They could see nothing.
A distant scuffle, an oath, a cry, silence! The same, a little nearer, a little louder, followed this time, not by silence, but by the slow tread of a limping horse.

Again a rush of feet, the clash of steel, a scream, a laugh, all weird and unreal, issuing from the night; then out of the darkness into the light, stepping slowly with hanging head, moved a horse, bearing on its back a man--or was it a man ?--bending low in the saddle, his feet swinging loose.

For an instant the horse and the man seemed to be alone, a ghostly pair; then at their heels came into view two figures, skirmishing this way and that; and now coming nearer, and now darting back into the gloom.

One, a squat figure, stooping low, wielded a sword with two hands; the other covered him with a half-pike.
And then beyond these--abruptly as it seemed--the night gave up to sight a swarm of dark figures pressing on them and after them, driving them before them.
Carlat had an inspiration.

"Fire!" he cried; and four arquebuses poured a score of slugs into the knot of pursuers.