For an instant after they had poured out the gate seemed quiet, and with his eyes upon it, Claude rose, first to his knees and then to his feet, paused a moment in doubt, then darted in and entered the guard-room.
The firelight--the other lights in the small, dingy chamber had been trampled under foot--showed him two wounded men groaning on the floor, and the body of a third who lay apparently dead.

Claude bent over one, found what he wanted--a half-pike--and glided to the door of the stairs that led to the roof.

It was in the same position as in the Tertasse.

He opened it, passed through it, mounted two steps, and in the darkness came plump against some one who seized him by the throat.
The man had no weapon--at any rate he did not strike; and Claude, taken by surprise, could not level his pike in the narrow stairway.

For a moment they wrestled, Claude striving to bring his weapon to bear on his foe, the latter trying to strangle him.