Landon leaped to his feet with a curse. He seized an oar; he thrust with all his strength at the mud. And at the same moment the two on the shore, struggling in their captor's hands, let fall the painter. The boat shot out stern foremost into deep water.
From the shore came the sound of a struggle and then Muhammed's voice, shrill in explanation.
"Signori! Signori!I am not a contrabandist! I am a tourist; I can prove it; I wish to offer no resistance; I place myself in your hands, freely."
There was a grim laugh, and then the yellow beam of light which had been withdrawn while the struggle proceeded, flung out its level rays again and illuminated the boat.
"Surrender, Luigi!" shouted a stern voice. There was another click. "Surrender,stupido! I have you covered; I give you five seconds before I fire!"
The shrill voice of the captured sailor reinforced the argument.
"It is over—finished," he shouted pessimistically. "It isPinale; there is nothing more to be done!"
Luigi groaned and then flung up his hands.
"I give in!" he cried, and burst into a storm of hysterical sobs. "It means Procida—this," he wept. "It means years in chains; it means half the rest of my life snatched from me." He turned and smote at Landon in the darkness. "I owe it to you, tempter!" he yelled. "Accursed of God, you led me into this!"
Landon stumbled in his surprise and then leaped at him like a cat. There was a shrill scream from the child as the swaying pair rolled down upon the stern sheets, gripping, each of them, for the other's throat. The boat rocked violently.
Again the stern command from the shore rang into the night. They gave it no heed. Animal rage possessed them; they were no longer men but beasts, fighting with hand and foot and knee, clawing, tearing, even biting as the chance of conflict brought Luigi's lips within reach of his assailant's cheek. They were lost to all human warning or control.
It was no human interference which separated them.
Fate played her hand—played it irresistibly, crushingly, played it with a vindictive completeness such as even she has never used since her grip fell upon her plaything—that toy of hers among a million million toys, and which we call our world.
A roar, terrific, growing, menacing, filling the echoes, brimming the heavy air, rolling out across the still waters of the bay, thundered into the silence of the shore. The dim lamps upon the Marina shook; crash upon crash echoed from buildings which could not be seen, but which terror could picture in all the crude pigments of imagination and despair! Beside the boat a huge crack rent the jetty in twain. Stones, dashed from the crumbling buildings in the darkness, flung huge gouts of spray over the two who wrenched themselves apart in her stern, over their prisoners, over the child, who cried aloud in all the agony of childish fear.
And then human voices joined the chorus—voices which expressed every intonation of panic, of the horror which is built upon amazement, of the unleashed emotions of men awaking to meet blindly the common hazards of life and confronting chaos, illimitable ruin, a sudden unbarring of the gates of Hell.
The struggle in the boat ceased. Wild curses became, on Luigi's lips, a string of piteous appeals to the very saints whose names he had used a moment before to point his blasphemies. Miller and Landon grasped the oars.
But even the terrors of earthquake do not wreck the discipline of Italy's Carbineers. The sergeant's warning was repeated thunderously.
Miller screamed an assent, a surrender. Landon answered with an oath. The one endeavored to propel the boat shorewards, the other towards the sea. It spun between their efforts; they yelled and gesticulated madly.
And again the sergeant's voice was heard, with a hundred other voices, appealing to a God whose mercy was surely turned away.
For a moaning soundtingledalong the strand, and then silently, but with the speed of a cataract, the sea sank back from the shore.
It plucked half a hundred boats from their anchorages; it gripped them down into its trough. For full thirty seconds they fled upon this monstrous tide of a tideless sea, hull crashing against hull, mast beating against mast, a wrecked wilderness of spars and rigging, tangled, coiled, the froth, the scum, as it were, upon that mighty crest. And behind them went theSanta Margarita'sdingy, with bound and free in equal helplessness.
Then, as if the sluice of some Cyclopean lock had been shut, the mighty mill-race halted and a mountain grew upon the face of the deep. Huge, black, awesome, it swung itself up, swelled higher and higher, hung through an æon-long moment of horror, and then rolled back whence it had come. And the menace of its coming left no tiniest coign of foothold for hope in its path. Irresistible and relentless it moved along to destroy every barrier of nature, every man-built obstacle with its might. Its foam-plumed crest roared over the quayside and the Marina five fathoms deep.
Like a chip upon the surface of a torrent which suddenly hastens to the brink of the cascade, the boat and its burden of lives was snatched along. The three who stood and gripped its gunwale saw the broad expanse of the Marina before them, saw it seem to sink as they themselves rose upon the flood, saw how they raced across it twenty feet above the level of its flags. And they saw more—saw it with eyes which seemed to sear their brains with anticipation, with despair.
This!
A long, irregular, deep-fronted row of dwellings, square to the sea, square to the reeling ridge of ocean which was sweeping upon them as the gust sweeps down upon the far-flung autumn leaves.
They called aloud in chorus; they challenged Fate with their despair. And Fate replied.
The waters reached the walls; the huge sheet of spray shot high into the night. But the dingy passed on uncrushed.
An alley opened before them—an alley through which they shot on the roaring tide into the square beyond, sank down as the dwindling waters sank and with their last effort of destruction reached, and were borne into an arched opening girt about with trees. And then that, in its turn, became a ruin of plaster and planks and stone. The wave completed what the earthquake had all too thoroughly begun. The roof and walls crashed down into a grim monument upon a living grave.
