CHAPTER V.THE DUNGEON.
Those iron fingers crushed into flesh and sinew till the bones of Frank Merriwell’s neck cracked with the terrible pressure. He could not cry out, he could not breathe, he could not turn about and face his unseen assailant.
In a moment Frank dropped his revolvers and clutched at those hands, seized the wrists, and tried to tear them away.
All in vain!
The black man beyond the panel seemed to have the strength of a Samson and be possessed with a fiendish desire to crush the life out of the boy.
There was a buzzing sound in Frank’s head, and it swiftly swelled to a roar. A blood-red mist swam and swayed before his eyes, and through this he saw the exultant faces of Ali Mustaf and Ben Ahmet grinning.
Frank felt that he must tear those iron hands from his throat or he was lost, and he made frantic efforts to do so, but the frightful pressure had robbed him of his strength, and his efforts were like the struggles of an infant.
Then it seemed that many lights flared before his vision, rockets burst into scintillating stars of ten thousand colors, and all the universe was whirling through a fiery sea of space.
The roaring in his head had swelled to the thunder of a Niagara, and then died to the soft murmur of a lapping brook. He seemed to hear tinkling fountains, delightful music and sweet voices calling, calling, calling——
Frank sat up. All was dark and dank about him, with a musty, underground smell. He drew his breath with difficulty, and there was a terrible pain in his throat and neck, which now and then sent a dagger dart to the very top of his head. He knew something had happened, and he felt that he had been injured, but his senses were confused, and he could not remember.
He put out one hand. It touched a slimy wall of stone. He felt beneath him. Wet ground there. He put out the other hand. Nothingness.
Then he heard some one breathing heavily close at hand, and the sound—harsh, rasping, blood-chilling, like the gasping of a strangling person—seemed to turn him to stone for some minutes. He sat there, listening to that horrible breathing, fully convinced that a mortally wounded human being was dying near at hand.
As he sat thus, with a rush, memory returned. He knew he had been led into a trap by treacherous Azza. He remembered holding off the two old Moors until he had been seized by an unseen assailant, and then——
That frightful sound continued near at hand, turning the boy’s blood icy cold. Had he been thrown into a dungeon where lay some other victim of the blood-thirsty Moors—some other unfortunate Christian, it might be? He held his breath to listen, and the sound stopped.
“He is dead!” thought the horrified lad.
But, a moment later, the rasping breathing began again, and then Frank made a singular discovery.
The sounds came from his own throat, which had been fearfully crushed by the iron fingers which had fastened on it.
He lifted his hand to his neck, and found it terribly sore to his touch.
“It is a wonder that I am yet alive,” he told himself.
And then came the thought that it might be much better for him if he were dead and out of his misery.
Beyond a doubt he was a prisoner, confined in some horrible place, doomed to perish there alone.
Alone! That was a terrifying thought. It seemed even more horrible than his fancy of a few seconds before that a dying man was near.
A sudden desire to cry out, to shout, to scream, came upon him. He opened his lips to do so, but no more than a hoarse gasp, that was half a groan, came from them.
He was seized by a feeling of despair—a mad longing to spring up and rush away somewhere, anywhere.
Staggeringly, feebly he got upon his feet, but then he was seized by another fear, and he stood still.
Dense and fearful darkness lay all around him, and he could not see what pitfalls might be on every hand.
The situation was one to chill the strongest heart, to turn the blood of the bravest man to water.
“This is some secret dungeon beneath the city, and I shall never escape from it of my own efforts,” thought the boy. “Who is there to save me? The professor does not know I left the hotel. I could not tell him, for he would have forbidden it. I was forced to leave Ephraim behind to take up the attention of the professor while I got out. Ephraim knows I was going somewhere to meet this mysterious Igela, as I supposed, but he does not know where I was going. How will they trace me?”
That was a question to which he could not find a ready answer.
“Even if Ephraim and the professor were to confront Ali Mustaf and Ben Ahmet and accuse them, the two rascally old wretches would plead utter ignorance, and there is little chance for a Christian to obtain his rights in this country. The professor might get the United States Consul to do something, but I have my doubts.”
Frank fully understood how desperate and almost hopeless his situation must be. At first he wondered that he had not been killed outright, and then he came to believe that Ali Mustaf and Ben Ahmet had hated him so that they had thrown him into the dark underground place to perish by inches in order that he might suffer wretchedly. And then it was possible that they had believed him dead when they cast him in there.
