"If Monsieur will be so obliging?" he said quickly, and turned towards the nearest tree, a cedar which towered twenty feet above the dwarfed bolls of cork. He climbed lithely, rapidly, resting, at last, within a few feet of the top. He leaned his carbine upon a bough, took a steady aim, and fired. A shriek answered the report--a shriek muffled in the blanket of the broom. "_Courage, mes enfants!_" said Perinaud, placidly. "That accounted for one, and from here I see all. There are but six. Give me time and the affair completes itself effectually." Again he dwelled upon his aim, hesitated, fired, shook his head in self-reproach and fired again. This time he gave a little nod of satisfaction. "Two!" he cried complacently. "Two, my children!" and the report of his rifle punctuated the announcement. "So!" went on the sergeant, as if he commented on the score at a rifle range. "So! We write full stop to _Monsieur le troisième_. Aha! _Messieurs quatrième_, _cinquième_ and _sixième_--it is poor stuff to push through, the broom. No, I do not see you, Messieurs, but I see where you run like rabbits, and perhaps we may chance a bullet--there!" The report of the last cartridge in the magazine was answered by another yell. A brown-clad body shot into the air out of the undergrowth and subsided limply. Perinaud nodded again. "Through the brain, my friend, through the brain. Yes, I still see you, my two little doves. We have to reload. Four for one magazine of five cartridges is not bad, you will allow. You are trapped, are you not? In the broom you cannot escape me; in the open you will be ridden down. Well, it is to be in the broom, is it? So! _Voilà, Monsieur le cinquième!_ That closes your account. As for you, my sixth friend, you have chosen the thicket, have you? You are very still; we must speculate, we must invite the co-operation of chance, who is a good friend to Sergeant Perinaud as a rule. There! No, is that not in the middle of the target? We must try again. Umph! I wonder if you are, after all, dead, my pigeon. Holà, there! Monsieur le Commandant. If you will be good enough to step fifteen long paces to the right, following the motion of my hand, you will be able to inform me if my last shot was a bull's-eye, an outer, or even--shame to me if it is so--a miss. Yes, Monsieur, that is the spot. Where the patch of broom outcrops between those two stumps of cork." Rattier beat a road laboriously through the clinging stems as the sergeant's finger motioned. A sudden muffled exclamation burst from him; he lurched sideways, stumbled, and fell prone. The green stalks rustled and shook as something brown and indistinguishable shot through them in the direction in which the waiting Goumiers were thickest. Perinaud gave a warning cry. "Look to yourselves! I cannot shoot; he is in line between us!"