Out of the darkness of insensibility consciousness came slowly into being in Aylmer's brain, but memory lagged to join it. He was bound—that he realized, and his teeth were immovable upon a gag. The darkness was absolute and so, for the first few minutes through which his senses woke, was the silence. He could feel rough slabs of wood which cased his body in. He shifted uneasily and beat his temple upon a plank. The sweat of terror broke out upon his brow. He was buried alive! God help him! The worst that could happen to a living soul was his sentence from the lips of Fate!
Something whimpered in the darkness; something stirred beside his feet.
In a flash came remembrance. The awful moment of disaster through which he had been carried, blind, speechless, and bound, became a picture in his brain—a picture the more vivid in that actuality had been hidden from him and imagination had supplied details beyond the compass of the real. He stirred afresh, he writhed, his bound wrists beat out upon the air.
The whimpers ceased and words followed—words in a child's voice shaken by fear. A trembling hand found Aylmer's sleeve, crept up it to his cheek, and halted there in miserable hesitation.
"It's me—it's me!" whispered the voice. "Can't you speak? Oh, can't you speak to me?"
And then the wandering fingers found the linen band which bound the gag into place and was fastened behind Aylmer's head.
"Is that why?" said the child in eager discovery. "Isthatwhy?"
The band cut into Aylmer's cheek as the knot was twitched with all the awkwardness of haste, but a moment later the pressure ceased. He spat the gag from between his teeth.
"Little John!" he cried. "Little John! Are you hurt? are you able to stand?"
The boy clutched him with a sort of desperation of relief.
"Oh, youcanspeak—youcanspeak!" he shouted joyously. "My head aches and my shoulder doesn't move right, but I can stand. I can reach nothing above my head—or right—or left."
There was a creaking of timber as he moved, stretching his hands, as was evident, into the black emptiness about the boat. Aylmer's bound wrists were lifted to reach him.
"Pick at them—as you did before, little John," he said. "Loose me, so that we can search the darkness together."
The child's breath came in zealous pants as he tugged and pulled, but the knots were tightly lashed and sodden with the sea. And his haste was a handicap; he plucked and twisted ineffectually. And finally he overbalanced himself and slipped.
He gave a cry of pain.
"I'm hurted—I'm bleeding!" he sobbed. "I fell against something that cut!"
Aylmer's heart stood still. If the fall had injured the child severely, if it had disabled him, if he were to lose consciousness—was this horror of helplessness to be added to those which already had them in their grip? He stretched out his arms towards the sound of the sobbing, and this, as he did so, suddenly ceased.
Panic gripped him, only to be fought down. Slowly, and with painful effort, he twisted himself round in the darkness till his bound wrists found as their goal the child's cap which still covered his untidy mane of curls. And these were wet and sticky.
The reason was not far to seek. The baling slipper lay below little John's temple—the baling slipper mended with a rough strip of tin. And this had cut through cap and curls, down to the bone. It had finished what terror had begun. The boy had fainted.
Aylmer's first impulse was to use the whole of his tethered strength in bringing consciousness back to the child—to what was, he considered, his only chance of freedom. A moment later chance pointed a quicker road. His knuckles met and were scarred by the frayed edge of the tin. He gave an exclamation of impatience at his own dulness. What would cut him would cut his bonds. Crouching down he managed to grip the slipper between his knees and steady it there. And then he rasped his lashings upon its edge.
A minute sufficed, or even less. The cord frayed, gave strand by strand, and broke apart with a twang. He gasped with relief and fell to work upon his ankles. As these bonds loosened and fell away in their turn, he stood up, rising slowly and stretching his hands above his head. He touched nothing.
He sighed not only with relief, this time, but with a faint tinge of hope. And then he bent, felt his way past the still motionless child, and touched, by chance's guidance, Claire Van Arlen's hair. And he gave another exclamation of self-encouragement. For her cheek was warm.
He plucked the gag from her lips; his hands were already at her wrists as she uttered his name. He thrilled to the anxiety in her voice.
"You?" she asked anxiously. "You? You were uninjured. I heard you speak and—and, it seemed, to me that you—flagged—that you—were not you!"
"Yes," he answered quietly. "I had not found you then. I did not know—I do not know it yet—how far you yourself were unhurt."
His fingers were unlashing her feet now. He heard her stir into a sitting posture and, as her feet were freed, felt her rise to her knees. Instinct bade him thrust out a hand as she did so, and she rocked up against it. Her energy had been more than her strength; she leaned against him panting.
For a full minute he held her, feeling her pulses throb against his, fanned by her breath that panted past his cheek, one hand warm within his own, one upon his shoulder. And through the darkness he sent out his appeal to Fate. If the grim goddess had no farther favors in her store for him, let her hand close upon him there. Might there be no more weary struggles; might the end find him and the girl whose hand clung to his in this intimate protection at once. Let death come in that moment, and he would ask no more.
Fate gave no answer and the moment passed.
She gave a little sob and, still holding him, staggered to her feet.
"It is the stiffness, and the long hours bound. And the anxiety—for—for you!" she murmured. "I am unhurt, indeed I am unhurt. I have scarcely so much as a bruise upon me. And my chatelaine? That is still at my waist. I have—have matches, if the sea water has spared them!"
