CHAPTER XV.
THE FINAL EFFORT OF THE FINAL STRUGGLE.
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Andrea Ferrato remained silent. He said nothing in answer to Count Sandorf. His Corsican blood boiled within him. He had forgotten the fugitives for whom up to then he had risked so much. He thought only of the Spaniard, he saw only Carpena!
“The scoundrel! The scoundrel!” he murmured, at length. “Yes! He knows all. We are at his mercy! I ought to have understood.”
Sandorf and Bathory looked anxiously at the fisherman. They waited for what he was going to say, what he was going to do. There was not an instant to lose. The informer had, perhaps, already done his work.
“Count,” said Andrea, “the police may enter my house at any moment. That beggar knows or supposes that you are here. He came to bargain with me. My daughter was to be the price of his silence. He would ruin you to be revenged on me. If the police come you can not escape, and yon will be discovered. Yes; you must go at once.”
“You are right, Ferrato,” answered Count Sandorf, “but before we separate let me thank you for all you have done and all you intended to do—”
“What I intended to do I shall still do,” said Andrea, seriously.
“We refuse,” said Bathory.
“Yes, we refuse,” added Sandorf. “You are already too deeply compromised as it is. If they find us in your house they will send you to the hulks. Come, Stephen, let us leave this house before we bring ruin and misfortune on it. Escape, but escape alone!”
Ferrato seized Sandorf's hand.
“Where will you go?” said he. “The country is all watched by the authorities, the police are patrolling it night and day; there is not a spot on the coast that you can get off from, not a footpath across the frontier that is free. To go without me is to go to your death.”
“Follow my father,” added Maria. “Whatever happens he will do his duty and try to save you.”
“That is it, daughter,” said Ferrato. “It is only my duty. Your brother can wait for us in the boat. The night is dark. Before we can be seen we shall be at sea. Good-bye, Maria. Good-bye!”
But Sandorf and Bathory would not let him move. They refused to profit by his devotion. To leave the house so as not to compromise the fisherman, yes! But to embark under his charge and send him to the hulks, no.
“Come,” said Sandorf, “once out of the house we shall only have to fear for ourselves.”
And by the open window they began to get down into the yard to cross it and escape when Luigi rushed in.
“The police!” he said.
“Adieu!” said Sandorf.
And followed by Bathory he leaped to the ground.
And at the same moment the police came running into the front room.
Carpena was at their head.
“Scoundrel!” said Ferrato.
“This is my answer to your refusal,” replied the Spaniard.
The fisherman was seized and garroted. In a moment the police had seized and visited every room in the house. The window opening on to the yard showed the road taken by the fugitives. They started in pursuit.
Sandorf and his companion had reached the hedge which ran along the stream. Sandorf leaped it at a bound and turned to help over Stephen when the report of a gun rang out some fifty paces off.
Bathory was hit by the bullet, which only grazed his shoulder, it is true; but his arm remained paralyzed and he could not let his companion seize it to help him.
“Escape, Mathias!” he exclaimed. “Escape.”
“No, Stephen, no. We will die together,” replied Sandorf, after trying for the last time to lift his wounded companion in his arms.
“Escape, Mathias!” repeated Bathory. “And live to punish the traitors!”
Bathory's last words were, as it were, a command to Sandorf. To him there fell the work of the three—to him alone. The magnate of Transylvania, the conspirator of Trieste, the. companion of Stephen Bathory and Ladislas Zathmar, must give place to the messenger of justice.
At this moment the police had reached the end of the yard and thrown themselves on the wounded man. Sandorf would fall into their hands if he hesitated another second.
“Adieu, Stephen, adieu!” he exclaimed.
With a leap he cleared the brook which ran along by the hedge, and disappeared.
Five or six shots were fired after him, but the bullets missed, and turning aside he ran quickly toward the sea.
The police, however, were on his track. Not being able to see him in the darkness they did not try to run straight after him. They dispersed so as to cut him off not only from the interior, but from the town and from the promontory which shelters the Bay of Rovigno.
A brigade of gendarmes re-enforced them,and were so maneuvered as to prevent him from taking any other route than that toward the sea. But what could he do there? Could he possess himself of a boat and put out to the open sea? He would not have time, and before he could get her clear he would be shot. From the first he saw that his retreat to the east was cut off. The noise of the guns, the shouts of the police and the gendarmes as they approached, told him that he was hedged in on the beach. His only chance of escape was to the sea and by the sea. It was doubtless to rush to certain death; but better to find it among the waves than before the firing party in the court-yard of the fortress of Pisino.
