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While the excited crowd tried to break through the cordon of mounted guards, Mattingley, by a twist and a jerk, freed his corded hands. Loosing the rope at his neck he opened his eyes and looked around him, dazed and dumb. The Apprentice came forward. "I'll shorten the rope oui-gia! Then you shall see him swing," he grumbled viciously to the Vicomte.
True to the instinct which had kept him faithful to one idea for sixteen years, and in spite of the protests of Mattingley and Carterette of the despairing Carterette who felt the last thread of her hopes snap with his going Ranulph made ready to leave them. Bidding them good-bye, he placed his father's body in the rowboat, and pulling back to the shore of St.
As he stood watching and leaning on ma couzaine, a sailor near him said that the bay and the rock were called Perce. Perce Bay that was the exact point for which Elie Mattingley and Carterette had sailed with Sebastian Alixandre. How strange it was! He had bidden Carterette good-bye for ever, yet fate had now brought him to the very spot whither she had gone.
Chattering people were gathered at familiar points, and at the foot of La Pyramide a large group surrounded two sailor-men just come from Gaspe, bringing news of adventuring Jersiais Elie Mattingley, Carterette and Ranulph Delagarde. This audience quickly grew, for word was being passed on from one little group to another.
Mattingley had replied: "Ma fuifre, I can't remember them! I know I never done them, for I never done anything but good all my life so much for so much." He had argued it out with himself and he believed he was a good man. He had been open-handed, had stood by his friends, and, up to a few days ago, was counted a good citizen; for many had come to profit through him.
Then came the fatal "Maintenant!" from the Vicomte, the platform fell, and Elie Mattingley dropped the length of the rope. What was the consternation of the Vicomte and the hangman, and the horror of the crowd, to see that Mattingley's toes just touched the ground! The body shook and twisted. The man was being slowly strangled, not hanged.
Elie Mattingley, pirate, smuggler, and sometime master of a privateer, had had dealings with people high and low in the island, and they had not always, nor often, been conducted in the open Vier Marchi. Fifteen years ago he used to have his little daughter Carterette always beside him when he sold his wares. Philip wondered what had become of her.
Secondly, Carterette was to bring Sebastian Alixandre to the prison disguised as a sorrowing aunt of the condemned. Alixandre was suddenly to overpower the jailer, Mattingley was to make a rush for freedom, and a few bold spirits without would second his efforts and smuggle him to the sea. The directing mind and hand in the business were Ranulph Delagarde's.
It is probable that the fury of the Royal Court at the news was not quite sincere, for it was notable that the night of his evasion, suave and uncrestfallen, they dined in state at the Tres Pigeons. The escape gave them happy issue from a quandary. The Vicomte officially explained that Mattingley had got out by the dungeon window.
"My poor scarecrow!" she repeated, and she tenderly wiped the blood from his face where his hands had touched it. Meanwhile bugle-calls and cries of command came up to them, and in the first light of morning they could see French officers and sailors, Mattingley, Alixandre, and others, hurrying to and fro.
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