Sarek

“ Listen, I know that your brat is expecting a rescuer, a professor of clap-trap, a Don Quixote of adventure. Let him come! Vorski will give him the reception he deserves! The more the merrier! We shall see some fun! . . . And, if the very gods join in the game and take up your defence, I shan't care! It's no longer their business, it's my business. It's no longer a question of Sarek and the treasure and the great secret and all the humbug of the God-Stone! It's a question of yourself! You have spat in Vorski's face and Vorski is taking his revenge. He is taking his revenge! ”

“ CHAPTER VI. ALL'S WELL
WALKING erect, with a stiff and mechanical gait, without turning round to look at the abominable spectacle, without recking of what might happen if she were seen, Veronique went back to the Priory.
A single aim, a single hope sustained her: that of leaving the Isle of Sarek. She had had her fill of horror. Had she seen three corpses, three women who had had their throats cut, or been shot, or even hanged, she would not have felt, as she did now, that her whole being was in revolt. ”

“ He looks upon it as the Old and New Testament, the Scriptures which explain and expound the Sarek law, the very gospel of the God-Stone. And this gospel designates him, Vorski, him, the Superhun, as the Messiah appointed to execute the decrees of Providence.
"To Vorski, there is no possibility of mistake. No doubt he enjoys the business, because it is a matter of stealing wealth and power. ”

“ We are not people who condemn and execute. But, all the same, think of what Vorski was, think of his thirty murders and his refinements of cruelty and congratulate me on having, in the last resort, chosen blind destiny as his judge and the loathsome Otto as his responsible executioner. The will of the gods be done!”
The Sarek coast was making a thinner line on the horizon. ”

“ Yes, a prophecy which dates back to an indeterminate period and which for centuries has governed the whole history and the whole life of Sarek. The belief has always prevailed that a day would come when, within a space of twelve months, the thirty principal reefs which surround the island and which are called the thirty coffins would receive: their thirty victims, who were to die a violent death, and that those thirty victims would include four women who were to die crucified. It is an established and undisputed tradition, handed down from father to son: and everybody believes in it. ”

“ A second series of ordeals was before her, more terrible than the first.
“There's death all about us,” she said.
He tried to smile:
“You are talking like the people of Sarek. You have the same fears...”
“They were right to be afraid. And you yourself feel the horror of it all.”
She rushed to the door, drew the bolt, tried to open it; but what could she do against that massive, iron-clad door?
Stephane seized her by the arm:
“One moment.... Listen.... It sounds as if...”
“Yes,” she said, “it's up there that they are knocking... above our heads... in Francois' cell...” ”

“ Still, just test your memory: I am the gentleman who was to come to the rescue of the d'Hergemont family and the people of Sarek, the one whom your son Francois was expecting with such simple faith.... Well, are you there?... Look, your companion, the trusty Otto, he seems to remember!... But perhaps my other name will convey more to you? It is well and favourably known. Lupin.... Arsene Lupin....”
Vorski watched him with increasing terror and with a misgiving which became more accentuated at each word and movement of this new adversary. ”

“ Veronique protested angrily; but Honorine repeated:
“With Francois, I tell you, and with M. Stephane. And as soon as possible. I also want to go... and to take you with me... and Francois too. There is death in the island. Death Is the master here. We must leave Sarek. We shall all go.”
Veronique did not wish to thwart her. But at nine o'clock hurried steps were heard outside. It was Correjou, coming from the village. On reaching the door he shouted:
“They've stolen your motor-boat, Ma'me Honorine! She's disappeared!” ”

“ Within mortal memory, the people of Sarek have always feared some terrible events, connected with the discovery and the disappearance of the invisible stone. There was likewise always a question of wrecks and of women crucified. Besides, Vorski was acquainted with the inscription on the Fairies' Dolmen, about the thirty victims destined for the thirty coffins, the martyrdom of the four women, the God-Stone which gives life or death. What a number of disturbing coincidences for a mind as weak as his! ”

