in the night, and the group, with startled speed, turned in their tracks and made silently for the sea, while from all directions poured the concealed agents and threw themselves into the pursuit, jostling each other and crying after the fugitives.  But the cries became cries of rage, for the group of revolutionaries gained the beach.  They saw Natacha, who was held up by Priemkof himself, reject the aid of the Nihilist, who did not wish to abandon her, in order that he might save himself.  She made him go and seeing that she was going to be taken, stopped short and waited for the enemy stoically, with folded arms.  Meanwhile, her three companions succeeded in throwing themselves into the canoe and plied the oars hard while Koupriane’s men, in the water up to their chests, discharged their revolvers at the fugitives.  The men in the canoe, fearing to wound Natacha, made no reply to the firing.  The yacht had sails up by the time they drew alongside, and made off like a bird toward the mysterious fords of Finland, audaciously hoisting the black flag of the Revolution.

Meantime, Koupriane’s agents, trembling before his anger, gathered at the eating-house.  The Prefect of Police let his fury loose on them and treated them like the most infamous of animals.  The capture of Natacha was little comfort.  He had planned for the whole bag, and his men’s stupidity took away all his self-control.  If he had had a whip at hand he would have found prompt solace for his mined hopes.  Natacha, standing in a corner, with her face singularly calm, watched this extraordinary scene that was like a menagerie in which the tamer himself had become a wild beast.  From another corner, Rouletabille kept his eyes fixed on Natacha who ignored him.  Ah, that girl, sphinx to them all!  Even to him who thought a while ago that he could read things invisible to other vulgar men in her features, in her eyes!  The impassive face of that girl whose father they had tried to assassinate only a few hours before and who had just pressed the hand of Priemkof, the assassin!  Once she turned her head slightly toward Rouletabille.  The reporter then looked towards her with increased eagerness, his eyes burning, as though he would say:  “Surely, Natacha, you are not the accomplice of your father’s assassins; surely it was not you who poured the poison!”

But Natacha’s glance passed the reporter coldly over.  Ah, that mysterious, cold mask, the mouth with its bitter, impudent smile, an atrocious smile which seemed to say to the reporter:  “If it is not I who poured the poison, then it is you!”

It was the visage common enough to the daughters whom Koupriane had spoken of a little while before, “the young girls who read” and, their reading done, set themselves to accomplish some terrible thing, some thing because of which, from time to time, they place stiff ropes around the necks of these young females.