Light! Could they pierce this wall of darkness; could they actually hope to see how and where they were caged? He scarcely dared to breathe as he heard her silver chain of trinkets tinkle, and heard the rasp of the match-head on the box. The red spark sputtered against the blackness and then flared into yellow being as the wax took flame. They looked about them with more than curiosity. With awe.
High above their head was an arch of masonry, massively mortised, curving from a wall to a row of squat, solid pillars; and these last flanked a pile of heaped rubble and stone. They were in a passage some twenty feet long, closed at each end as the unwalled side was closed by the wreck of the house above. It was a cloister. And the open courtyard which it had rimmed was now a stupendous rubbish heap, massed high above their heads with ruin.
They looked down. They still stood in the boat, and at Aylmer's feet the child was huddled in unconsciousness, the blood still welling slowly from the cut on his brow. Beyond them something indefinite and unrecognizable lay in a dark heap upon the flags.
Aylmer stepped forward and bent over it.
It was the body of a man, clothed in the dark, red-striped uniform of the Carbineers. His lips were grim and set. His right hand still clutched the breach of a rifle. And at his belt was a lantern—the glass broken, but the tin intact. Aylmer's hands trembled as they fell upon this prize.
He wheeled back to his companion and touched the flame against the wick. There was a moment's suspense, and then they sighed in chorus. For the oil was unspilt. For a time, at least, darkness was not to be among the terrors which menaced them.
Claire knelt and pulled the child upon her knee. She stanched the blood; she dropped her handkerchief into the little pool of sea water which was fast draining through the wrenched seams of the boat, and gently laved the unconscious face. Little John stirred drowsily, opened his eyes reluctantly, and looked up with wonder into her face.
He put his hand up weakly to his temple.
"It's—it's queer—and—and hurty," he whispered. "Muhammed? He would make it well."
She pulled him to her tenderly.
"Does it hurt badly?" she asked. "Muhammed hasn't come to us—yet."
He looked wonderingly around him.
"The house—opened—and let us right in," he mused. "We came up on the sea—right up—as fast as a train. And Dad? Dad was with us then."
She looked up questioningly at Aylmer. And he had gathered up the dead Carbineer's cloak and was arranging it against the stern. He made a motion towards it.
"Sleep is all the medicine we can give him," he advised. "Let him rest. Meanwhile we must use the light while we have it."
She nodded quickly and laid the child gently down. He smiled at her drowsily again, whispered a half-distinguishable appeal to be told when the Moor "came back," and then nature's healing hand closed over his eyes. He slept—the deep, dead sleep of exhaustion.
Aylmer raised the lamp. Together they paced the length of their prison.
The gray flags were bare except where the Carbineer's body lay. With a little gesture of compassion, Aylmer straightened the stiffening limbs, and covered the stern, unfaltering face with the dead man's handkerchief. And then they passed on, to confront the hill of rubble which closed the cloister's end. And here they halted, as they looked down.
Claire shuddered.
A gray sleeve emerged from the stones and an open hand seemed to appeal for the help which came all too late. Aylmer dragged fiercely at the ruined wall. A block or two became unseated. These shouldered out others to rumble at their feet.
A gray-clad body became exposed. They looked at it, instinct preparing them to recognize what they saw. Battered and disfigured though it was, they knew it for Miller's face.
For a moment they kept silence, looking at it fixedly. The eyes were open, but death had wiped out from them the imperturbability which they had held through life. Fear had gripped the gray man at the last. Horror had been with him—even panic.
Aylmer leaned down and covered the fear-haunted eyes.
"He has gone, and taken his mystery with him," he said. "What his life was we shall never ascertain. What led him to betray us? That is beyond our learning. It may have been no more than fear and the desire to save himself. I think there was something behind it all that has escaped us, but"—he shrugged his shoulders as he looked about him—"what does it matter now?"
He held the lantern at arm's length as he spoke, and looked searchingly round. The gray stone ringed them in relentlessly. Was there any expedient in which they could find a challenge to the arbitrary decree of Fate? He saw none.
The girl at his side watched him. And then her eyes met his. And as he spoke his voice was strangely gentle.
"God interfered between Landon and his evil purpose, as you said He would. Perhaps, who knows, He may have other mercies reserved for us. But in any case we must teach each other to be strong."
She nodded gravely.
"We are in His hands," she said, "and nothing can be as terrible as what was threatened us by that vile man. The boy is safe. I have the help of your presence. We must kill imagination with work."
He looked about him again, doubtfully.
"Work?" he questioned. "Have we the chance to work?"
"Isn't it obvious," she said. "That is a courtyard. Above the ruins which brim it is the sky. If we use our strength and time to pluck a way through that to life again, we shall, at least, not think."
He paced forward a yard or two and examined the heaped wreckage of plaster, wooden beams, and stones. He hesitated.
"If we disturb it, there is just a chance of making our situation worse," he hazarded.
She shook her head.
"No," she said significantly. "Not worse. God might answer us that way, and save us suspense. And we shall, at any rate, have defied Fate to the end."
