Chapter L. The Death of a Titan.

by Alexandre Dumas

　　At the moment when Porthos, more accustomed to the darkness than thesemen, coming from open daylight, was looking round him to see if throughthis artificial midnight Aramis were not making him some signal, he felthis 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 ofthe dying, Aramis and Porthos glided unseen along the granite walls ofthe cavern. Aramis led Porthos into the last but one compartment, andshowed him, in a hollow of the rocky wall, a barrel of powder weighingfrom seventy to eighty pounds, to which he had just attached a fuse. "Myfriend," said he to Porthos, "you will take this barrel, the match ofwhich I am going to set fire to, and throw it amidst our enemies; can youdo 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, myJupiter, hurl your thunderbolt among them.""Light it," repeated Porthos."On my part," continued Aramis, "I will join our Bretons, and help themto get the canoe to the sea. I will wait for you on the shore; launch itstrongly, 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 evenattempt 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 hishands, and fell back to the outlet of the cavern where the three rowersawaited him.Porthos, left alone, applied the spark bravely to the match. The spark -a feeble spark, first principle of conflagration - shone in the darknesslike a glow-worm, then was deadened against the match which it set fireto, Porthos enlivening the flame with his breath. The smoke was a littledispersed, and by the light of the sparkling match objects might, for twoseconds, be distinguished. It was a brief but splendid spectacle, thatof this giant, pale, bloody, his countenance lighted by the fire of thematch burning in surrounding darkness! The soldiers saw him, they sawthe barrel he held in his hand - they at once understood what was goingto happen. Then, these men, already choked with horror at the sight ofwhat had been accomplished, filled with terror at thought of what wasabout to be accomplished, gave out a simultaneous shriek of agony. Someendeavored to fly, but they encountered the third brigade, which barredtheir passage; others mechanically took aim and attempted to fire theirdischarged muskets; others fell instinctively upon their knees. Two orthree officers cried out to Porthos to promise him his liberty if hewould spare their lives. The lieutenant of the third brigade commandedhis men to fire; but the guards had before them their terrifiedcompanions, who served as a living rampart for Porthos. We have saidthat the light produced by the spark and the match did not last more thantwo seconds; but during these two seconds this is what it illumined: inthe first place, the giant, enlarged in the darkness; then, at ten pacesoff, a heap of bleeding bodies, crushed, mutilated, in the midst of whichsome still heaved in the last agony, lifting the mass as a lastrespiration inflating the sides of some old monster dying in the night.Every breath of Porthos, thus vivifying the match, sent towards this heapof bodies a phosphorescent aura, mingled with streaks of purple. Inaddition to this principal group scattered about the grotto, as thechances of death or surprise had stretched them, isolated bodies seemedto be making ghastly exhibitions of their gaping wounds. Above ground,bedded in pools of blood, rose, heavy and sparkling, the short, thickpillars of the cavern, of which the strongly marked shades threw out theluminous particles. And all this was seen by the tremulous light of amatch 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. Duringthis short space of time an officer of the third brigade got togethereight men armed with muskets, and, through an opening, ordered them tofire upon Porthos. But they who received the order to fire trembled sothat three guards fell by the discharge, and the five remaining ballshissed on to splinter the vault, plow the ground, or indent the pillarsof the cavern.A burst of laughter replied to this volley; then the arm of the giantswung round; then was seen whirling through the air, like a falling star,the train of fire. The barrel, hurled a distance of thirty feet, clearedthe barricade of dead bodies, and fell amidst a group of shriekingsoldiers, who threw themselves on their faces. The officer had followedthe brilliant train in the air; he endeavored to precipitate himself uponthe barrel and tear out the match before it reached the powder itcontained. Useless! The air had made the flame attached to theconductor more active; the match, which at rest might have burnt fiveminutes, was consumed in thirty seconds, and the infernal work exploded.Furious vortices of sulphur and nitre, devouring shoals of fire whichcaught every object, the terrible thunder of the explosion, this is whatthe second which followed disclosed in that cavern of horrors. Therocks split like planks of deal beneath the axe. A jet of fire, smoke,and debris sprang from the middle of the grotto, enlarging as itmounted. The large walls of silex tottered and fell upon the sand, andthe 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 fellgrimly back, in the order of their weight, every vegetable, mineral, orhuman fragment. Then the lighter sand and ash came down in turn,stretching like a winding sheet and smoking over the dismal scene. Andnow, in this burning tomb, this subterranean volcano, seek the king'sguards with their blue coats laced with silver. Seek the officers,brilliant in gold, seek for the arms upon which they depended for theirdefense. One single man has made of all of those things a chaos moreconfused, more shapeless, more terrible than the chaos which existedbefore the creation of the world. There remained nothing of the threecompartments - nothing by which God could