Brown’s messenger came back; he had explored the river bank and found no sign of the enemy, as was to be expected. Clausen’s division would be sufficiently dispersed guarding likely places, let alone the unlikely ones. They got to their feet, Hornblower feeling new agony as his weight came again on his blisters. He could hardly step at first, and his legs were stiff and weary as well and hardly obeyed his wishes. The Count was able to mount his horse, but the poor brute seemed as leg weary as Hornblower himself. It was a sorry party that limped and hobbled and stumbled forward in the gathering darkness. The thunder had long ceased, but the rain continued to fall steadily, with every promise of going on through the night.
The turbulent surface of the river gleamed in the half-light ahead of them.
“The ford begins down by those trees,” said Marie. “It is a ledge under the surface that runs diagonally upstream from there to the middle of the river. That is how you cross the deep part.”
“Come on, then,” said Hornblower. In his pain and weariness he felt as if he would like to cover that last half-mile on his hands and knees.
They came to the water’s edge; the rushing river boiled at their feet among the rocks.
“It is too deep already,” said Marie. She was only voicing the suspicion that had formed in every mind. There was no expression in her tone at all; her voice was flat and dead.
“I’ll take a horse and try it,” she went on, “Here, help Pierre down.”
“Let me try, madame,” said Brown, but Marie paid him no attention.
She climbed astride into the saddle, hitching up the skirts of her habit to permit her to do so. Then she urged the horse forward into the water. The animal balked, nearly lost his footing among unseen rocks, and went forward with the utmost reluctance under the urging of Marie’s heels. The water was almost up to its belly before—as Hornblower guessed—it had reached the end of the ledge of rock that Marie had spoken about. There was another battle of wills between Marie and the horse, and it plunged forward again. Three strides and it was out of its depth, struggling madly over the irregular bottom, almost vanishing from sight, and whirling downstream at frightening speed before it regained its footing. Marie, flung from the saddle, somehow hung on to the pommel, avoiding the lashing hoofs as the horse headed for the shore, and found her footing as it came out from the shallows snorting in fear. Marie struggled onto the bank weighed down by her dripping clothing. No one had uttered a sound while the trial was being made, not even in the moment of Marie’s greatest peril. It was plain now to everybody that the ford was impassable.
“We must all walk on water now besides milord,” said a voice. It might have been a joke, but anyone who heard it knew that it was not.
Hornblower made himself come out of his daze. He had to think and plan and lead.
“No,” he said. “I’m the only one who can do that. And none of us care to swim. Do we? Then let us keep along the river bank until we find a boat. I’ll exchange ten miracles for one boat.”
The suggestion was received in depressed silence. Hornblower wondered if the men were one-half as tired as he was. He forced himself to his feet, by a fierce effort of will ignoring the pain of the blisters.
“Come on,” he said. “At least we cannot stay here.”
No guerrilla leader in his senses would camp for the night beside an unfordable river against which he could be hemmed in, and with the rain continuing it would be at least twenty-four hours before it would be passable again.
“Come on,” he repeated. “Come on, Frenchmen.”
Then he knew he had failed. A few stirred reluctantly; more looked to see how their comrades acted, and then deliberately lay down again, some on their backs, some with their faces pillowed on their forearms, with the rain still dropping on them.
“An hour’s rest,” pleaded one voice.
Someone—Hornblower guessed it was young Jean, not yet seventeen—was sobbing unashamedly and loudly. The men had reached breaking point. Someone else, someone with greater powers of inspiration, might have got them to move again, Hornblower told himself, but it was beyond him. Had the ford been practicable they would have crossed it, and staggered on a mile or two the other side, but in the face of this disappointment they were capable of nothing further tonight. And they knew, the same as he did, that there was nothing to go on for. The rebellion was at an end, whether they marched till they died or gave up now. The thunderstorm, the flooding of the ford, had balked it. The men were realists after this experience of guerrilla warfare, and knew that anything further they did would be only a gesture. They all knew of Clausen’s proclamation offering amnesty, too. Brown was at his side, eloquent in his silence, a hand on the butt of a pistol in his belt. Brown, himself, Marie; the Count and Annette, for what they were worth. One or two more—old Fermiac for one—were all he could count on. It would be enough for the moment. He could shoot a couple of the most obstinate of the objectors, and the rest would get to their feet and march, sulkily. But he could hardly keep unwilling men together in a march in darkness. They could slip away too easily; nor would it be difficult for someone more discontented or desperate than the others to slip a knife into his back on the march or put the muzzle of his musket to his ribs and pull the trigger. He was prepared to face that risk, he was prepared to kill a couple of malcontents, but he could see no real benefit from such action. There was one thing left for him to do, the last resource of the hunted guerrilla leader, to disperse his band and hope for better days to come. It was a bitter pill to swallow, especially in view of the desperate danger to Marie and the Count, but it was not a matter of choosing the best of possible alternatives. He had to choose the least bad. But failure was a horrible thing.
“Very well,” he said. “It is here that we say goodbye.”
Some of the men stirred at those words.
“’Oratio!” said Marie, and then ceased abruptly. She had learned the lessons of discipline.
“Your lives are safe,” went on Hornblower. “You have all read Clausen’s proclamation. Tomorrow—tonight if you will—you can make your way to the troops and surrender. You can go to your homes. Madame and the Count and I go on, for go on we must. And we would even if we need not.”
The men were stunned into silence by his words. No one stirred, no one spoke in the darkness. The two weeks of toil and danger and hardship through which they had just passed seemed like a lifetime to most of them, and it was hard to realise that a lifetime had come to an end.
“We shall return,” continued Hornblower. “Remember us when you are in your homes. Think of us. We shall return with a fresh call to arms. Then we shall all of us gather again in our strength to thrust down the tyrant. Remember that. And now one last cheer for the King! Vive le Roi!”
They cheered, feebly enough, but Hornblower had achieved what he set out to do. He had sowed the seeds of a later rebellion; when Clausen’s division should move away it would be possible to set the Nivernais in a turmoil once more should a leader arise—should he and the Count ever succeed in making their way back into the province. It was a desperate, slight hope, but it was all that remained.
“In the name of God!” said Fermiac. “I come with you now.”
“I also,” said another voice in the darkness.
Perhaps with these Frenchmen it might be possible now to make an hysterical appeal to them, carry them away on a wave of emotion, set them marching once more. Hornblower felt the temptation, and he had to balance the pros and cons coldly. That sort of hysteria would hardly survive the shock of the men’s feeling their leg weariness. Some of the men simply could not march farther. It would not do; by dawn next day he would not have six men with him, and time would have been irretrievably lost.