"Yes," he said. "In that I am with you; we will do our best—to the last. And if God's purpose falls upon us quickly, Claire, I thank Him here and now that He has permitted me to share this bitter cup with you, instead of draining that more bitter one which threatened an hour ago. At least I am not leaving you in Landon's hands, alone."
"And I am not helpless while they work their vile wills upon you," she answered. "Fate has been cruel enough, but she has spared us that. The end? That is still her mystery. Let us forget it."
He smiled.
"There is much I can remember which will spare me that. What you have been and done for me these last wild days—my memory will occupy itself with that and hope—while I work to make hope true."
And then, still smiling as if he had plumbed the eyes of Hope and found in them an answering smile, he laid the lantern on the flags and put his hands upon the barrier of ruin which faced him.
He toiled vigorously but with caution. As he rolled the larger blocks from their resting-place, he was quick to notice and to support the beams or flagstones which they had buttressed with their weight. And he used the first plank which tumbled out of the chaos as a lever upon its fellows. At his feet Claire worked vigorously, sweeping out the plaster which filled the openings as he made them, rolling aside the unseated stones to give him room, lending her lesser strength to aid his, when some task was trying his powers to the utmost.
For a couple of hours they toiled silently, and a gap had been hewn into the debris—a gap which seemed to be ceaselessly filled as the accumulations rolled into it from above, but an opening, nevertheless, which spoke of progress, which showed a reward for effort, which even pictured, faintly and indistinctly, a vision of hope. If their strength lasted? Was there not a chance, a tiny, elusive, but possible chance?
It was the remembrance that uninterrupted effort would fatigue them to a point where their strength would be taxed beyond recovery which made Aylmer at last call a halt. They went and sat beside the sleeping child. To economize the light, they extinguished the lamp.
And then—they rubbed their eyes.
A tiny beam of light, dim, faint, gray but distinguishable, was filtered down into their prison at the point where one of the cloister pillars reached an arch. It fell upon the flags in a little circle.
Aylmer reached it in two strides. He gave an exclamation.
"It is a pipe from the spouting of the roof," he cried. "I see the sky. I see the sky!"
She was at his side in an instant. In her turn she looked up into the hollow of the tube, to see light. She gave a little gasp.
"It's wonderful—wonderful!" she breathed. "Only that little way up—ten feet, twelve, perhaps, and freedom. And we are here!"
"It means two things of infinite importance!" he rejoined. "Air and, in all probability, water. If the gutter which discharges into this is still intact, we shall receive the rain when it comes. And after earthquake it comes, invariably."
She was not paying him attention. Her eye was still fixed below the tiny opening; she continued to look up as if the tiny disc of brightness fascinated her, as if she would drink draughts of the outer air thus delivered to them as if from an immense cistern.
And then the emotion of sudden discovery illuminated her face.
"We can signal!" she cried. "We can attract attention! We have only to thrust a rod up through that, and it will tell our tale. Surely there are rescuers at work by now; a whole city cannot be left to its fate!"
His eyes glistened.
"God sent that thought to you—God himself!" he cried. "We must have a rod; we must make one!" He turned and re-lit the lantern. He examined the splintered woodwork of the boat with a calculating eye.
Wood was at their service in plenty, but the tools to deal with it were wanting. Neither of them possessed a knife. He searched the pockets of the dead, but had no success. For a moment they stood regarding each other in incredulous despair. Surely Fate, after bracing them with this hope, was not going to torture them by withdrawal? And then Aylmer's eye fell upon the baling slipper.
He lifted it with a gesture of relief; he tore the strip of tin from off it and held it up.
"That is our blade!" he cried. "We have only to pare down splinters till they will pass through the pipe, and the thing is done."
He picked up a piece of planking as he spoke, worked the metal into the grain till a split began to gape, and then, wrapping a piece of tarpaulin round each end of his impromptu blade, worked it to and fro and downwards. A thin sliver of wood was the result—one about eighteen inches long.
He repeated the operation, slowly and carefully. As each lath was split and pared, he passed it to his companion and she spliced the ends with strips of gray cloth. And these? Aylmer took them from the dead body at the end of the cloister. Miller, in death, was helping to repair some of the injuries for which his life was responsible.
They worked methodically, without haste, but with every care. Two hours later they had a twelve-foot staff laid out at their feet. To the top they attached a little flag, also of gray. They divided it into halves, thrust the upper half into the pipe, attached the lower one to it, and then pushed the whole upwards to the full extent of Aylmer's reach. Claire peered anxiously into the hole. She gave a great cry of relief; her eyes filled with sudden tears.
"The flag is outside!" she cried. "There is no doubt of that; it is a certainty. While it was wrapped round the head of the staff inside the tube, it hid all light from me. And now light has come again—dim, but there still. It slips down between the staff and the sides. The flag is out in the air—the air!"
He nodded.
"All that remains, then, is to keep it moving—to show that human beings are holding its other end. We must work ceaselessly."
He looked round at her as he spoke. Her eyes were bent on him earnestly, meditatively. And there was something in her gaze for which he had no clue.
She spoke, and so supplied it herself.
"I think we shall be rescued now," she said quietly. "I feel a certainty about it, an instinct. Yes, I think we have defeated Fate. We shall come back into life again, you and I."