have recognized His handiwork.As for Porthos, after having hurled the barrel of powder amidst hisenemies, he had fled, as Aramis had directed him to do, and had gainedthe last compartment, into which air, light, and sunshine penetratedthrough the opening. Scarcely had he turned the angle which separatedthe third compartment from the fourth when he perceived at a hundredpaces from him the bark dancing on the waves. There were his friends,there liberty, there life and victory. Six more of his formidablestrides, and he would be out of the vault; out of the vault! a dozen ofhis vigorous leaps and he would reach the canoe. Suddenly he felt hisknees give way; his knees seemed powerless, his legs to yield beneath him."Oh! oh!" murmured he, "there is my weakness seizing me again! I canwalk no further! What is this?"Aramis perceived him through the opening, and unable to conceive whatcould 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 ofhis body - "oh! but I cannot." While saying these words, he fell uponhis knees, but with his mighty hands he clung to the rocks, and raisedhimself up again."Quick! quick!" repeated Aramis, bending forward towards the shore, as ifto draw Porthos towards him with his arms."Here I am," stammered Porthos, collecting all his strength to make onestep more."In the name of Heaven! Porthos, make haste! the barrel will blow up!""Make haste, monseigneur!" shouted the Bretons to Porthos, who wasfloundering as in a dream.But there was no time; the explosion thundered, earth gaped, the smokewhich hurled through the clefts obscured the sky; the sea flowed back asthough driven by the blast of flame which darted from the grotto as iffrom the jaws of some gigantic fiery chimera; the reflux took the barkout twenty toises; the solid rocks cracked to their base, and separatedlike blocks beneath the operation of the wedge; a portion of the vaultwas carried up towards heaven, as if it had been built of cardboard; thegreen and blue and topaz conflagration and black lava of liquefactionsclashed and combated an instant beneath a majestic dome of smoke; thenoscillated, declined, and fell successively the mighty monoliths of rockwhich the violence of the explosion had not been able to uproot from thebed of ages; they bowed to each other like grave and stiff old men, thenprostrating themselves, lay down forever in their dusty tomb.This frightful shock seemed to restore Porthos the strength that he hadlost; he arose, a giant among granite giants. But at the moment he wasflying between the double hedge of granite phantoms, these latter, whichwere no longer supported by the corresponding links, began to roll andtotter round our Titan, who looked as if precipitated from heaven amidstrocks which he had just been launching. Porthos felt the very earthbeneath his feet becoming jelly-tremulous. He stretched both hands torepulse the falling rocks. A gigantic block was held back by each of hisextended arms. He bent his head, and a third granite mass sank betweenhis shoulders. For an instant the power of Porthos seemed about to failhim, but this new Hercules united all his force, and the two walls of theprison in which he was buried fell back slowly and gave him place. Foran instant he appeared, in this frame of granite, like the angel ofchaos, but in pushing back the lateral rocks, he lost his point ofsupport, for the monolith which weighed upon his shoulders, and theboulder, pressing upon him with all its weight, brought the giant downupon his knees. The lateral rocks, for an instant pushed back, drewtogether again, and added their weight to the ponderous mass which wouldhave 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 believedthat, like Enceladus, he would succeed in shaking off the triple load.But by degrees Aramis beheld the block sink; the hands, strung for aninstant, the arms stiffened for a last effort, gave way, the extendedshoulders sank, wounded and torn, and the rocks continued to graduallycollapse."Porthos! Porthos!" cried Aramis, tearing his hair. "Porthos! where areyou? Speak!""Here, here," murmured Porthos, with a voice growing evidently weaker,"patience! patience!"Scarcely had he pronounced these words, when the impulse of the fallaugmented the weight; the enormous rock sank down, pressed by thoseothers which sank in from the sides, and, as it were, swallowed upPorthos in a sepulcher of badly jointed stones. On hearing the dyingvoice of his friend, Aramis had sprung to land. Two of the Bretonsfollowed him, with each a lever in his hand - one being sufficient totake care of the bark. The dying rattle of the valiant gladiator guidedthem amidst the ruins. Aramis, animated, active and young as at twenty,sprang towards the triple mass, and with his hands, delicate as those ofa woman, raised by a miracle of strength the corner-stone of this greatgranite grave. Then he caught a glimpse, through the darkness of thatcharnel-house, of the still brilliant eye of his friend, to whom themomentary lifting of the mass restored a momentary respiration. The twomen came rushing up, grasped their iron levers, united their triplestrength, not merely to raise it, but sustain it. All was useless. Theygave way with cries of grief, and the rough voice of Porthos, seeing themexhaust themselves in a useless struggle, murmured in an almost cheerfultone those supreme words which came to his lips with the lastrespiration, "Too heavy!"After which his eyes darkened and closed, his face grew ashy pale, thehands whitened, and the colossus sank quite down, breathing his lastsigh. With him sank the rock, which, even in his dying agony he hadstill held up. The three men dropped the levers, which rolled upon thetumulary 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 whichGod had built about him to his measure.