For a quarter of a mile he walked over the rocks, then returned. It was nine o’clock. The moment had arrived for the appearance of Jeanne and Pierre. He resumed his patrol of the cliff, and with each moment his nervousness increased. What if Jeanne failed him? What if she did not come to the rock? The mere thought made his heart sink with a sudden painful throb. Until now the fear that Jeanne might disappoint him, that she might not keep the tryst, had not entered his head. His faith in this girl, whom he had seen but twice, was supreme.
A second and a third time he patrolled the quarter mile of cliff. Again his watch tinkled the half-hour, and he knew that the last minutes of the appointed time had come.
The third and last time he went beyond the quarter-mile limit, searching in the white distances beyond. A low wind was rising from the Bay; it rustled in the spruce and balsam tops of the forest that reached up to the barren whiteness of the rock plateau on which he stood; under him he heard, growing more and more distinct, the moaning wash of the swelling tide. A moment of despair possessed him, and he felt that he had lost.
Suddenly the wind brought to him a different sound—a shout far down the cliff, a second cry, and then the scream of a woman, deadened by the wash of the sea and the increasing sweep of the wind among the trees.
He stood for a moment powerless, listening. The wind lulled, and the woman’s cry now came to him again—a voice that was filled with terror rising in a wild appeal for help. With an answering shout he ran like a swift-footed animal along the cliff. It was Jeanne who was calling! Who else but Jeanne would be out there in the gray night—Jeanne and Pierre? He listened as he ran, but there came no other sound. At last he stopped, and drew in a great breath, to send out a shout that would reach their ears.
Above the fierce beating of his heart, the throbbing intake of his breath, he heard sounds which were not of the wind or the sea. He ran on, and suddenly the cliff dropped from under his feet, and he found himself on the edge of a great rift in the wall of rock, looking across upon a strange scene. In the brilliant moonlight, with his back against a rock, stood Pierre, his glistening rapier in his hand, his thin, lithe body bent for the attack of three men who faced him. It was but a moment’s tableau. The men rushed in. Muffled cries, blows, a single clash of steel, and Pierre’s voice rose above the sound of conflict. “For the love of God, give me help, M’sieur!” He had seen Philip rush up to the edge of the break in the cliff, and as he fought he cried out again.
“Shoot, M’sieur! In a moment it will be too late!”
Philip had drawn his heavy revolver. He watched for an opportunity. The men were fighting now so that Pierre had been forced between his assailants and the breach in the wall. There was no chance to fire without hitting him.