He understood. Through the wild days in the boat and on the island, Fate had given no chance for either of them to probe the future. Hope had had so tiny a place in their thoughts—hopelessness had so immeasurably absorbed them all. And now? Was she allowing herself to dwell on life as it would affect them untouched by Fate, and free? Was she mentally rearranging her attitude to him?
Fate would supply her own answer. He turned and doggedly began to work the flagstaff up and down.
A tension of silence was over them as they waited. The hours went by. With a little gesture she came, took the pole from his hand, and bade him rest. He surrendered it quietly, spent ten minutes in massaging his stiffened muscles, and then took it again. It was queer, this sudden reticence which had arisen between them. It was as if while Fate delayed to speak, all other words were futile. And her answer might come at any moment or—God help them—not at all.
The hours lengthened. The thin rays which still filtered through the half-closed pipe grew dim and at last died altogether. Night had come.
Aylmer turned with a little shrug, placed a plank beneath the butt of the staff to keep it in position, and came back to the boat.
"There is no need to fatigue ourselves through the darkness," he said. "Till daylight shows our flag again, we had better rest, to be strong for to-morrow. Shall we sleep?"
She looked at him curiously, and then answered with a little nod.
"Sleep," she agreed. "You are tired, tired. And wake strong; your strength—God knows—has been tried enough."
There was something restrained in her voice; something which again escaped his comprehension, but his fatigue was overmastering. He stretched himself upon a couple of flags. Sleep overcame him instantly.
Was it a moment later that he awoke in answer to her cry? So he believed, but as a matter of fact midnight was long past. She had lit a match; she was holding it to the wick of the lantern.
Her eyes were wide and bright with excitement. She pointed towards the pipe.
"I could not rest!" she cried. "No, I could not sleep and know that rescue might be passing by. I have worked at the staff ceaselessly and now! Now it is gone!"
He sprang towards her.
"Gone!" he repeated. "Gone!"
"They are there—above us—men—men who know we are here. They pulled it up, out of my hands!" She made a gesture which pled for silence. "Listen!" she cried. "Listen!"
A tinkling sound came from the pipe and then a tiny bottle sank into view, dangling from a string. He seized it. It was warm.
"Soup!" he cried. "Food! That is their first thought for us! And I had forgotten that I was starving. I had forgotten it absolutely!"
He held it to her lips. She put out her hand in protest, but his gesture was inexorable. She gave a queer little laugh, shrugged her shoulders, and drank. He took the half she left him and drank in his turn. He tied the bottle again to the string and shook it. It disappeared and was lowered again, this time with wine. And half a dozen little rolls dropped at their feet. They ate, they waked the child and fed him, they sat, and from above the sound of pick and mattock in the hands of men who toiled furiously thundered down to them. They speculated how and whence the first sight of rescue would appear. They laughed in high, excited tones. Expectancy had them in its grip to the exclusion of all other emotions.
And then, with a sudden roar and crash, an avalanche of rubble poured into the hole which they had dug into the mass of debris. And with it came a man in sailor uniform who mixed anathema and congratulation in excited but fluent French. He wept, he fell upon Aylmer's neck and embraced him, he kissed the child and Claire's hand. Slowly they toiled at his heels, helped by a dangling rope, out into the red glare of a dozen torches which were held by seamen of the French Marine.
And one of the two officers who directed them called upon the name of God and all His saints to emphasize his amazement.
It was Rattier who held and shook their hands a hundred times. Rattier, incoherent, swearing, every vestige of his taciturnity ravished from him by emotion, plying them with a thousand questions, raining tears upon little John Aylmer's wondering face.
They reached the market square. They looked upon the ruin which covered the devastated earth in the wan light of the slowly coming dawn.
Five miles away, swinging at her mooring opposite the ruined port of Messina was a white-hulled boat—a boat which they looked at with wistfully incredulous eyes. They whispered her name.
"The Morning Star?" they wondered. "The Morning Star?"
"What else?" cried the commandant, exultantly. "That Spanish torpedo boat—did you think nothing was to be heard from her? You disappeared. Two days later comes the news from Malaga of a felucca, going east with prisoners on board. Would that not induce your father, Mademoiselle, to put two and two together? The Melilla port authorities supplied the name of that felucca and her destination—Sicily. He arrived two days back. I have seen him, we spoke together, and then God knows all our energies and thoughts have been with these poor wretches ashore. Down in Messina your own countrymen and the Russians are doing marvels. TheDiomèdewas the only French ship, alas, in harbor, but we have others coming from Tunis, from Algiers, from Marseilles. We need every worker we can get. What you have suffered thousands are suffering still."
Aylmer gave a quick, decided little nod. He looked at Claire.
"You will let one of these sailors see you on board?" he said. "Paul will spare one to escort you."
She looked at him, startled, a little bewildered, even.
"And you?" she asked. "And you?"
He made a gesture towards the chaos which covered shore and hill.
"Can I leave the work which calls me, knowing what I know?" he asked. "Paul has put my duty into words. What I have suffered, others are suffering yet. Would you think well of me, if I left it?"
She looked at him with a smile that told of appreciation, approval, of something (or was hope a lying glass?) more than these.
"No!" she said quietly. "No!" She hesitated a moment.
"And when I have found my father, eased his mind, delivered to him his grandchild whom he owes to you, rested, made myself strong to work, will you come for me to do my part? Will you come—then?"
