Following the Enemy Into Darkness — The Scarlet Pimpernel

The last sounds die outside the Chat Gris. Desgas goes for more men; six are not enough for an Englishman whose brain is more dangerous than his strength. The Jew's cart bumps away. Marguerite slips down the broken stairs, wraps her cloak, and follows on foot. Nearly three leagues to Miquelon, then on to whatever cliff holds Père Blanchard's hut. She keeps to ditches and shrubs so patrols will not see her. The moon stays in, a small mercy. The nag is half-starved and must rest, so a tired woman can keep the rumble of wheels as her guide.

Calais lights fall behind. There is no hut or cottage on the road, only the distant sea and, ahead, an enemy jolted toward his triumph. Chauvelin nurses the finest leaf for his wreath: catch the Englishman red-handed so no British claim can arrive in time. He does not think of Marguerite at all. She was a useful tool. That is all. Mounted men come from Miquelon with the password Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité. They have not seen a tall stranger. They have seen a rough wooden hut beyond the village, a charcoal fire, two stools, then a young man and an old one coming from the Lille Road.

The young man showed a paper given him in London: the fork, the cut across the St. Martin Road, the footpath to the cliff. Four soldiers stayed to watch. If a boat comes they will close in and, if needed, shoot. Chauvelin snarls that he did not want the stranger hurt yet. The hut is two leagues on. He puts a soldier beside the Jew and tells him to stop the cart a quarter-league from the path. Desgas and the squad come up behind her. She has heard enough: Armand and de Tournay are the decoy, Percy is on this road, and the net is already around the fire. She cowers in the shrubs, then creeps after them into a darkness that has grown thicker.