The sky was growing grayish-black, a tint that blended with the slate-colored sea.To those on the bank, the sound of the men about to die came softly across the water.There was a sail far out.Between the strand and the touba where Koupriane watched, was a ridge, a window, which, however, did not hide the shore or the bay from the prefect of police, because at the height where he was his glance passed at an angle above it.But from the sea this ridge entirely hid anyone who lay in ambush behind it.The reporter watched fifty moujiks flat on their stomachs crawling up the ridge, behind two of their number whose heads alone topped the ridge.In the line of gaze taken by those two heads was the white sail, looming much larger now.The yacht was heeled in the water and glided with real elegance, heading straight on.Suddenly, just when they supposed she was coming straight to shore, the sails fell and a canoe was dropped over the side.Four men got into it; then a woman jumped lightly down a little gangway into the canoe.It was Natacha.Koupriane had no difficulty in recognizing her through the gathering darkness.
"Ah, my dear Monsieur Rouletabille," said he, "see your prisoner of the Nihilists.Notice how she is bound.Her thongs certainly are causing her great pain.These revolutionaries surely are brutes!"The truth was that Natacha had gone quite readily to the rudder and while the others rowed she steered the light boat to the place on the beach that had been pointed out to her.Soon the prow of the canoe touched the sands.There did not seem to be a soul about, and that was the conclusion the men in the canoe who stood up looking around, seemed to reach.They jumped out, and then it was Natacha's turn.She accepted the hand held out to her, talking pleasantly with the men all the time.She even turned to press the hand of one of them.The group came up across the beach.All this time the watchers in the little eating-house could see the false moujiks, who had wriggled on their stomachs to the very edge of the ridge, hold ing themselves ready to spring.
Behind his shutter, Koupriane could not restrain an exclamation of triumph; he gradually identified some of the figures in the group, and muttered:
"Eh! eh! There is Priemkof himself and the others.Gounsovski is right and he certainly is well-informed; his system is decidedly a good one.What a net-full!"He hardly breathed as he watched the outcome.He could discern elsewhere, beside the bay, flat on the ground, concealed by the slightest elevation of the soil, other false moujiks.The wood of Sestroriesk was watched in the same way.The group of revolutionaries who strolled behind Natacha stopped to confer.In three - maybe two - minutes, they would be surrounded - cut off, taken in the trap.Suddenly a gunshot sounded 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.