For all of the boy’s gloomy thoughts, he found his strength returning, and strength brought hope. He would not give up as long as life and energy were left in his body.
But what could he do?
“If I had a light!”
He uttered the words aloud, finding that his voice had regained its power in a measure, but it sounded hoarse, unnatural and muffled.
As the words left his lips, there was a sudden squeaking and a hurried scampering sound that seemed to make his hair stand up.
“Rats!”
They were there in large numbers.
“Great Scott!” gasped the boy. “I had rather face a tiger than a swarm of rats in a dark cellar!”
Nervously he felt through his pockets. His purse was gone, but it had not contained much money. Not a weapon was left him, his clasp-knife having been taken, with other things.
Then he uttered a cry of joy.
His fingers had found his waterproof match safe, which he constantly carried.
That had not been taken from him.
“A match!” he palpitated. “That will show me something!”
In another moment he had taken the match safe from his pocket, but, in his nervousness, he dropped it.
With a muttered exclamation of dismay, he stooped to find it.
A moment later a gasping cry of horror came from his lips.
His hands touched something cold and slippery, and that touch was enough to make him shudder and quake.
Frank fell back, and for some minutes he crouched there in the darkness of that terrible place, feeling cold chills run down his back.
“I must have those matches,” he finally muttered, although the words were broken and unsteady. “It is a case of must, and I’ll find them, even if I have to feel the thing all over.”
He seemed to feel himself in the midst of unseen horrors, and he longed to rush from the spot, but he knew that there would not be one chance in a hundred of his finding the matches if he moved away.
Setting his teeth and nerving himself for the task, he felt about for the match safe—and found it!
With a feeling of unutterable joy and relief he clutched the metallic case. His fingers found the spring, and it opened to his touch.
Snap—splutter—flare!
A match was lighted. It flared up, and then burned steadily.
Frank immediately looked for the object which he had touched, and there it was before him—a human skeleton.
The bones were stripped clean of flesh, and the skull grinned up at him in a ghastly manner. The light of the burning match glistened on the white spots, and showed a dank, green mold that was forming in places on the skeleton.
It was a most ghastly and nerve-shaking spectacle.
All at once, as Frank stood there, turned to stone, staring at the uncanny object, the skull began to rock from side to side! It was no hallucination—it actually moved!
To the staring, astounded and horrified lad it seemed that the thing was about to speak. Indeed, Frank found himself listening, with hushed breath and stilled heart, for the hollow-sounding words that should issue from that fleshless head.
The boy was spellbound—hypnotized with horror.
And then, just as the flame of the match burned his fingers, a half-grown rat darted out of the skull and scampered away.
The match fell and lay, a dying spark, on the damp ground.
In a moment the boy had lighted another match. He looked at the skeleton. It now lay silent and motionless, but scarcely less terrible to the eye.
“A victim of those miserable old Moors,” thought Frank. “And this foretells my own fate! I am to die here, and my bones are to bleach and rot beside the bones of this unfortunate wretch, who was, perhaps, a Christian like myself.”
Then he was seized by a tempest of rage, an ungovernable fury against the men who had cast him into that dungeon of death. He longed for the power to slay them, to blot them from the face of the earth.
“God help me!” he madly cried. “I must not die here—I will not die here! I will live to get square with them!”
Hours passed, and every hour seemed a day.
Frank explored the place where he was confined, and found it a large underground vault or cellar. There was a passage leading from it to some slippery stairs of stone. At the head of the stairs was a stone door. Hercules could not have moved that door from its position.
Frank explored all parts of his prison, and what he discovered was of a most discouraging nature.
There seemed no possible way of escaping.
Most boys would have given up in despair, but Frank still clung to hope, vowing he would live to “get square” with his captors.
His matches were running low, and the thought of being left with no redemption from continued darkness was far from pleasant.
He had returned to the spot where he had found the skeleton, when he was startled to hear a jarring, scraping sound far along the passage.
In a moment the boy was on the alert, his heart thumping violently, his whole body quivering with excitement.
Some one was coming.
At the farther end of the passage there was seen a gleam of light.
“They are coming to finish me!” thought Frank. “It must be that. Well, they may have a heavy job.”