As the dawn rose over Messina's city of the dead, in John Aylmer's heart rose the dawn of hope fulfilled. Her eyes? What message did they not give? He read it as plainly as he knew he would read it at their next meeting—from her lips.
He lifted her hand. His moustache swept it.
"Till then, Claire," he whispered. "Till then, Beloved."
Dawn flushed into full daylight as the sun rose upon the ruined city. Morning dragged its length to midday and midday merged in afternoon. And the workers toiled on doggedly, burrowing, hewing, climbing, flinging their energies, risking their lives, against the inanimate barriers of destruction. Italian and Frenchman, Englishman and Russian vied with each other in deeds of humanity against the common foe. Nor was that foe content with the victory already won. Further shocks furrowed the stricken shores: ruin became more complete, danger more menacing, but the toilers worked on.
Aylmer's rescuers had gone aboard their ship and had been replaced by a new relay. He himself remained. The pressing needs of those who lay, as he had lain, in living tombs around him were first in his mind. But another thought was ceaseless. Certainty—that was what he asked. Certainty of Landon's fate. He scarcely allowed himself to realize how he hoped—yearned—to know definitely that Landon was dead. He simply contemplated it as a matter of completeness, as news that would bring infinite relief to those on boardThe Morning Star. If he were alive? He set his lips grimly. Though law was suspended, order out of gear, Landon should meet his deserts. If not by instruments of Italian justice, then by Aylmer's own hands—by the law of retribution, not the law of revenge.
He dropped the mattock which he had been wielding. He stood up and straightened himself, turning his eyes from the wearying expanse of wreckage towards the sea.
A boat was running up beside the ruined jetty. Before the mooring ropes were cast ashore a tall figure leaped from it—a figure clad in asoutane.
Aylmer made an exclamation, hesitated, and then clambered down the walls and ran across the uneven flags, holding out his hand.
Padre Sigismondi flung up his arms. His gesture was one of incredulous relief.
"But the Signora?" he cried, stricken with sudden apprehension. He panted, his eyes were vivid with anxiety. "The Signora?"
As Aylmer answered with the one vital word, the priest cried aloud again. He lifted his face towards the sky and made the sign of the cross.
"Safe!" he repeated. "Safe! If there was a single hope left to me amid the horrors which have overwhelmed us, it was that. I told myself that God, who allowed me to fail in my duty to you through my arrogant self-confidence, might be saving you in the midst of—and by—this destruction. When I came to myself and found you gone, I writhed. My friend, I cast myself upon the ground in the agonies of my self-reproach. Not to have plumbed the wicked devices of these men—I, who have worked among them a score of years!"
Aylmer gripped his hand.
"You, yourself?" he inquired. "You come here—how?"
"One of the many boats which were speeding to Messina—some, alas, with no charitable intent, I fear—saw my signals and took me off. And now? One scarcely knows where to begin. How can one confront such a disaster with one's puny efforts? God send me His strength! My own is as water!"
A shout echoed to them suddenly from the group of sailors. One stood up and waved to them with his neckcloth.
Aylmer made an answering gesture. He took the priest's arm.
"Begin here, father," he said quietly. "Some of those we have found are alive, but death's claim, I fear, is relaxed for no more than an hour or two. They need your offices. It may be for such an one that they are signalling to us now."
They hurried across the square. They climbed the pyramid of ruin.
The sailors were looking down at something which lay at their feet—something brown, and white, and vivid red.
The quartermaster pointed to a crevice in the masonry.
"There is a hollow," he explained. "We pulled him out by the arms, which—God forgive us—are broken. There are in there, perhaps, others. His eyes imply it. Words are beyond him."
The priest gave a startled exclamation. Aylmer echoed it. Disfigured, battered, crushed as it was, they recognized the figure in the blood-staineddjelabof brown.
A growing dimness was clouding Muhammed's eyes. The quick pant of his breathing weakened as they watched. But a flash of feeling illuminated the pallid features as the Moor's glance reached and dwelled upon Aylmer's face.
His lips moved.
"The child?" he asked in a faint whisper. "The Sidi Jan?"
Padre Sigismondi darted an inquiring look at his companion and then knelt beside the dying man.
"The child is well," he answered gravely. "Yourself? Is there no message to give, no delivery of your soul you wish to make? Time is short for you. Use it, and me, as you wish."
The brown eyes searched the priest's features with a queer disdain, as it seemed—or was it, perchance, compassion. The stiffening lips became more grimly resolute.
"I proclaim!" said the Moor. "I proclaim that there is One God—One God—," and passed, unfaltering, to meet Him.
For a moment there was silence. Aylmer broke it.
"Perhaps we owe him more than we think," he said slowly. "The boy? That was always his first care. Perhaps he stood between the child and harm. I believe that he would have done so in the face of the child's father himself!"
Sigismondi drew a fold of thedjelabover the bruised face.
"The God to whom he appealed is his judge," he said. "Let us leave it in His hands. The living, now, my friend. It is not here that we can concern ourselves with the dead."
They turned to the sailors. Half a dozen blocks had been rolled from the opening, which gaped wide over an empty darkness. The quartermaster slung himself carefully down into it and slowly disappeared.
A moment later they heard his voice.
"A rope," he demanded. "Here is one who is, at least, warm."