“ There were two women in the Isle of Sarek and two only, Veronique and the other... the other whose name was Elfride, I understand: am I right? Elfride and Veronique, your two wives, one the mother of Raynold, the other the mother of Francois. So, if it's not Francois' mother whom you tied on the cross and whom you've just stabbed, then it's Raynold's mother. If the woman lying here, with her wrists bruised by the torture, is not Veronique, then she's Elfride. There's no mistake possible; Elfride, your wife and your accomplice; Elfride, your willing and subservient tool. ”

“ She ended by dozing off and was wakened by the Breton woman, who said to her, in one of those accesses of fever in which the brain still retains a certain lucidity:
“Francois must be hiding... and M. Stephane too... The island has safe hiding-places, which Maguennoc showed them. We shan't see them, therefore; and no one will know anything about them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite, do listen to me. To-morrow, when everybody has left Sarek and when we two are alone, I shall blow the signal with my horn and he will come here.”
Veronique was horrified:
“But I don't want to see him!” ”

“ The Superhun wrote it down on ten different pages of his note-book, so that he might wear it ten times next to his skin and engrave it in the very substance of his being. Here's one of the pages. Stéphane, Patrice, listen! Listen, O faithful Otto! And you yourself, Vorski, for the last time listen to the doggerel of Brother Thomas! Listen as I read!
"In Sarek's isle, in year fourteen and three,
There will be shipwrecks, terrors, grief and crimes,
Death-chambers, arrows, poison there will be
And woe, four women crucified on tree!
For thirty coffins victims thirty times. ”

“ True, they were the priests [Pg 314] of a religion accepted by all and also the instructors of Gallic childhood (it seems certain, incidentally, that the cells under the Black Heath were those of a Druid convent, or rather a sort of university) ; true, in obedience to the practices of the time, they presided over human sacrifices and ordained the gathering of the mistletoe, the vervain and all the magic herbs; but, before all, in the island of Sarek, they were the guardians and the possessors of the stone which gave life or death. ”

“ Just suppose it.”
“But the men are living!” cried Veronique, in growing excitement. “They can be questioned.”
“Two of them are dead; they died a natural death a few years ago. The third is an old man called Maguennoc; you will find him at Sarek. As for the fourth, you may have seen him just now. He used the money which he made out of that business to buy a grocer's shop at Beg-Meil.”
“Ah, we can speak to him at once!” cried Veronique, eagerly. “Let's go and fetch him.”
“Why should we? I know more than he does.” ”

“ A few words remained, however, the very words which Veronique had read on the drawing which she found beside Maguennoc's corpse:
“Four women crucified.... Thirty coffins.... The God-Stone which gives life or death.”
Veronique moved away, staggering. The mystery was once more before her, as everywhere in the island, and she was determined to escape from it until the moment when she could leave Sarek altogether. ”

“ And she whispered:
“Oh, as to those, they have been guarding the island for centuries and centuries, but like wild beasts that only care for doing harm and killing. They... they... no, it's better never to speak about them or even think of them. They are the thirty wild beasts. Yes, thirty, Madame Veronique, there are thirty of them....”
She made the sign of the cross and continued, more calmly:
“There are thirty of them. Your father says that Sarek is called the island of the thirty coffins because the people instinctively ended in this case by confusing the two words ecueils and cercueils. ”

“ He comes scrambling from the top of the cliffs where we live and runs down to the jetty.”
“So I shall see him?” exclaimed Veronique, turning very pale.
“You will see him. Fold your veil double, so that he may not know you from your photographs. I'll speak to you as I would to a stranger who has come to look at Sarek.”
They could see the island distinctly, but the foot of the cliffs was hidden by a multitude of reefs.
“Ah, yes, there's no lack of rocks! They swarm like a shoal of herring!” cried Honorine, who had been obliged to switch off the motor and was using two short paddles. ”