He had no weapon save his bare hands, but he was desperate, and he felt capable of coping with several men. He would be fighting for his life, and he would possess all the fury of a cornered tiger.
The light moved, and he could see that its bearer was coming down the steps of stone, moving rapidly.
Swiftly the boy moved toward the passage, making no noise. He would be ready to meet the bearer of the light the moment the vault was entered.
Peering along the passage, he saw a strange figure approaching—a girl, muffled and veiled, holding a lighted lamp of quaint and curious make above her head.
Her face below the eyes was hidden by a veil.
“Can it be?” thought Frank, in amazement. “Is this Igela! or is it the black wench that entrapped me?”
The flaring light was of a baffling nature, and he could not make out much save that it was a girl beyond the shadow of a doubt.
The thumping of his heart became so loud that he feared she must hear it. He pressed one hand over it, trying to smother the sound of its heavy and rapid pulsations. Through his head the blood was rushing like a riotous, roaring river.
His mind was filled with a thousand wild conjectures and speculations. His thoughts were in a mad tumult.
It seemed to the eager boy that the girl advanced with the slowness of a snail, and still he dreaded to have her come nearer. Never before in his life had he been so wrought up, and he began to realize that his confinement in that horrible place had worked havoc with his nerves.
Many of the sensations Frank experienced as he waited for the girl to approach were new to him, and he wondered at himself. A thought that he must go mad if forced to remain long in that vault flashed like a bloodied rocket through his brain.
Then he noticed that the hand of the girl which held the lamp was shaking as if she had the palsy. It was a fair, plump hand, but it seemed about to loose its hold and let the lamp fall.
The girl halted, and it was plain that she was nearly overcome with fear. She seemed on the verge of flight.
“She must not run away now!” thought the excited youth. “If she tries it, I shall overtake her before she can reach the steps.”
He bent forward, ready to make a dash if she turned to retreat.
“Frank!”
She spoke his name, and it was the voice he had heard once before in the Square of Tangier. For all that it echoed strangely in that underground place, he was sure that he recognized it.
“Igela!”
He spoke the name softly, so that she might not be frightened.
He saw her start, saw her lean forward doubtfully, her attitude being that of a person who fancies he has heard something, but is not sure.
“Igela!”
He repeated the name.
“Allah be praised!” sobbed the girl, again starting forward. “He answers me! He lives! He is here!”
Then Frank advanced toward her saying:
“I am here, and I am alive.”
She swayed, and he caught the lamp from her hand with a deftness that saved it from falling. His free arm encircled her. He longed to see the face hidden by that veil.
In a moment the girl had recovered, and she started from him, saying swiftly:
“Am I a child that I lose my strength thus! I am strong now. How you escaped from Bab-el-Maroc I know not. Great was my wonder and joy to see you in Tangier. Ben Ahmet told me you were dead, and Ali Mustaf swore it was true.”
Frank was not a little puzzled by her words. He would have questioned her, but she suddenly started, catching him by the arm, and panting:
“Listen! Is it some one I hear coming this way?”
Both listened, but heard nothing save the rustling movement of a rat.
“We must get away soon,” whispered the girl. “If they should come—if they should find us here! We must go!”
“But how did you know where to find me?” asked Frank, whose curiosity was great. “How did you know where they had placed me?”
“I heard them talking. They did not know I was listening. They spoke of you, saying they had disposed of you at last, and that you would never escape to trouble them more. I stilled my heart—I listened, and I heard them say where they had placed you. Then, when my time came, I hastened here. The door was barred, but with all my strength I dragged the bar away. Then it was that my courage nearly failed me. I prayed to Allah. I took up the lamp and here I am.”
“Brave little girl! They had left me here to die—to starve and be devoured by rats!”
“And I will save you! But, oh, Frank! how are we to get out of Tangier? I cannot! You must go alone—you must leave me to my fate!”
Her voice broke in a sob, and he drew her closer to him, mystified, bewildered, but dauntless.
“That I will never do,” he boldly declared. “You shall come with me. We will seek the protection of the United States Consul. He will aid us.”
“No, Frank, it is not possible. He will have no power to hold me from Ben Ahmet. It is not possible that we may escape together. That we must give up. You will be fortunate if you are able to escape with your life. Come, let us hurry from this place.”