They passed down a rope carefully. Aylmer's heart became suddenly audible to himself. What would appear; what had Fate still in store for him?
Again the quartermaster's voice echoed from the darkness with directions. The sailors bent their backs and hauled.
A face appeared in the opening, travelling upwards.
Aylmer felt no surprise. This was the expected, the inevitable. Landon was dragged out into the day—Landon—alive.
They laid him silently at his cousin's feet.
And as Aylmer looked down he felt a thrill of what must have been nearly akin to sympathy. God help the mutilated wretch!
His arms hung beside him limp and helpless, the fractured bones distorted in hideous angles. There were marks as of burns upon his face. But the supreme horror was in the sockets which held nothing recognizable as human eyes. Coals might have lain within them—coals pressed down to find their quenching there.
He moaned ceaselessly, swinging himself from side to side. And then words came slowly, piteously, one by one.
"Oil!" he gasped. "For God's sake, a little oil—upon my eyes!"
Sigismondi shuddered. Then he bent and placed his hand compassionately on the scarred temple.
"As soon as it can be found, my brother," he said. "Try to keep your courage while we do our utmost. We have to carry you—where you can be treated."
The tortured wretch moaned again and made an instinctive effort to raise a hand to his face. He shrieked as the shattered bones failed him, shrieked and cursed in hideous blasphemies. His brain began to wander upon the border-line of delirium.
"Hours—days—weeks," he wailed. "Broken—broken! Immovable and always in agony—burning—my eyes—my eyes! And the rain—running over them and bringing more agony—and more—and more. And unable to move a finger. My feet hanging in emptiness—my hands crushed in upon me—crushed—crushed—crushed!"
The quartermaster made a gesture of infinite compassion.
"The room had been newly plastered, do you see?" he whispered. "He was caught bodily—in the closing of the walls—as a nutcracker closes. And he was held and crushed—like the nut. The lime was deep upon his face—and when the rain came, washing it in—eating him—" He turned away with another pregnant motion of his hands, as if he put from him the picture which imagination conjured up.
Aylmer leaned down and spoke.
"We are going to take you from here," he said. "We are going to lift you. Be prepared."
Landon's groans ceased. His body became suddenly rigid with attention.
"Jack?" he whispered incredulously. "Jack?"
"It is I," said Aylmer gravely. "I—am unhurt."
Landon's face grew yet more distorted.
"Claire?" he muttered eagerly. "Claire—is gone?"
A light gleamed tempestuously in Aylmer's eyes and then as quickly died. His voice was even and restrained.
"She is safe, and well," he said. "She is on her father's yacht."
An inarticulate howl of rage burst from Landon's lips. He rocked himself to and fro; he made as if he would beat his broken hands upon the stones.
"God! If they'd suffered alongside me, if they'd been there, if they had given me groan for groan, I could have stood it—enjoyed it—damn them, I could have laughed with the lime in my eyes, if they'd been there—if they'd been there!"
He jerked himself to a sitting posture; he writhed backwards and forwards. His spite was a sort of ecstasy, possessing him, freeing him, as it seemed, from even the sense of pain.
Aylmer made a significant motion. He bent and slipped his arms beneath Landon's shoulders. The quartermaster lifted his knees.
Landon struggled in their arms.
"Let me be!" he cried. "Let me stand. Damn you, let me stand upon my own feet!"
They hesitated. Then with a shrug the quartermaster laid down his burden.
"This is no place for a blind man to pick his way," he remonstrated. "To get down, Monsieur, you have to poise yourself along the wall thirty feet above the square."
Landon stood panting and leaning against his cousin. The spasms of agony were convulsing his face.
"I will not be carried," he panted. "I'll walk upon my feet—like a man."
They looked at each other, hesitating.
"But your arms?" protested Aylmer. "Your arms?"
The breath hissed between Landon's teeth.
"My arms!" he repeated. "God! If I'd my arms! You—you must lead me—carefully—carefully. Put your hand upon my shoulder; keep close—close."
For a dozen yards he tottered along, and the sweat broke out astream upon his scars. And then he halted, and stumbled.
The quartermaster instinctively put a hand upon one of the broken wrists. Landon shrieked, and cursed him hideously.
"Monsieur might have fallen," apologized the man. "My excuses, Monsieur, but it was so quick—so near—the danger. The drop is sheer, do you see, sheer down to the square."
Landon gasped. "Which side?" he asked thickly. "Which side?"
"The right," said Aylmer. "Lean away from me, inwards, to the left!"
Landon drew a deep breath.
The next instant he had flung himself against Aylmer's guiding hand, outwards, to the right!
For the second time the quartermaster cried aloud and stretched out a hand. But it was not Landon's sleeve which it reached, but Aylmer's—reached and gripped it while the two bodies reeled upon the crumbling edge and sent the flying blocks down to break into powder upon the solid flags below.
And then, where two had struggled, one alone remained and clung. Landon had gone. Like the blocks he lay thirty feet below—broken.
A pall of mist and driving rain closed upon the city as evening fell, as if Nature flung a veil between herself and the handiwork of her passions. Through it the launch of theDiomèdethreaded the network of the shipping.
Warmly red against the ghost-like paintwork, the ports ofThe Morning Starbeamed up out of the smother. Aylmer held up his hand. Silently, with stopped engines, the boat slid up to the accommodation ladder, and as silently Aylmer swung himself aboard.
