Chapter L: The Death of a Titan.

At the moment when Porthos, more accustomed to the darkness than these

men, coming from open daylight, was looking round him to see if through

this artificial midnight Aramis were not making him some signal, he felt

his arm gently touched, and a voice low as a breath murmured in his ear,

“Come.”

“Oh!” said Porthos.

“Hush!” said Aramis, if possible, yet more softly.

And amidst the noise of the third brigade, which continued to advance,

the imprecations of the guards still left alive, the muffled groans of

the dying, Aramis and Porthos glided unseen along the granite walls of

the cavern. Aramis led Porthos into the last but one compartment, and

showed him, in a hollow of the rocky wall, a barrel of powder weighing

from seventy to eighty pounds, to which he had just attached a fuse. “My

friend,” said he to Porthos, “you will take this barrel, the match of

which I am going to set fire to, and throw it amidst our enemies; can

you do so?”

“_Parbleu!_” replied Porthos; and he lifted the barrel with one hand.

“Light it!”

“Stop,” said Aramis, “till they are all massed together, and then, my

Jupiter, hurl your thunderbolt among them.”

“Light it,” repeated Porthos.

“On my part,” continued Aramis, “I will join our Bretons, and help them

to get the canoe to the sea. I will wait for you on the shore; launch it

strongly, and hasten to us.”

“Light it,” said Porthos, a third time.

“But do you understand me?”

“_Parbleu!_” said Porthos again, with laughter that he did not even

attempt to restrain, “when a thing is explained to me I understand it;

begone, and give me the light.”

Aramis gave the burning match to Porthos, who held out his arm to him,

his hands being engaged. Aramis pressed the arm of Porthos with both his

hands, and fell back to the outlet of the cavern where the three rowers

awaited him.

Porthos, left alone, applied the spark bravely to the match. The

spark--a feeble spark, first principle of conflagration--shone in the

darkness like a glow-worm, then was deadened against the match which it

set fire to, Porthos enlivening the flame with his breath. The smoke

was a little dispersed, and by the light of the sparkling match objects

might, for two seconds, be distinguished. It was a brief but splendid

spectacle, that of this giant, pale, bloody, his countenance lighted by

the fire of the match burning in surrounding darkness! The soldiers saw

him, they saw the barrel he held in his hand--they at once understood

what was going to happen. Then, these men, already choked with horror at

the sight of what had been accomplished, filled with terror at thought

of what was about to be accomplished, gave out a simultaneous shriek of

agony. Some endeavored to fly, but they encountered the third brigade,

which barred their passage; others mechanically took aim and attempted

to fire their discharged muskets; others fell instinctively upon their

knees. Two or three officers cried out to Porthos to promise him his

liberty if he would spare their lives. The lieutenant of the third

brigade commanded his men to fire; but the guards had before them their

terrified companions, who served as a living rampart for Porthos. We

have said that the light produced by the spark and the match did not

last more than two seconds; but during these two seconds this is what

it illumined: in the first place, the giant, enlarged in the darkness;

then, at ten paces off, a heap of bleeding bodies, crushed, mutilated,

in the midst of which some still heaved in the last agony, lifting the

mass as a last respiration inflating the sides of some old monster dying

in the night. Every breath of Porthos, thus vivifying the match, sent

towards this heap of bodies a phosphorescent aura, mingled with streaks

of purple. In addition to this principal group scattered about the

grotto, as the chances of death or surprise had stretched them, isolated

bodies seemed to be making ghastly exhibitions of their gaping wounds.

Above ground, bedded in pools of blood, rose, heavy and sparkling, the

short, thick pillars of the cavern, of which the strongly marked shades

threw out the luminous particles. And all this was seen by the tremulous

light of a match attached to a barrel of powder, that is to say, a torch

which, whilst throwing a light on the dead past, showed death to come.

As I have said, this spectacle did not last above two seconds. During

this short space of time an officer of the third brigade got together

eight men armed with muskets, and, through an opening, ordered them to

fire upon Porthos. But they who received the order to fire trembled so

that three guards fell by the discharge, and the five remaining balls

hissed on to splinter the vault, plow the ground, or indent the pillars

of the cavern.

A burst of laughter replied to this volley; then the arm of the giant

swung round; then was seen whirling through the air, like a falling

star, the train of fire. The barrel, hurled a distance of thirty

feet, cleared the barricade of dead bodies, and fell amidst a group of

shrieking soldiers, who threw themselves on their faces. The officer had

followed the brilliant train in the air; he endeavored to precipitate

himself upon the barrel and tear out the match before it reached the

powder it contained. Useless! The air had made the flame attached to the

conductor more active; the match, which at rest might have burnt five

minutes, was consumed in thirty seconds, and the infernal work exploded.

Furious vortices of sulphur and nitre, devouring shoals of fire which

caught every object, the terrible thunder of the explosion, this is what

the second which followed disclosed in that cavern of horrors. The rocks

split like planks of deal beneath the axe. A jet of fire, smoke, and

_debris_ sprang from the middle of the grotto, enlarging as it mounted.

The large walls of silex tottered and fell upon the sand, and the sand

itself, an instrument of pain when launched from its hard bed, riddled

the faces with its myriad cutting atoms. Shrieks, imprecations, human

life, dead bodies--all were engulfed in one terrific crash.

The three first compartments became one sepulchral sink into which fell

grimly back, in the order of their weight, every vegetable, mineral,

or human fragment. Then the lighter sand and ash came down in turn,

stretching like a winding sheet and smoking over the dismal scene. And

now, in this burning tomb, this subterranean volcano, seek the king’s

guards with their blue coats laced with silver. Seek the officers,

brilliant in gold, seek for the arms upon which they depended for their

defense. One single man has made of all of those things a chaos more

confused, more shapeless, more terrible than the chaos which existed

before the creation of the world. There remained nothing of the three

compartments--nothing by which God could have recognized His handiwork.

