor and his son leaped into the bark and cut it loose. Belle-Rose and Cornelius, carried on by the impulse of their speed, plunged into the water which splashed around their horses. In a bound they threw themselves into the bark; the sail swelled under the evening wind, the prow turned toward the open sea, and the boat floated lightly over the waves. At this moment Bouletord reached the shore and looked around him; no bark was there. His men surrounded him; Bouletord saw a musket in the hands of one of them, snatched it from him, and directed it at the fugitive boat. The black silhouette of the three passengers was outlined upon the horizon, where the sun had just disappeared like a king in a bed of purple and of gold. The gun remained immovable for a moment as if it had been sustained by a marble hand, then there was a flash of light and the lead whistled. A cry came from the bark, and one of the three shadows fell with outspread arms. Asmile of feverish joy illuminated Bouletord’s face. ‘‘This time I have not lost everything,’’ said he. Belle-Rose was extended at the bottom of the boat; the ball had entered slightly above his right breast. Cornelius, paler than the wounded man, had thrown himself on his knees beside him and was seeking to stanch the flow of blood. Déroute said nothing; his countenance was mourn- (E(0) micooo S ‘ (Q)