Sandorf then ran toward the beach. In a few bounds he had reached the first small waves that licked the sand. He already felt the police behind him, and the bullets fired at random whistled past his head.
All down this Istrian coast there is a reef of isolated rocks just a little way out from the shore. Between these rocks there are pools filling the depressions in the sand—some of them several feet deep, some of them quite shallow.
It was the last road that was open, and although Sandorf thought death was at the end he did not hesitate to take it.
Behold him then clearing the pools, jumping from rock to rock; but his profile thus became more visible against the less dense darkness of the horizon. And immediately the shouts gave the alarm and the police dashed out after him.
He had resolved not to be taken alive. If the sea gave nim up it would give up a corpse.
The difficult chase over the slippery rocks, over the viscous wracks and weeds, through the pools where every step might mean a fall, lasted for more than a quarter of an hour. The fugitive was still ahead, but the solid ground was soon to fail him.
He reached the last rocks of the reef. Two or three police were not more than ten yards away, the others were about double as far behind.
Count Sandorf stopped. A last cry escaped him—a cry of farewell thrown to Heaven. Then, as a discharge of bullets rained around him, he precipitated himself into the sea.
The police came to the very edge of the rock, and saw nothing but the head of the fugitive, like a black point, turned toward the offing.
Another volley pattered into the water round the count. And doubtless one or two bullets reached him, for he sunk under the waves and disappeared.
Till day broke the police kept watch along the reef and the beach, from the promontory to beyond the fort of Rovigno. It was useless. Nothing showed that Sandorf had again set foot on shore. It remained undoubted then that if he had not been shot he had been drowned.
But though a careful search was made no body was ever found among the breakers nor on the sands for more than a couple of leagues along the coast, But as the wind was off shore and the current running to the south-west, there could be no doubt that the corpse of the fugitive had been swept out to the open sea.
Count Sandorf, the Magyar nobleman, had then found his grave in the waves of the Adriatic.
After a minute investigation this was the verdict, a very natural one, to which the Austrian Government came.
Stephen Bathory, captured as we have seen, was taken under escort during the night to the donjon of Pisino, there for a few hours to rejoin Ladislas Zathmar.
The execution was fixed for the 30th of June.
Doubtless at this supreme moment Stephen would have a last interview with his wife and child; Ladislas would see his servant for the last time, for permission had been given to admit them to the donjon. But Mme. Bathory and her son, and Borik, who had been let out of prison, had left Trieste. Not knowing where the prisoners had been taken, for their arrest had been a secret one, they had searched for them even in Hungary, even in Austria, and after the sentence was announced they could not reach them in time.
Bathory had not the last consolation of seeing his wife and son. He could not tell them the names of those who had betrayed him.
Stephen Bathory and Ladislas Zathmar at five o'clock in the evening were shot in the court-yard of the fortress. They died like men who had given their lives for their country.
Toronthal and Sarcany could now believe that they were beyond all chance of reprisal. In fact the secret of their treachery was only known to themselves and to the Governor of Trieste. Their reward was half the possessions of Count Sandorf, the other half, by special favor, being reserved for his heiress when she attained her eighteenth year.
Toronthal and Sarcany, insensible to all remorse, could enjoy in peace the wealth obtained by their abominable treachery.
Another traitor seemed to have nothing to fear. This was the Spanish Carpena to whom had been paid the reward of 5,000 florins.
But if the banker and his accomplice could remain and hold up their heads at Trieste, Carpena under the weight of public reprobation had to leave Rovigno to live no one knew where. What did it matter? He had nothing to fear; not even the vengeance of Ferrato.
For the fisherman had been arrested, found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for life for having sheltered the fugitives. Maria and her young brother Luigi were now left alone to live in misery in the house from which the father had been taken never to return.
And so three scoundrels for mere greed, without a sentiment of hatred against their victims—Carpena excepted perhaps—one to restore his embarrassed affairs, the others to gain money, had carried through this odious scheme.
Was such infamy to remain unpunished in this world? Count Sandorf, Count Zathmar, Stephen Bathory—these three patriots—and Andrea Ferrato, the honest fisherman, were they not to be avenged? The future will show.
END OF PART I.