With a gesture of farewell to the boat's crew and one of greeting to the sailor at the gangway head, he passed into the companion and went below. In the doorway of the saloon he halted.
Two figures sat at the table, a picture book open before them. Claire's arm was about her little nephew's shoulder. His face was turned up to hers, but his finger still pointed to the page which they had been studying.
"And was he brave, enormously brave?" he was asking. "As brave as—as Muhammed?"
"Braver than Muhammed," she said quietly. "Because he was—good."
He debated a moment.
"As brave as the pig man, then?" he suggested. "He's been good, always?"
Aylmer stepped forward.
"Not always," he said smiling. "Not even often. But just as much as he knew how to be."
The glances which met his were startled but full of welcome. With a cackle of delight little John ran from his seat.
"It's him, himself—the pig man!" he cried.
Aylmer smiled and held out his hand.
Then he turned.
In Claire's eyes the surprise had vanished. They were full of inquiry, of an agony of question. Her lips were pale and faltered over the words which would not come.
He nodded, gravely, significantly.
She gave a little gasp. The color rushed to her cheeks, flooded to her brow. As if some strong chord of tension had broken in her breast, she leaned against the table, quivering.
"Yes," said Aylmer, quietly. "That shadow is lifted from our lives. He is gone—God's hand fell upon him—as you told him it would. The future of this life," he laid his fingers tenderly upon the child's head, "is in your hands now." He paused. "And my life, Claire—that is yours, too, to deal with, as you will."
She lifted her head.
The wave of emotion had passed and left her calm again. The haggardness, the anxious lines, were smoothed. Only in her eyes remained the mist of unshed tears. And as the mist sinks from the face of the risen sun, so the shadow of passed sorrow fled before her dawning smile. Slowly she came towards him.
With a sigh of infinite content her hands reached out to—and placed their surrender in—his.
Mr. Oppenheim's new story is a narrative of mystery and international intrigue that carries the reader breathless from page to page. It is the tale of the secret and world-startling methods employed by the Emperor of Japan through Prince Maiyo, his close kinsman, to ascertain the real reasons for the around-the-world cruise of the American fleet. The American Ambassador in London and the Duke of Denvenham, an influential Englishman, work hand in hand to circumvent the Oriental plot, which proceeds mysteriously to the last page. From the time when Mr. Hamilton Fynes steps from theLusitaniainto a special tug, in his mad rush towards London, to the very end, the reader is carried from deep mystery to tense situations, until finally the explanation is reached in a most unexpected and unusual climax.
No man of this generation has so much facility of expression, so many technical resources, or so fine a power of narration as Mr. E. Phillips Oppenheim.—Philadelphia Inquirer.
Mr. Oppenheim is a past master of the art of constructing ingenious plots and weaving them around attractive characters.—London Morning Post.
This new novel by Anthony Partridge, whose absorbing romance, "The Kingdom of Earth," met with instant favor, has London for its scene. But when you have read it you will admit that real London, as well as imaginary Bergeland, is a source of fascinating romance.
The heroine of "Passers-By" is a street singer, Christine, who comes to London accompanied by Ambrose Drake, a hunchback, with a piano and a monkey. The fortunes of these two are strangely linked with those of an English statesman, the Marquis of Ellingham, who in his youth has led a wild and criminal career in Paris as the leader of a band of thieves and gamblers, the Black Foxes. Here is the material for a thrilling tale in which mystery breeds adventure and culminates in love.
The first chapter plunges the reader into an interest-compelling maze of events, and the attention is held to the end by a series of dramatic situations and surprises.
Mr. Partridge is now reckoned among the favorite novelists of the day. His first book was "The Distributors," the story of a great London mystery. Then came "The Kingdom of Earth," one of the popular novels of 1909. "Passers-By" is his third book.
Here is a tale of love, mystery, and adventure, that opens with a rush and holds the interest unflagging to the end. If you like a stirring love story, prepare to be fascinated by the charming but baffling heroine; if you enjoy an absorbing mystery, be ready to cudgel your brains over a perplexing one; if you care for adventures that thrill, follow Maurice Wynn through the mad whirl of events that befall him when he goes to Russia and becomes involved with a secret society of Nihilists. Better yet, if you're fond of a rattling good yarn, one which combines all three elements, love, mystery, and action, in just the right proportions, take up "The Red Symbol," and when you have turned the last page, with nerves all tingling, you will regret that you're not just starting.
This swiftly moving narrative promises to be one of the most popular novels of 1910.
When the American baby's mother hurries off from London to Egypt, where her husband is ill with fever, the baby, in company with its colored nurse and a friend of its mother's, follows more leisurely. The trio stop at Oberammergau to see the Passion Play, in Rome to witness a special mass conducted by Pope Leo,—in a word, do more or less sightseeing, until they finally reach Cairo, where much more exciting events befall them. The description of the places they visit is enhanced by a pleasant vein of humor, and an attractive love episode sustains the interest. It is an extremely entertaining story, light and vivacious, with brisk dialogue and diverting situations—just the book for summer reading.
A series of characteristic pictures, by the well-known artist, Mr. R. F. Outcault, and Modest Stein gives additional charm to the volume.