"Fire Fire!" shrieked the sergeant, pointing at the white figure of Rohan.
But before the command could be obeyed, Rohan got under shelter, and the bullets rained harmlessly round the spot where he had just stood. Then, under cover of fire, some men advanced and again placed the ladder against the precipice. As Rohan crouched down on the ledge, he was startled by the apparition of a human face. With a cry of rage, he sprang to his feet, and, heedless of the bullets thudding on the rock around him, he slowly and painfully lifted up a terrible granite boulder, poised it for a moment over his head, and then hurled it down at the shapes dimly struggling below him. There was a crash, a shriek. Under the weight of the boulder the ladders broke, and the men upon them fell down, amid horrible cries of agony and terror.
What happened after this Rohan never knew; for, overcome by frenzy and fatigue, he swooned away. When he opened his eyes, he was lying beneath the hole in the cliff, with the moonlight streaming upon his face. From below him came the soft sound of lapping water, and, looking down, he saw that the tide had entered the cave, and forced the besiegers to give over their attack.
Yes, the battle was over, and he had conquered! His position indeed was impregnable; had he been well supplied with food, he could have held it against hundreds of men for a long period. But, as he laid down on his bed of seaweed, a rough tongue licked his hand. It was his goat, Jannedik. For the last fortnight, Rohan's mother had sent the goat every day to her son with a basket of food tied round its neck and hidden in the long hair of its throat. Rohan groped in the darkness for the basket, and Jannedik uttered a low cry of pain, rolled over at his feet into the moonlight, revealing a terrible bullet-wound in its side, and quivered and died. Some soldier had shot it.
As Rohan stared at the dead body of his four-footed friend, the strength of mind which had enabled him to withstand all the power that Napoleon, the conqueror of Europe, could bring against him at last went from him. Trembling and shivering, he looked around him, overcome by utter desolation and despair. He had held out bravely, but he could hold out no longer; slowly and laboriously he climbed down the dark face of the precipice, and reached the narrow strip of shingle below, just as the moon got clear from a cloud and lighted up the cavern. Its cold rays fell on the white face of the sergeant, who laid half on the shingle and half in the water, crushed by the great boulder with which Rohan had broken down the ladders.