"More lights!" she cried.

"Lights! How can they find their way?
And let six men go down the _digue_, and meet them.

Will you let them be butchered between the shore and this ?" But Carlat, who had not been able to collect more than a dozen men, shook his head; and before she could repeat the order, sounds of battle, shrill, faint, like cries of hungry seagulls, pierced the darkness which shrouded the farther end of the causeway.

The women shrank inward over the threshold, while Carlat cried to the men at the chains to be ready, and to some who stood at loopholes above, to blow up their matches and let fly at his word.

And then they all waited, the Countess foremost, peering eagerly into the growing darkness.