“At last they divided into two parties and moved off.  When they had passed me I rose, weary and hopeless.  The path to the warders’ house was dark and silent, but on each side the bushes rustled slightly.  Presently I saw a faint thread of light before me.  The chief warder, followed by his three men, was approaching cautiously.  But he had failed to close his dark lantern properly.  The convicts had seen that faint gleam, too.  There was an awful savage yell, a turmoil on the dark path, shots fired, blows, groans:  and with the sound of smashed bushes, the shouts of the pursuers and the screams of the pursued, the man-hunt, the warder-hunt, passed by me into the interior of the island.  I was alone.  And I assure you, monsieur, I was indifferent to everything.  After standing still for a while, I walked on along the path till I kicked something hard.  I stooped and picked up a warder’s revolver.  I felt with my fingers that it was loaded in five chambers.  In the gusts of wind I heard the convicts calling to each other far away, and then a roll of thunder would cover the soughing and rustling of the trees.  Suddenly, a big light ran across my path very low along the ground.  And it showed a woman’s skirt with the edge of an apron.

“I knew that the person who carried it must be the wife of the head warder.  They had forgotten all about her, it seems.  A shot rang out in the interior of the island, and she cried out to herself as she ran.  She passed on.  I followed, and presently I saw her again.  She was pulling at the cord of the big bell which hangs at the end of the landing-pier, with one hand, and with the other she was swinging the heavy lantern to and fro.  This is the agreed signal for the Ile Royale should assistance be required at night.  The wind carried the sound away from our island and the light she swung was hidden on the shore side by the few trees that grow near the warders’ house.

“I came up quite close to her from behind.  She went on without stopping, without looking aside, as though she had been all alone on the island.  A brave woman, monsieur.  I put the revolver inside the breast of my blue blouse and waited.  A flash of lightning and a clap of thunder destroyed both the sound and the light of the signal for an instant, but she never faltered, pulling at the cord and swinging the lantern as regularly as a machine.  She was a comely woman of thirty—­no more.  I thought to myself, ‘All that’s no good on a night like this.’  And I made up my mind that if a body of my fellow-convicts came down to the pier—­which was sure to happen soon—­I would shoot her through the head before I shot myself.  I knew the ‘comrades’ well.  This idea of mine gave me quite an interest in life, monsieur; and at once, instead of remaining stupidly exposed on the pier, I retreated a little way and crouched behind a bush.  I did not intend to let myself be pounced upon unawares and be prevented perhaps from rendering a supreme service to at least one human creature before I died myself.