CHAPTER XXVII LA VIREVILLE BREAKS HIS SWORD (1) The hour when their last defence should fail them was nearer even than any of the Royalists had imagined. All next day, and the next, while Sombreuil's contingent--the émigrés with the black cockade, the regiments who had fought side by side with the British in the Netherlands campaign of 1794-95, and had endured with them the terrible retreat of that winter--were being disembarked on to a shore which was all too likely to be their grave, the garrison of Fort Penthièvre was leaking away to the enemy. And on the night of the twentieth, a dark night of rain and tempest, three hundred of Hoche's grenadiers, led by one of these deserters, came creeping, knee-deep in water, round the base of the fort on the side of the 'mer sauvage,' and men of d'Hervilly's own regiment helped them over the parapet. . . . * * * * * At half-past one on the morning of the twenty-first of July the sound of a cannon, indistinctly heard amid the howling of the wind, came to the ears of the wounded Le Goffic, where he lay wakeful on his couch of seaweed in the lantern-light. He put out a feverish hand and touched his leader, stretched out in sleep beside him. La Vireville started up instantly. "What is it, my boy? Do you need anything?" "I heard a cannon-shot, Monsieur Augustin," replied the young man in his weak voice. "It must have been from the fort, I think." "Then it is being attacked--or, more probably, surprised," said Fortuné, reaching for his pistols. Almost at the same moment Grain d'Orge, a lantern in his hand, appeared in the doorway. "The Blues have got the upper part of the fort, Monsieur Augustin," he shouted. "They are killing everybody inside----" "Get the men ready--those that are able-bodied," said La Vireville, snatching up his sword. "I will be with you in an instant." "There is such a cursed wind!" grumbled the Chouan, disappearing with his lantern. La Vireville knelt down by Le Goffic. "Good-bye, Charles! If the worst come to the worst, and if I do not return, there are plenty of slightly wounded men here in St. Pierre who can take you off to the English squadron. I have seen to that already." The young man looked up at his leader with undimmed affection and trust shining out of his sunken eyes, and put his hot hands over La Vireville's right, that held the sheathed sword. "If you do not come back, I would rather have died with you, Monsieur le Chevalier! Let me fasten on your sword for you . . . you cannot do it with your arm thus." The feeble fingers fumbled with the buckle, but Fortuné, guessing what the rendering of that last service meant to his young lieutenant, waited patiently till they had accomplished their task. Then he stooped down and kissed him, French fashion, on both cheeks. * * * * *