The arrival of this aid increased the strength of the mother superior, who still clinched the arm of Horace. She was beginning to embarrass the sailor quite seriously; he could not resort to violence to escape this aged woman. In the meanwhile, the lights and the voices came nearer and nearer, and Sans-Plume, occupied, no doubt, in assuring the safe descent of Dolores on the other side of the wall, had not yet thrown the rope, his only means of flight. Then wishing, at any cost, to extricate himself from the grasp of the sister, the captain said to her:
"Then pardon me, madame, because you force me to it. I am going to dance with you an infernal waltz, a riotous polka."
"Come, madame, since you insist upon it we must. Keep time to the air. Tra, la, la, la."
And joining the act to the words, the merry sailor passed the arm that was free around the bony waist of Sister Prudence, and carried her with him, singing his refrain and whirling her around with such rapidity that, at the end of a few seconds, bewildered, dizzy, and suffocated, she could only gasp the syllables:
"Ah, help--help--you--wretch! He--takes--my--breath! Help--help!"
And soon overcome by the rapid whirling, Sister Prudence felt her strength failing. The captain saw her about to faint on his arms, and only had time to lay her gently on the grass.
"Ho!" at this moment cried Sans-Plume on the other side of the wall, as he threw over the knotted rope to the captain.
"The devil, it is high time!" said the captain, rushing after the rope, for the lights and the persons who carried them were no more than fifty steps distant.
Armed with pitchforks and guns, they approached the mother superior, who had recovered sufficiently to point over the wall as she said:
One of the men, armed with a gun, guided by her gesture, saw the captain, who, thanks to his agility as a sailor, had just gained the crest of the wall.
The man fired his gun, but missed his aim.
"You! You!" cried he to another man armed like himself. "There he is on the top of the wall reaching for the branches of that tree,--fire!"
The second shot was fired just at the moment when Captain Horace, astride one of the branches projecting over the garden, was approaching the trunk of the tree, by means of which he meant to descend on the outside. Scarcely had the second shot been fired, when Horace made a sudden leap, stopped a moment, and then disappeared in the thick foliage of the trees.