The Knight of Malta

“On the beach, near the ruins of the Abbey of St. Victor, monseigneur.”

“Make your crew row faster, they do not advance,” said Pierre des Anbiez, with feverish impatience.

“The waves are high, the cloud is gathering, and the wind is going to blow; the night will be bad,” said Hadji, in a low voice.

The commander, absorbed in his own thoughts, did not reply to him. The sun’s last rays were soon obscured by a large belt of black clouds, which, at first heavy and motionless upon the horizon, began to move with frightful rapidity. Deep and distant bursts of thunder, a phenomenon quite common during the winter season of Provence, announced one of those sudden hurricanes so frequent in the Mediterranean.

CHAPTER XLI. THE COMBAT

The clouds piled high in the west, spread rapidly over the sky which had been so serene. The increasing murmur of the waves, the plaintive moan of the wind, which was gradually rising, the distant rolling of the thunder, all announced a terrible storm.

The little boat reached the shore, a lonely beach girded by blocks of reddish granite. The commander and Honorât landed, when Hadji, who had preceded them a few steps, stopped and said to Pierre des Anbiez, “Monseigneur, follow this path hollowed out of the rock, and you will soon arrive at the ruins of the Abbey of St. Victor. Pog-Reis awaits you there.”

Without replying to Hadji, Pierre des Anbiez resolutely entered a sort of crevasse formed by a rent in the rock, and scarcely large enough for a man to pass through.

Honorât, not less courageous, followed him, reflecting at the same time that a traitor, placed on the crest of the two rocks between which they rather glided than walked, could easily crush them by rolling upon them some one of the enormous stones which crowned the escarpment. The tempest was gradually approaching. The loud voices of the wind and the sea, which threatened more and more, at last burst forth into fury, and were answered from the height of the clouds by the thunderbolts. The elements had entered upon a tremendous struggle.

The commander walked with long strides. In the violence of the storm he saw an omen; it seemed to him that the vengeance of Heaven clothed itself in a terrible majesty before striking him.

The more he reflected, the more the strange dream related by the Bohemian appeared to him a manifestation of the divine will.

By one of the ordinary phenomena of thought, Pierre des Anbiez in one second recalled every detail of bloody tragedy which was the consequence of his love for the wife of Count de Montreuil, the birth of his unfortunate child, the death of Emilie, and the murder of her husband. All of these events came back to his mind with awful precision, as if the crime had been committed the day before.

The narrow passage which wound across the rocks enlarged somewhat, and the commander and Honorât issued from this granite wall, and found themselves opposite the ruins of the Abbey of St. Victor. In this spot they beheld no one.

The interior basin of the bay formed a deep cove. At the south it was shut in by the rocks through which they had just passed; at the north and at the west, by the half-destroyed buildings of the abbey; at the east could be seen the road in which the two galleys of the pirates were anchored.

The imposing pile of the abbey ruins, the wreck of vaults and heavy arches, the crumbling towers covered with ivy, outlined their sad, gray forms upon the black clouds which hung lower and lower over the solemn scene.

A wan, bleak day, which was neither light nor darkness, threw a strange and weird radiance over the rocks, the ruins, the beach, and the sea. The waves roared, the wind howled, the thunder rolled, yet no person appeared.

Honorât, in spite of his courage, was struck with the awful and dismal scene which lay around him. The commander, wrapped in his long black mantle, his form erect, his face anxious and gloomy, seemed to evoke evil spirits.

In a deep, sepulchral voice, he called three times: “Pog-Reis! Pog-Reis! Pog-Reis!” No answer was heard.

An enormous owl uttered a doleful cry as it flew slowly and heavily from a vault, as massive as the arch of a bridge, which had once been the entrance to the cloister.

“Nobody comes,” said Honorât. “Do you not fear an ambuscade, M. Commander? Perhaps you have placed too much confidence in the words of these wretches.”

“Divine vengeance assumes all forms,” replied Pierre des Anbiez.

He then relapsed into silence, gazing abstractedly at the heavy arcade, which formerly served as an entrance to the cloister, and whose interior was now enveloped in dense shadow.

Suddenly a pale winter ray threw its wan light over this arch, casting a livid, fantastic illumination over the solemn scene.

A thunderbolt broke and reverberated, and, by a strange coincidence, at the same moment two men issued from the obscurity of the vault, and with slow and deliberate steps advanced toward the commander and Honorât de Berrol.

These men were Pog and Erebus.

Pog held a naked sword in his right hand; his left arm was around the neck of Erebus, and he reclined tenderly upon the young man, as a father would lean upon a son. Erebus also held an unsheathed sword in his hand.

Both continued to approach the commander and Honorât.

Suddenly Pierre des Anbiez stood for a moment petrified, then, without uttering a word, quickly stepped back, seized the arm of the Chevalier de Berrol, and pointed to Pog and Erebus, with a gesture of terror.

Notwithstanding the change produced by years in the countenance of Pog, the commander recognised in him the Count de Montreuil, the husband of Emilie, the man whom he believed he had killed, and whose portrait he had preserved as an expiation of his crime.

“Have the dead come back from the grave?” said he, in a low voice, recoiling and dragging Honorât with him as Pog advanced.

The Chevalier de Berrol was ignorant of all that pertained to that terrible tragedy, but he felt a secret horror, less at the appearance of the two pirates than at the evident fright of the commander, whose intrepidity was so well known.

Then, as if to render the solemn scene still more awful, the tempest increased in violence, and the thunder grew louder and more frequent.

Pog stopped.

“Do you know me? Do you know me?” said he to the commander.

“If you are not a ghost, I know you,” replied the commander, fixing a look of amazement upon the husband of Emilie.

“Do you remember the unhappy woman whose murderer you were?”

“I remember, I remember, I accuse myself.” And the commander struck his breast in the act of contrition.

At these words, uttered in a low voice by Pierre des Anbiez, Erebus, whose countenance expressed the rage of desperation, raised his sword, and started to throw himself upon the commander.

Pog restrained him with a firm hand, and said to him: “Not yet.”

Erebus rested the point of his sword on the ground, and raised his eyes to heaven.

“You owe me a bloody reparation,” said Pog.

“My life belongs to you. I shall not lift my sword against you,” replied the commander, bowing his head upon his breast.

“You have accepted the combat. I have your word. Here is your adversary,” and he pointed to Erebus. “Here is mine,” and he pointed to Honorât.

“Take up your sword, then,” cried the Chevalier do Berrol, who wished at any cost to put an end to a scene which, in spite of himself, chilled him with horror.

He advanced toward Pog.

“They first, we afterward,” answered Pog.

“This instant, this instant! Take up your sword!” cried Honorât.

Pog, addressing Pierre des Anbiez, said, in an imperious tone: “Order your second to await the result of your fight with the young captain.”

“Chevalier, I pray you to wait,” said the commander, with resignation.

“Defend your life, murderer!” cried Erebus, rushing upon Pierre des Anbiez with uplifted sword.