“ The motor-boat was drifting forward down below, with the two marksmen at their posts, holding their guns ready for murder.
The survivors fled. Two of them hung back in the rear.
These two were aimed at. Their heads disappeared from view.
“But look at them!” Honorine said, explosively, in a hoarse voice. “They're hunting them down! They're killing them like garnet... Oh, the poor people of Sarek!...”
Another shot. Another black speck vanished.
Veronique was writhing in despair. She shook the rails of the balcony, as she might have shaken the bars of a cage in which she was imprisoned. ”

“ Oh, what hatred! No, no, it is impossible. I don't believe in such hatred. Hatred has its limits. A mother like you! No, no, there's something else . . . some love-affair, perhaps? No, no, Véronique's not in love . . . What then? My pity, a weakness on my part? Oh, how little you know me! Vorski show pity! Vorski show weakness! Why, you've seen me at work! Did I flinch in the performance of my terrible mission? Was Sarek not devastated as it was written? Were the boats not sunk and the people not drowned? Were the sisters Archignat not nailed to the ancient oak-trees? ”

“ He began to laugh:
"You mustn't hope for anything sensational," he said. "A mystery is worth just as much as the darkness in which it is shrouded; and, as we have begun by dispelling the darkness, nothing remains but the fact itself in its naked reality. Nevertheless the facts in this case are strange and the reality is not denuded of a certain grandeur."
"It must needs be so," said Patrice Belval, "seeing that the reality left so miraculous a legend in the isle of Sarek and even all over Brittany." ”

“ Brother Thomas was a poet and an illuminator about whom we possess not many details, a very bad poet, to judge by his verses, but as an illuminator ingenuous and not devoid of talent. He left a sort of missal in which he related his life at Sarek Abbey and drew the thirty dolmens of the island, the whole accompanied by instances, religious quotations and predictions after the manner of Nostradamus. It was this missal, discovered by Maguennoc aforesaid, that contained the famous page with the crucified women and the prophecy relating to Sarek ”

“ Véronique had been listening absent-mindedly to Honorine's explanations. She leant her body farther out of the boat, in order to catch sight the sooner of her son, while the Breton woman, once more a victim to her obsession, continued, in spite of herself:
"There's more than that. The Isle of Sarek—and that is why your father came to live here—contains a collection of dolmens which have nothing remarkable about them, but which are peculiar for one reason, that they are all nearly alike. Well, how many of them do you think there are? Thirty! Thirty, like the principal reefs. ”

“ But why not abandon herself to the death that offered, death from starvation, from exhaustion? If you suffer long enough, there must come a moment when the suffering decreases and when you pass, almost unconsciously, from life, which has grown too cruel, to death, which Veronique was gradually beginning to desire.
“That's it, that's it,” she murmured. “To go from Sarek or to die: it's all the same. What I want is to get away.”
A sound of leaves made her open her eyes. The flame of the candle was expiring. But behind the lantern All's Well was sitting, beating the air with his fore-paws. ”

“ The opening which she thus contrived to make was very wide; and she easily passed the ladder which she had brought with her through and secured it by its iron hooks to the lower ledge.
She was some hundred feet or so above the sea, which lay all white before her, guarded by the thousand reefs of Sarek. But she could not see the foot of the cliff, for there was under the window a slight projection of granite which jutted forward and on which the ladder rested instead of hanging perpendicularly. ”

“ The prophecy doesn't mention such a thing. In any case, Vorski goes to work at random. At Sarek he carries off Francois and Stephane Maroux and then, both as a measure of precaution and in order to cross the island without attracting attention and to enter the Priory more easily, he dresses himself in Stephane's clothes, while Raynold puts on Francois'. The job before them is an easy one. The only people in the house are an old man, M. d'Hergemont, and a woman, Marie Le Goff. As soon as these are got rid of, the rooms and Maguennoc's in particular will be searched. ”

“ You can imagine the effect produced by this revelation on a man like Vorski. The God-Stone was bound to be the miraculous stone wrested from the soil of his native land, the stone which was to be discovered by the son of a king and which, from that time onward, would give him power and royalty. Everything that he learnt later confirmed his conviction. But the great fact that dominates his subterranean life at Sarek was the discovery of Brother Thomas' prophecy in the course of the last month. ”