r idea proves a good one--and your idea is most
likely to be good--I am satisfied."

"To your ambuscade, Porthos, and count how many enter."

"But you, what will you do?"

"Don't trouble yourself about me; I have a task to perform."

"I think I hear shouts."

"It is they! To your post. Keep within reach of my voice and hand."

Porthos took refuge in the second compartment, which was in darkness,
absolutely black. Aramis glided into the third; the giant held in his
hand an iron bar of about fifty pounds weight. Porthos handled this
lever, which had been used in rolling the bark, with marvelous facility.
During this time, the Bretons had pushed the bark to the beach. In the
further and lighter compartment, Aramis, stooping and concealed, was
busy with some mysterious maneuver. A command was given in a loud voice.
It was the last order of the captain commandant. Twenty-five men jumped
from the upper rocks into the first compartment of the grotto, and
having taken their ground, began to fire. The echoes shrieked and
barked, the hissing balls seemed actually to rarefy the air, and then
opaque smoke filled the vault.

"To the left! to the left!" cried Biscarrat, who, in his first assault,
had seen the passage to the second chamber, and who, animated by the
smell of powder, wished to guide his soldiers in that direction. The
troop, accordingly, precipitated themselves to the left--the passage
gradually growing narrower. Biscarrat, with his hands stretched forward,
devoted to death, marched in advance of the muskets. "Come on! come on!"
exclaimed he, "I see daylight!"

"Strike, Porthos!" cried the sepulchral voice of Aramis.

Porthos breathed a heavy sigh--but he obeyed. The iron bar fell full and
direct upon the head of Biscarrat, who was dead before he had ended his
cry. Then the formidable lever rose ten times in ten seconds, and
made ten corpses. The soldiers could see nothing; they heard sighs and
groans; they stumbled over dead bodies, but as they had no conception
of the cause of all this, they came forward jostling each other. The
implacable bar, still falling, annihilated the first platoon, without
a single sound to warn the second, which was quietly advancing; only,
commanded by the captain, the men had stripped a fir, growing on the
shore, and, with its resinous branches twisted together, the captain had
made a flambeau. On arriving at the compartment where Porthos, like the
exterminating angel, had destroy