Outside was darkness, confusion, and violent wind. But his men were marshalling. Already Vauban's Chouans, in disorder and with recriminations, were setting out up the peninsula towards the scene of the fresh disaster. "Are all here who should be?" shouted Fortuné in Grain d'Orge's ear. The old Chouan held a half-cocked pistol in his other hand. He nodded. "All but Yannik. He said he would not go, so I----" He lifted the pistol. La Vireville nodded. "Give me the lantern." And with it he went forward to the little ranks, now pitifully depleted. "Mes gars," he cried, holding the lantern high, and running his eyes over the rows of familiar faces, "this is our last chance. We must help retake the fort. If it is not retaken, all is finished. But listen now. If I think that to fight any further is useless I shall give the word--Every man for himself." And he explained, as he had explained to Grain d'Orge, his reason for this course. "Do you understand, mes enfants, and will you follow me till I give that word?" He was not sure that they would. But they had known and trusted and somewhat feared him long before their recent unforgettable experiences of artillery outside Auray and at Ste. Barbe. They shouted back their acquiescence. "And then," yelled Grain d'Orge, putting in his word, "if M. Augustin is pleased with you, he will come back to us at Kerdronan, and we can go on again with _that_ kind of fighting----" "I wish to God that I had never brought them away from Kerdronan," thought La Vireville, as he turned away and put himself at their head. (2) They never reached the fort. The way towards it was blocked with the fruit of past mistakes, with masses of fugitives--mainly the dispossessed Bretons of the mainland, that unpropitious flotsam which the events of July the sixth had swept on to the peninsula--pouring away from the scene of calamity. The difficulty of struggling with a handful of men through this flood, all setting in the opposite direction, was enormous. It was almost impossible to keep together. However, they fought their way on, their heads down, buffeted by the wind and by the bodies of the fugitives, physically and morally disheartened, till at last the light of the wet, cheerless dawn was strong enough to show, in the distance, the grey bulk of Fort Penthièvre, looking doubly massive and formidable now that it was no longer in their hands. For, as La Vireville realised with a pang no less keen because it was anticipated, the golden lilies floated there no more. In their stead, flaring defiantly out in the wind and rain over counterscarp and glacis, was the red, white, and blue of the Republic. "Halt!" cried La Vireville, and remained a moment staring at that significant sight. Then he called for Grain d'Orge.