As for Porthos, after having hurled the barrel of powder amidst his

enemies, he had fled, as Aramis had directed him to do, and had gained

the last compartment, into which air, light, and sunshine penetrated

through the opening. Scarcely had he turned the angle which separated

the third compartment from the fourth when he perceived at a hundred

paces from him the bark dancing on the waves. There were his friends,

there liberty, there life and victory. Six more of his formidable

strides, and he would be out of the vault; out of the vault! a dozen of

his vigorous leaps and he would reach the canoe. Suddenly he felt his

knees give way; his knees seemed powerless, his legs to yield beneath

him.

“Oh! oh!” murmured he, “there is my weakness seizing me again! I can

walk no further! What is this?”

Aramis perceived him through the opening, and unable to conceive what

could induce him to stop thus--“Come on, Porthos! come on,” he cried;

“come quickly!”

“Oh!” replied the giant, making an effort that contorted every muscle of

his body--“oh! but I cannot.” While saying these words, he fell upon

his knees, but with his mighty hands he clung to the rocks, and raised

himself up again.

“Quick! quick!” repeated Aramis, bending forward towards the shore, as

if to draw Porthos towards him with his arms.

“Here I am,” stammered Porthos, collecting all his strength to make one

step more.

“In the name of Heaven! Porthos, make haste! the barrel will blow up!”

“Make haste, monseigneur!” shouted the Bretons to Porthos, who was

floundering as in a dream.

But there was no time; the explosion thundered, earth gaped, the smoke

which hurled through the clefts obscured the sky; the sea flowed back as

though driven by the blast of flame which darted from the grotto as if

from the jaws of some gigantic fiery chimera; the reflux took the

bark out twenty _toises_; the solid rocks cracked to their base, and

separated like blocks beneath the operation of the wedge; a portion

of the vault was carried up towards heaven, as if it had been built of

cardboard; the green and blue and topaz conflagration and black lava of

liquefactions clashed and combated an instant beneath a majestic dome

of smoke; then oscillated, declined, and fell successively the mighty

monoliths of rock which the violence of the explosion had not been able

to uproot from the bed of ages; they bowed to each other like grave and

stiff old men, then prostrating themselves, lay down forever in their

dusty tomb.

This frightful shock seemed to restore Porthos the strength that he had

lost; he arose, a giant among granite giants. But at the moment he was

flying between the double hedge of granite phantoms, these latter, which

were no longer supported by the corresponding links, began to roll and

totter round our Titan, who looked as if precipitated from heaven amidst

rocks which he had just been launching. Porthos felt the very earth

beneath his feet becoming jelly-tremulous. He stretched both hands to

repulse the falling rocks. A gigantic block was held back by each of his

extended arms. He bent his head, and a third granite mass sank between

his shoulders. For an instant the power of Porthos seemed about to fail

him, but this new Hercules united all his force, and the two walls of

the prison in which he was buried fell back slowly and gave him place.

For an instant he appeared, in this frame of granite, like the angel

of chaos, but in pushing back the lateral rocks, he lost his point of

support, for the monolith which weighed upon his shoulders, and the

boulder, pressing upon him with all its weight, brought the giant down

upon his knees. The lateral rocks, for an instant pushed back, drew

together again, and added their weight to the ponderous mass which would

have been sufficient to crush ten men. The hero fell without a groan--he

fell while answering Aramis with words of encouragement and hope, for,

thanks to the powerful arch of his hands, for an instant he believed

that, like Enceladus, he would succeed in shaking off the triple load.

But by degrees Aramis beheld the block sink; the hands, strung for an

instant, the arms stiffened for a last effort, gave way, the extended

shoulders sank, wounded and torn, and the rocks continued to gradually

collapse.

“Porthos! Porthos!” cried Aramis, tearing his hair. “Porthos! where are

you? Speak!”

“Here, here,” murmured Porthos, with a voice growing evidently weaker,

“patience! patience!”

Scarcely had he pronounced these words, when the impulse of the fall

augmented the weight; the enormous rock sank down, pressed by those

others which sank in from the sides, and, as it were, swallowed up

Porthos in a sepulcher of badly jointed stones. On hearing the dying

voice of his friend, Aramis had sprung to land. Two of the Bretons

followed him, with each a lever in his hand--one being sufficient to

take care of the bark. The dying rattle of the valiant gladiator guided

them amidst the ruins. Aramis, animated, active and young as at twenty,

sprang towards the triple mass, and with his hands, delicate as those of

a woman, raised by a miracle of strength the corner-stone of this great

granite grave. Then he caught a glimpse, through the darkness of that

charnel-house, of the still brilliant eye of his friend, to whom the

momentary lifting of the mass restored a momentary respiration. The

two men came rushing up, grasped their iron levers, united their triple

strength, not merely to raise it, but sustain it. All was useless. They

gave way with cries of grief, and the rough voice of Porthos, seeing

them exhaust themselves in a useless struggle, murmured in an almost

cheerful tone those supreme words which came to his lips with the last

respiration, “Too heavy!”

After which his eyes darkened and closed, his face grew ashy pale, the

hands whitened, and the colossus sank quite down, breathing his last

sigh. With him sank the rock, which, even in his dying agony he had

still held up. The three men dropped the levers, which rolled upon the

tumulary stone. Then, breathless, pale, his brow covered with sweat,

Aramis listened, his breast oppressed, his heart ready to break.

Nothing more. The giant slept the eternal sleep, in the sepulcher which

God had built about him to his measure.