Thus adjured, Achille thrust his woolly head and half his shining black body through the aperture. Madame de Montmirail, standing before her daughter, was not five paces off. She raised her white arm slowly, and covered him with steady aim. Ere his large thick hand had closed round the bolt for which it groped, there was a flash, a loud report, a cloud of smoke curling round the toilet accessories of a lady's bed-chamber, and Achille, shot through the brain, fell back stone dead into the passage.
"A little lighter charge of powder, my dear," said the Marquise, giving the smoking weapon to her daughter to be reloaded, while she poised its fellow carefully in her hand. "I sighted him very fine, and was a trifle over my mark even then. These pistols always throw high at so short a distance."
Then she placed herself in readiness for another enemy, and during a short space waited in vain.
The report of her pistol had been followed by a general scramble of the negroes, who tumbled precipitately down-*stairs, and in some cases even out of the house, under the impression that every succeeding moment might find them all blown into the air. But the very cause of the besiegers' panic proved, when their alarm subsided, of the utmost detriment to the garrison. Hippolyte, finding himself still in possession of his limbs and faculties, on the same side of the Sulphur Mountain as before, argued, reasonably enough, that the concealed powder was a delusion, and with considerable promptitude at once set fire to the lower part of the house; after which, once more mustering his followers, and encouraging them by his example, he ascended the staircase, and betaking himself to the crowbar with a will, soon battered in the weak defence that alone stood between the ladies and their savage enemies.
Cerise had loaded her mother's pistol to perfection; that mother, roused out of all thought of self by her child's danger, was even now reckoning the last frail chance by which her daughter might escape. During the short respite afforded by the panic of the negroes, they had dragged with desperate strength a heavy chest of drawers, and placed it across the doorway. Even when the latter was forced, this slight breast-work afforded an additional impediment to the assailants.
